Paul Jacobson

Category: Social Web

  • This is one reason BitTorrent is so important

    Big Media portrays BitTorrent as a den of thieves and other undesirables whose only desire is to share content illegally rather than address a dying business model. BitTorrent is used for illegal content sharing, for sure, but there are very legitimate and important uses for BitTorrent include the dissemination of open source software like Ubuntu…

  • Caution about using Apple's Ping in South Africa

    I had a thought about Apple’s new music social network, Ping, and a potential risk for South Africans who have hacked US iTunes Store accounts (in other words, people who are using a US iTunes Store account without a legitimate US address and US credit card – similar story with other country stores too, I…

  • Could Orkut be a Google Me preview?

    Yes, I know I just said “Orkut” but take a look at how Google is treating contact groups in Orkut now. Granted Orkut pales in comparison to Facebook but these changes suggest Google may even be trying a couple things out in Orkut with a view to incorporating them into its much anticipated (and rumoured)…

  • Revamped LinkedIn Groups for better conversations

    LinkedIn has revamped its Groups and the result is likely to be better engagement, improved discussion quality and more relevant information being presented in groups. This video outlines the changes quite nicely: The changes seem to be designed to make the groups more relevant in themselves and, at the same time, starting points for new…

  • Moving towards a more open and social Web

    Chris Messina presented at Google I/O recently about the open and social Web and I just watched the video of his presentation. He takes the audience through many of the technologies which are adding a very interactive and social layer to the Web itself, potentially obviating the need for dedicated social platforms on the Web…

  • WordPress 3.0 releases and I'm trying a new theme

    I noticed that WordPress 3.0 released and I upgraded my blog immediately using the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-don’t-try-this-at-home-kids method of just upgrading automatically without making a complete backup first. Fortunately it worked and I didn’t lose almost 6 years of blog posts. I decided to change my theme on the blog and I adapted the default Twenty Ten…

  • Google Wave matures into a truly useful tool

    We’ve been using Google Wave in our firm to collaborate with some clients on new projects. We’re using a Google Wave instance based in our Google Apps account and so far the results have been pretty good. We’ve been using Wave to replace email for project related communications and brainstorming and while we haven’t exactly…

  • Does Google Buzz have a chance with fickle users?

    Is history repeating itself with Google Buzz? I hope not. I became a fan of a service called Jaiku about two years ago and wrote about how it was so much better than Twitter from a feature perspective. It was designed for meaningful conversations, unlike Twitter which wasn’t (and still isn’t) really designed for conversations.…