2010

Yesterday we published an interview with the founder of Instapaper, Marco Arment. In this post on ReadWriteHack, we look at Arment’s product development philosophy. And he knows what he’s talking about. Instapaper, a cross-platform app that saves web pages for reading later, is the second popular web service that Marco Arment has developed. He was … Read more

A common theme of our product innovation series has been exploring applications that take advantage of new devices – and the user experience patterns that evolve out of that. Instapaper is perfect example of this. It started out as a web application, then embraced smart phones, and now it’s being used by many iPad owners. … Read more

One of the leading trends this year has been check-in apps. Typically mobile apps, they allow you to announce that you’re at a place or doing something. The excitement started with the location check-in apps: Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Latitude and others. But over the past year the practice of “checking in” has expanded to … Read more

We Are Hunted is just one of a number of web upstarts hoping to displace Billboard as the chart of record for music. What makes We Are Hunted slightly different is that it not only produces the requisite daily and weekly music charts, it releases a set of research reports every 6 months. It recently … Read more

The advent of the iPad has triggered a new round of innovation in the startup community. And few startups have utilized the iPad’s touchscreen UI to create a unique user experience more than Flipboard, a magazine reading application built specifically for the iPad. As part of our continuing product innovation interview series, I spoke with … Read more

As different Internet-connected devices become scattered around your home – laptop, smartphone, iPad, netbook, Internet TV box, and more – it’s useful to have apps that connect them together and sync data when necessary. Below we look at 5 products that do this. Ultimately, they help you take control of your multiple devices! Some of … Read more

Caterina Fake was one of the co-founders of Flickr, an iconic web 2.0 online photo service that was sold to Yahoo. Her latest product is Hunch, a service that started out as a Q&A service but is now being positioned as a personalization service. It’s basically a recommendation engine that shows you movies you want … Read more

The Magazine Publishers of America was established in 1919 and is the leading industry association for magazine publishers. However, it’s just announced a curious name change. It will still be known by the acronym MPA, but is officially dropping two of the words from that acronym: “publishers” and “America.” Henceforth, the trade group will be … Read more

Television is one of the biggest markets in entertainment, but it is at the early stages of a huge shift online. While most people still watch TV through cable and via traditional linear programming, increasingly TV will be delivered over the Internet and with the user in charge of their own programming. The big TV … Read more

When it comes to unique, ‘out there’ startup ideas, it doesn’t get much more far out than Ponoko. The simplified concept for customers: design your own custom product and someone will make it for you. Example products created for Ponoko users so far include custom chairs, jewelry, toys, wine racks, laptop stands. As if the … Read more

Yesterday we looked at the evolution of GetGlue, a service that allows you to “check in” to TV shows, movies, music, and more. One of the striking things about GetGlue is how it has used cutting edge web technologies (recommendations, Semantic Web) to build a future-proof foundation. And how it has taken advantage of currently … Read more

Today we’re launching our sixth channel, ReadWriteMobile. Sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent, ReadWriteMobile is dedicated to helping its community understand the strategic business and technical implications of developing mobile applications. ReadWriteMobile will be authored by Sarah Perez, who you all know as a feature writer for ReadWriteWeb. Sarah admits in her Twitter profile that she’s “obsessed with … Read more

Sometimes a successful web product takes a while to find its niche. Occasionally it morphs into a different product altogether, along the way. Both things have happened to GetGlue, the service where users “check in” to watching TV shows, reading books, listening to music – indeed, to just about anything. I caught up with GetGlue … Read more

In our new series about product innovation, we’re exploring how cutting edge Internet products are created. Yesterday we wrote about the design philosophy of John Borthwick, the CEO and co-founder of Betaworks. His company operates some of the leading real-time web products: Bit.ly (link shortener), TweetDeck (desktop Twitter client), SocialFlow (a social messaging service) and … Read more

Continuing our series on product innovation and the people driving it, this week I spoke with the CEO and co-founder of Betaworks: John Borthwick. If you’re unfamiliar with the name Betaworks, you will recognize the products under its umbrella: Bit.ly (the leading link shortener), TweetDeck (desktop Twitter client), Chartbeat (real-time analytics service) and SocialFlow (a … Read more