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
This week’s poll complements our feature, Non-Profits and the Web. We’re asking about your online donation habits. We’re not interested in how much you donate, but the frequency. Although having said that, there is an option for those who donate irregularly but give large amounts. Because it may be easier for some people to do … Read more
This week’s feature series on Read/WriteWeb is non-profits and the Web. We’ll be exploring how non-profit organizations use the Web and the tools available for them. By non-profits, we mean charities, clubs and any “organization whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit” (Wikipedia’s definition). Non-profit organizations cover a wide range of … Read more
Lately I’ve been getting invites to a new social network called Quechup. I’m already a member of too many social networks, so to be honest I’ve ignored these requests. But it seems Quechup has been automatically sending out invites, without the knowledge or consent of the people signing up. I got this email today from … Read more
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 Future Week This week we focused on the future of the Web and here were our top posts: 10 Future Web Trends What then … Read more
A new version of Delicious (sans dots) was released as a private preview today. I got an invite and have been poking around. Techcrunch got the exclusive on the story, so they have a full review up. But in my initial quick tests, a couple of features immediately stood out for me. We’ve written a … Read more
ShareMethods is announcing two new apps to its open standards Web Office suite, ShareOffice, at the Office 2.0 conference today. We reviewed ShareOffice back in May when it launched, noting that it’s the world’s first open standards online office suite. The two new apps are an online calendar from Jotlet and real-time meeting from Persony. … Read more
At the Office 2.0 Conference today, Web Office vendor Zoho will unveil a new Suite product called Zoho Business. It will be available in two versions – Free and Pro. Both versions will be free until Zoho has sorted out the feature set for Pro over the beta period, expected to last until Q1 2008. … Read more
Just yesterday some R/WW readers were bitterly complaining in our comments about Google Reader’s lack of search. “I’m a loyal Google Reader user,” remarked R/WW reader Stephen Glauser, “but if they don’t hurry up and implement a search feature very soon, the first company who does will win my service.” Perhaps the Google Reader team … Read more
We’re well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Features of this phase of the Web include search, social networks, online media (music, video, etc), content aggregation and syndication (RSS), mashups (APIs), and much more. Currently the Web is still mostly accessed via a PC, but we’re starting to … Read more
Microsoft today released Silverlight 1.0, its cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering interactive apps on the Web. It’s often compared to Adobe’s Flash plug-in and is certainly a direct competitor of Flash. Also today Microsoft announced they’ll work with Novell to deliver Silverlight support for Linux, in a project called Moonlight – based on the open … Read more
At the end of last week, we posted on Bloglines vs Google Reader – Who’s Really Winning?. The answer was: Bloglines, but Google Reader is catching up fast. We’ve just received a new chart from Hitwise, which also shows Netvibes and Newsgator. So it shows the context of this “two-horse race”, as Bloglines GM Eric … Read more
Not quite across the universe, as John Lennon sung it, but here are some highlights from the Read/WriteWeb Network: MySpace: Hot or Not? – Alex Iskold explores the current state of MySpace. So is MySpace still hot? As a trend Alex says the answer is no. But as a site, yes – while a lot … Read more
This morning MyStrands released a personalized online video service called MyStrands.TV. Immediately it reminded me of last.fm, because you can type in an artist or tag and it creates a custom “channel” for you. In fact, let’s be honest – it’s a complete rip of last.fm. But that’s actually good, because last.fm is my favorite … Read more
Varien, a Los Angeles web development firm, has just launched a preview version of its open source eCommerce platform called Magento. Also released was a community site and a demo store. Check out the screencasts, the first of which explains how to add a new product to your e-commerce catalog using Magento – see screenshots … Read more
A big thank you to our sponsors for supporting Read/WriteWeb. Wine Library TV is one of my favorite video blogs. In the latest episode Gary Vaynerchuk checks out some California Chardonnay. Zoho is a leading Web Office suite, with probably the most comprehensive product range of all the online office suites. Last week they introduced … Read more