Forbes has an interesting article in which is raises the seemingly perennial question about Google+: why should “ordinary” users care about Google+? The point that no-one is using Google+ isn’t really a good one, however you measure Google+ users, there are a substantial number of people using the service. The challenge is more the composition [...]
- Paul Jacobson
I bought an Adonit Jot Pro stylus a while ago to use with my iPad 3 and I struggle writing stuff on my iPad with it. It seems to jump around a bit. It is possible I am not holding it correctly (or something) but I tend not to use it even though I have [...]
- Paul Jacobson
I’m pretty interested in Git and +GitHub and whether there is scope to use either in our work. Perhaps if we were working exclusively with plain text files there may be scope as an internal collaboration option. Adding it might just add more complexity to our workflows unless we’re going to replace something with it. [...]
- Paul Jacobson
Mozilla is doing some really interesting work online. It's value is perhaps more in the questions it asks than whether its experiments gain much traction.
- Paul Jacobson
Apparently MTN is charging its contract users an extra R39 each month for access to its LTE service. This access charge seems to be an add-on like data bundles and itemised billing and it is something Telkom executives would come up with as a Good Idea because it adds another convenient revenue stream. It doesn’t [...]
- Paul Jacobson
As you know, Facebook Home was announced this last week and was met with mixed reactions ranging from horror at the privacy implications (Facebook says not to worry) to degrees of interest and excitement. Having Facebook integrated so deeply into your Android phone may be worrying to you but then you probably wouldn’t install it [...]
- Paul Jacobson
I once swore by Evernote. I used it for everything. I used it to take notes, to collect scanned documents, receipts, bank statements and serve as a general reference archive for everything that caught my attention and that I want to be able to get back to one day. I still do much of that [...]
- Paul Jacobson
We're assessing how useful our various channels are to you. At the moment we have a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a LinkedIn page and a Google+ Page. Our publishing workflow generally includes all of these profiles and pages. We write a post on our site and then publish the link to that post, along with a brief description (where possible, given profile constraints) to each one. We also publish smaller updates directly to each of the profiles using Hootsuite and then check in and respond to feedback as it pops up in each space. This has proven to be a fairly effective way to reach out to our clients and followers who use different platforms but we would like to improve the experience. One way to do that is to focus our resources on the more popular or useful channels. Twitter, for example, is an essential channel. It is a lightweight and effective tool which we use to reach out to you and listen to your thoughts. We can also see which content appeals to you by the immediate...
- Paul Jacobson
Google Reader, visually, is awful but its value is not its interface but what it does. Google Reader is the feed synchronisation engine that powers many popular feed readers and enables users like me to follow a variety of terrific blogs. It isn’t the only way to keep up to date on what is happening [...]
- Paul Jacobson
I received an email from a Canadian student who is researching how people express themselves online and she posed a few questions which I answered in a recording. This is related to my previous post titled "What you can legally say on Twitter" which I published in the aftermath of the Oscar Pistorius tweetstorm. I go a little further than defamation and also talk a little about privacy concerns and content sharing. The important thing to bear in mind is that just because you are using the social Web to express yourself, it doesn't mean that what you say and share won't have very real consequences for you and people close to you.
- Paul Jacobson
I received an email from Nadya, a Canadian student, who is researching how people express themselves online and she posed a few questions which I answered in a recording. This is related to my previous post titled "What you can legally say on Twitter" which I published in the aftermath of the Oscar Pistorius tweetstorm. I go a little further than defamation and also talk a little about privacy concerns and content sharing. The important thing to bear in mind is that just because you are using the social Web to express yourself, it doesn't mean that what you say and share won't have very real consequences for you and people close to you.
- Paul Jacobson
We attended the Deloitte Tech Trends 2013 event at the Wanderers Club yesterday. It is an annual event and we had an opportunity to hear from several Deloitte executives, including Mark White, Deloitte’s Global CTO. Although the discussion focused on technology trends and how businesses are (and can) incorporate them into business processes (the emphasis was on business-driven technology implementations, not just technology for its own sake), we couldn’t help but think about the implications for legal frameworks and how law may be applied in a near future era of billions of smart and connected devices. We created a Storify which is basically a stream of consciousness as we thought the process through in 140 characters at a time. [View the story "Legal frameworks for autonomous machines" on Storify]Legal frameworks for autonomous machinesWe were at the Deloitte Tech Trends 2013 event yesterday in Johannesburg and, although the discussion focused on business-driven technology, we...
- Paul Jacobson
We attended the Deloitte Tech Trends 2013 event at the Wanderers Club yesterday. It is an annual event and we had an opportunity to hear from several Deloitte executives, including Mark White, Deloitte’s Global CTO. Although the discussion focused on technology trends and how businesses are (and can) incorporate them into business processes (the emphasis was on business-driven technology implementations, not just technology for its own sake), we couldn’t help but think about the implications for legal frameworks and how law may be applied in a near future era of billions of smart and connected devices. We created a Storify which is basically a stream of consciousness as we thought the process through in 140 characters at a time. [View the story "Legal frameworks for autonomous machines" on Storify]Legal frameworks for autonomous machinesWe were at the Deloitte Tech Trends 2013 event yesterday in Johannesburg and, although the discussion focused on business-driven technology, we...
- Paul Jacobson
Quirk invited me to listen to and watch Emma Sadleir speak about social media and the law last Friday. She took the Quirk team and a few guests (which included me) through South African law on defamation and how it related to social media. For the most part she dealt with fundamentals in our law and, at one point, she pointed out that, in her view, retweeting a defamatory tweet exposed the re-tweeter to a defamation claim alongside the original poster. @emmasadleir “anyone can be sued in ‘chain of publication’”… “but there is a ‘innocence of dissemination’ defence” #UoQJozi — justinspratt (@justinspratt) March 1, 2013 I don't necessarily agree with Emma's views but I agree that a court will likely see retweets as endorsements and will hold re-tweeters (and equivalent users on other platforms) liable for defamation because they clicked a button and shared a defamatory update with their followers or connections. While I can understand the argument and agree there is merit to it, as well...
- Paul Jacobson
Quirk invited me to listen to and watch Emma Sadleir speak about social media and the law last Friday. She took the Quirk team and a few guests (which included me) through South African law on defamation and how it related to social media. For the most part she dealt with fundamentals in our law and, at one point, she pointed out that, in her view, retweeting a defamatory tweet exposed the re-tweeter to a defamation claim alongside the original poster. @emmasadleir “anyone can be sued in ‘chain of publication’”… “but there is a ‘innocence of dissemination’ defence” #UoQJozi — justinspratt (@justinspratt) March 1, 2013 I don't necessarily agree with Emma's views but I agree that a court will likely see retweets as endorsements and will hold re-tweeters (and equivalent users on other platforms) liable for defamation because they clicked a button and shared a defamatory update with their followers or connections. While I can understand the argument and agree there is merit to it, as well...
- Paul Jacobson