2010

In our new series about product innovation, I’ll be speaking to a variety of entrepreneurs about the products they’re building and how they’re going about it. One of the more unique people in this series is Buster Benson, a 34-year old Seattle resident whose experience includes working for Amazon.com, writing a novel, and co-founding a … Read more

Yesterday we started a new interview series on ReadWriteWeb, focused on web product innovation. We began with a product that aims to change the way people consume news on mobile devices: Newsy. In part 2 of this interview with founder and CEO Jim Spencer, we delve into Newsy’s audience and how that’s evolving, what’s next … Read more

Today we’re starting a new interview series on ReadWriteWeb, focused on product innovation on the Web. I’ll be interviewing a number of startup founders over the coming weeks, all of whom have created ground-breaking Internet businesses. I hope that this series will give insight into both product innovation and what drives the people behind the … Read more

One of the more interesting startup battles in recent times has been Tumblr vs. Posterous, two light blogging services that make it easy for anyone to publish ‘found’ things very quickly and at the click of a button. Tumblr was the first kid on the block, but over the past year Posterous has tried to … Read more

Yesterday Twitter announced a major redesign of its homepage. The new twitter.com is designed to make it easier for mainstream people to consume content on Twitter. “You don’t have to tweet,” said Twitter co-founder Evan Williams at the press gathering yesterday, “any more than you have to make a webpage to use the Web.” In … Read more

This week, leading tech news aggregator Techmeme turned 5 years old. The service launched in September 2005, under the name tech.memeorandum, and ReadWriteWeb was one of the first media publications to review it. In 2005, tech.memeorandum mostly tracked blogs. In 2010, Techmeme tracks all types of media web sites. Everything from news wires, newspapers, professional … Read more

Over the past month, Facebook has not so smoothly transitioned third party content from boxes to tabs on your Facebook profile page. This is best explained by example: if you had a music box on your profile page, displaying what music you’re listening to, then that box is now gone. Instead, you have the option … Read more

Music videos became famous in the early 80’s on MTV. Nowadays, music videos are more likely to be viewed on the Web. Seven of the top ten YouTube videos of all time are music videos – from the likes of Lady Gaga, Shakira and Justin Bieber. The increasing popularity of music videos online led the … Read more

Earlier this week we looked at the upcoming launch of Google TV. It’s slated for this fall (U.S.) and will be integrated into a new line of Sony Internet TVs. Meanwhile a Swedish company has just launched its own Internet TV, built on top of Google’s open source Android Operating System. The company is called … Read more

The Internet of Things, when real world objects are connected to the Internet, has been slow to attract the attention of budding entrepreneurs. However, there has been some startup action in so-called “social objects.” We’ve covered two companies in this domain in recent times, StickyBits and TalesOfThings. The New York Times profiled a third company … Read more

In May, Google announced a new Internet TV product called Google TV. As we noted at the time, the most interesting aspect of the announcement was the developer ecosystem that Google is introducing to television. Google TV will not just allow you to view television programs and online video content, it’ll also give you access … Read more

One of Apple’s announcements yesterday was a completely redesigned Apple TV. It’s competing in a crowded and still confusing field of products that stream video from the Internet to your TV. Boxee and Roku are two smaller companies trying to crack it; and Google TV was unveiled in May. The ultimate goal of all of … Read more

Part of the new iTunes 10 software, announced and launched yesterday, is a significant new social networking feature for iTunes called Ping. It allows you to comment on music, ‘like’ it a la Facebook, or rate it. Ping is also very similar to Twitter, in that you can ‘follow’ people and music stars. All of … Read more

Recently we’ve been exploring how the book industry is adjusting to electronic books. There are pros and cons to eBooks, but regardless the industry is moving to digital formats fast – even to the point of the Oxford English Dictionary considering not publishing another print edition. Some book publishers aren’t just adjusting to eBooks, they’re … Read more

Today we’re launching our fifth channel, ReadWriteHack. Sponsored by the Intel Atom Developer Program, ReadWriteHack is a resource and guide for developers. In this channel we will outline best practices for designing and developing applications. We will also provide examples of hacks and how they work, to inspire you and show you what’s possible. ReadWriteHack … Read more