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
Music-based social networking site Imeem has launched a re-design, which according to a blog post by founder/CEO Dalton Caldwell makes it “easier for you to discover and enjoy new music on imeem”. Imeem has been growing its market share steadily over the past year and its licensing deals with all 4 major record labels makes … Read more
RDF is the cornerstone of The Semantic Web, yet there still very few commercial RDF apps. In the latest issue of Nodalities, a magazine about the Semantic Web by UK company Talis, there is an article by Talis CTO Ian Davis about the state of Semantic Web applications. Davis says that we’re still in “Generation … Read more
Last year we reviewed YouTube’s 10 most popular videos. It’s time to update that list and see what, if anything, has changed. Last year we concluded that 7 of the top 10 videos were music – with 5 of those being professional videos. That trend has continued, although there are now no amateur music videos … Read more
It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. This week we had two big product launches: the Google Phone and MySpace Music. We also looked at Favtape, a new startup aiming to shake up the online music market. On the trends side, we had another great podcast this week – … Read more
Google has just released a mini-site explaining “the facts” about the contentious advertising deal it announced with Yahoo in June. The deal will go live in early October, according to a report on SearchEngineLand, so the mini-site is an attempt to outline how it will work – and why consumers, publishers, competitors (and the US … Read more
This week we’re looking at how religious organizations are using Web technology. Today’s post looks at a blog that aims to “challenge misconceptions and stereotypical perceptions about Islam and Muslims worldwide”. The site is Inside Islam and we caught up with lead blogger Kaitlin Foley today to find out more. For the previous posts in … Read more
Browser vendor Opera, which is a stronger player in the mobile browser market than it is on the desktop, has just released more data on of the state of the Mobile Web. The latest report tells us that usage of the mobile Web continues to grow in terms of unique users and page views. What’s … Read more
The New York Times announced today that it will syndicate ReadWriteWeb content, as part of a re-designed Technology section on its website. Over the coming weeks you will see ReadWriteWeb content incorporated into the Technology section front. This is great news for us, because it brings our brand of web technology news, reviews and analysis … Read more
This week we’re looking at how religious organizations are using Web technology. Yesterday we reviewed LifeChurch.tv, an innovative Christian website. Today we check out what the Shalom Hartman Institute, from Jerusalem in Israel, is doing on the Web. Alan Abbey, the Website Manager of Shalom Hartman Institute, told us about his site in the comments … Read more
There’s more user unrest in the community of popular social news site Digg, after the all-time number 3 ranked user Zaibatsu, a.k.a. Reg Saddler, was banned for alleged multiple violations of the Digg Terms of Use. That decision is “final and irreversible”, according to an email Saddler got from Digg today. JD Rucker of Social … Read more
We’re live now in the latest episode of RWW Live, our podcast show. You can tune into the show, and interact with us via the chat, by clicking here. You can also use the Calliflower Facebook app to tune in and participate. This week’s topic is Data Portability, the ongoing campaign for open data across … Read more
This week, as part of our ongoing Mainstream Web Watch series, we’ll be looking into how religious groups are using Web technologies. As early adopters in the tech industry, many of us have near spiritual experiences about our favorite products – as Rob Cottingham highlighted in his RWW cartoon over the weekend! But let’s look … Read more
It’s time for our weekly summary of Web Technology news, products and trends. This week we surveyed the leading online banking products and 10 recommended photo sharing sites. We also checked out a new ‘deep web’ search tool and reported on Joost’s move to the browser. Our prediction question this week was about the controversial … Read more
This week we reported that Cognition had announced “the largest commercially available Semantic Map of the English language.” In our interview with Cognition CEO Scott Janus, we asked him to compare Cognition’s technologies to those of other semantic search companies Hakia and Powerset. Janus pointed to their large Semantic Map as the main differentiator. Indeed … Read more
Cisco announced today the acquisition of Jabber, Inc., a provider of presence and messaging software. It’s important to note that Cisco has acquired the company called Jabber (jabber.com), not the open standard Jabber (jabber.org) which we have written about extensively in the past. The Jabber protocol, now called XMPP, is an open standard for Instant … Read more