Disqus - Latest Comments for jonmulholland

Re: Why is Posterous the Platform of the Future?

jonmulholland — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:57:18 -0000

I think there are a few reasons, I've blogged about them here http://jonmulholland.poster... and here http://jonmulholland.poster... (on my Posterous, of course!).

My feeling is that a new form of blogging is emerging - part sharing/lifestreaming, part writing/observing. Posterous (and Tumblr to a lesser extent) are platforms well built to support this trend.

In particular what sets Posterous apart is it's ability to act as a hub for online activity. It actually is easier to post bookmarks, photos, videos and blogposts directly to it, knowing that they will be onward shared with other communities you participate in. Unlike other services - Tumblr, FriendFeed, even a hacked WordPress set up - it's actually a push platform rather than a lifestream/subscription pull service. Use it as your online 'base' and it works really well.

The email post method shouldn't be discounted either. The way Posterous handles posting by email makes it seriously mobile friendly. I'm not sure any other platform makes it so easy to post an update, article or picture to a blog, at the same time sharing it with favoured social networks, all at the press of one 'Send' button from a mobile phone?

Give it a try!

Re: SpinVox’s James Whatley set the record straight

jonmulholland — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:21:24 -0000

About a year or so ago, just after SpinVox announced their big funding round and whilst I was still working for Vodafone, James and I had an interesting chat on IM about big companies, their inability to 'get' social media and use it intelligently.

Long story short I was frustrated and really envious of SpinVox; they seemed to embody the new generation of telecoms / technology company. Online savvy and happy to let James build a genuine online personality for the company. They were nimble, inventive and approachable in a way that the big guys didn't appear to be able to get to grips with.

I guess what this episode has shown is that it really doesn't matter how big or small you are as an organisation; the ability to communicate effectively - especially through social mediums - is still a rare skill. One that companies and organisations increasingly cannot do without in this fast moving media age.

Re: SpinVox: If ever a company was more in need of James Whatley

jonmulholland — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:06:45 -0000

Agreed! As I said on Twitter this morning:

"Side affect of this #spinvox stuff. Disappointing to see that @whatleydude actually does have a life outside of the internet! I'm jealous!"

Re: The Rise of Android: Mr Scoble might switch from iPhone, who else?

jonmulholland — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:57:49 -0000

Well you know I'm also switching, just waiting to get my hands on either a HTC Hero or a Samsung i7500.

Android has always been an attractive proposition - in the long run it will turn out to be one of Google's smartest moves. It's just taken a year for the phone manufacturers to get their hardware offerings into the same game as the iPhone.

Bear in mind though that it takes a while for normobs to follow what the geeks are doing! The iPhone has gone supernova in the past year - 18 months after the Scoble's of this world first bought one. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Android to transcend geekdom and also go mass market.

Re: Help: Is the HTC Hero Android-forward-compatible?

jonmulholland — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:20:49 -0000

I thought that would probably be the case, it's not the end of the world but as I said it was great to see Google rolling out the recent Maps update via the Android Store. Device updates have always been such a notoriously user unfriendly experience - anything that can be done to make it an easier process (like the iPhone updates) for the user would be a good thing.

I imagine Orange, T-Mobile + which ever other networks that sell the Hero worldwide will push out OTA updates in their own sweet time, with a ROM available for download from HTC's website. Might be something worth bearing in mind if your a Google fanatic thinking of buying the Hero (like me!). It could mean a bit of a wait to upgrade the device if Google add anything really cool to the Android base platform.

Re: Orange UK arrives in the 21st Century with the HTC Hero

jonmulholland — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:28:39 -0000

That's a good point Ewan - as I said earlier I'm a bit of an Orange sceptic, but they do seem to genuinely be trying to engage with the mobile community. Connor's video is so good it took a minute for me to realize it was an 'official' effort. More of this type of thing will go a long way towards rebuilding relationships with mobile geeks like us.

Keep it up Orange - I'm ready to be convinced...

Re: The world’s first mobile augmented reality browser: Layar

jonmulholland — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:04:52 -0000

Pretty nifty, like the concept of customisable layers but at the moment I think I prefer Wikitide as this takes entries from Wikipedia to augment whatever you're pointing you phone at. An exciting area of mobile development - the next, next big thing maybe?

Re: Mobile Industry Review 3.0 is here

jonmulholland — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:02:37 -0000

It's great to have you properly back Ewan, looking forward to seeing the next phase in the evolution of Mobile Industry Review. I'll never forget stumbling upon SMS Text News late one night in front of my laptop - I remember commenting on some rant you were having on 3's X Series... felt like I'd found a kindred spirit and I'm glad we've become friends since.

I've really enjoyed the odd occasions I've written posts for the site and wish you all the best as you move things forward again. As ever, let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Re: This ZumoDrive upload is going to take a little while…

jonmulholland — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:57:00 -0000

You'll have a que of ZumoDrive users lining your street!

