2006

In this exclusive interview with ex-Excite founder and current JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus, I discuss with Joe the Web Office and his ‘Embrace and Extend’ theory. “Our goal wasn’t just to build Excel online. In fact I believe that Excel will be ‘Excel Online’. Microsoft isn’t dumb and they get this revolution about ‘software as … Read more

Developing a mashup can be a lot of fun and it’s usually low cost, because you’re using (semi) open tools and data. Forget fun though for a minute – is there a business in mashups? There are obvious benefits for the data providers, for example both Google and craigslist benefit from increased traffic to their … Read more

Niall Kennedy is on a roll, having this week published an informative series of posts on the RSS platform and the ‘state of the aggregator’: NewsGator API Google Reader platform Windows RSS Platform Feeds as a platform State of the aggregator I don’t really have anything to add, being busy in the middle of other … Read more

Is it just me, or does the list of winners announced for the 2006 Bloggies (the blogging oscars) bear a striking resemblance to the last 5-6 years? Slashdot, Boing Boing, Blogger, etc. Where are all the ‘2.0’ sites, like TechCrunch, Scripting News, Digg? Anyway, there was one shining light: Darren Rowse’s Problogger got an award … Read more

– The “Real” SXSW (it seems that live blogging is beside the point at an SXSW… I say that after fruitless searches tonight for the winners of the awards — Technorati and 9rules won apparently, but that’s all I know officer…) – Star of Startup.com Resurfaces (I enjoyed that movie… ex GovWorks Kaleil Isaza Tuzman … Read more

– Google/Writely points to online/offline future (Phil Sim is putting out some excellent analysis these days, especially on the topic of Web Office. In this post he convincingly makes the case for an online/offline amalgam Office.) – Directory of New Web Office Technology (Rod Boothby has started a fantastic resource here…) – Instructables (Interesting new … Read more

My NZ 2.0 buddy Ben Nolan is selling one of his web apps, bubbletwo, on eBay. There he is pictured on the left, pretending he’s zooming down the Silicon Valley highways in a Ferarri (which may yet happen if he sells his mapping startup zoomin.co.nz). Ben whipped up bubbletwo recently and he describes it as … Read more

I’ve long been suspicious of some of the stats that certain companies and bloggers push. We all know by now that industry stats tool alexa.com must be taken with a grain of salt, but until today I hadn’t realised the extent of how a site’s own measured traffic can be exaggerated. You see recently I’ve … Read more

Google has acquired what I chose as the ‘best of breed’ Web-based word processing app in my recent ZDNet post Web Office Suite [news via TechCrunch] The Writely blog is rightly chuffed: “…everyone told us it was crazy to try and give people a way to access their documents from anywhere — not to mention … Read more

Today I spoke to JotSpot co-founder and CEO Joe Kraus about their latest product release, pre-packaged “wiki applications”. We also discussed the Web Office, which I will post about separately on ZDNet. JotSpot’s latest product is a prebuilt wiki. Basically it’s a wiki with set templates and functionality, making it easy for people to use … Read more

Yahoo has announced four new APIs for its Developer Network: Photos, Calendar, MyWeb and Shopping. The Shopping 2.0 API is available now, while the Photos, Calendar and MyWeb read/write APIs will be available soon [updated – thanks Jeffrey]. While they’ll be free to use for non commercial purposes, Ash Patel (Yahoo chief product officer) tells … Read more

The Register investigates. [via] Full whiteboard image here I knew Google was up to something big. It’s always the quiet ones you need to watch… Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

Live.com, Microsoft’s personalized start page, has just been upgraded with some impressive new features. Live.com program manager Sanaz Ahari sent me details of the release this evening. It was good timing, because earlier today I’d been using the old Live.com and having trouble! The new features are: Pages – you can have multiple pages for … Read more

TechCrunch has obtained screenshots of the as yet unreleased Google Calendar, called CL2. The leak came via Google’s closed beta of about 200 participants. Apparently CL2 is a long way away from launch, but there are some meaty details in Mike’s post. CL2 looks to be a very strong product from Google (which has by … Read more

Microsoft has just released (or is about to) a series of new products: Windows Live Search Beta, Windows Live Toolbar Beta and the next version of Live.com. Details on my ZDNet blog. One thing of personal interest to me is that a former Read/WriteWeb sponsor, web research product Onfolio, has been acquired by Microsoft and … Read more