TweepML Launches Twitter Groups Service & OPML-like Format

A new service called TweepML just launched that makes it easy to create and share groups of Twitter users. It’s more than just a grouping service though, TweepML is also an open extensible format. What OPML is to RSS, TweepML is to Twitter. Groups are of course one of the core features of social software, … Read more

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Personalization

This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest Web trends of 2009. Our first post was about Structured Data, our second about The Real-Time Web. The third part of our series is on Personalization. Personalization has long been a buzzword on the Internet. With the glut of information on the … Read more

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: The Real-Time Web

This week ReadWriteWeb is running a series of posts analyzing the 5 biggest, most cutting edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We’re posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we’ll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends. Our opening post was about … Read more

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Structured Data

This week ReadWriteWeb will run a series of posts detailing what we think are the 5 biggest, most cutting edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We’ll be posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we’ll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends. … Read more

Gmail Ads Within Email Thread – Is This New?

Today I spotted a contextual advert within an email thread in Gmail. Usually these ‘sponsored links’ are displayed in a separate pane on the right-hand side of Gmail – i.e. outside of the actual email content. But this places the ad squarely within the content of the email thread. It’s possible this has been around … Read more

Weekly Wrapup: Smart Cards, Android, eReader Pricing, And More…

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we review the state of smart cards around the world, update you on the latest Augmented Reality news, ask whether eReaders are being priced too high, analyze Google’s Chrome OS browser plans, present our hands-on impressions of … Read more

Hong Kong’s Octopus Card: Utility Outweighs Privacy Concerns

This week we’re looking at Smart Cards, which have proliferated across the world mainly as a form of electronic payment for public transportation. Earlier this week we profiled Japan’s cutting edge Suica Card and London’s Oyster Card. Today we look at a widely used smart card that has been in service since 1997: the Octopus … Read more

The Cutting Edge of Smart Cards: Japan’s Suica Card

This week we’re looking at the world of Smart Cards. Yesterday we checked out the Oyster Card, an RFID-powered smart card that millions of Londoners are using to pay for public transport. It’s one of the largest implementations of RFID in the western world. However perhaps because of that scale, it’s also fairly conservative. Right … Read more

Oyster Card: 10 Million + RFID Chips in London

The Oyster card is an RFID smart card used for electronic ticketing on London public transport services, notably the London Underground and buses. Other countries have similar smart cards. A couple that I’ve come across in real life recently were Boston’s CharlieCard and Wellington’s Snapper card. Some smart cards are used for other types of … Read more

Break Media: Funny Videos Formula Still Works

People who think that ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ is a media phenomenon that peaked in the television era, may be disappointed to know that the same formula is becoming increasingly popular on the Web. As of July 2009, Break Media was ranked the 35th most popular site in the U.S. – one year ago it … Read more