The first time Richard became aware of me was in January 2007 when I left a comment on a poll asking if AJAX was an RIA technology. To my surprise, Richard apparently liked my comment so much that he turned it into a full post. A few days later, I saw RWW feature writer Alex Iskold leave a comment on my personal blog and struck up an email conversation with him -- which I continued a month later when I sent him a congratulations note about the funding he landed for his company, AdaptiveBlue.

Toward the end of February, ReadWriteWeb wrote a post about OpenID that I thought I had a killer response to. So I wrote up my thoughts on my personal blog (sadly, that post has been lost to the ether) and emailed a link to Richard. After receiving a reply, I followed up with an offer to write some guest posts for RWW, saying that I'd been planning to write up a comparison of online IPTV providers. And that's exactly what I did -- my first post was published about 2 weeks later.

After a couple of more guest posts, all three of which landed on the front page of Digg, Richard invited me to hold down the fort while he was away at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in April 2007. I was still writing for that political site, but I thought -- who needs sleep for a week if it gets me a crack at writing for my favorite blog? After that first trial week, Richard hired me on a part time basis, and I worked both jobs until July 2007 when I joined RWW on a more full-time basis.

In the 15 months I have worked here I have learned a ton about blogging, made a lot of great friends, and met a lot of awesome people. ReadWriteWeb has been very good to me, and I'll certainly miss it. It was, however, time for a new chapter in my life. I'll still be blogging, but I'll be joining a new outfit. Where I'm headed isn't exactly a secret (I've told plenty of people), but I'll leave off saying here. If you're curious, I'll announce it soon on my personal blog, mockriot (a very occasionally updated tumblog).

I want to sincerely thank everyone who has read and commented on my work over the past year. It means a lot to me that anyone cares what I have to say and I hope to continue interacting with you at my new gig. ReadWriteWeb will remain my first daily read, and I want to extend my congratulations to Corvida and Frederic. Richard: You've assembled one hell of a team, and RWW rocks because of it!

Thanks again, everyone!

Note: there is a new writer coming on board, which I will announce in a separate post on Saturday.

10 Classic Josh Posts

Below I've listed 10 of Josh's posts that I've particularly enjoyed over the past 15 months. This is a completely subjective list. I nearly called it 'Top 10 Josh Posts', as a kind of inside joke that I think he would appreciate :-)

• Internet Killed The Television Star: Reviews of Joost, Babelgum, Zattoo, and More -- Josh's first post on RWW, dated 6 June '07. I believe it was after reading this post, which Josh wrote as a guest writer, that I thought: "I need to hire this guy".
• Crowdsourcing: A Million Heads is Better than One -- Josh's second post! Crowdsourcing has been one of his favorite topics, see also IdeaScale - Crowdsourcing R&D (more links to his crowdsourcing posts inside that).
• Rolling Your Own Online Office
• Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students
• Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work; Top 10 Facebook Apps: Play; Top 10 Facebook Apps: Media; Top 10 Facebook Apps: Utility; Top 10 Facebook Apps: Extension -- Josh has written a lot of outstanding posts about Facebook, and this 5-part series on top Facebook Apps is still a must-read.
• Is Facebook Worth the Hype?
• The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Internet Matter in Election Politics? -- online politics has been another strong topic for Josh, as this post demonstrates. I always looked forward to reading his take on how the Web was becoming a part of the political process.
• A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff -- still ranks as one of our most successful posts ever, proving once and for all that the Web loves lists.
• Beacon Saga Comes to an End: Facebook Adds Global Opt-Out, Apologizes -- a great overview of the Beacon saga at Facebook.
• There is No Web 3.0, There is No Web 2.0 - There is Just the Web -- 'nuff said!

All the best Josh in your future endeavours. Stay in touch and we hope to see you regularly in the RWW comments ;-)