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 very pleased to announce the launch of ReadWriteWeb’s fourth country channel: ReadWriteWeb Spain. It joins our existing three country channels: France, China and Brazil (which launched last month). Our Spain channel is edited by Ignacio García Ramos. Ignacio and his team will combine translation of ReadWriteWeb posts with original posts about Spain’s Web market. … Read more
It’s November 2009 and we’re nearing the end of a decade. It’s been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. With that in mind, over the coming weeks ReadWriteWeb will look back on the defining Web trends of the past 10 years. From the dot com boom, … Read more
Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 “connected consumers.” The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents “friended” brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What’s more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter … Read more
Five years ago I interviewed tech publisher Tim O’Reilly about a new term that his company had just coined: Web 2.0. The first Web 2.0 conference had been held the previous month, October 2004, and O’Reilly had graciously agreed to give an interview to yours truly – “an unknown blogger from New Zealand,” as I … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze a new breed of content site that is rapidly gaining momentum, look into recent statistics showing that Gen Y is using Twitter more, compare five recommendation services for iPhone apps, review the new-look MSN, and … Read more
Two companies that produce massive quantities of new content every day, Answers.com and Demand Media, are rapidly moving up the list of top U.S. web properties, as measured by comScore. Answers.com has risen from #26 to #13 in just two months, and Demand Media has risen from #24 to #15 in the same time period. … Read more
IBM has launched a new product called Returnable Container Management, which uses the Internet of Things to track and measure the usage of shipping containers. These containers are a large, dull but essential part of the supply chain for manufacturers – they are used to hold automobile parts, meat, pharmaceuticals and anything else that needs … Read more
Two years ago social news site Newsvine was acquired by MSNBC, the Microsoft/NBC joint venture. The site had launched publicly in March 2006 and was considered to be one of the best designed new breed of ‘web 2.0’ news sites. Features include user-generated content, reputation, voting, comments, friends lists, tags, and more. At the time … Read more
A new report by ChangeWave Research provides yet more evidence of the surge in consumer interest in smartphones; and of Apple’s iPhone in particular. Last week we reported statistics from AdMob stating that smartphones are now edging out feature phones as the device of choice for consumers. In the race for the highly lucrative consumer … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze how Google CEO Eric Schmidt thinks the Web will evolve, review Hulu’s latest plans to make money, investigate use cases for Google Wave, ask why VCs aren’t investing in Augmented Reality, review the latest Mobile … Read more
Yesterday we looked at how Google Wave (a new product that is part email, part IM, part something entirely new) is being used as an educational tool. In this post we explore if and how Wave is being used by the artistic community. This topic was suggested by Cory Huff, a commenter on the first … Read more
Google Wave is a much hyped new Internet-based communications and collaboration platform. It was announced at the end of May, released as a ‘Preview’ product shortly after and 100,000 more invites were made available at the end of September. Early users reported mixed feelings. But one month after Google Wave was opened to tens of … Read more
Brizzly wants to be to microblogging what Blogger.com was to blogging five years ago. Currently, Brizzly offers a user-friendly browser-based interface for Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook integration went live today and more social media applications will be added as the product evolves. Brizzly was founded by Jason Shellen, one of the original developers of … Read more
Today at the IBM Information on Demand event, IBM will demo a new app that will bring the Internet of Things to the iPhone. The as yet unreleased iPhone app is called Breadcrumbs and it will give consumers access to information about grocery food items. The app will be able to scan barcodes and deliver … Read more
This post is sponsored by IBM’s A Smarter Planet blog. Today at the Web 2.0 Summit, Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Media ran a panel called Humans As Sensors. With him were four organizations doing innovative applications using sensors: Markus Tripp (Mobilizy), Deborah Estrin (Computer Science Department, UCLA), Sharon Biggar (Path Intelligence), Di-Ann Eisnor (Waze). Each … Read more