Paul Jacobson

Category: Web/Tech

  • Switching from a Fitbit Charge to a Garmin Vivoactive 4

    Switching from a Fitbit Charge to a Garmin Vivoactive 4

    Change happens As you may remember, I bought a Fitbit Charge 3 in October 2018. I hadn’t worn a watch, let alone a fitness tracker like this, before that. I soon came to enjoy having it, and the data it gave me. Unfortunately, the screen stopped working soon after the warranty expired on the device, […]

  • How to send a Webmention in comments?

    How to send a Webmention in comments?

    I’ve had Webmentions enabled on this site for some time now. Sending a Webmention is pretty straightforward thanks to plugins like Webmention for WordPress and Semantic-Linkbacks. The question is how to send Webmentions in comments when someone replies to one of my posts? 🤔 I reached out to Chris Aldrich on Twitter, and he pointed […]

  • The greatest propaganda machine in history

    The greatest propaganda machine in history

    Sacha Baron Cohen recently spoke about how social media services have become the “greatest propaganda machine in history”. Much of the media’s focus, when reporting on his remarks, was on his attack on Facebook. While he certainly targeted Facebook, he also spoke about how Google, YouTube, and Twitter shape online discourse, and how they help […]

  • Build a membership site with recurring payments

    Build a membership site with recurring payments

    We launched a new Recurring Payments feature for self-hosted WordPress.org sites (powered by Jetpack) or WordPress.com sites today. It’s an awesome new way for anyone with a paid WordPress.com plan to earn money through their sites. Our new Recurring Payments feature for WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites lets you do just that: it’s a monetization tool […]

  • My new Twenty Twenty look

    I decided to switch my site over to the new Twenty Twenty theme that will be released with WordPress 5.3 next week. I downloaded a pre-release version from the GitHub repo, and uploaded it directly. I like the default themes that ship with WordPress, and the themes that our team is building. Even though the […]

  • Owning your tweets

    Owning your tweets

    I really like how Zach Leatherman has taken control over his tweets, and is sharing them on his site with some great analytics. He provides some insights into how he’s taking his tweets, and republishing them on his site in his post “I’m Taking Ownership of My Tweets” – I fully expect my personal website […]

  • A curious sequence of events with Google and its YouTube recommendations

    I noticed a curious sequence of events this morning. I responded to a tweet about Donald Trump’s latest tweet where he referred to his “great and unmatched wisdom” using the Twitter app on my Android phone – I then turned to our Android TV box where we were watching YouTube videos in the YouTube app, […]

  • A quantum computer did something a classical computer just can’t do

    A quantum computer did something a classical computer just can’t do

    Quantum computing still seems to be at a pretty early stage. At the same time, it looks like it has the potential to do truly remarkable things. In at least one case, it did something a classical computer just can’t feasibly do: But that seriously understates what’s going on here. Every calculation that’s done on […]