These summary posts are designed to be a ‘quick fix’ of the top Web news, for
those people who don’t have time to read the full articles but who want to stay
informed.
– Internet
Boom in China Is Built on Virtual Fun; NY Times continues the western
fascination with all things China. This article profiles Tencent and their
dominant mobile…
A recent Techcrunch Forum thread asked what is the difference between Techcrunch, Mashable and Read/WriteWeb? I think each has a unique brand and we’re pretty complementary when it comes down to it. But the comments got me thinking about what type of content people expect from R/WW.
So please help us out and tell us what you like to read at R/WW…
It’s a bit late, sorry, but here is a summary of last week’s action on
Read/WriteWeb….
Faking it
Our poll last week was an eye-opener. We asked: in your current Web activities where an identity is
required (i.e. you can’t be anonymous) do you ever fake all or part of your identity? In
the end 1,542 votes were cast and 57% of people said they…
Couple of bits of Google
product news this weekend. Firstly, at last some tangible
evidence of an online presentations app from Google, one of the missing pieces so far
in the much-anticipated Google Office suite.
The ‘Google Operating System’ blog dug into some file notes from Google that reveal the
code-name of the tool is Presently (a play on…
Tonight there’s a crucial
cricket game on in the international Tri-Series involving Australia (the world
champions), New Zealand and England. My team, New Zealand, is playing Australia tonight
at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Sadly I don’t currently have TV access to the sports
channel that televises cricket games here in NZ, so I have to use the…
Yahoo has rolled out a new portal-type service called OurCity, a beta product that aggregates content about cities from across the Yahoo network and Wikipedia. It’s rolled out to just 2 cities so
far, Bangalore and Delhi. It is described on the TechMag blog (who
brought this to my attention) as a “mashup of yahoo service[s]”, which is an…
I’m no stock market expert, but Adam Hewison from MarketClub has produced a 9-minute video that even I can
follow. It uses stock chart theory to predict the fortunes of Google and Yahoo stocks
this year – concluding that Yahoo will probably have the most percentage gain:
The chart above is the Yahoo one, which has fallen over the last year…
A summary of the main Web Tech news today…
– del.icio.us now
has 1.5 million users, according to the official blog; Also talks about doing “more
meaningful joint development work” with its parent company Yahoo, including re-doing the
UI.
–
Amazon Q4 Announcements; sales up 34% including “for the first time, non-Media dollar
growth [e.g…
The Daily Reel has
a short interview with the creators of LonelyGirl15, the online video diary of a fake
teen which became enormously popular on YouTube last year. The topic was what they think
about the monetization of YouTube. If anyone would’ve benefited from a revenue share with
YouTube in recent times, it’s these guys (three of them btw…
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
Last year at DEMOfall a
company called Vapor Stream generated a lot of
controversial press because it introduced an email system capable of completely erasing
any trace of your communication. This year, one of the contenders that may generate a lot
of controversy is Me.dium – a Colorado based…
– Information
Super Traffic Jam; “A new assessment from Deloitte & Touche predicts that global
traffic will exceed the Internet’s capacity as soon as this year. Why? The rapid growth
in the number of global Internet users, combined with the rise of online video services
and the lack of investment in new infrastructure.”; for an excellent take…
The Read/WriteWeb team is a little
obsessed with next-generation search, even more so after Charles Knight’s illuminating
post outlining 100
alternative search engines. Although Pixsta
didn’t make that list (note that Charles is constantly updating the top 100), it is a
“visual browse and search” engine that has a unique approach to search. It…
Some interesting Web Tech news out today…
– Web giants ask for feds’ help
on censorship; mostly relating to US Big Internet Companies (Goog, MS and Y!) trying
to do business in China, although this CNET report suggests that about 25 countries
around the world are currently engaged in Internet filtering.
–
Yahoo Planning to Add 100 Web Sites…
Our current
poll has been causing a bit of water cooler discussion amongst the Read/WriteWeb
authors. The question we’re asking in the poll is: in your current Web
activities where an identity is required (i.e. you can’t be anonymous) do you
ever fake all or part of your identity?
After 511 votes so far, an astonishing 55% of respondents say they…
A new “3D community” has
just been launched, with the unusual name of Teapotters. The name comes from 3D pioneer
Martin Newell, who created the first free 3D model in 1974 – a teapot model. The site
Teapotters.com aims to popularize 3D displays and sharing across the Web – websites,
social networks, blogs and more – via a “3D widget”. The email…
Normally when we discuss
mashups, we’re talking about browser-based mashups (and usually they involve Google
Maps!). But Proto is a new application for building
“desktop mashups”. The desktop/Web hybrid theme is one we’ve been exploring in recent
months on Read/WriteWeb, so Proto is an interesting twist on this. The site offers a
visual building…
In
my previous post, I noted how the new Gmail/Google Docs & Spreadsheet integration
feature threatens Microsoft. There’s also some high level discussion going on in the tech
sphere about how Microsoft’s continued loss of search market share and
confusion over the Live branding means they are losing the “web war”. Infamous Dot
Com analyst…
On Monday Google released a relatively
minor, but useful, feature. It’s worth examining a bit more closely, because it’s yet
another signal that Google is quietly pecking away at Microsoft’s lunch in office
software. Now I know that Microsoft Office has a lot of advanced functionality that the
online office apps don’t have, but hear me…
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
We covered Widgetbox,
the widget market place, in June last year as
well as during its DEMOfall 2006
launch. Today Widgetbox announced a new product called blidgets, which helps bloggers
create a widget that represents their blog.
Widgetbox is an online marketplace that connects widget…
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
I was reading a Time magazine article online today, entitled Marketing to your
mind. This article was very provocative and I enjoyed reading it. But after I was
done, something else caught my attention. I was surprised to see a row of ‘web 2.0’
buttons at the bottom of the article. Time…
