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
Web analytics firm WebTrends reported today that mainstream Internet users are “embracing” the Google Chrome browser. In the third week since its launch, WebTrends states that Google Chrome is the fourth most popular browser used by visitors to the web site of The Daily Telegraph, Britain’s highest selling newspaper. WebTrends puts the figure at “nearly … Read more
A new report from Universal McCann discusses the rise of “a new breed of super influencers” that has been created by “the tools of the social media revolution.” Before we all don our superhero capes, let’s look more closely at the findings of the report. Entitled When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet … Read more
A new report from Handango – a distribution network for smartphone applications across the BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, and Linux platforms – states that gaming apps have jumped in popularity this year. In a report entitled First Half 2008 Handango Yardstick, Handango’s regular review of the global smartphone content industry, it notes that … Read more
Cognition Technologies, a Semantic Web company that specialises in Natural Language Processing (NLP) search, is today announcing the release of what it claims is “the largest commercially available Semantic Map of the English language.” We interviewed Cognition CEO Scott Janus to find out what this means. We also discovered that Cognition, which currently licenses its … Read more
A new report about Enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, by Awareness, Inc., shows that employers are increasingly allowing staff to use social media applications in working hours. Awareness puts the figure at 69 percent of businesses in 2008, up from 37 percent last year. It’s the latest in a string of reports this year … Read more
Join us now for our weekly review of Web Technology news and reviews. This week we reported on the launch of Apple’s iTunes 8, analyzed AOL’s move to bring RSS and lifestreaming to the mainstream, and covered some of the best web apps to come out of DEMOfall08. On the trends side, we looked into … Read more
We track hundreds of web apps here on ReadWriteWeb. Some, like YouTube and last.fm, become our favorites and prosper. But others sadly close down, or whither away due to not many people using them, or suddenly stop working for one reason or another (the bills are too high, the RIAA gets on their back, the … Read more
The latest episode of RWW Live, our live podcast show, is set to begin shortly at 3.30pm PST (6.30pm EST). This week’s topic is, you guessed it, Chrome. We will be discussing Google’s new open source browser and its potential impact in the browser market. We have 3 very special guests on the show to … Read more
This week we’re running a prediction challenge, on the topic of browsers. Google’s new browser, Chrome (our coverage), is sure to take market share from the existing players. So we want you to help us predict: which of the following browsers will lose the most share (in percentage terms) between August 2008 and December 2008? … Read more
Join us now for our weekly review of Web Technology news. This week was dominated by the launch of Google’s new open source browser Chrome. As the Ed tweeted during the week: how often does a major Internet company launch a brand new browser? Check out our extensive coverage and analysis below. This week we … Read more
This week we ran a poll asking which word processing tool you primarily use. We wanted to see if things had changed much since we ran the same poll one year ago. So are ReadWriteWeb readers, many of whom are early adopters of Internet technology, using online word processing services now instead of desktop software? … Read more
We’ve covered the launch of Google’s new browser Chrome extensively this week. But as we near the end of the week, one of the questions yet to be answered is how Chrome will fare in the enterprise. As we all know Google is making a strong push into the enterprise with Google Apps, which received … Read more
Online video ad network LiveRail (our profile) has just released a ‘State Of The Industry Report’ for Q3 2008. It reports that video ad spending currently only represents 2.36% of all online advertising, but that it is expected to grow over 55% next year. Right now only 20.95% of internet video streams are being monetized. … Read more
Google has released the video of its announcement of Chrome, the company’s open source browser. It’s embedded below, via YouTube. We’ve been all over this story for the past few days, so here is a summary of our coverage so far: – Google to Offer its Own Browser: Chrome (Marshall’s initial story) – Chrome: Test … Read more
Today Google is launching a new product for the enterprise market, Google Video for business. It’s a new application in the Google Apps office suite, enabling workers to upload and share videos inside their organizations. Videos can be shared on an individual, group or company-wide basis. Google sees it being used for such things as … Read more