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Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special RSS feed or by email:
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Read/WriteWeb Network Expands
This week we announced the second Read/WriteWeb Network blog, AltSearchEngines. This blog is focused on search engines, in particular the hundreds of ‘alternative’ search engines that compete with the big guns like Google and Yahoo. AltSearchEngines is edited by Charles Knight, author of the very popular Top 100 Alt Search Engines List. Indeed AltSearchEngines launched with the June edition of the Top 100 Alt Search Engines, which featured 26 new Alts.
R/WW’s other network blog, last100, continues to provide excellent coverage of the Digital Lifestyle. Check out Steve O’Hear’s Weekly Wrapup of last100 coverage this week, including 5 predictions for Apple’s upcoming World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).
Top Web News
It was a relatively quiet week on the news front – for once, no multi-million dollar acquisitions! In terms of product announcements though, there was a bit of action there. One of the big search engines, Ask.com, released a major re-design called Ask3D. Our coverage included an overview and comparison to Google Universal Search, plus an analysis of how the re-design might bring a 20%+ improvement in user satisfaction.
Another big product announcement this week was Movable Type 4.0, the next generation in one of the leading blog platforms. It is an exciting and far-reaching release, as MT4 will be a full “Social Media Platform” and will include an open source component. The battle between Six Apart (makers of MT4) and WordPress has just gone to another level, so it will be interesting to see how WordPress responds.
Yahoo was in the news this week, perhaps for the wrong reasons. A report came out claiming that Yahoo thinks the Web’s future is not in search. However a follow-up report clarified Yahoo’s position: Not So Fast, Search Isn’t History Quite Yet.
In other news this week:
- Newspaper Alliances Help Yahoo! Expand Ad Reach
- Webby Awards 2007: Big Winners Include Flickr, LinkedIn, last.fm
- Akamai Releases Internet Traffic Visualizations
- Rumor Mill: Amazon-Netflix, Yahoo!-Facebook
- Internet Companies Push For Mobile Phone Carriers to Open Up
- Clearspring Lands Major Deal With NBC
- Google Maps at 30,000 Feet
- Google First? Selling Display Ads on Another Site
- Amazon Comes to Twitter
Analysis Posts
The award for Most Controversial Post of the Week goes to…. Technology and Terrorism: Are we being too naive?. The comments are not for the faint-hearted, but we think this article raises some interesting moral and ethical issues around technology such as Google Earth.
Also Read/WriteWeb resumed its popular international Top Web Apps series with Top Web Apps in Hong Kong. If your country hasn’t yet been featured, we are looking for Guest Authors to write profiles of other countries. It is best if these articles are written by people familiar with the terrain, but of course we are more than happy to edit and publish it for you. So if you’d like to write a Top Web Apps profile for your country, please email the editor.
Startup Action
Our Startup of the Week is eyeOS, which launched eyeOS 1.0 this week. eyeOS is one of many “WebOS” products attempting to create a full Web-based operating system environment and virtual desktop. It’s an exciting area of development on the Web, and one which (ahem) I have a close eye on.
We also profiled SynthaSite, an Online Webpage Editor and Rouxbe, “Cooking Show Meets Web 2.0”.
Events
Check out our coverage of The Next Web Conference. Read/WriteWeb was the only top blog to provide full coverage, including the first reporting of Kevin Rose announcing upcoming digg changes. For a detailed look at how The Next Web went, be sure to read David Lenehan’s on-the-spot write-up.
Also this week I traveled over to Sydney, Australia to speak at a Web 2.0 Forum. This event, run by Ross Dawson, was an excellent example of the effect new web technologies are having on mainstream businesses nowadays.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
