Paul Jacobson Life, law and other stuff

School reunionsPosted by Paul on June 15th, 2005

High school reunions …
Old friends, acquaintances
enemies, secret and public;
loud noises, popping corks,
cool burgers and mixed salads.

And when it is time to leave,
past differences are set aside
as original friends take their leave in joy.

Is small the new big?Posted by Paul on June 15th, 2005

Now here is an interesting idea.  Big is out and small is in.  Size may matter after all.  Seth Godin thinks so and Carolyn Elefant agrees:

Get Big Fast was the motto for startups, because big companies can
go public and get more access to capital and use that capital to get
even bigger. Big accounting firms were the place to go to get audited
if you were a big company, because a big accounting firm could be
trusted. Big law firms were the place to find the right lawyer, because
big law firms were a one-stop shop.

And then small happened.

Enron (big) got audited by Andersen (big) and failed (big.) The
World Trade Center was a target. TV advertising is collapsing so fast
you can hear it. American Airlines (big) is getting creamed by Jet Blue
(think small). BoingBoing (four people) has a readership growing a
hundred times faster than the New Yorker (hundreds of people).

…

Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

Small means that you can answer email from your customers.

Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff
like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others,
while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell
stories to people who want to hear them.

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding
because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies
are happy to hire them.

Please excuse the liberal quoting from Godin’s post.  He just makes the point so much better than I would.  The point is, small is the new big and small is better.  To get to this conclusion you have to put aside the traditional belief that bigger firms are automatically better and more successful because they are bigger.  Coming from a large firm I can say that large firm’s do have their advantages though.  Elefant refers to this in her post:

Not surprisingly, Stephen, who works for a 370 attorney firm doesn’t
completely buy Seth’s thesis.  Stephen notes that Seth doesn’t offer
many statistics to support his view and also argues that these days,
large firms, like small firms need to be good to succeed.  Finally,
Stephen cites what he perceives as a large firm advantage:

Often, large (and medium-sized firms) bring together a team
of attorneys with individual specialties that no small firm can match.
I am currently working with a client that in one "small" matter, has
issues involving not just patent protection but issues in taxation,
bankruptcy, interstate & international commerce, regulatory and
criminal law, all rolled into one. Fortunately, we’re able to put
together the right mix of attorneys to work through the problems and
come up with a success overall.

This argument does have merit although it ignores, as Elefant points out in her post, that this only holds true when smaller firms don’t band together and form alliances and pool their collective resources.  In addition, commonly available technology means you don’t have to have a large and fully stocked office to do what the big boys do.  Just consider what you can do with a laptop and a multifunction device (print/scan/copy/fax) in a relatively paperless business environment.

Posts like these really give me hope and inspire me.  The implications for small and medium businesses are astounding.

Apple and Nokia collaborate on new browserPosted by Paul on June 15th, 2005

According to Engadget, Apple and Nokia are working together to develop an open source browser for Series 60 phones such as the Nokia 6600, 6630 and 6680 (as well as phones produced by other manufacturers):

Apple’s Safari web browser may not be available on the majority of the world’s personal
  computers (at least not officially, that is), but it’s about to carve out a whole new market — on smartphones. Nokia has been working with Apple to develop a new browser for its Series 60caused a stir in the open source community when it broke away from the KHTML project (which developed the technology behind WebCore and JavaScript Core) to form its own open source project focused on its WebKit environment, which includes WebCore and JavaScript Core. The new browser, to be compatible with all Series 60 phones, including those from LG, Panasonic and Samsung, is expected to be available in the first half of next year. Though Nokia says it will “actively participate in the open source community to further develop and enhance these components,?? there’s currently no info or source code related to the project on the WebKit web site.

Skype goes furtherPosted by Paul on June 15th, 2005

I seem to be a little behind with new tech lately.  I haven’t jumped into podcasting and I don’t even have Skype installed on my PC.  Just the same, there are some interesting developments in the world of Skype.  Om Malik, guru of all things broadband and VOIP has reported on two developments recently.

