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
Earlier this week we ran a poll about the latest version of the iPhone announced at Apple’s WWDC event in San Francisco. The results were a little surprising, in that only half (52%) of respondents thought iPhone 2.0 was a solid release — just over 1 in 5 of those thought it was revolutionary. But … Read more
In Web 1.0 there were a number of browser-based website creation platforms – e.g. Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, Homestead and Brinkster (I myself used nearly all of those, back in the day). These apps were very popular in the mid to late 90’s, because they made web publishing relatively easy. The most successful one, Geocities, was … Read more
The Rensselaer interactive debate on the future of the Web is just starting now and is being webcast live here (note: Silverlight required). You can watch the debate and submit questions – including while it is happening – by clicking here. Update: The debate is now over, see our comprehensive notes below… Here’s a screenshot … Read more
ReadWriteWeb is the exclusive Media Partner for an interactive debate on the future of the Web, which kicks off in a couple of hours time. The debate features Tim Berners-Lee and will be webcast live. You can watch the debate and submit questions – including while it is happening – by clicking here. Semantic Web … Read more
My favorite online music service Last.fm is currently ungoing a semi-public re-design, available to Last.fm subscribers ($3 per month) at beta.last.fm. Bearing in mind that last.fm is now owned by mega media company CBS, it is great to see last.fm continuing to evolve fast. In this post we review the new design and see if … Read more
Tech blogs have been literally stampeding over the top of each other today to report on the latest version of the iPhone, announced at Apple’s WWDC event in San Francisco. Our network blog last100 has an excellent overview of the news. Personally I’m a huge iPhone fan and so I was looking forward to this … Read more
Earlier today we covered a mobile social network called Buzzd, which will be featured at the music festival Bonnaroo. In this post we outline 10 mobile social networks to keep your eye on. It’s a developing field – and there are issues such as hardware compatibility to overcome – but we expect some of these … Read more
Back in February we reported that Buzzd, a Mobile Web social networking service used at bars, clubs and restaurants, had won a bunch of awards at the MobileMonday Peer Awards. We noted that Buzzd is a great example of how location-based services will be the killer app for the Mobile Web. Today Buzzd announced that … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we analyzed Adobe’s new Web Office suite, investigated a worrying exodus of sellers from eBay, looked some more at Yahoo’s Search Monkey, and showed you 6 tools to save links with. On the trends side we explored … Read more
ReadWriteWeb is the exclusive Media Partner for an interactive debate on the future of the Web being held this coming Wednesday 11 June. The debate features Tim Berners-Lee and will be webcast live. You can submit questions for the debate – and vote on existing questions – by clicking here (see below for other options). … Read more
This week Barack Obama won the Democrat nomination for US President, pitting him against Republican candidate John McCain. At the same time both candidates have ramped up their web efforts, with Obama’s camp calling for web developers to “Write Software, Change Washington” and McCain’s camp launching a new-look website. In this post we check out … Read more
WorkLight, a startup that offers enterprise 2.0 products, recently did a survey among Facebook users to find out their willingness to use Web 2.0 tools for secure banking. The survey was conducted among 1000 Facebook users between the ages of 18-34. The fact that the survey was conducted among Facebook users gives it a bias … Read more
On May 22 we reported that Eurekster, a custom search engine provider, had been down for the past two days and users were wondering if the company would be back. Tonight an alert RWW reader spotted that Eurekster has returned to the land of the living. A blog entry dated May 30 from Eurekster states … Read more
As we blogged recently, ReadWriteWeb is the exclusive Media Partner for an interactive debate on the future of the Web being held by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Tetherless World Research Constellation. In this post we check in to see what the top questions are so far – and we encourage RWW readers to … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we covered announcements by Google about Gears and App Engine, we looked at some compelling Yahoo! Pipes apps, we checked out Strands Lifestreaming, and we reviewed promising Semantic Apps Faviki and Freebase. On the trends side we … Read more