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
We’re pleased to announce a new monthly feature on ReadWriteTalk, ReadWriteWeb’s podcast show. There’s a new podcast gang in town and it’s called The Semantic Web Gang. The group is led by Paul Miller of Talis and includes our own Alex Iskold. Indeed we just published a monster post about Semantic Web Patterns, written by … Read more
Today’s winning comment comes from our post about a Facebook security flaw that allowed people to access private photos – including some from Paris Hilton at the Emmys and others from Facebook founding CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vacation in November of 2005. In an excellent example of crowdsourced fact checking and research, Mark Jaquith noted that … Read more
Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting ReadWriteWeb’s mission to provide in-depth coverage of Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking & Social Media. We currently have a couple of sponsor slots available for April-May on ReadWriteWeb, so if you would like to enquire about those then please email us for a Media Kit. We … Read more
We have another 2 Comment of the Day prizes to give away and both of them relate to the mainstreaming of online media (specifically video and audio). The first is from our post Is Oprah Going to Save the Internet?, in which Marshall Kirkpatrick noted that Oprah Winfrey’s use of podcasting, Silverlight and Skype could … Read more
Here are some of the highlights from the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. This week includes social networks and lifestreaming analysis (Facebook, FeedFriend and more), a look at new Semantic Apps, and a new service from Amazon. And don’t forget to click through to our website and leave a comment on our posts, for … Read more
last100 is reporting that Joost (last100 review) is planning to let viewers access its Internet TV service via a Web browser, rather than requiring them to download and install the current Mac/Windows application. last100 editor Steve O’Hear notes that “though no specific launch date is mentioned (Joost has a track record of stating that it … Read more
Today we have 2 prizes to give away. They both come from a very appropriate post from Sarah Perez: The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere. In it, Sarah noted that “a lot of new aggregation services and lifestreaming applications [have] come into play recently”, which may be dragging discussions off blogs and onto the likes … Read more
Aggregate Knowledge, which operates a content discovery network under the brand name Pique, today announced a deal with BusinessWeek to deliver “user-driven content suggestions” on their website. It’s the latest in a string of similar deals – Aggregate Knowledge powers “discovery” of both editorial content and product recommendations for over 100 websites, with a particular … Read more
In our post Social Networks Will Be Tomorrow’s iTunes, Sarah Perez reported on new research indicating that social networks have the potential to be the content distribution platforms of tomorrow. “MySpace the next iTunes?”, said Sarah, “It’s coming.” However commenter Rian from DailySplice.com thinks it should be the other way round: iTunes to become social … Read more
We’ve just spotted the new Facebook privacy options in the wild. As we wrote earlier this week, “the new privacy features will increase the granular control that Facebook has been known for. Users will now have the option of showing private information, including photos, to only specific friends (entered one at a time or by … Read more
Today’s winning comment comes from Aziz Poonawalla, from our post What Happens When WiFi Goes Away? Aziz wrote that “the future of web access will be 802.11n in the home and office (assuming it ever gets out of draft!) and WiMax everywhere else.” Congratulations Aziz, you’ve won a $30 Amazon voucher – courtesy of our … Read more
Blog search engine Blogdigger will be announcing shortly that it has been acquired by SonicMountain, parent company of Odeo – the podcast network that is currently being rebuilt as a full-fledged platform for digital media. Blogdigger’s aggregation and media search technology is being integrated into the new Odeo, and Blogdigger founder and CEO Greg Gershman … Read more
Semantic search engine hakia is announcing today, at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, that it is licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology to other companies. This will enable third parties to build semantic search applications. The first such customer to be made public is RiverGlass, Inc, a provider of real-time analytics. RiverGlass will … Read more
Sarah Perez wrote today: “When Amazon introduced their e-book reader, the Kindle, Steve Jobs made a strong proclamation regarding the book industry that received a lot of attention: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore […]” As it turns out, he was only half-right. … Read more
Slideshare is growing and may even have become the leading pure play online presentations app [Update:Zoli Erdos points out in the comments that Slideshare doesn’t allow you to create online presentations, only share them – which is a key point that I forgot to mention initially]. Two years ago I lamented the shortage of ‘online … Read more