2007

last100 has an excellent post analyzing comments about the upcoming AppleTV, made by Steve Jobs at yesterday’s D5 event. ‘We’re in two businesses today, we’ll very shortly be in three, and a hobby’?, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg in an on-stage interview at yesterday’s D: conference. The first two are computers and digital … Read more

Earlier this week we reported that the F.T.C. is looking at a possible antitrust investigation against Google, over its DoubleClick acquisition. Our poll this week asks: Should Google be investigated for antitrust? I’m somewhat amazed to find that nearly half of respondants so far think that YES, Google should be investigated for anti-trust. At this … Read more

Google has released a browser plug-in called Gears, which enables people to use web apps while offline. The technology behind the plug-in gives developers the ability to implement offline functionality into their browser-based web apps. Gears is an open source collaboration between Google, Adobe, Mozilla, and Opera. We’ve written many times before about the need … Read more

Update: Google has acquired Panoramio, a website that links millions of photos with the exact geographical location where they were taken. It’s all happening today! (original post) A lot of acquisition news has been released today, with the common theme that Big Media is buying successful web 2.0 startups. First it was CBS acquiring last.fm … Read more

Microsoft just announced a very cool new multi-touch computing product, called Surface. At first the rumors were this would be an iPhone competitor, but it’s clear now that it’s much larger (30-inch display!) and more of an environmental computer device. Using the product, people can interact with information using touch, natural gestures and physical objects. … Read more

Update to Microsoft story: news has just come out about the product described below, officially named Surface. It’s a lot bigger than the iPhone, but uses similar multi-touch technology. Here is the press release and here is our write-up. (original story) Our sister site last100 reports on the imminent unveiling of Microsoft’s multi-touch technology — … Read more

Egnyte is a collaborative document sharing app that hopes to make inroads on the growing Web Office space. It’s kind of like a mix between an online storage solution (such as Omnidrive or ElephantDrive) and a content management solution. In enterprise speak, essentially it’s a knowledge management application. The company started in January 2006 and … Read more

In developing news, the NY Times is reporting that The Federal Trade Commission has “opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick”. Ironically two of the companies that called for this were Microsoft and AT&T, both of whom have colorful histories battling antitrust suits. According to … Read more

The Times of England reports that founders of UK dot com ‘star’ Lastminute.com, Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, have teamed up again with a new business called Mydeco.com, which aims to help people decorate their homes. The new website is still in ‘enter your email address’ mode right now, but it will no doubt … Read more

The R/WW Weekly Wrapup is sponsored by: Another busy week of Web Tech, including big news from Facebook and rumors of a Feedburner acquisition. This week also marked the launch of the first Read/WriteWeb Network blog, last100 – which will provide news, reviews and analysis on the digital lifestyle. last100 is edited by Steve O’Hear, … Read more

Today in San Francisco social networking site Facebook officially announced their much talked about open platform, for companies wanting to hook into the Facebook network. There’s plenty of blog coverage of this event, so in this post I hope to synthesize it all and explore what it means… What has Facebook announced? Today Facebook launched … Read more

Today Facebook is going to formally announce its plans to become an open platform. We know that the platform will allow companies to offer their products and services to Facebook users, but the details haven’t yet been ‘exposed’. So all of us bloggers are waiting for the news to be announced today, on the edges … Read more

Over on our new network blog, last100, Steve O’Hear has covered two interesting developments in the ‘digital home’ space. Firstly Steve posted that there has been quite a bit of development activity around AppleTV – but not by Apple itself, rather by hackers. Wrote Steve: “…[the hackers] have been hard at work building plug-ins and … Read more

Today AdaptiveBlue released a new version of its BlueOrganizer product, a Firefox extension that aims to provide extra contextual information to you while browsing the Web. Basically after you install BlueOrganizer in your Firefox, it enables you to discover all kinds of relevant content while you’re browsing – such as books, music, links, related information, … Read more

At the end of January, we reported on a new “preview product” called Zoho Notebook. Well tonight it has launched as a beta product. In the office software space nowadays, comparisons must be made not only to the equivalent Microsoft Office product – but also the equivalent Google Web Office product. Not forgetting of course … Read more