Tech analyst, AI & the web
I founded the tech blog ReadWriteWeb in April 2003 and ran it until October 2012. During my time running the business, it was well known for its cutting edge content (“What’s next on the Web”) and its influential global audience. At its peak, RWW was ranked among the top ten blogs in the world by Technorati.
This category contains all of the articles I personally wrote for RWW, now archived on ricmac.org for easier browsing and search. If you’d like to explore the original context, you can also view a year-by-year archive with links to the Wayback Machine
The Internet Stock Blog asks: “Is it possible that if Yahoo is the new Internet media leader with RSS, etc. and Google is the leader in search, that Apple will own rich media?” Well ‘own’ is too strong a word, but I do know I’ll be paying much more attention to Apple this year than … Read more
It’s technically New Years Eve where I am, as I write this. I haven’t done much blogging over the past week, because I’ve been re-charging my batteries and making plans for 2006. In this post I reflect on the year that’s past and tell you a bit about my plans for R/WW in 2006. A … Read more
On 9 January 2005, I published the first of my Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-ups. When I launched it I described it as “a weekly summary of news and views relating to Web 2.0 (Web as platform).” I pumped out one a week for the rest of 2005. In many ways I viewed the Wrap-Up as … Read more
William Slawski has compiled two very useful lists of acquisitions, first by Google and now by Yahoo (see also The Guardian’s list). I’ll add the third, Microsoft’s acquisitions as listed on their corporate site. From 2003 on: Nov. 3, 2005: FolderShare Nov. 3, 2005: media-streams.com AG Aug. 30, 2005: Teleo Inc. Jul. 20, 2005: FrontBridge … Read more
Last year about this time I did a post celebrating the best Web companies of 2004. I was planning on doing a mega version of that this year, extending it to software and services. But then Dion came up with his excellent list of best Web software of ’05, as close to definitive as you’ll … Read more
After my phone-throwing incident earlier this week, I think I’ve calmed down enough now to do the equivalent of going on the Letterman show and saying sorry to anyone I offended. My friend Mike Arrington called me a traitor and others baled me up about what I wrote. My position hasn’t changed, but I think … Read more
I’ve published a post on ZDNet that details how the Web was used for good in 2005, in very bad situations. It was actually something I wrote for the book I’m working on with Joshua Porter, but it will almost certainly not be used (due to the book having a design focus). So I thought … Read more
This image from a Scott Gatzpresentation sums it up: 2005 was about introducing RSS to the products listed in Scott’s picture. 2006 will surely be about how to organize all those RSS feeds, for mainstream people in particular. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)
– Dan Gillmor is building a non-profit ‘Center for Citizen Media’, moving on from his previous (for-profit) project called Bayosphere. [via SiliconBeat] – The much-anticipated Pegasus News has released their first product, a music and entertainment news site called TexasGigs. It started as a music blog by Cindy Chaffin in 2002 – Chaffin will continue … Read more
Feedster has named Read/WriteWeb one of their Feeds of the Year. Their summary of my blog is pretty funny, given the controversy over the past few days. Russell Shaw, whose post was the final straw which led me to declaring myself fed up with all the Web 2.0 hype and debate, was one of the … Read more
Well my declaration that Web 2.0 is dead set the cat amongst the pigeons. Let me give a bit of background… I’ve been thinking for a while now about re-focusing Read/WriteWeb onto more media-related Web technologies. Many of the things I’m interested in are being done by Yahoo!, which by now is generally recognized as … Read more
I’ve had enough of the hype. I’ve had enough of cynicism. I’ve had enough of hate blogs. The nail in the coffin was this post on ZDNet, by Russell Shaw. The thing is, I agree with Russell. The term ‘Web 2.0’ is distracting from the real value going on in the Web right now. Read/WriteWeb … Read more
The inventor of the World Wide Web is now blogging: “In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, … Read more
Ben Barren’s written an excellent series of posts about his favorite features to flip. Here’s his top ten: #1 – Podcasting Ratings #2 – Better Blogging Tools #3 – MySpace meets Linkedin #4 – Non-Text RSS Reader #5 – RSS Search/Reader Attention Glue #6 – Images for Adsense #7 – Podcasting Creation Tool #8 – … Read more
Here’s the Top Ten web technology and new media memes, issues or news stories of the past week. 1. Yahoo buys del.icio.us. Yahoo! continues its buying spree of cool Web app companies, after also buying Flickr and konfabulator this year. Bubblegeneration had a nice summary: “Yahoo, I think, is rolling up social plays so it … Read more