2007

Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Top Web News It was a relatively quiet week in Web news. There were various mobile announcements from the 3GSM conference in Spain and some product releases (e.g. MS Soapbox). Also Google acquired video game advertising company Adscape. Perhaps the most interesting news … Read more

Saul Klein, the former Skype global marketing VP who joined VC firm Index Ventures this week, has a great post on his blog about the European startup scene. I spoke to Saul earlier this week and I will write up a post about that conversation next week. But for now, check out Saul’s post – … Read more

This morning Dell unveiled a couple of community-focused sites, essentially jumping into the web 2.0 waters with a splash. They’ve released a digg-like community site called IdeaStorm and a video sharing site called StudioDell. It’s all part of Dell’s “Digital Media plan” and the new products are designed to increase the interaction between Dell and … Read more

– Yahoo implements digg-style voting across some of its products; two opposing headlines pretty much sum this story up… Yahoo Anecdotal’s headline: It takes two to Tango (suggesting interaction between Y! developers and their users); digg’s headline: Yahoo Shamelessly Rips Off Digg and Brags About It. The first digg commenter on the story wittily notes: … Read more

While YouTube and online video is all the rage currently, I often wonder if there’s anything on these video websites other than mentos-coke explosions and bad singing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy YouTube as much as the next person – but I am also a bit artsy-fartsy, so I like to see artistic stuff … Read more

– The Mozilla Manifesto; rather generic new manifesto. It reminds us of an old Jeff Bezos quote… when someone asked him ‘What do u think about Google’s moto – don’t be evil?’ Bezos is said to have replied: ‘I assumed this was obvious’. We couldn’t track down the exact quote, so please leave a comment … Read more

Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet has done an excellent analysis of Microsoft’s Windows Live brand. Her conclusions are quite damning of Microsoft’s marketing department: “Problem No. 1: Live isn’t a consistently applied term: Sometimes it refers to services (like Windows Live Messenger), sometimes to desktop applications (a k a Windows Live Search Preview), and sometimes … Read more

The oddly-named 1dawg is the latest of hundreds of hopefuls to ride the online video wave. 1dawg’s differentiating factor is that it provides a free video conversion service to a variety of mobile devices. It’s a seemingly minor thing to do, but in the current era mobile devices often use incompatible media formats – and … Read more

This week’s poll relates to a somewhat controversial NY Times article over the weekend, which suggested that Silicon Valley is more likely to create innovative and successful tech products than elsewhere in the world. Obviously Silicon Valley has a lot going for it – it’s a hub for smart Web technologists, it’s swimming in VC … Read more

Later today Mozilla is launching an upgrade to its Add-Ons website. Add-ons are extensions to the Firefox browser and Mozilla is aiming to make them more accessible to mainstream users with this upgrade. Last week I spoke with Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s Director of Ecosystem Development and “add-ons guru”, about the new add-ons upgrade and also … Read more

– Microsoft Announces Three New Windows Live Products for Mobile Devices; along with the official release of Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft has announced 3 new Live products – Live Search for Windows Mobile, Live Search for Java, and Windows Live for Windows Mobile (a portal-type offering for mobile including e-mail, instant messaging, search and Live … Read more

An interesting tidbit came out of the recent Foo Camp New Zealand (which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend). Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla, who is based in NZ but drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox, spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you’ll be able to use … Read more

Latvia is a small country in Northern Europe, next to Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. It has a population of 2.3 million, around 38% of whom have Internet access. The ethnicity of the population (Latvians 60%; Russian 30%) is reflected in the small internet market, because most local web sites and apps have 2 versions … Read more

Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Top Web News All of the big Web companies were in the news this week, but probably the one that made the most impact (as usual) was Apple. Steve Jobs is the master of getting attention, and his call for record companies to … Read more

TVTonic is billing itself as “The Internet Channel”. There are plenty of companies muscling into that market currently (the Amazon/TiVO partnership being the latest example), but TVTonic seems more focused on being a subscription service for video podcasts. Essentially they are trying to become a TV station for user-generated or ‘amateur’ content (and a bit … Read more