Cybercultural
Cybercultural
Richard MacManus
Cybercultural chronicles internet history and its cultural impact, from the pre-web era to the dot-com boom, Web 2.0, and beyond. Written by pioneering tech blogger Richard MacManus.
Latest Posts
Stranger in a strange land; me at The Venetian, 28 April, 2007. After the Web 2.0 Expo, it was off to Las Vegas for Microsoft’s MIX conference, an event to promote the company’s web technologies. My travel, including accommodations at...
In April 2007, I traveled back to San Francisco for the first Web 2.0 Expo, which was being pitched as a trade show. I arrived on Friday, April 13. I would be moderating a panel at the event, entitled “The New Hybrid Designer,” and I...
There had been rumors of a combined phone and iPod device coming from Apple, but what Steve Jobs announced at Macworld on January 9, 2007, blasted away all expectations. Using his trademark showmanship, Jobs calmly announced that Apple...
On Friday I made my way from San Francisco to the TechCrunch ranch in Atherton, about forty-five minutes south down the 101. Mike was as busy as usual. I brought up the RWW Research idea that I’d chatted to my friend Fergus about, but he...
In early November I was back in Silicon Valley to attend the annual Web 2.0 Conference, now renamed Web 2.0 Summit, and with the theme of “Disruption & Opportunity.” The name change was because the organizers, O’Reilly Media and John...
Me and Alex Iskold, a few years after he began writing for Read/WriteWeb; photo by Mike Dunn During the second half of 2006, more and more of my focus was on building up Read/WriteWeb. In July 2006 I announced a major redesign of the...
At the end of June, 2006, I boarded a flight to Seattle for Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex conference. For the second time, I got lucky with the weather in Seattle — it was the middle of summer and gloriously sunny. The event was being held at...
For the rest of the week after the Digg podcast call, I attended the 2006 Supernova conference, run by a business academic named Kevin Werbach. It wasn’t as good as the Web 2.0 Conference. In too many cases, panelists and speakers just...
In June 2006 I flew to San Francisco for my third US trip. I arrived at SFO just after midday on Monday, June 19, after another sleepless twelve-hour flight from New Zealand. Mike Arrington was hosting me at his place in Atherton again,...
ReadWriteWeb screenshot, August 2006. After Microsoft Search Champs in Redmond had finished, I began my journey back to New Zealand. My first layover was twelve hours at the San Francisco airport, so I’d arranged for Marc Canter to pick...
Microsoft campus, January 2006; photo by author. It was a cold but sunny Wednesday morning and a Microsoft charter bus pulled into a complex of red brick office buildings, all no more than three stories high. This was Microsoft’s...
Josh Porter and Richard MacManus at the Seattle Central Library; photo by Fred Oliveira. In the second week of January 2006, I got married to my partner of nine years, Maria. We had a 4-year old daughter, Rosabelle, who was one of the...
Richard MacManus = Illuminati, according to Eran Globen and Ryan King from the Supr.c.ilio.us blog, November 2005. By October 2005, I was making a reasonable living from the web as a freelancer. I’d quit my New Zealand day job in August...
Celebrating the formation of the Web 2.0 Workgroup at Jing Jing, Palo Alto. From left to right: Gabe Rivera, Dave Winer, me, Mike Arrington, Fred Oliveira; photo by Dave Winer. During my stay at the TechCrunch ranch, Mike Arrington, Fred...
Me at the Yahoo! cafe, URL’s, on 10 October 2005; photo by Jeremy Zawodny. Earlier in 2005, I had made some contacts inside of Yahoo! and had begun to think about trying for a job there. One of my contacts was a search engine executive...