First, Skype is entering the retail environment:

Skype just signed an agreement
with Brightpoint, to sell and promote Skype products via the retail
channel. Incase you did not know, Brightpoint is a cellular wholesaler.
This is a major move, which pits Skype against Vonage. (We said so!)
Secondly, I believe this is clear indication that the viral marketing
campaign is running out of gas, and the company realizes that it needs
to step-up the marketing if it needs to trump other VoIP rivals. It
should and must be worried about cellular companies’ voip plans. SIP is also trying hard to get a peer-to-peer makeover, and become a more potent competitor. More on this later. Meanwhile, Skype has also added voicemail services.

I actually saw a Skype handset (connects to your PC via USB) for sale at a local electronics store a little while ago.  Looks like Skype is a little more serious than I thought it was.  At first I thought Skype was a bit like QQ, a local IM and now VOIP client, that was relaunched recently and which has failed to sway me from Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger.

Malik also published a post about a new plugin called vSkype which enables video conferencing across the Skype platform.  You can see the potential for this just from the image in Malik’s post.  Given the prevalence of broadband in business, this could well be the beginning of an almost ubiquitous presence for Skype:

Video calls are coming to Skype, thanks to vSkype,
a plug-in developed by Santa Cruz Networks. The company has just
released a public beta, which for now works only on windows machines.
(Of course, most Mac users have lovely iChat/iSight combination to get
their video calling groove on!)

Of course Mac OSX users have had iChat to play with for some time now but this is still an awesome development, especially considering the explosive adoption of Skype for VOIP.

The next tidbit of news is more interesting (for me at any rate).  Engadget has reported that a company called IPdrum will soon bridge the gap between mobile phones and Skype:

Tons of good news for Skype of late. Yet more: IPdrum
is rolling out a solution that will allow cellphone users to use Skype on their handsets. They’re calling this the
IPdrum Mobile Skype Cable, and since there are no pics, we’re a little bit puzzled by the “cable?? moniker because it
implies some sort of tethering from phone to PC, which is apparently not the case. IPdrum uses proprietary technology
to connect mobile phones to Skype, allowing the placing of free long distance calls worldwide. It’s not restricted to
any special phones or restricted to areas with WiFi access. It’ll forward incoming Skype calls to your handset as well
as allowing bi-directional synchronization of contacts. No word on pricing, but the Mobile Skype Cable is set to be
unleashed in August.

Very very cool stuff indeed!

Update:

Malik has published a post titled "Skype rules, but for how long?" - pretty self-explanatory.  The introduction is as follows:

Conventional wisdom, even among telecom cognoscenti is that Skype
has become so big, that it can be declared a platform. Who can argue?
After a shinny pretty face, a Mac-like ease of use and millions of
users, when married to superb voice quality, it is hard not to like
Skype. Even I have fallen prey to the charms of the product, and have
found that I am shifting my VoIP minutes away from Vonage to Skype.

Still,
I think there are some issues, which need to be talked about and
addressed in our open forum. Last month, Popular Telephony, makers of
another p2p VoIP software Peerio, announced that they were adding Skype
support in their gateway. What it essentially means is that a small
company using PT’s PBX replacement system can now pure-Skype calls on
its gateway and then route them to different extensions, and Skype
callers can leave voice mails as well. The outgoing calls work the same
way – use the gateway and call someone on the Skype network.

Check it out!

Many many pretty girlsPosted by Paul on June 15th, 2005

The guys over at ChumpStyle have accumulated an awesome collection of links to some pretty steamy galleries.  Two of their latest posts (here and here) have links to some spectacular galleries of images of very hot women.  This image to the right is just a sample of this gallery.

Coming on the heels of my post about Haley Madsen, this probably represents a slight shift in the direction of this blog.  I have tended not to post much about pretty girls wearing close to nothing and in various configurations.  I may rethink that a tad if there is enough of a demand.  Of course this doesn’t mean this blog will become a porn blog or anything like that.  This is a clean(ish) blog so there won’t be any graphic pictures of girls doing obscene things with fresh produce in barns and farm animals.

