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
While in New York earlier this month, I attended New York University’s annual ITP Spring Show. ITP is a graduate program for communications studies and the Spring Show is a chance for students to showcase their interactive projects. I saw everything from Matrix-like interactive squiddies, to a woman on stilts powered by an iPhone app, … Read more
Last week in New York, I met up with two of the founders of MyCityWay. It’s a portal for location-based mobile applications for city navigation, available on iPhone, iPod, iPad and Android. Around 50 different services are currently available in the MyCityWay app. Despite the 90’s style user interface, in some ways MyCityWay points to … Read more
Earlier this month I presented the keynote at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, on the topic of Mobile trends in 2010 and beyond. The presentation, delivered at the beautiful Computer History Museum in Mountain View, aimed to stimulate discussion about the business and technology of Mobile. Frederic Lardinois wrote a good overview of the presentation on … Read more
Today we are announcing our third event and our first on the East Coast: the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit, on June 11th at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. As you all know, last Friday we held the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, in Mountain View, California. The Real-Time Web Summit in NYC will follow the … Read more
Tomorrow we’re running our second unconference event, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit. It’s on right after the Web 2.0 Expo and we’re once again holding it at the beautiful Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Our last unconference was on the Real-Time Web and we got a lot of great feedback about the format and high … Read more
This Friday we’re running our second unconference event, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit. It’s on right after the Web 2.0 Expo and we’re once again holding it at the beautiful Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Our last unconference was on the Real-Time Web and we got a lot of great feedback about the format and … Read more
This morning I caught up with Chris Tolles, CEO of news aggregation service Topix. I’ve been following Topix since it began, back in 2004, so it was interesting to find out how the service has evolved. Originally, as the name suggests, Topix was focused on being a news site that categorized its content into topics. … Read more
Every now and then we publish the favorite mobile apps or sites of the ReadWriteWeb staff. The last time we did this was November 2009, however with our Mobile Summit just around the corner we wanted to give you an updated list. We’re all early adopters of mobile technology here at ReadWriteWeb, so have a … Read more
Within the next 24 hours we will be emailing out a very special, limited time offer to fans of the ReadWriteWeb Facebook Page. If you’re not already a fan of our Facebook Page, we encourage you to join our page now in order to receive this offer. Hint: it includes a special, friends-only discount to … Read more
Prior to SXSW, we polled you on what location-based mobile app you would use during the festival. Brightkite and Foursquare were the most popular picks, with Gowalla third. We also polled you a year ago about this class of app and at that time Brightkite was a clear favorite. As an attendee at SXSW, it … Read more
In the emerging Internet of Things, everyday objects are becoming networked. Recently we looked at smart clothing, today we explore the world of smart cars. From Formula One to cheap family cars, all kinds of vehicles are utilizing sensors and advanced technology nowadays. While some of the features we discuss below aren’t connected to the … Read more
In a recent post, I outlined a kind of layman’s test for the Semantic Web. I wrote that the tipping point for the Semantic Web may be when anyone can query a set of data about a historical figure and get a long list of structured results in return. I called this ‘The Modigliani Test,’ … Read more
In preparation for the upcoming ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, we’re outlining the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of posts. In this the final instalment, we look at three markets for mobile which promise to be hugely valuable: commerce, cloud computing and health. As a reminder, in Part 1 we covered … Read more
In preparation for the upcoming ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, we’re outlining the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of posts. In Part 1 we explored 3 important design and development issues for the Mobile Web. Now in Part 2, we look at 4 classes of mobile applications that have become popular … Read more
In a little under 3 weeks time, we will host our second unconference: the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit. It’s a 1-day event at the lovely Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California. In preparation for the RWW Mobile Summit, we’re going to outline the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of … Read more