Here's another new feature we're launching: ReadWriteWeb Companies. It's a company index, powered by TradeVibes. Now whenever we write a review of a startup, you may see a RWW Companies widget at the end of the post - with lots of contextual info about the startup (funding, people, competitors, news, and more). It's a nice value add for our readers, we hope. You can see an example of the widget at the end of this post, for TradeVibes owner Mill River Labs.
We have a new daily writer coming on board ReadWriteWeb this Monday, Frederic Lardinois. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to formally welcome Corvida, who joined the team as a part-time writer in May.
Frederic takes the position of News & Reviews Writer, recently advertised here. He will be a daily presence on RWW throughout the working week. Corvida is our resident blogger during the weekends.
I'm sad to say that Josh Catone is leaving ReadWriteWeb today, to move on to a new job at a popular web development community website. Josh was the first daily writer (other than myself) to join ReadWriteWeb. He started with us in March 2007 and has been instrumental in helping ReadWriteWeb grow over the past 15 months. He will be missed by myself and the whole RWW team. We wish Josh all the best at his new gig.
ReadWriteWeb is looking for a new blogger to join our team. Ideally we're after a blogger based in Silicon Valley, who can attend the local events on our behalf and meet with startups. However we'll consider non-Valley bloggers too. The role description is basically: cover breaking web tech news and product reviews. So don't worry, you won't have to write long, analytical posts like many RWW writers do :-) If this sounds like you, email the editor with the subject line 'RWW Writer Position'.
On 20 April, 2003, ReadWriteWeb was born. My first post here was appropriately entitled The Read/Write Web and it began: "The World Wide Web in 2003 is beginning to fulfil the hopes that Tim Berners-Lee had for it over 10 years ago when he created it." At the time I started ReadWriteWeb, web 2.0 hadn't yet been invented, Google Adsense hadn't launched (it would do so in June '03), Internet Explorer had 94% of the browser market share (followed by Netscape with 2%), the top blogs of the day according to Technorati were Slashdot (listed as number 1) and Where is Raed ? (a weblog from Baghdad; it closed in 2004). And 5 years ago, there was no money in blogging.
ReadWriteWeb network blog AltSearchEngines announced this week a partnership with Near-Time to establish a new forum. The forum has three levels. One tier is for CEOs and executives of Alternative Search Engines, the second tier is open to all AltSearchEngines readers, and the third tier is for the international advisors who provide AltSearchEngines with their bilingual content.
A couple of days ago I received the following email, from a Mr Vladislav Sobolev, who I'd never heard of before:
"Hi,I am going to launch ReadWriteWeb.mobi, the mobile version of ReadWriteWeb
optimized for viewing on a mobile phone. I am also launching a number of other
mobile sites including buzzmachine, craphound, crunchboard, deadspin,
micropersuasion, scobleizer, sethgodin, and a couple dozen other projects.
Thought you might be interested.I'm also launching MacManus.mobi btw.
Cheers,
V.S ."
We have a new author on the ReadWriteWeb team, Sarah Perez, who will become a daily writer in a few weeks time - once she finishes up at her current job. Sarah has started posting here already, so keep an eye out out for her posts.
Sarah is from sunny Tampa, Florida where she had worked as an I.T. Professional for many years. You may know Sarah already from her personal site sarahintampa.com, which launched in 2004 and was the reason I noticed her writing.
Welcome to Sarah, who joins myself, Josh, Marshall and Alex as regular contributers to RWW.
Our network blog AltSearchEngines has been nominated for 3 Search Blog Awards at Search Engine Journal. ASE is up for:
Best Search Engine Research Blog
Breakout Blog of 2007
Most Giving Search Blogger (for editor Charles Knight)
Last Monday we rolled out a new design on ReadWriteWeb and we received a lot of feedback on it, both positive and negative. Thank you to everybody who commented on the new design, particularly those of you who left detailed critiques. I'll address some of the feedback below, as well as update you on our comments system in general - which had technical issues during the week.
Overall I am still very happy with the design and it achieves the goals that I listed in the announcement post. But as with any Web development project, there is room for more iteration and some tweaking. So I want to assure you that all your feedback will be taken into consideration. Now to the specifics...
