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
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on Google’s announcement of a new communications and collaboration platform called Google Wave, look at Microsoft’s latest challenger in the search market with Bing, analyze the current trends we’re seeing on the Web, look at the latest … Read more
A new PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology report explains how the Semantic Web and Linked Data can help enterprises manage their large-scale data better. The PwC Center for Technology and Innovation team spent several months researching and analyzing the problem of data silos in enterprises – and what solutions are being developed to help with that problem. The … Read more
The latest implementation of OpenCalais, the Semantic API by media company Thomson Reuters, has just been announced. It’s with ‘new media’ stalwart CNET, which has signed up to use OpenCalais for semantic analysis of its tech product reviews, news, and blog posts. CNET has also joined Thomson Reuters as one of the first commercial media … Read more
A couple of weeks ago we launched our first premium report, on the topic of Online Community Management. In an era of the Web where separating signal from noise is difficult, there seems to be a market for in-depth commercial content that goes beyond the daily free news cycle. Our friends at GigaOM launched a … Read more
The MIT SENSEable City Lab recently released visualizations of mobile phone call activity over the week of President Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009. The visualizations are of course stunning, but they also aim to answer the questions: Who was in Washington, D.C. for President Obama’s Inauguration Day, when did they arrive, where did they … Read more
Last week we discussed some of the new trends we’re seeing on the Web in 2009: open data, structured data, apps that filter content effectively, real-time, personalization, mobile (especially location-based), and Internet of Things (the Web in real-world objects). We asked for your thoughts on these trends, along with your suggestions on what we should … Read more
Mir:ror is an Internet of Things app from the company Violet (follow on Twitter @violetOS). As the name suggests, it is literally a mirror – but an Internet-connected one which detects the objects you show it, triggering applications and multimedia content on your computer. It works via RFID stamps, known as “ztamp:s” in the company’s … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on why and how Facebook has opened up to OpenID, explore the rising popularity of Linked Data, analyze the current trends we’re seeing on the Web, look at the future of the iPhone, and more. We also … Read more
Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer at design firm Schematic, spoke today at the XML Auckland conference. Herigstad worked with Steven Spielberg on the conceptual design for the film Minority Report, including designing the hologram screens on which Tom Cruise used his hands to navigate. The subject of Herigstad’s presentation today was new forms of User … Read more
A prototype for an iPhone app that provides an integrated hardware-software solution for diabetes patients, has won a $10,000 prize in a competition run by DiabetesMine. The competition aimed to find an iPod-like device or web app for diabetes management. The winning concept was designed to solve a problem that all diabetes patients (including this … Read more
One of the web trends we’re noticing this year is more location-based mobile phone applications – i.e. apps that know where you and/or your friends are and utilize that data in some way. Some of this activity was fueled by Google’s entrance into the market as a serious player, in February when Google Latitude launched. … Read more
This week I gave a short presentation at a local event, Webstock Mini, in which I looked at some of the trends we’re seeing in Web Technology this year. The presentation is embedded below. I gave the term ‘Web 3.0’ a bit of a ribbing. But my overall theme was that there is indeed a … Read more
Visible Past is a location-aware learning environment being developed at Purdue University. It is based around the idea that data can be organized using space and time attributes. The team behind the project believes that Visible Past can be used as a learning tool in schools and museums. Practically speaking, Visible Past is a mix … Read more
Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year, evangelizing Linked Data. He said that … Read more
In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we give you a blow-by-blow account of the Twitter replies policy debacle this week, explain why the new Google Search Options and rich snippets are so significant, analyze what ‘Web 3.0’ means, and more. We also update you with … Read more