Tonight Bloglines is launching a new design at beta.bloglines.com , which includes a new personalizable Start Page, more views, and drag and drop Ajax functionality. I spoke to new Bloglines GM Eric Engleman about the makeover and tested the Beta Bloglines myself. My judgement below, plus I re-cap the history of Bloglines and how they dropped the ball after being acquired by Ask.co... [read more ...]

Bloglines, the grandfather of web based RSS readers, launched a new beta site this evening at beta.bloglines.com. Like everyone else these days, the most notable new feature is an Ajax customizable home page where users can drag and reorder feeds for a quick view. Bloglines now has three viewing options - quick view (the new Ajax [...] [read more ...]

Don’t get us wrong, Google Reader is our favorite feedreader. But sometimes, we just wish it was a little…better. Here are 50 Firefox extensions and scripts to make Google Reader your own. Note: some of these require the Greasemonkey or Stylish extensions. Also see Google Reader on the iPhone. Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player [...] [read more ...]

We’re pretty big fans of Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform. And just about everyone will agree that Tafiti, a new Microsoft search site built on Silverlight, is pretty darn easy on the eyes. They even got the Jackson Fish Market team (they are creating new visually stunning products) to help out on the project. But will many [...] [read more ...]

NowPublic, a Vancouver-based citizen journalism site has raised $10.6 million in Series A funding from Rho Ventures/Rho Canada, Brightspark, and the Working Opportunity Fund. So first off, that’s a boatload of cash in the web news business and we’re not saying it’s justified. However, NowPublic is clearly attracting contributors (119,000 of them in 140 countries), money [...] [read more ...]

King.com, one of the largest makers of games where people compete against each other for small awards, has announced an exclusive partnership with RealNetworks, a once popular video player company that has struggled of late. This is just the latest deal happening in the increasingly competitive online gaming industry. However, we mention this one because King [...] [read more ...]

Today AOL unveiled a new myAOL beta, including an updated RSS reader dubbed “Favorites.” We decided to take a look at the new product head-to-head in several areas versus Google Reader, arguably the leader in the space. Managing Subscriptions Perhaps the most important part of any RSS reader is the way in which it allows the [...] [read more ...]

News is delivered in many different ways via the Internet. With so many blogs and news sites, it is sometimes hard to keep up and know if you're really getting all the day's top headlines. That's where content aggregation comes into play. Aggregators are sites specifically designed to bring multiple news sources together and repackage them in a more convenient form. These sites make it pos... [read more ...]

Thank you to everyone who applied for the Read/WriteWeb writer roles we wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The response was amazing, with over 120 people applying. There were a lot of good applicants and the shortlist was brimming with talent. However we only had two part-time positions available and they have gone to: Aidan Henry and Andrew Pipes . You will be hearing more from those... [read more ...]

I'm finally back on deck after a week out on the road, and after spending a few days in Perth I've settled on the fact that this city is piping hot when it comes to the interweb. I must admit, it was my first time in Perth and I jokingly expected to see a fairly medium sized city in the middle of the desert. Instead I found a city worth visiting again that's for sure. The main reas... [read more ...]

Salaries of engineers in India have risen strongly — as they should — but apparently enough for several U.S. companies to give up on the idea of hiring there. The WSJ has a notable story (subscription required) about the trend, worth reading for start-ups with investors pressuring them to hire abroad for cost reasons. It may [...] [read more ...]

Feedslice is a new service that acts as an aggregator for feeds, and creates a community around it. The end goal is to provide personalized user recommendations. The site is still in private beta, but I got a chance to try it out. As a member, you can browse through feeds in its library [...] [read more ...]

Filed under: OS , Odds and ends One of the first things users noticed about the new Safari for Windows beta is that Apple is using their own font smoothing technology (found in OS X) instead of the Windows standard ClearType. Joel Spolsky has an interesting discussion of the different approaches Apple and Microsoft use with respect to sub-pixel font smoothing. Basically his con... [read more ...]

Tripbase is a new travel suggestion service which lets users decide which aspects of a city are most important and recommends destinations based on those criteria. Tripbase is currently in alpha testing, but it demonstrates some promising features. How it Works Without having to register, Tripbase begins your search by asking you to rate the importance [...] [read more ...]

I've written about it before and it still works like a charm. Here's one of the easiest ways to get your product or service featured on Digg and even on the Diggnation podcast. So how do you do it? Feature Digg paraphernalia, Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecht, or anyone else from the Digg posse in an advertisement or anywhere on your site. Create a special version of your product/s... [read more ...]

Tommorrow, Google will be hosting a developer day for 5,000 developers worldwide. The bulk of developers will be gathering at the San Jose convention center for a keynote by Google’s VP of Engineering, Jeff Huber. At the conference Google will be outlinging their their developer strategy. But the big announcement will be Google Gears, an [...] [read more ...]

Editor's Note: This post was written by Ross Dawson , CEO of Advanced Human Technologies and Chairman of Future Exploration Network . Ross is holding a Web 2.0 event in Sydney, Australia on June 6, which I will be a speaker at. In preparation for the conference, Ross has produced this amazing list of Top Aussie Web Apps. Almost as amazingly, I personally know people from all of the t... [read more ...]

Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman rips into MySpace today as he applauds Facebook’s new developer platform. Facebook’s timing is perfect. They just released an API that gives third party developers deep access to Facebook functionality and it’s 20 million users. Not only can these third party startups get a widget placed on people’s Facebook profiles, but they [...] [read more ...]

Illumino is a new type of social site, connecting people based on groups and RSS feeds, that has just launched a few hours ago. The purpose of Illumino is to help you track only what you’re interested in, and connect you with others based on interests and information needed. Illumino is a downloadable application that [...] [read more ...]

Google has officially responded to Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit, citing copyright infringement. Google’s stance is to deny all the accusations. Google insists that Viacom’s lawsuit is going against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which established the standards by which the Internet culture lives by. Specifically, in terms of making carriers and hosting providers [.... [read more ...]

In November, Linux music player Amarok shipped with Magnatune support built-in. As far as overall sales go, I'm very pleased as they've been strong and consistent. Here are the stats: - 473 albums sold through Amarok Since October 31st 2006... [read more ...]

I've been seeing lots of reactions to Microsoft's attack on Google at the Association of American Publishers, and it isn't pretty. (Here's a link to the full text of Microsoft Assistant General Counsel Tom Rubin's speech.) For those of you... [read more ...]

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(Credit: CNET Networks) Read and write RSS feeds with GoBits Reader A Web-based RSS aggregator and publisher, GoBits Reader uses Ajax and your browser as opposed to a standalone RSS app like FeedReader or FeedExplorer . This isn't the first Web-based RSS reader (see PageFlakes and the NewsGator ) but this ... [read more ...]