Paul Jacobson › Comments

"Eskom's management mess comes as no surprise, given the state of the operation, regulatory rot and the leadership crisis at other parastatals." - Paul Jacobson

I received a bunch of Google Wave invitations to pass around. I have posted the details on Facebook and Twitter and had to extend the offer to you, my loyal and very patient readers. I only have a few invitations left but feel free to request one. Simply fill out this form [...] Related posts:Gmail invites up for grabsPownce invites …Vox updated – unlimited invites! - Paul Jacobson

"I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the beginning of the Google Web. If the US Congress passes the misleadingly names legislation which the telcos are lobbying for, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google create its own version of the Web using the fibre it controls. Using a separate protocol could make for a clean break too." - Paul Jacobson

Nokia invited me to be part of a Joburg-based focus group based on its event in Finland titled “The Way We Live Next 3.0” which took place in the last few days. Its video pretty much sets the atmosphere for the event and presents a number of exciting possibilities for future mobile devices: Rich Mulholland [...] Related posts:Looking under the hood – the Symbian OSIs history repeating itself with Nokia?Underestimating Nokia, blinded by the iPhone - Paul Jacobson

"You've always wanted to learn how to build software yourself—or just whip up an occasional script—but never knew where to start. Luckily, the web is full of free resources that can turn you into a programmer in no time." - Paul Jacobson

"Hi Julie I used to be a big fan of that store. The staff were awesome and the lattes were the best I'd had anywhere but that experience put me off. I went back there a couple weeks after my post and my experience was very "meh" compared to stores like the Hyde Park one." - Paul Jacobson

"The Way We Live Next 3.0 is a unique two-day event at Nokia’s global headquarters in Espoo, Finland. The event will feature presentations and demonstrations from Nokia and our ecosystem partners, showing how we are connecting and building the communities of the future – many presented and showcased for the first time." - Paul Jacobson

I just read an interesting post on the Michalsons site about 3rd parties processing personal information on behalf of companies that may be collecting it from you. The post reminds me about an issue I've been thinking about for a little while now and have been chatting to one or two of my clients about. It relates largely to the growing online reputation management (also referred to as "ORM") market. You may not be familiar with these tools so here is a video by one of South Africa's ORM services, SaidWot (disclosure: SaidWot is one of this firm's clients) explaining how its service works: Another popular ORM service is Quirk's Brandeye. Brandseye, as I understand it, is a similar tool used to monitor a brand's reputation online. The question I have is what the privacy implications are for ORM providers who monitor mentions and keywords on the Web for their clients? These providers may also find themselves profiling influential individuals as part of their monitoring activities in... - Paul Jacobson

A helpful reminder about the importance of a weekly review. - Paul Jacobson

"There are times when things are so hectic that 9 am becomes 5 pm, Monday becomes Friday, and the first day of the month becomes the last before you can even turn around. The days and weeks run together, and everything seems to be moving at lightening speed. Even though the impulse is to run as fast as you can to keep up, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop, see where you are, and adjust the course of a runaway train. As a small business owner, it’s possible to have several projects going on at any given point, and unfortunately, there are many occasions where the one that makes the most noise and fuss is the one that gets the majority of available attention. Time goes by, and the most important things get pushed aside for the most desperate. Getting it all back under control is actually pretty simple. It’s done with a weekly review." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

This is a terrific post, thank you. In many ways it is a reminder of what I have read before but it is always good to be reminded in such a clear and constructive way. - Paul Jacobson

Great preview of HTML 5 written a couple years ago with a discussion about various elements introduced in HTML 5. - Paul Jacobson

"Ok, I had to look that one up!" - Paul Jacobson

I received this release from Nokia’s agency, Fleishman Hillard this morning which may be of interest to Nokia users. You can read a little more on the Nokia Conversations site too. Global announcement from Nokia – Nokia identified a potential product quality issue with certain chargers manufactured by one of its third-party suppliers and as [...] Related posts:How your Nokia N97 is built and prepared to ship to youInterview with Nokia SA’s General ManagerNokia is listening to you - Paul Jacobson

