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
Semantic search engine Hakia has just released a new social networking feature, called Meet Others (MO). The basic idea is to “meet others” who asked the same query. This is something I’ve never seen in a search engine before – and actually I’m not convinced that social networking is a good fit with search. But … Read more
Techcrunch has sniffed out details on Google’s new social network project, named OpenSocial (set to go live Thur US). OpenSocial is not a social network itself, rather it is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access the following core functions and information at social networks: Profile Information (user data) Friends Information … Read more
Steve Rubel has written a post bemoaning the lack of innovative Web products these days: “…I miss the days of 2004 when the class that includes Flickr, del.icio.us and others started. They really were about changing the web, not making a quick buck (they did so only because they added value). There are companies still … Read more
We’ve written before about PlentyOfFish, a leading online dating site that is run by a single person and is raking in money. Markus Frind is the singular force behind PlentyOfFish. At the time of our last review, June 2006, PlentyOfFish was earning $10,000 per day from Google Adsense (around $3.5 M per annum). I caught … Read more
Image credit: Newsweek A Newsweek article makes the case for an alternative search engine to usurp Google and become the dominant 3rd generation search engine. Our own Charles Knight, from R/WW Network blog AltSearchEngines, features prominently in the article: “If Google has been able to crush its search competition, it’s not because it has perfected … Read more
ActionThis, a Wellington, New Zealand based startup, today launched a “Get Things Done” task management app. It enables people to create and track project management items and tasks, either using a browser interface (free) or within Microsoft Outlook (premium, subscription-based). Note that at the bottom of this post, there is a special offer for R/WW … Read more
It’s conference season for the Web and below are some upcoming events that may interest you: Defrag – 1 free ticket available to R/WW reader; discounts too Defrag has been sponsoring our Weekly Wrapups for the last few weeks; and we are a Media Sponsor for the event. The focus of Defrag is ‘The Implicit … Read more
Sponsor: Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups – either via the special RSS feed or by email. Web News Microsoft Invests in Facebook The week was dominated by the news that … Read more
This week Read/WriteWeb upgraded its server and also moved to Movable Type 4. The upgrade process resulted in issues with commenting yesterday and the first half of today. So my apologies to anyone who left a comment over the past couple of days for the bad user experience. Commenting is now back working – and … Read more
Read/WriteWeb is currently undergoing a server upgrade, so there may be issues with comments in particular for a little while. Please bear with us, we will get everything running smoothly again asap. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)
Last week while in San Francisco I got the chance to visit Current’s offices, to check out the launch of their new Current.com website. I spoke to Robin Sloan (Online Product Strategist) and Joshua Katz (President of Marketing), who gave me a demo and overview of their strategy. I came away impressed by Current.com’s stunning … Read more
We wrote earlier this morning that Google and Microsoft were competing for a stake in Facebook, the super-hot social networking platform. Earlier, the NY Post was reporting that Google was the frontrunner. But a WSJ report has now confirmed that Microsoft won out: “Microsoft Corp. agreed to invest $240 million for a minority stake in … Read more
Last week I attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. This is the third year running I’ve attended – I went to the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference in October 2005, the 2006 Web 2.0 Summit in November 2006 (it was re-named the “Summit” at that point and took on a more business focus), the … Read more
Sponsor: Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email. Web News MySpace Evolves – Developer Platform Details, Partnerships, Growth Figures This week News Corp chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, and MySpace CEO and … Read more
I’m here at the Semantic Edge panel at the Summit, moderated by Tim O’Reilly and featuring W. Daniel Hillis (Co-Chairman and CTO, Applied Minds), Barney Pell (Founder and CEO of Powerset), Nova Spivack (Twine – see our review here). The panel starts with demos from each of the three speakers. Freebase Daniel Hillis starts with … Read more