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
Last week we profiledeyeOS, which had just launched its 1.0 version. This week the eyeOS team contacted me to claim that a new competitor, MyBooo, has broken the Open Source license of eyeOS 0.9.x and is using it as a base for their project. The WebOS space is made up of a number of small … Read more
If you ever wanted to know what I look and sound like, here I am courtesy of Ross Dawson and One Minute World, a neat new service that specializes in one minute video content for streaming and mobile devices. And to preempt the comments – yes I do sometimes smile; and no, I don’t know … Read more
Davide Casaleggio sent a tip to Read/WriteWeb about a video his company produced exploring the future of media. It is a very cool 6-minute video, which takes some educated (and imaginative) guesses at how the Web and media will evolve over the next 40-50 years. In the short movie, Google, Amazon.com and Second Life are … Read more
Plenty of interest this week in our poll, asking which online collaboration platform do you use? So far, after over 1,100 votes, Google Apps is way out in front – 47% of respondents use it. Basecamp is next with 20%, with Zoho on 10% and ThinkFree 6%. The two Microsoft options, Office Groove and Office … Read more
Last month at the D conference, Real Networks announced the next version of RealPlayer, which features one-click downloading and saving of online video. This week last100 editor Steve O’Hear got his hands on RealPlayer 11 and thoroughly tested it. Steve reported that RealPlayer 11 has a cleaner installation process, a UI similar to iTunes, and … Read more
Yesterday was the Day Without Google, a one-day blog event organized by AltSearchEngines. A lot of people tried to last a day without using Google’s ubiquitous search engine, and in this post we take a look at the results. TheRegister has already covered the event, in an article provocatively entitled Blog calls for Google boycott. … Read more
Co-founder of Clipperz, Marco Barulli, recently contacted Read/WriteWeb to let us know about their recently launched online password manager – available in both english and Japanese. In this age of social networks, the Web Office and Best of Breed web apps, it can get tricky to keep track of all your usernames and passwords. I … Read more
Today Flickr is launching in seven additional languages, including French, German, Spanish, Japanese and the Hong Kong dialect of Chinese. I spoke with co-founder and head of Flickr, Stewart Butterfield, about the news – and also found out the meaning behind the “loves you” label currently on Flickr’s logo! More on that below. Flickr now … Read more
Are you ready to spend a whole day, today (Tuesday), without using Google? There are literally hundreds of alternative search engines to choose from. Once again here are the ‘ground rules’, as prepared by AltSearchEngines editor Charles Knight: 1. All day Tuesday, June 12th, don’t use any of the 5 major search engines. 2. Avoid … Read more
Babelgum, an Internet TV competitor to Joost, is in limited beta and has started to send out invites. You may’ve seen them already on other sites, but if you haven’t got an invite yet then click here to go to the Read/WriteWeb/last100 Babelgum signup page. Note: the app is Windows only. last100 has covered both … Read more
This week’s poll was requested by a reader, who wanted to find out what online collaboration platforms R/WW readers used. The email I received noted: “While mass services such as myspace and facebook get a lot of coverage, there’s not a lot of data showing how well collaborative platforms do. I think that your audience … Read more
Last week I was briefed on the new online advertising platform that Tumri is launching today. Flush with $16.5 million in investment and already well covered by business tech blogs, Tumri is building out a widget-based Merchandising Network that it hopes will be The Next Big Thing in online advertising – after Google Adsense. Tumri … Read more
AltSearchEngines is asking everyone to go one day, this Tuesday (whatever your timezone may be), without using one of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or Ask. This was inspired by a similar Between The Lines experiment. AltSearchEngines editor Charles Knight wants everyone to try one of the alt search engines in his … Read more
The R/WW Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by: 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: Note: The Weekly Wrapup is looking for its next sponsor, so if you’d like to support a quality … Read more
This week the winners of the 11th annual Webby Awards, billed nowadays as the “Oscars of the Internet”, were announced at a ceremony in New York. Much of the publicity was over the fact that David Bowie was there (Prince attended last year). But other than that, what were the highlights of the Webbys? In … Read more