Paul Jacobson

I have been meaning to respond to Bev’s post published late July and just haven’t gotten around to it just yet … well, till now. The tag post thing has pretty much done the rounds so I’m not going to try re-ignite the flow. Instead, I’ll just let you in on a couple details about me that you may not know:

• I am just a little obsessive compulsive about arbitrary things like keeping my hands clean and not eating off other people’s plates (yuck – I am getting a little better about this one though, I’ll take french fries off my wife’s plate);
• I tend to undervalue my work and charge too little in favour of helping people out – the downside of this is that I am probably being valued about as highly as I value my work;
• I am a (lapsed) Reiki Master;
• I have a phobia about needles and, coupled with a really vivid imagination, I don’t handle hospitals very well;
• As much as I enjoy new things, I am pretty averse to change;
• One of the few ways to really tick me off is to question my integrity, especially by my clients or colleagues – it doesn’t take me long to part ways with the person concerned;
• I don’t like to take orders from someone for too long, I much prefer to be my own boss or have control over my own processes; and
• I can be pretty cranky, especially when people stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that I am right (sometimes), when I am hungry/tired (often) and when I don’t get time to myself once in a while.

Otherwise I am generally a pretty amazing person!

Technorati Tags:
facts, meme, factoids, me

According to Engadget:

Good news on the SSD front. Samsung is now mass producing its 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs in both 64GB and 128GB capacities. And since these SATA II SSDs are based on MLC — 64 MLC NAND flash chips of 16 gigabits each in the 9.5-mm thick 128GB SSD — you can expect them to be cheap by comparison to SLC-based SSDs and faster by comparison to traditional laptop hard disk drives while lasting about 20 times longer than the expected 4-5 year life span of that mechanical spinner.

Holding thumbs for a revision to the iPod Touch that includes a 64GB/128GB SSD …

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ipod touch, ssd, samsung

It has taken me a while to get this post out so here goes …

Nic published a post a week or so ago about his top 20 albums that he feels would help educate a child. I had to think about this one and here is my rough list in no particular order:

• Batman Begins soundtrack
• Transformers soundtrack
• Lord of the Rings soundtrack
• Michael Buble’s It’s Time
• Paul Simon’s Graceland
• Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints
• Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours
• Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night
• Tracy Chapman’s Matters of the Heart
• Moby’s PlayKatie Melua’s Piece by Piece
• Bruce Hornsby and the Range’s The Way It Is
• Sarah McLahlan’s Afterglow
• Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
• Seal’s System
• Tom Petty’s Wildflowers
• Toni Childs’ Union
• U2’s Best of 1990 – 2000
• Watershed’s In the Meantime

There are actually more albums than just 20 but these are some of the highlights in my iTunes collection at the moment.

Technorati Tags:
music, top 20, albums

Isn’t this interesting: Dave Winer has posted news about a popular AIR Twitter app called Twhirl which I have been using for a little while and which has also gained some prominence among local bloggers:

“Yesterday Seesmic announced that they’re buying Twhirl, the AIR-based Twitter client.”

Seesmic is a recent video startup owned by Loic Le Meur who posted 20 reasons why Seesmic bought Twhirl. Here are 11 of those reasons:

-Staying in touch with your friends using microblogging is much easier using a client than through your browser
-Thwirl is the #1 and coolest Twitter client with more than 100,000 downloads and 7% of all tweets posted per day
-Thousands of new users download Twhirl daily
-Twhirl works on Mac AND PC, soon on Linux too
-Twhirl lets you easily use all the advanced messaging options of Twitter (replies, direct messages)
-Twhirl added very cool features such as search and url shortening in a second
-Twhirl allows you to have multiple Twitter accounts opened simultaneously
-Twhirl not only posts on Twitter but also on Pownce and Jaiku, with more services coming soon
-Seesmic and Twhirl have been created exactly the same way, by listening to their communities and adding new features according to their popularity
-Twhirl has amazing feedback from its users and press coverage: Thwirl was just on Fox News
-We got in touch entirely through using Twitter and Twhirl… how cool is that? Okay, we also used Skype a bit to close the deal

None of this stuff really tells me why Seesmic would buy Twhirl. Ok, I haven’t actually used Seesmic yet, it is still in a private beta, but I still couldn’t why this made sense in a non-dotCom Bust kind of way until I watched this video where Loic explains the rationale:

One word popped up in my head when I saw the demo of a Twhirl/Seesmic combo service … Pownce! The reason I thought about Pownce was Pownce’s ability to insert photos into posts that you can see in messages and not just as links. This will take things a step further and when you combine the lifestreaming potential, this could well represent a pretty substantial shift in the messaging/lifestreaming space. As the very wise Marshall Kirkpatrick put it:

Seesmic plus Twhirl is of course just two very forward-looking organizations in a large, diverse economy of innovation. Look at this deal though and you’ll see a big part of the future of online communication technology, no matter who it is that makes it happen.

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twitter, seesmic, twhirl, loic le meur, purchase, messaging, video

Man it has been crazy here the last few months and just when I think things are going to calm down a bit, it gets worse. I have been using Leopard Mail to manage my tasks and I am starting to think it might be a good idea to get a bit more organised with my tasks and managing them. One of the worst sensations is realising that something major has slipped through the cracks.

So I guess my question is how best to get my stuff done? Do I suck it up, stick to my task list in Mail (my iCal list is just not doing it for me) or do I look at something more specific? OmniGroup has OmniFocus which I tried out in the early days and couldn’t quite get the hang of (I keep meaning to but haven’t read Getting Things Done yet – ironic, isn’t it). I am thinking I should maybe give it another try?

What do you think? What works best for you?

Update: I started using OmniFocus on a trial basis this morning and I enjoyed using it. I noticed I had some cash available so I bought the special OmniOutliner Pro upgrade license (OOP licensees get a discount on OmniFocus licenses). It isn’t cheap but, touch wood, I will use it regularly and be better organised … I don’t really have a choice.

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omnifocus, tasks, tools, gtd, getting things done

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