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.
This week Read/WriteWeb introduced a new network blog: a podcasting show called Read/WriteTalk, hosted by Sean Ammirati. The tagline behind the show is “The People Behind The Web” and Sean will be interviewing a number of major players in the Web Technology industry over the coming months. The opening podcast features Jason Calacanis and he gives a lot of informative details about his background and experiences as an entrepreneur.
Web Office Week
This week we focused on Web Office and here were our top posts:
Web Office Defined – How it’s Evolved From 2005 to Present
In this post we reviewed the history of Web Office from 2005 to the present. Here’s the definition we ended up with:
“A Web Office suite is a combination of productivity, publishing and collaboration features. A Web Office both embraces the functionality of desktop office suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) and extends it by using Web Native features.”
Check out the comments for some great feedback on this definition. Also Conrado Viña, who is responsible for the Wikipedia definition of ‘Web Office’ wrote an interesting response on his blog.
10 Must Have Online Office Apps
Josh Catone listed the best of breed Web Office apps currently, as a kind of sequel to his Rolling Your Own Online Office post from June – and also my own Best of Breed Web Office list from February 2006.
Check out Josh’s choices for the best of breed online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, calendar, email app, groupware, file storage, RSS reader, contact manager, and to do list.
Web Products
Bloglines Launches Beta Re-design and Start Page
This week Bloglines launched a new design at beta.bloglines.com, the first stage of a complete redesign of the Bloglines service. The new features include a new personalizeable Start Page (featuring drag and drop functionality to add feeds); 3 feed reading views (Quick View with headlines only, 3-Pane View for an email-like interface, and Full View for “the classic Bloglines page layout, updated”); Drag-and-drop feed management using Ajax; and a new Unread System to manage what to keep and what to ignore. Also upgraded are the ‘Add Feeds’ process and the ‘Full View’ option.
Beta Bloglines
Exclusive: First Look at Clever Tools Groupware Suite
Clever Tools is a new online project management and extranet application suite that is aiming for a Q1 2008 launch (and a beta of at least a few of the apps in the suite in October of this year). The full Clever Tools suite will include a project management application (that includes message boards, task management, and file sharing), an invoicing app, timesheets, a CRM application, bug tracking, and a whiteboard.
You can find many other startup profiles in our Startups category.
Analysis
Alex Iskold analyses the state of the podcasting industry. He wrote that “it appears that podcasts are not picking up steam, and rather, podcasting is actually slowing down. There is not enough incentive for people to jump exclusively into podcasting because of tight competition from video, blogs, big media and a lack of clear monetization methods. However, it does not mean that podcasts are not here to stay.”
Read the whole article and be sure to check out the comments for an interesting discussion on podcasting’s future.
Bloglines vs Google Reader – Who’s Really Winning?
A follow-up to our review of Beta Blogines, we have exclusive Hitwise data revealing that Bloglines is still the market leader. Bloglines GM Eric Engleman told Read/WriteWeb that “it’s a two-horse race [and] the race is on!” – meaning Bloglines and Google Reader. He expects the next 3 months to be a very interesting time to watch Bloglines and Google Reader. He says that Bloglines has a good plan “to get our product back out there to our fans and expand the feed reader marketplace past its current tech set.”
You can find more R/WW analysis posts here.
R/WW Network Blogs
Check out a wrap of the week’s Digital Lifestyle news on last100. The biggest news this week was Nokia’s transformation into a mobile web services company, with the launch of its “Ovi” brand. It will encompass the highly anticipated Nokia Music Store, a revamped N-Gage, as well as Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps and city guides.
Also on last100 this week was The Gphone is coming; how Google could rewrite the rules, in which Dan Langendorf took a speculative look at what a future Google mobile phone might look like.
Alt Video Search Engines
Our other network blog AltSearchEngines has a report entitled Search Engine Stealth Report: The New Top 10. This is knowledge very few search industry people have, but ASE editor Charles Knight prides himself on knowing this kind of stuff! Click through to find out the top 10 up-and-coming alternative search engines that are in pre-launch stealth mode or in private alpha or beta testing.
Poll
Our poll this week asked: What Tool Do You Use For Word Processing? It got over 1000 votes and here are the results:
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OpenOffice 15% (166 votes)
Microsoft Word 47% (504 votes)
StarOffice (Sun) 0% (4 votes)
Another desktop word processor (please comment) 5% (49 votes)
A Text Editor (e.g. Notepad, Emacs) 7% (75 votes)
Google Docs 12% (128 votes)
ThinkFree 4% (44 votes)
Zimbra 2% (19 votes)
Zoho 5% (59 votes)
Another browser-based word processor (please comment) 1% (9 votes)
Other tool (please comment) 2% (18 votes)
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So Microsoft Word still dominates word processing, with nearly half R/WW readers (who voted) still using it. Overall about 3/4 of people still use desktop word processors or text editors. Just 12% use the leading Web Office tool, Google Docs, as their main word processor.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
