ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb is a blog that provides analysis of web products and trends. One of the world's top 20 blogs, ReadWriteWeb speaks to an intelligent audience of web enthusiasts, early adopters and innovators.
ReadWriteWeb was founded on April 20, 2003 by Richard MacManus and is now one of the most widely read and respected blogs in the world. It is written by a team of Web enthusiasts.
-
It's True: You Have Too Many Facebook 'Friends'
8th February 2012 01:00
Facebook can be whatever you want it to be. It's a promotional tool, a way to keep in touch with family members, a space for lifestreaming your every move, or a community forum for meaningful discussion about a specific topic. But sometimes, it all just gets too overwhelming to deal with. You have 1500 Facebook friends from all walks of life - why? Those social ties expired long ago. So what's the point of holding onto that one last digital…
-
Building a Better Mouse Lock for Chrome and Firefox
8th February 2012 00:30
Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better mouse lock for Web browsers, and you might make browser-based gaming a lot more attractive. Vincent Scheib has been working on a W3C specification and feature for Chrome that will put browsers another step closer to competitive with native games. This might sound like a little thing, but the lack of the mouse lock feature holds back browser-based games. Here's the problem:…
-
Rapportive Would Mesh Well With Recent LinkedIn Acquisitions
7th February 2012 23:56
AllThingsD's Liz Gannes has sources telling her that Rapportive, the best thing that ever happened to email, has been acquired by LinkedIn. We've heard the scuttlebutt, too. Our friends at LinkedIn won't say a word. Rapportive co-founder Martin Kleppmann "can't comment," and CEO Rahul Vohra has been quiet on Twitter lately. That's all we know. So we aren't reporting that it has happened, but we're bracing ourselves in case it does. Since Rapportive is the most useful plug-in ever, we're…
-
Red Hat's GlusterFS Appliance for Amazon Now Totally Virtual
7th February 2012 23:30
One thing you don't quite get accustomed to in reporting developments in cloud technology is how even the virtual things become virtualized. Last December, Red Hat released a software storage appliance based on the GlusterFS software-based NAS system that Red Hat acquired in October. That product is a way to apply the same methodology that GlusterFS customers used to build network-attached storage pools completely from existing storage. That product had been described as a "virtual storage appliance" - in fact,…
-
TinyVox & the End of Voicemail
7th February 2012 22:55
Last week, I got a kind of tweet I hadn't seen before. It was an audio-tweet from TinyVox, an app for iOS and Android that lets users send voice messages to anyone on the Web or just keep them as memos. That doesn't sound like a new idea, but that's the point. As you can see from the interface, TinyVox is all about recovering an old, beloved medium we've lost: the heartfelt mixtape. My audio-tweet was from Srini Kumar, developer…
-
Why Second Screens Beat the Super Bowl
7th February 2012 22:30
"If the Super Bowl is such a meaningless game, why are so many people posting updates about how they're not going to watch it?" said one of my Facebook friends, as the game approached halftime. OK, I don't follow football. And I especially don't know anything about the Super Bowl. After the Super Bowl, I was wondering why Nicki Minaj and MIA (aside from her Cee Lo flick-off) didn't play a bigger role in Madonna's halftime show. I was also…
-
Netflix's Original Programming: Enough to Turn Things Around?
7th February 2012 22:00
Well, it's official. Netflix has entered the original programming game and is no longer just a distributor of other companies' content. "Lilyhammer," a dramatic comedy starring "Sopranos" actor Steven Van Zandt, went live on Sunday. For the first time, the following words have appeared on the opening credits to a television-style show: "A Netflix original series." Rather than being broadcast on HBO, a standard cable channel or even network TV, "Lilyhammer" is going straight to audiences via the Web. Netflix…
-
Chrome Beta for Android Will Be Good for Mobile HTML5 Development
7th February 2012 21:15
When Google announced that the Chrome browser would become its own operating system and run on netbooks, the thought around the tech community was that eventually Google would have to merge Chrome with Android. After all, what is the point of supporting two disparate mobile operating systems? The convergence has not yet occurred but may have taken a step further today as Google announced Chrome for Android available on devices running version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Chrome for Android is…
-
Poll: People Don't Rely On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter For Election Information
7th February 2012 20:00
People are relying on the Internet in general and social media specifically for election news and information than some social media "experts" would have us believe, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center. Sponsor While many in tech journalism circles have been quick to call the 2012 presidential race "the Social Media Election," the poll found that few of us are relying on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for election information. While 25% say they regularly learn something…
-
Wolfram Alpha Pro is "Freemium" Done Right
7th February 2012 19:44
Wolfram Alpha isn't the "Google killer" that many hyped it up to be prior to its 2009 launch. Instead, the self-described computational knowledge engine takes a completely different approach to letting users find and analyze information. Rather than scouring the Web and ranking everybody's pages in the order it thinks we'd find them useful, it uses its own data sets and computational power to return detailed reports and analysis about whatever topics users query it for. Tomorrow, the service will…
