2008

Online comics service Bitstrips will be one of the startups hoping to become SXSW Breakout App of 2008. In fact they responded to our Breakout Apps post by creating a special comic strip for ReadWriteWeb (see below). So what is Bitstrips? It’s an online comic strip that you can create and run as a series, … Read more

In our post SXSW Breakout App of 2008: What Will it Be?, Marshall Kirkpatrick looks at five possible contenders for SXSW breakout app. Last year it was Twitter, the year before Dodgeball. Commenter Rob nominatedsocialthing! as a contender: “If socialthing! is able to launch their iphone interface for SXSW, it could be the huge hit. … Read more

Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. Highlights include analysis of Adobe AIR and its apps, recommendation engines, Google Sites, the ‘free’ theory of the Web, Twitter vs mainstream media, Etsy vs eBay, and much more. Don’t forget to click through to our website and leave a comment on our … Read more

In our post 35 Ways to Stream Your Life, Josh Catone listed 35 apps that aggregate all the little bits of your online life. Commenter matthewvb sees some irony in the current craze for lifestreaming, pointing out that “a little over a year ago (Sept 06) when Facebook launched their news feed feature […] it … Read more

In her post Google Sites the Next Sharepoint? Maybe Not…., Sarah Perez argues that Google’s strategy with Google Apps is to “subvert the IT department altogether and appeal directly to the worker.” But commenter benkepes said that IT is still key to Google Apps’ success: “any success Google has within an enterprise setting […] would … Read more

In our post Tim Berners-Lee Says the Time for the Semantic Web is Now, the Web’s inventor is quoted as saying that “people are realizing it’s time to just go do it.” But commenter Gregory isn’t getting as excited – he thinks that “we haven’t even gotten to first base”. And no we’re not talking … Read more

In our post Beware of Freeconomics, Alex Iskold explained why the ‘free’ economy proposed by Wired’s Chris Anderson may not be a bed of roses. Commenter SJones had an interesting ‘bee’ metaphor that furthered the discussion. “It is not enough to build a killer app”, said SJones, “they [startups] have to build a killer honey … Read more

We have two winning comments today, from Michael Lambie and Vibhu Norby. Michael’s comment was on our post The Best Things About Adobe’s AIR Platform. He suggested that AIR could be used to create an offline browser. Vibhu’s comment was on Microsoft: ROI Measurement is Broken – he thinks that “Microsoft is looking a step … Read more

Alex Iskold just posted Rethinking Recommendation Engines, a product type that we here at ReadWriteWeb have explored a lot over the past year or so. In this follow-up post, we present 10 recommendation engines that we like. And we don’t include the obvious ones, such as Amazon, Netflix, last.fm, Pandora. So it’s not a ‘top … Read more

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Today’s winning comment comes from our post Top Health 2.0 Web Apps. At the end of that post we asked for your suggestions of innovative, potentially ground-breaking web apps that will change how healthcare is done. One came from Dr. Anri Kissilenko, who was particularly impressed with the doctor ratings site Vitals. Well done Dr … Read more

Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. For those of you reading this via our website, note that you can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email. Web Trends Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office Bernard Lunn wrote that … Read more

In his post Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office, Bernard Lunn argued that the collaboration features in Google Apps are good enough to take on Microsoft. Commenter Karim took him on, with a well-written defense of MS Office. Also check out Bernard’s response and the further debate that ensued. This kind … Read more

Love it or hate it, the social news site digg sure does have a passionate user base. This Monday night (February 25th) at 9pm EST/6pm PST, Digg is holding a virtual “Townhall webcast”, in partnership with Ustream. In a recent blog post Digg founder Kevin Rose said that in the webcast “we’ll be talking about … Read more

Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we’re starting to see health 2.0 apps try … Read more