In case your RSS Reader got the better of you over the working week, here’s a snapshot
of last week’s Read/WriteWeb posts. The big web tech stories were Times Reader, Zune,
Yahoo Mail Beta, iTV. Here are summaries of all our posts this week:
New York
Times Reader Launches – NY Times releases the beta of its new desktop app, promising a better Web
reading experience. Built with Microsoft WPF technology.
Netvibes
Claims 5 Million Users – despite Netvibe’s 5M user base (is that return users?),
we’re still a way off start pages being mainstream tools.
Zune –
Social Networking Differentiates It From iPod – while the new Microsoft iPod-like device will offer social music sharing via
WiFi, questions remain over its DRM.
Yahoo!
Mail Beta Release – Exclusive Podcast With Ethan Diamond – Yahoo opens up the beta
for its Ajax-powered web email, which has desktop-like user experience and great features
such as calendar and RSS Reader integration.
Apple’s iPod
Success Won’t Be Repeated With iTV – 30 people commented on this, most of them making
good cases for Apple succeeding with iTV.
The Web VC
Chart – Alex Iskold’s well-researched and beautifully designed chart of Web VC
investments. Keep the comments coming in, because we’re going to do an update real
soon on the chart.
Poll:
Do Personalized Start Pages have a viable future? – 52% say yes, 46% no and 2% don’t
know what start pages are.
VCs on
Web Technology: Judy Gibbons from Accel – this is well worth a read if you’re a
budding entrepreneur in the Web space. Judy has 25 years experience in the computer
industry, so her advice should be noted.
What New
Web Technology Has Apple Unveiled? – a wrap of Apple’s announcements this week,
including movies on iTunes and an as-yet unreleased device (currently named iTV) that
will enable you to view video content on your television.
Sharpcast’s
Desktop/Web Synchronization – Soon For All Types Of Files – this is what Next
Generation Web Technology is all about; solving a big pain point (synching files/data between PC, mobile
and other devices) and making it all seem easy.
Smartpox: Bar
Codes For The Web – Read/WriteWeb was the first publication to cover the oddly named
Smartpox, which offers barcoding technology to connect the online and offline worlds.
Top Web Apps
in Brazil – continuing our very popular series on international Web markets, we
discovered that Brazil Internet users are very community-minded and social. And yes, a
lot of them use Orkut.
World
Internet Penetration Now 16% – Asia Growing Fast! – China and Asia in general are
making great progress in Internet penetration. Despite the US and countries such as my
own being above 65% penetration, much of the world is closer to 10-15% or lower.
