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 a couple of reports released today, Forrester Research makes projections on the future of enterprise web technologies. Forrester predicts that social networking tools and internal wikis “will have the greatest impact on workplace collaboration”. It is bullish too on forums and RSS, which Forrester claims “have a future in the enterprise but are currently … Read more
It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the product side, Microsoft had two major Web announcements: 1) the release of Azure, a cloud computing OS; and 2) browser-based versions of four Office products. Google was also active this week, releasing the third beta of its new browser Chrome … Read more
Our friends at Gigaom are running the second annual NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco on November 13, 2008. It’s an event focused on the online video arena and we have one free ticket to giveaway. To be in to win, all you need to do is leave a comment here telling us what your … Read more
Microsoft announced this morning at its PDC conference that the next release of Microsoft Office will include browser-based versions of some of its main office software products – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. These will be “lightweight versions”, but Microsoft told us yesterday that they’ll still have rich functionality and will be comparable to Google’s … Read more
I’m at the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles, where I was among a small group of bloggers and analysts who had a roundtable today with Microsoft executives Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect), Bob Muglia (Senior Vice President of the Server and Tools Business) and Amitabh Srivastava (Corporate Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure Services). The topic of … Read more
Ray Ozzie opened the Microsoft PDC ’08 this morning with a keynote speech. In it he announced Windows Azure, Microsoft’s “Windows in the cloud”. It is a new service based operating environment. He described it as a massive highly scalable service platform. What is being released today is just a fraction of what it will … Read more
It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the trends side this week, we analyzed why platforms such as Facebook and Open Social have been a let-down, we looked at a new (perhaps under-appreciated) platform from AOL, reported on the latest ‘web 3.0’ moves by Yahoo!, and more. On … Read more
A new report by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research states that usage of social technologies increased markedly in 2008: three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each, up from 56% in 2007. According to the report, the largest growth came from ratings and reviews, “voting” on websites, and user-generated … Read more
Today at 11am PT/2pm ET, ReadWriteWeb is presenting an online product strategy roundtable featuring Sramana Mitra and using Dimdim‘s open source web conferencing platform. During the 60-minute session, entrepreneurs will pitch Sramana their product ideas in a 3-minute presentation. She will review the material in real-time and provide 3-minutes of feedback on each plan. The … Read more
When Twine announced itself to the world exactly one year ago, it claimed to be “the first mainstream Semantic Web application”. However despite raising millions of dollars in its quest to bring the Semantic Web to the mainstream, Twine has been beset by usability and performance issues in its beta period. Our own Marshall Kirkpatrick … Read more
You can’t turn on the TV, visit Yahoo Finance or pick up the Wall Street Journal without hearing about the economic crisis we’re in. It’s caused most of us to step back and look at our own financial situation. In the next episode of RWW Live, to be broadcasted live at 3.30pm PST Monday (6.30pm … Read more
It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. On the trends side this week, we had a great discussion about what’s next after web 2.0, celebrated the success of the newsfeed, looked at enterprise use of social media, helped Twitter find a revenue model, and more. On the product side, … Read more
Parlez-vous français? No neither do I, apart from the smattering of French I learnt at the beginning of high school. But to cater to our friends in Europe, we’ve just opened a French language version of ReadWriteWeb. The idea was suggested by Romain Péchard, who approached us about translating our articles into French and also … Read more
Calling all entrepreneurs! On Tuesday, October 21 at 11am PT/2pm ET, we’re partnering with leading entrepreneur and strategy consultant Sramana Mitra to bring you a Web 3.0 product strategy roundtable online – using Dimdim‘s open source web conferencing platform. During the 60-minute session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana their product ideas in a 3-minute … Read more
Project10X has just published a “Web 3.0 Manifesto”. It’s a kind of sequel to their Semantic Wave 2008 report released in January this year. Mills Davis, Managing Director of Project10X, told us via email that the new manifesto “reveals how semantic technologies will drive product and service opportunities in the next stage of the internet.” … Read more