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
This week we’re looking at the world of Smart Cards. Yesterday we checked out the Oyster Card, an RFID-powered smart card that millions of Londoners are using to pay for public transport. It’s one of the largest implementations of RFID in the western world. However perhaps because of that scale, it’s also fairly conservative. Right … Read more
The Oyster card is an RFID smart card used for electronic ticketing on London public transport services, notably the London Underground and buses. Other countries have similar smart cards. A couple that I’ve come across in real life recently were Boston’s CharlieCard and Wellington’s Snapper card. Some smart cards are used for other types of … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we explain why augmented reality is ramping up (and look at three new iPhone examples), analyze the top websites in the U.S., check out new Twitter statistics suggesting that teens don’t tweet, review recent Wikipedia changes, and … Read more
People who think that ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ is a media phenomenon that peaked in the television era, may be disappointed to know that the same formula is becoming increasingly popular on the Web. As of July 2009, Break Media was ranked the 35th most popular site in the U.S. – one year ago it … Read more
Earlier this week we looked at the top 50 web properties in the U.S., according to comScore, and analyzed the changes over the past year. The top 5 were almost the same, except for the entrance of Facebook at number 5. What really caught our eye though was the progress of several less glamorous brands … Read more
In our recent post about the top 50 web properties in the U.S. according to comScore, we noted that Demand Media is on the rise – moving from #36 to #24 in the past 12 months. Demand Media owns a number of successful sites, including ehow.com, Pluck and eNom (the second or third-largest domain registrar … Read more
Annual changes of note: Facebook #5 with a rocket; Twitter entered Top 50 in June; Demand Media, Answers.com and Break Media sites to watch. comScore has just released their latest Media Metrix rankings for the Top 50 U.S. Web Properties. If we compare the top 50 to one year ago, we see that the top … Read more
The New York Times has an article today about sentiment analysis, a trend which has been accelerating on the back of the Real-time Web – and Twitter in particular. Sentiment analysis is no short-term hot trend. It will eventually become a key feature of search engines, which will integrate the aggregate sentiment of the crowd … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we poll our readers on their 3 most exciting web apps or services, analyze the latest Twitter client stats, report on MySpace’s acquisition of Facebook app iLike, review the state of the netbook market, talk to Tim … Read more
Yesterday we asked what 3 web apps or services you find the most exciting right now. Not your 3 most used or favorite, but the apps that currently make you tingly with excitement. We got some great responses in the comments, so in this post we pick out our top 10 from your choices. We’ve … Read more
One year ago today we first asked that question, so now is a good time to ask it again. What 3 web apps or services do you find the most exciting right now? Note that ‘exciting’ is the keyword, so they won’t necessarily be your 3 favorite or most used web apps or services. For … Read more
Facebook is a social networking site that is enormously popular, but it can be a frustrating user experience. The design of Facebook leaves a lot to be desired and there are almost too many choices for things to do on Facebook. Also some of the more popular Facebook activities are trivial instead of useful – … Read more
In our analysis of the RFID market, we noted that the cost of RFID tags was a major reason why the technology hasn’t taken off as many had predicted. However various experiments are underway to produce a low-cost RFID chip. We mentioned MIT’s bokodes in our analysis; others include Alien Technology, PolyIC, and ChronoTrack Systems‘ … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we report on and analyze the acquisition of lifestreaming company FriendFeed by Facebook. We also explore a new trend that may route around both companies: distributed social networking. In other news this week: Facebook announced that user … Read more
So far in this What The Internet of Things Means For You series we’ve looked at how the Internet of Things (when everyday objects are connected to the Web) will affect marketers and accountants. Some of the comments on those posts have requested that we look at the effect on consumers – i.e. all of … Read more