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
It’s time to review the week that was on ReadWriteWeb. It was a very busy week on the product side, and not surprisingly it was dominated by the release of Apple’s 3G iPhone and the accompanying App Store. Also this week Google launched a virtual world, Yahoo opened up its index and search engine to … Read more
This week we announced a new feature for our community: ReadWriteWeb Predictions, a Predictions Center that we hope will enable you to tap into the collective intelligence of RWW readers. The first prediction is about the battle for users and mind-share that has emerged this year between Twitter and FriendFeed. Here are the results, along … Read more
While the US waits agonizingly for their 3G iPhones to arrive, some of us have been playing with our new toys 🙂 There’s been a lot of excitement over the App Store today, and on first inspection there are some outstanding iPhone apps available. Right now the top 5 apps are: Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, … Read more
Here’s another new feature we’re launching: ReadWriteWeb Companies. It’s a company index, powered by TradeVibes. Now whenever we write a review of a startup, you may see a RWW Companies widget at the end of the post – with lots of contextual info about the startup (funding, people, competitors, news, and more). It’s a nice … Read more
Yesterday we reported on the outlandish iphone 3G pricing plans of Vodafone New Zealand, which is charging up to $250 per month for data plans and $1129 local currency for the 16 GB phone by itself – a far cry from the $199 Steve Jobs was promoting last month. But Vodafone NZ is not the … Read more
New Zealand will be the first country in the world to get the Apple iPhone 3G, because of the country’s position on the international dateline. Vodafone NZ is the carrier which is offering the iPhone, but its pricing plans – released today – have attracted a storm of criticism. Vodafone NZ has decided to charge … Read more
Today we’re announcing a new feature for our community: ReadWriteWeb Predictions, a Predictions Center powered by Predictify. We hope it will enable you to tap into the collective intelligence of RWW readers, to assess web technology trends and keep one step ahead of the news. The first prediction is about the battle for users and … Read more
We’ve reached the halfway point of 2008, so time for a half-year assessment of the Internet bigcos. Below is a poll, asking for your picks for best bigcos so far in ’08. We did a similar poll last July – and Facebook just edged out Google for the RWW popular vote. At the end of … Read more
Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting ReadWriteWeb’s mission to provide in-depth coverage of Web apps and trends. To enquire about sponsor slots on ReadWriteWeb, email us for a Media Kit. We offer discounts for signing up for 2 or more months. Why sponsor ReadWriteWeb? It is one of the most popular blogs in the … Read more
It’s time to review the week that was on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we looked at Adobe’s announcement of searchable Flash, checked in with online TV service Hulu, reviewed a couple of innovative new web apps (Gnip and Identi.ca) and reviewed Firefox’s recent world record. On the trends side, we analyzed Microsoft’s acquisition of … Read more
2008 has seen a big change in the way the blogging community communicates with each other. In a nutshell, discussions have become very fragmented. There are two main reasons for this: firstly Twitter and its 140 character soundbites has become very popular among bloggers, and secondly FriendFeed has tipped as the lifestreaming aggregator of choice … Read more
For years the big problem with Flash-based websites is that they could not be properly indexed by search engines. Flash websites have been favored by marketers and advertisers for a long time, because of the ability to create rich, interactive Web experiences. However for most other businesses, particularly those with a lot of information on … Read more
The weekend is a good chance to play around with web apps and social networks. With that in mind, on a rainy Sunday I found myself checking out Sarah Perez’s classic post from May: How to Make Facebook Useful Again. You may also want to read the comments for other useful suggestions. But if you … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we reported on Nokia’s buyout of the open source mobile OS Symbian, reviewed a “memory augmentation” service and a semantic search engine, and looked at what LinkedIn’s strategy tells us about the IPO market. On the trends … Read more
iYomu was a social network designed for adults, that launched in August 2007 with a splashy $1 million competition. Less than a year later, the company has closed its doors. Turns out adults didn’t want a separate social network after all, or at least not iYomu’s one. In this post we explore why this New … Read more