Re: This ZumoDrive upload is going to take a little while…

jonmulholland — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:31:31 -0000

I have the exact same problem - it's very frustrating. I've decided that when I'm in Austin next month I'm going to find somewhere with a decent upload speed and stick EVERYTHING into my ZumoDrive cloud or personal S3 account once and for all...

Re: Is this the rudest thing you can do on Twitter?

jonmulholland — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:38:49 -0000

Who was it? Name and shame!

Re: Mr Operator on Google Latitude: No One Saw This Coming

jonmulholland — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:38:13 -0000

"Look for Latitude 2.0 to take off in 1-2 years time, once the general privacy panic has evaporated under the sunny beam of real-world usefulness."

Very good point. I was explaining Latitude and it's potential to an (older) colleague last week -

"That's very clever, but it sounds really creepy." was his comment.

"How did you feel about Faceboook 2 years ago?" I asked,

"Uh, good point - I felt pretty much the same and I guess I'm using that now."

Mr Operator is right - give it about 2 years to cross the mass market acceptability tipping point and Lattitude (or Fire Eagle if Yahoo can get in the market) platformed services will be everywhere. Once operators start to offer free tariffs in exchange for accepting targeted location aware advertising this model will become inevitable.

Re: Google Latitude arrives to rip the arse out of mobile location services

jonmulholland — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:49:54 -0000

I agree with Josh - Latitude has Jaiku all over it (http://bit.ly/3B7xVm). One point I would add though is that Google is actually quite well developed with it's 'friend strategy', it just hasn't been applied to mobile... yet. Google Friend Connect and the Google Social Graph API provide a very though way of linking online social relationships to Google Accounts - relationships from Twitter, Blogs, Flickr and any other web site using a simple line of XFN are easily identified.

I always thought the 'Google announces plan to destroy all information it can't index story on the Onion was satire, not so sure now - http://www.theonion.com/con...

Re: #uksnow yet another demonstration of time wasting rubbish

jonmulholland — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:39:55 -0000

I'm just thinking there might be something you could do using FriendFeed 'likes' as a filter. Might take a look into that...

Re: #uksnow yet another demonstration of time wasting rubbish

jonmulholland — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:38:03 -0000

You do have a point, I'm just pulling your leg. There is a fair amount of noise on Twitter, and I think the rules you've set yourself re. who you will follow are a pretty sound approach for keeping it a relevant service for you.

Interestingly I have pretty much the same view as you when it comes to FriendFeed - I simply can't filter the noise from the relevance.

Re: #uksnow yet another demonstration of time wasting rubbish

jonmulholland — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:11:39 -0000

I suspect you are slightly obsessive / compulsive :)

Re: #uksnow yet another demonstration of time wasting rubbish

jonmulholland — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:36:24 -0000

Like most social media you have to accept that you're swimming in a stream - sometimes you'll find useful objects, sometimes you'll find.... other stuff, or even drown if you take it too seriously.

When it comes to #hashtags I find the most useful approach is to use http://search.twitter.com to combine the event #hashtag with keyword(s) relevant to you. Searching for #uksnow + winnersh / + waterloo / + south west trains helped me to decide not to go into London today.

Re: Vote for the companies you’d like us to interview at MWC

jonmulholland — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:47:01 -0000

Nice one Ewan!

Re: An idea about Mobile World Congress

jonmulholland — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:01:51 -0000

As I recall you always have trouble deciding which one to go to / cover etc.

Why don't you through up a poll or a Digg style page (use Pligg) and let us lot vote pitches up or down - crowdsource the decision!

Re: 27 minutes to upload 1GB to ZumoDrive

jonmulholland — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:57:15 -0000

That's it, I'm moving! I hear South Korea has pretty good broadband!

Re: 27 minutes to upload 1GB to ZumoDrive

jonmulholland — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:28:58 -0000

Wow, that it s so embarrassing.

It's not much better in the heart of the Thames Valley - averaging about 2.3Mbs just a few miles south of Reading.

Re: Twittering: 99% ego, 1% useful

jonmulholland — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:05:13 -0000

Oh we're not doing this again are we?

Re: A Twitter Debate with James Whatley

jonmulholland — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:32:56 -0000

Two links to fuel the MIR Twitter debate!

For those that just don't get Twitter, why it can be useful and generally positive you should read this Wired article on how Twitter creates a 'Social Sixth Sense' - http://www.wired.com/techbi...

And for those who are convinced Twitter is a waste of time, only for attention seekers who want to share what they had for breakfast, you'll love 'Twitter Whore' - http://uk.youtube.com/watch...

Re: My arse with Twitter. Help.

jonmulholland — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:01:16 -0000

I don't think I was using Dopplr at the time, but have since discovered it, and I love using it. What do you mean by 'overhead'?

Re: My arse with Twitter. Help.

jonmulholland — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:26:25 -0000

Didn't we meet up for for the first time after realising via Twitter we were both in San Francisco at the same time? I thought that was pretty cool.

Twitter (and many other forms of social and web 2.0 media) are best treated as a 'river of news'. Dip in and out of it as suits you - don't get too obsessed and accept that sometimes you'll discover an interesting Tweet, blog post or whatever and sometimes you'll miss them.