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
Sticking with the sportingtheme, and in deference to the European Championship currently in progress in Austria and Switzerland, our latest look at mainstream use of web 2.0 is a football (i.e. soccer) website. OleOle is a fully featured social media platform for football fans – and it has shown impressive growth since its launch on … Read more
Nokia isn’t finished with its acquisition spree just yet. Tonight the Finnish company announced a plan to acquire the 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn’t already own and make the platform open source. Nokia clearly aims to challenge Android, the open source mobile operating system of Google. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says that it … Read more
Last week we started a new series called Mainstream Web Watch, in which we’ll be exploring how the Social Web is infiltrating mainstream culture. We started out with NBA.com last week, to celebrate the end of the basketball season and the crowning of a new champion (Boston Celtics). In this post we look at another … Read more
We have a new daily writer coming on board ReadWriteWeb this Monday, Frederic Lardinois. Also I’d like to take this opportunity to formally welcome Corvida, who joined the team as a part-time writer in May. Frederic takes the position of News & Reviews Writer, recently advertised here. He will be a daily presence on RWW … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we explored Yahoo’s ongoing troubles, reported on Firefox 3’s record-setting week, covered a new “universal edit” wiki offering, and checked out some Mobile Web apps. On the trends side, we looked at what could disrupt Google search, … Read more
I’m sad to say that Josh Catone is leaving ReadWriteWeb today, to move on to a new job at a popular web development community website. Josh was the first daily writer (other than myself) to join ReadWriteWeb. He started with us in March 2007 and has been instrumental in helping ReadWriteWeb grow over the past … Read more
According to the Zuula blog, former search king pretender Accoona has finally given up on becoming a major search player. When Accoona was officially launched in December 2004, at a ceremony featuring Bill Clinton, Accoona claimed to have search technology that would be “more efficient than the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN.” Accoona … Read more
Welcome to a new series on ReadWebWeb, which we’re calling ‘Mainstream Web Watch’. Over the coming weeks I will be exploring a whole range of websites for RWW – from sports sites, to grocery store sites, to government websites, to banking sites, and much more. We’re starting with a sports website that has probably peaked … Read more
DivShare, an online service for storing and sharing video, photos, music and documents, has had a security breach. The company announced on its blog tonight that “a malicious user” had accessed its database, “which included user e-mail addresses and other basic profile information.” The startup states that “no financial information has been accessed by any … Read more
Yesterday we questioned whether Yahoo is focusing enough on its core products. We wrote that “Yahoo’s key properties remain yahoo.com, email, myyahoo, and even Answers can be considered special. In short, content is what continues to drive Yahoo and those core properties are still enormously popular.” A leaked Yahoo memo has come to light today … Read more
Due to demand in the comments, 3 new IM clients have been added to the poll. You can now vote for Pidgin, Miranda, and Apple’s iChat. Apologies for omissions! Our poll this week focuses on IM clients. This weekend Corvida wrote that interoperability between popular IM clients is happening, albeit slowly. One thing that Corvida … Read more
There’s been a lot of hand wringing in the media over the weekend about Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s takeover bid. Most of the coverage has focused on the (very serious) financial and people issues that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is now facing. But let’s turn some attention to Yahoo’s product line for a moment. How … Read more
ReadWriteWeb is looking for a new blogger to join our team. Ideally we’re after a blogger based in Silicon Valley, who can attend the local events on our behalf and meet with startups. However we’ll consider non-Valley bloggers too. The role description is basically: cover breaking web tech news and product reviews. So don’t worry, … Read more
One of the most interesting aspects of Web 2.0 these days is how it’s beginning to create change in ‘the real world’. While geek-friendly apps like FriendFeed, Twitter and Google Reader get a lot of attention in our little world, there is a whole other world out there in which the Web is making a … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we covered the iPhone 2.0 announcement, reviewed 6 Adobe AIR apps for work, checked out the new MySpace and Last.fm re-designs, looked at Coke’s social media play, and interviewed the co-founder of Mobile Web startup Skydeck. On … Read more