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
We’re reviewing the first half of 2011 and in particular 5 trends that have helped shape the year so far. Earlier this week we looked at online privacy and group messaging. Today we get a bit geeky and review the continuing growth of HTML5. HTML5 is the next version of HTML, the markup language that … Read more
This week we’re running a 5-part series of posts looking back on the significant trends of 2011. Today we’re reviewing group messaging, the hot trend at this year’s SXSW festival. Group messaging started out as a battle between several startups, but over the past few months it’s turned into a fascinating Google vs. Facebook vs. … Read more
We’re now over halfway through 2011 and it’s been another year of technology disruption. This time last year, the focus was on Apple’s groundbreaking iPad and the impact it had on how we consume media. This year, the big story has been Google Plus. The reason Google’s new social network has shaken things up has … Read more
Google Plus, the new social network from Google, has been rapidly expanding. But contrary to early perception, it isn’t just being used by techies to talk about Google Plus. Trey Ratcliff is a well-known photographer and already Google Plus has become his main social platform – despite already having large fan bases on Facebook and … Read more
I admit: it’s taken me a while to warm up to Google Plus. Several of our team were early enthusiasts, one or two suggesting that it may even replace their use of Facebook or Twitter. That got me wondering: how many Google Plus users are spending less time on Facebook and/or Twitter? I surveyed people … Read more
My favorite startup in the fast emerging Internet of Things market, London-based Pachube, has been acquired by Woburn, Massachusetts-based LogMeIn. The deal is worth “approximately $15 million in cash,” some of it dependent on performance. LogMeIn provides provides cloud-based remote access solutions, such as the remote PC control app Ignition that we wrote about earlier … Read more
Today Apple released its third quarter earnings. Perusing the revenue figures, I was struck by just how much the iPhone and iPad have overtaken computers and music as Apple’s main form of revenue. The iPhone and iPad combined now make up 68% of Apple’s entire revenue, compared to just 18% for what were (until the … Read more
In January of this year, mobile travel management app TripIt was acquired for up to $120 million by Concur, a company founded in 1993 that provides “integrated expense and travel management solutions.” TripIt, founded in late 2006, was one of my favorite ‘web 2.0’ apps. At the end of 2007, ReadWriteWeb named it one of … Read more
The Internet of Things, when real world objects are connected to the Internet, is a trend that we’ve been actively tracking since early 2009. So far a lot of big technology infrastructure and solutions companies have gotten behind the trend, for the simple reason that they see a huge market opportunity. As more and more … Read more
Designer consumer electronics company Jawbone announced this week a new product called UP, a wristband built using vibration and motion sensors. UP will track data about your eating, sleeping and activity patterns. The main point of interaction with that data will be a smartphone app, on iPhone or Android. Health is one of the big … Read more
During my recent visit to Seattle I visited the Bellevue offices of Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile network and wireless phone provider in the U.S., to talk about the Internet of Things. There I met with Bobby Morrison, president of the Pacific Northwest region. The term that Verizon Wireless uses is M2M, machine-to-machine, which means … Read more
One of the most interesting aspects of Web technology and social media nowadays is how it’s being deployed by non-techies. Recently I had the chance to connect with the U.S. Army to find out how it is using the Web. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online video and more is currently in operation at U.S. Army HQ. … Read more
I’m thrilled to introduce ReadWriteWeb’s new Senior Community Manager, Robyn Tippins. Robyn comes to us from Current TV, where she was their Senior Community Manager. Prior to that, Robyn was Community Manager at Yahoo Developer Network from 2008-2010 and before that MyBlogLog. What’s more, Robyn has literally written the book on Community Management: Community 101: … Read more
On my visit to Seattle last month, I visited the office of data visualization company Tableau. As more and more data gets uploaded to the Web, it needs to be analyzed and made sense of. Data visualization is one of the most effective ways of doing this and Tableau is a leading company in this … Read more
Today the community behind open source blogging platform, WordPress, released its latest version: 3.2. It features a design refresh and speed improvements. That’s all par for the course for a software update these days. What actually caught my attention was a slightly gimmicky thing called Distraction Free Writing (or DFW). As the name suggests, what … Read more