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.