Latest Articles

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  Web

  Making the Web Searchable: The Story of SearchMonkey

  Last week at the SemTech 2008 Conference that took place in San Jose, Yahoo! Researcher Peter Mika spoke in detail about the company's new SearchMonkey search platform initiative. Mika talked broadly about his work looking at metadata on the web, and how that led to the birth of SearchMonkey. This...

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  Web

  Google App Engine Announces Pricing Plan, APIs, Open Access

  At tomorrow's Google I/O conference, the App Engine team will be making a number of announcements. In advance of the conference, we interviewed Paul McDonald and Pete Koomen, two App Engine product managers, on our podcast show ReadWriteTalk. Specifically, Google will be announcing: Pricing options for additional App Engine resources...

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  Social

  The Social Networking Arms Race

  Last November, when Google launched Open Social we asked readers if Facebook would join Google's platform. The results were split right down the middle, but as we get farther from the Open Social launch, and the two sites continue to launch competing APIs (Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect, for example...

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  Web

  Borders To Compete With Amazon

  Bookworms around the world have something to rejoice about today. The Borders bookstore, a competitor of Barnes and Nobles, has launched an online version of their storefront. You may recall Borders partnering with Amazon.com for online sales. Now it seems Borders is ready to step out on its own. Here's...

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  Web

  Who Are The “Digitally Savvy?”

  A new report put about by consumer and media research firm Scarborough Research has revealed some interesting information about the section of the U.S. population that's being called the "digitally savvy." These are the consumers who are more likely to own high-tech items like DVRs, satellite radios, and VoIP phones...

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  Web

  Poll: Are You Still Watching Cable TV?

  Chris Albrecht has a post on NewTeeVee this morning asking for suggestions to help him break up with cable. Even though cable prices have gone up 77 percent since 1996, which according to the New York Times is nearly twice the rate of inflation, many people are having trouble kicking...

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  Social

  What’s the Biggest Rails App? It Doesn’t Matter

  Once upon a time, whenever anyone asked, "But are there any big applications built on Rails?" The answer was usually, 43Things, anything from 37Signals, or Odeo. But over the past year, there's no doubt that if there is a poster child for Rails, it is now Twitter. With such notorious...

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  Web

  When User-Generated Content Goes Bad

  Viral marketing, user-generated content, online buzz: over the past few years, these terms have been representative of a new way of marketing to consumers that takes advantage of the current popularity of the social web. This new technique involves companies encouraging its customers to create content of their own in...

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  Web

  Why Google is Wooing Web Developers

  Google I/O is the first event for web developers that Google has run. It happens later this week on 28/29 May and Google is expecting 2,500 people to attend. The I/O stands for "Innovation/Open" (i/o is also a programmer term input/output). Recently I spoke with Tom Stocky, a Director of...

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  Web

  Results: Data Portability’s Future

  A couple of weeks ago we ran an interactive game on the topic of Data Portability. We had a great response, with 680 people playing the game. Here now are the results, showing how RWW readers think 5 of the major players - Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, and the non-profit...

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  Web

  Semantic Tagging with Faviki

  Faviki is a new social bookmarking tool that offers something that services like Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, and Diigo do not - semantic tagging capabilities. What this means is that instead of having users haphazardly entering in tags to describe the links they save, Faviki will suggest tags to be used instead....

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  Web

  Sometimes Crowds Aren’t That Wise

  Last week, computer book publisher SitePoint relayed a story about recent experiences with Digg that demonstrates that the Digg system is far from perfect. We've written recently on ReadWriteWeb about the decline and fall of quality on Digg, but SitePoint's anecdote demonstrates that sometimes the wisdom of crowds approach is,...

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  Web

  Search Muxtapes With Muxfind

  Muxtape, an online mix tape-making service, has been a big hit with music fans on the social web. The site lets you upload mp3s to create a playlist you can share with anyone. Now, a new service called Muxfind lets you to search through the muxtapes created by others in...

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  Web

  New York Times API Coming

  As print circulation continues its slide at most newspapers, one of the United States' most respected newspapers, the New York Times, is taking steps to boost online readership. The paper is already the third most cited web site on Techmeme, and the first on Memeorandum, proving that bloggers at least...

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  Web

  Studios Should Look to Trent Reznor for Future of Distribution

  There was an article over the weekend in the New York Times about new tactics Warner Brothers is planning to boost flagging DVD sales. Warner plans to release direct-to-DVD companion films alongside new releases in the future, in an attempt to build buzz for the later DVD release of the...

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  Web

  Thanks RWW Sponsors; Packages Available June-July

  Thank you to our sponsors, for supporting ReadWriteWeb's mission to provide in-depth coverage of Web apps and trends. To enquire about sponsor slots on ReadWriteWeb, please email us for a Media Kit. We are currently booking June and July spots; and we offer discounts for signing up for 2 or...

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  Web

  uvLayer – Collect and Share Videos with Style

  uvLayer allows you to search for videos and organize them in a Minority Report fashion. Do a search for any video and uvLayer will instantly provide you with a handful of videos matching your keywords in a collection. With the results, you can drag videos outside the collection and onto...

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  Web

  Mars Phoenix Lander Live on Web in 1 Hour

  In July 1969 when the US Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon, an estimated 500 million people tuned in to watch on TV across the world. The space race between the US and the Russians had captured the public's imagination the world over. Over the next few years, though,...

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  Web

  Anothr – Real-time News Tracker

  When it comes to staying up-to-date on the news, RSS is the best thing that could have ever happened to the web. You've probably subscribed to a ton of feeds by now through services such as Google Reader or software like FeedDemon. Instead of waiting impatiently for these services to...

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  Entertainment

  Book Review: Inside Steve’s Brain

  Inside Steve's Brain, a book about Steve Jobs written by Leander Kahney, is a fascinating look at the thought processes and inspiration behind Apple's products and branding. It has a particular and much welcome focus on the current era - iPod/iTunes, the latest iMacs, the Apple Store and more. The...