Google announced its Dashboard yesterday as part of its effort to address users' privacy concerns. The Dashboard gives you an overview of what personal information Google has collected about you through your use of its various services. The Dashboard is not public and you can only access it by signing in to view it. Viewing your Dashboard for the first time can be both disturbing and revealing. The Dashboard shows you details about your email accounts, your YouTube viewing habits and a lot more. Mine even told me what my last recorded location on Latitude was. Dashboard isn't about privacy as secrecy but rather about privacy in the sense of being able to discover how much personal information has been collected and how much of that is publicly visible. The Dashboard also contains a variety of links to settings pages where you can modify your privacy settings for the various services you use as well as some guidance how to improve your privacy (as in secrecy). Google's privacy policy... - Paul Jacobson

"I was going to make the same point. The video Google released about Dashboard does indicate that you still need to log in when you access Dashboard, even if you are logged in to the other services." - Paul Jacobson

"Thanks Tania" - Paul Jacobson

"Just realised what I wanted to ask you. You mentioned you sync your iPhone with an Exchange based account. Have you had any experience syncing the iPhone with iCal when the calendars are synced with GCal via Exchange? I tried out the new iSync support for the N97 and found that the sync doesn't includes the "delegate" calendars associated with my one GCal calendar (http://pauljacobson.org/2009......). MobileMe doesn't even see GCal synced calendars at all." - Paul Jacobson

"What's your experience of the battery life with the new model? I realised that my aversion to the iPhone 3Gs was partly due to your initial experiences with battery life. It seemed even worse than my N97." - Paul Jacobson

The download link for Google Chrome for the Mac. - Paul Jacobson

Interesting article featuring Jason Fried of 37signals and his thoughts about business and productivity. - Paul Jacobson

One of the reasons I complained about the Nokia N97 when I got a demo unit was that it lacked iSync support on my Mac. That immediately made it that less useful to me because I had become accustomed to syncing my Nokia devices with iCal and Address Book. Its how I used [...] Related posts:Google Calendar is the new rising starSpanning Sync public betaGoogle Sync overtakes MobileMe, Ovi and others - Paul Jacobson

"Ah brilliant, looking forward to listening to this. Thanks for posting it." - Paul Jacobson

This calendar is a guide to our availability. Please bear in mind that we may have other commitments outside those reflected on this calendar but if you would like to meet with us, this is a good indication of when we are available. Please get in touch with us if you would like to book some time with us. - Paul Jacobson

"Hi Gian Thanks for dropping by and commenting. I think these two changes/fixes will make it a lot easier to keep connected and perhaps even reduce the load on your accounts people. The lady I spoke to yesterday who reconnected me had to wade through a lot of payment confirmations to find mine. Giving customers the ability to get to their control panel and pay their outstanding bills and have their accounts reconnected in the process must reduce the load your accounts people are carrying too." - Paul Jacobson

Installing the open source Google Wave Federation Prototype Server - Paul Jacobson

A free online version of Gina Trapani and Adam Pash's guide to Google Wave. - Paul Jacobson

I had the misfortune of being disconnected from Afrihost this morning because my scheduled payment didn’t go off my card for some reason I suspect has more to do with Standard Bank than Afrihost (yes, there is money in the account). I didn’t receive the email from Afrihost telling me about this on my [...] Related posts:DSL providers get a bloody nose from AfrihostConnected in SA: a few cool connectivity optionsRead the fine print - Paul Jacobson

Concerns about the US government's focus on Adobe products like PDF and Flash as the medium for government data. - Paul Jacobson

The Google Maps launch in South Africa this last week may not be big news in the USA where Google Maps has been fairly developed for some time now but this launch in South Africa is significant given that the World Cup will be hosted in South Africa next year. The version of Google Maps available at maps.google.co.za incorporates a number of features clearly intended to appeal to tourists. Tourists will be able to search for locations using phonetically similar names and search terms in languages other than English. There is more available but this release has gone a long way towards bringing the South African version of Google Maps into line with other more developed country specific versions. We should see Street view added in the coming months and that will add yet another dimension to this terrific service. - Paul Jacobson

"These illustrations of GLIF infrastructure show the international research and education network bandwidth made available for scheduled application and middleware research experiments as of May 2008." - Paul Jacobson