2007

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

This week’s poll is a tough one, because we’re asking you to predict the future. But we hope you’re game enough to vote, because it’ll give us some clues on what to write about in Web Future Week 😉 We’re asking: Which Web technology do you think will have the most impact over the next … Read more

The NY Times reports that Microsoft will release a Unified Installer program for Windows Live this week, enabling PC users to download a set of the services – understood to be Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. John Markoff of the … Read more

This week’s feature is inspired by Alex Iskold’s recent post on what he called The Digestion Phase. Alex defined this as “a period of time for us to reflect, to integrate, and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together.” We’ve come so far in just a few years and while there’s a lot … Read more

Ever wished you were a guest star on The Simpsons? Well now you can at least create a likeness of yourself, should The Simpsons producers ever call. On Simpsonize Me, you can upload a photo of yourself and then make adjustments until the cartoon drawing resembles you. Here’s mine – add a link to yours … 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. This week Read/WriteWeb introduced a new network blog: a podcasting show called Read/WriteTalk, hosted by Sean Ammirati. The tagline behind the show is “The People … Read more

Earlier this week Bloglines launched a beta re-design, ending about two years of design stagnation for the once dominant browser-based RSS Reader. During my conversation with new Bloglines GM Eric Engleman, we touched on the impact of Google Reader on this market. Has Google Reader in fact usurped Bloglines as the number 1 browser-based RSS … Read more

Jooce is a new Flash-based WebOS product from France, currently in private beta (we have invites at the bottom of this post). The primary use case for Jooce is for people who use cyber-cafes a lot, instead of or in addition to their own PCs or laptops. Jooce enables users to store, share and access … Read more

CNET columnist Matt Asay asks, provocatively: “does Google own your content?”. It’s based on a post by ZDNet’s Joshua Greenbaum, who picked up on some interesting language in the terms and conditions of Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Here’s the offending passage: “Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by … Read more

Our poll this week asks: Which tool do you mostly use for word processing?. We’ve had a great response, with 837 unique votes so far. The results are very much in favor of desktop word processing tools, which is a little surprising considering the early adopter readership of Read/WriteWeb. Microsoft Word has 47% of the … Read more