ReadWriteWeb

MQTT is an IBM-developed protocol for real-time messaging that could become a keystone of the emerging Internet of Things. As the BBC explained recently, MQTT (which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is “a platform-agnostic system which can connect almost any networked object to the wider world.” MQTT is used as a messaging protocol for … Read more

In the Web world, you know that a trend has major traction when IBM is all over it. Like any large Internet company, Big Blue is careful about which trends it latches onto. It was a good couple of years before they were spotted at the Web 2.0 conference, for example. However in the case … Read more

I recently spoke to Andy Stanford-Clark, a Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer at IBM. He’s been working on a number of Twitter and real-time monitoring projects, many of them at the intersection of two big trends we’ve been tracking in 2009: The Real-time Web and Internet of Things. Stanford-Clark has set up various systems for … Read more

Earlier this year at the TED conference, Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group showcased a wearable computing system that allows users to display and interact with the Web on any surface – including the human body. The video shows the system’s main developer, Pranav Mistry, taking photographs with his hand, summoning … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze the continuing popularity of Apple’s App store, question the longevity of AIR apps, investigate the waves of changes happening in the book publishing industry, review one 19 year old’s innovative and successful news website, tell … Read more

During my recent trip to MIT I met with Andrew Lippman, an Associate Director at the MIT Media Lab and a Senior Research Scientist. Lippman heads up the Lab’s Viral Communications program, which “examines scalable, real-time networks whose capacity increases with the number of members.” Among other things, we discussed an interesting new product his … Read more

As the Internet of Things continues to slowly but surely ramp up, we’re beginning to see more everyday ‘objects’ being connected to the Internet. One which caught our eye is a new web-connected bathroom scale. The company behind it is called BodyTrace and the product has been labeled ‘eScale.’ It wirelessly and automatically uploads a … Read more

Yesterday we explored an emerging trend called “Cross Reality”, one term for when sensor networks meet online virtual worlds. As this trend becomes more common over the next few years (and it will, as both Web-connected sensors and virtual reality ramp up), what are the implications on how people use the Web? How will it … Read more

During my recent visit to MIT in Boston I met with Joseph Paradiso, Associate Professor and Director of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT Media Laboratory. He showed me some demos of what his lab is up to, focusing mostly on what is termed “Cross Reality”. This is when sensor/actuator networks meet online virtual worlds. … Read more

Siri has been getting a lot of hype over the past year. It’s an as yet unreleased product that aims to be a “Virtual Personal Assistant” (VPA). At the recent SemTech conference in San Jose, I sat down with two of the founders of Siri: Dag Kittlaus (CEO) and Tom Gruber (CTO). I was informed … Read more

As founding editor of ReadWriteWeb, every weekend I’ll pick out 2-3 posts from the past week which I thought were particularly good and worth highlighting. The biggest news last week was probably the announcement of Google Chrome OS (excellently covered by Frederic Lardinois), which many people saw as the much-anticipated ‘Google OS.’ On further analysis … Read more

As founding editor of ReadWriteWeb, every weekend I’ll pick out 2-3 posts from the past week which I thought were particularly good and worth highlighting. Last week Marshall Kirkpatrick, RWW’s lead writer and VP Content Development, wrote an intriguing analysis of the impact Twitter has had on our culture. The basis of the post was … Read more

We’re starting a new feature on ReadWriteWeb, called ‘Editor’s Picks.’ As founding editor of the site, every weekend I’ll pick out 2-3 posts from the past week which I thought were particularly good and worth highlighting. We’ll start with a post by Jolie O’Dell in our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a subsite devoted to early … Read more

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we feature an in-depth interview with the inventor of the Web Tim Berners-Lee. We also cover and analyze the surprise announcement of a Chrome OS (Google’s new operating system for netbooks), investigate a raft of new statistics from social … Read more

In part 2 of my one-on-one interview with Tim Berners-Lee, we explore a variety of topics relating to Linked Data and the Semantic Web. If you missed it, in Part 1 of the interview we covered the emergence of Linked Data and how it is being used now even by governments. In Part 2 we … Read more