Holey moley, its Haley MadsenPosted by Paul on June 14th, 2005

I stumbled across this fine young lass this afternoon.  Actually, the site I came across is the SugarBank blog which has an interview with this nude model.  Here is an extract from the interview:

Haley Madsen has been modeling for three years. She runs a successful and totally free website. Like this one only with more hot-chickage and less chat. It’s predictably wildly successful.

SS:Tell us a little about who Haley is and where she’s from?
HM: Although I live in beautiful Southern California, I grew up in a tiny town just north of Sacramento. 

I’m a small-town girl, so the busy lifestyle of LA can be pretty
overwhelming at times. I’m just a nerd at heart (I love school,
reading, writing poetry, playing piano) and a hopeless romantic.

SS: What are the most important things about you for people to know that they can’t find out from reading your website?
HM:
I think our country (or better yet, the entire world) has some serious
problems to work out. We shouldn’t be wasting our time telling people
they shouldn’t be proud of their bodies or, heaven forbid, take a few
erotic photographs.

How can issues of morality be brought up when people and nations are
doing far worse things? I guess sometimes I feel like I come from a
different planet, that I have nothing in common with the majority of
the human race. I hate superficiality.

…

S: Why did you choose to make your website free?
HM:
I wanted a little corner of the internet where anybody could come and
find out about me on a more personal level. Why would I want to charge
people to do that?

There are enough paysites out there, I don’t need to have one too.
Plus, modeling for me is VERY part time. If I ran a paysite I would
spend the majority of my time running it and wouldn’t have the freedom
to pursue my other dreams.

Well, I have certainly made a note of this site.  Of course I can’t post most of the pictures from the site on this humble blog but feel free to visit and see more for yourself.

(via SugarBank)

Technorati betaPosted by Paul on June 14th, 2005

Well, I finally got around to visiting the Technorati beta site and it is quite a change from the original site.  I don’t use Technorati all that much unless I am looking for some info in the blogosphere about something not covered by the blogs I tend to frequent.  That being said I may start to use it a bit more.  Talk about loads of content!  Those guys have a great thing going and the new site is quite a bit friendlier than the old one and with one or two new features.

Here is the post by Dave Sifry from when the beta site was launched last week:

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the public beta
of this major redesign of the Technorati service. We’ve been listening
to your feedback, and we hope we’ve reflected that in this release.
This is a beta. So, if you have feedback, please tell
us because we want to know what is of value to you, our users. We’ve
made a big step with this release. Having said that, we also know we
have more improvements to make and we’re working hard to implement
them. Here are some of the highlights of this beta release:

• We’ve
  improved the user experience, making Technorati accessible to more
  people and, specifically, people who are new to blogging. We’ve tried
  to make it very simple to understand what Technorati is all about, and
  make it easy to understand how we’re different from other search
  engines.
• We’ve learned from the incredible success of tags, and brought some
  of the those same features into search, as well as expanding tag
  functionality. Now, if your search matches a tag, we bring in photos
  and links from flickr, furl, delicious, and now buzznet as well.
• We now have more powerful advanced search features. You can now click the "Options" link beside any search box for power searching options.
• We’ve added more personalization.  Sign in, and you’ll see your current set of watchlists, claimed blogs, and profile info, right on the homepage, giving you quick access to the stuff you want as quickly as possible.
• New Watchlist capabilities
  have been added. For example, you no longer need a RSS reader to watch
  your favorite searches. Now you can view all of your favorite searches
  on one page. Of
  course, you can still get your watchlists via RSS, and it is even
  easier to create new watchlists. You can also get RSS feeds for tagged posts, just check the bottom of each page of tag results!

As I mentioned, this beta is now public and available on our Web site at http://beta.technorati.com. We encourage you to check it out and, if you’d like, blog about it.

And please keep sending us your feedback!  It is invaluable, and has helped us immeasurably to improve the service.  There’s still a long
way to go, and we have lots more in store for the next few months - and
your comments are the first thing we all check every morning. Please
keep us on our toes, and keep telling us how we can continue to improve
and be of service to you.