Paul Jacobson Life, law and other stuff

More on blogging as a careerPosted by Paul on February 25th, 2005

Guardian Unlimited posted an article yesterday titled "Posting for Profit".  As you may imagine, the subject matter of this article is making a living (or at least some money) from blogging.  The article covers events such as Eason Jordan’s recent resignation as CNN’s News Chief to the players in the blogosphere.  It makes for very interesting reading.  Here is an excerpt:

Weblogs, usually a
parade of the author’s private peccadilloes, have been hailed as a
phenomenon by a host of supporters. Many claim they are the web’s coup
de grace, the heart of a personal publishing revolution to rival
desktop publishing or the appearance of the first printing presses.

For
all the hyperbole, the heart of the weblog movement has always been
driven by amateurism - hobbyist pundits voicing their passions or
wannabe writers giving us a window into their world. There are now
millions of bloggers creating a network of interesting voices. Despite
the grassroots "free" ideology, the hype has expanded further ever
since it became clear that some people were making money out of the
medium.

ProBlogger, Darren Rowse, has written quite a bit on this topic.  His latest installments on this topic are titled "More on making a living off of AdSense" and "Earning a six figure income from blogging?".

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Hectic!!Posted by Paul on February 25th, 2005

Fri 25.02.2005 13.16 - Garden at a local Sun International hotel

The last couple days have been hectic. We are closing off our accounts for the firm’s financial year end so I have been really busy discussing fees with clients and finalising everything. I will return to my normal posting schedule in the next day or two.

What? No RSS?!Posted by Paul on February 24th, 2005

Scoble blasted a member of a marketing team deep within Microsoft recently when he asked Scoble for some tips and freely admitted that his team didn’t even use RSS feeds on their site.  His post was mistaken for a rant about the necessity of having RSS on a site but as he pointed out, it isn’t just about RSS.  It is about having an interactive site that draws and retains traffic and these days this really only happens when your site has interactive features like RSS.  Given that a lot of traffic comes from bloggers, it becomes more and more important to make sure that the content on your site keeps bringing them back and you don’t achieve that with a static, feed-less site.  This is something I am learning with one of my projects and also why I am going to be restructuring that site soon.

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New products, lower prices from TelkomPosted by Paul on February 24th, 2005

I didn’t think I’d see this happen so soon!  Telkom has announced new broadband products at lower prices.  Telkom will be dropping its prices for its ADSL offerings and will introduce a 192kbps ADSL offering at a more reasonable price of R329 per month.  The price of its 512kbps HomeDSL offering will drop from R680 per month to R599 per month and users will also receive 5 free sessions at Telkom’s new T-Zone Wi-Fi hotspots.

Although the cost of a broadband connection is still relatively expensive, this is very encouraging indeed!

Update:
The Communications Users Association of South Africa has commented on these developments.  As I initially thought, they caution people not to enter in Telkom’s 24 month contracts too quickly.  The prices are still high and we can probably expect further price cuts as competition intensifies.  Keep your options open.

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Paris Hilton and blogging!Posted by Paul on February 24th, 2005

When I posted news about Tara Reid’s ’slip’ in January I didn’t anticipate what it would do for this blog.  As soon as the news broke on the Web my readership jumped.  Paris Hilton’s exposure has taken my blog through the roof and I am floored.  Just under two days ago the total number of hits on this blog since I moved across to Typepad in January or so was about 5000.  This morning I logged in to see the hit counter sitting at close to 6100!  This may not be news for the bigger blogs with huge followings but this is way cool for me!

Thank you again to all the people who visit this blog and validate what I do here!

New products, lower prices from TelkomPosted by Paul on February 24th, 2005

I didn’t think I’d see this happen so soon! Telkom has announced new broadband products at lower prices. Telkom will be dropping its prices for its ADSL offerings and will introduce a 192kbps ADSL offering at a more reasonable price of R329 per month. The price of its 512kbps HomeDSL offering will drop from R680 per month to R599 per month and users will also receive 5 free sessions at Telkom’s new T-Zone Wi-Fi hotspots.

Although the cost of a broadband connection is still relatively expensive, this is very encouraging indeed!

Update:

The Communications Users Association of South Africa has commented on these developments. As I initially thought, they caution people not to enter in Telkom’s 24 month contracts too quickly. The prices are still high and we can probably expect further price cuts as competition intensifies. Keep your options open.

“We also urge consumers to be cautious of signing any 24-month contracts which include ‘free’ modems, as it is likely that competitors will offer counter products, and at increasingly competitive prices,?? says Webber.

On the face of it, the average businessperson and consumer should not really care which company wins in a competitive environment, just as long as they are able to obtain broadband offerings at internationally competitive rates.

“However, we seriously doubt if the monopoly would be in the least bit interested in reducing its fees for broadband offerings without the presence of new and significant competitors.??

He points out as an example the fact that Telkom’s latest HomeDSL 512 price point is now exactly the same as that of one of its wireless competitors.”

Technorati Tags: adsl, Telkom

Intel unveils new class of Pentium 4s | CNET News.comPosted by Paul on February 23rd, 2005

CNET News.com has reported that Intel has unveiled a new class of Pentium 4 processors which will support 64-bit operating systems and applications:

Intel introduced a line of Pentium 4 desktop chips Sunday that
contain 2MB of secondary cache, twice as much as current Pentium 4s, as
well as technology from its notebook line that’s designed to cut power
consumption. Larger caches, a pool of memory located on the processor,
generally improve performance.

 

  The four chips included
in the new 600 series of Pentium 4s range in speeds from 3GHz to
3.6GHz, and all of them feature an 800MHz bus. The top-of-the-line 660
Pentium 4 sells for $605 in quantities of 1,000, while the 630 sells
for $224.

Intel also unveiled "another member of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor family, which
runs at 3.73GHz and contains a 1.066GHz bus. These chips are used
inside computers for gamers and serious hobbyists."

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