December 11th, 2008

Goodbye ZDNet

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 1:28 pm

Categories: Blogging

Tags: Goodbye, Blog, Number Act, Blogging, Internet, Steve O'Hear

As of today, I have to say goodbye to ZDNet.

After just over two years of writing this blog, I’m sad to say this is my last post here on the Social Web. I’ve been ‘let go’ as they say. Or perhaps more accurately, this blog is no more, making way for others*

It’s been an honor to write for ZDNet and, most of all, you my loyal and thoughtful readers.

I’m also thankful for the kind support and interesting conversations that have come from outside of ZDNet within the blogosphere and tech community as a whole. In addition, I want to thank Dan Farber for giving me my ZDNet break in the first place (after a very thorough virtual interview process) and my editor Larry Dignan whose hands-off but equally supportive approach has been most welcome.

And whilst it’s goodbye here, it’s certainly not goodbye to writing about technology or my interest in the social web.

Right now you can find me writing daily over at last100.com, a blog that covers the Digital Lifestyle (Internet TV, Mobile, Digital Music and more) that I co-founded with ReadWriteWeb’s Richard MacManus.

You can also follow me on Twitter.

Or look out for future announcements at my personal (and rarely updated) homepage.

My LinkedIn page is here and I welcome offers of work or any other interesting opportunities.

Take care and thanks again for reading!

- Steve

P.S. On the bright side, at least I don’t need to write about Facebook anymore. Until the next gig that is ;-)

P.P.S. If you want to keep up with all things social web here on ZDNet, then I recommend Jennifer Leggio’s Feeds blog.

* A blog network is a bit like a record label. A number of acts are signed, some of which go on to be hits, while others fare less well. After a while those acts that don’t hit the big time leave the label to make room for new talent and the process starts over. That’s the reality of the business end of blogging.

June 10th, 2008

iPhone is about to get a whole lot more social

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:11 am

Categories: Apple, Blogging, Social Networks

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Blogging, Internet, Steve O'Hear

As expected, during the company’s WWDC keynote Steve Jobs and co. demoed some of the early fruits of Apple’s official iPhone SDK and unsurprisingly we saw a number of social applications on display.

Social networking

While we didn’t see the rumored MySpace client, we were shown two location-based social offerings — made possible thanks to the iPhone’s built-in ‘Core Location’ API, which in turn will be enhanced by the new 3G iPhone and its inclusion of a GPS radio.

First up was an app called “Nearby Friends” which shows your contacts within a 10-mile radius; it uses the Address Book API and Core Location API. Not sure if it will be a paid-for offering or offered for free. Read the rest of this entry »

April 10th, 2008

Fickr user revolt; Why I deleted my twitter account

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:50 am

Categories: Blogging, MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo

Tags: Flickr, Video, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Steve O'Hear

The social web weekly: a quick-fire roundup of some of the news, announcements and conversations that have occurred throughout the week…

Flickr video feature spurs online revolt. Not all that surprising to see a mini user revolt after Flickr finally added video uploads. A segment of the user base is unhappy for fear that the photosharing site will lose focus and “turn into another YouTube”. A Flickr group has been set up called “NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!!” and has, at the time of posting, nearly 8,500 members. Additionally, there’s a petition that calls for the video feature to be removed. And, as is usual in these matters, long time Flickr user and CEO of competitor site Zooomr, Thomas Hawk, has chimed in: “With the huge user base that Flickr represents, the opportunity to promote video to this group from a dollars/cents standpoint probably means more to Yahoo! than how a small but vocal group of hardcore Flickr photographers feel about the service.” In many respects I agree with Hawk, adding video is a smart business move for Flickr, and the protesters are a “small but vocal group”. However, I think the restrictions that Flickr have added to video uploads - 90 seconds in length and available to Pro (paying) users only - will prove enough to mitigate the protesters’ fears.

Why I deleted my twitter account. I didn’t close my twitter account but cartoonist, marketer and author Hugh MacLeod has done. He says that he finds it “too easy”, and in a brilliant cartoon depicts how uncreative it is compared to longer form blogging and lots of other things he could be spending his time on. Of course, for the same reason that MacLeod says he’s leaving the service, Twitter has taken off. Neil McIntosh (head of editorial development at Guardian Unlimited) hit the nail on the head in a post titled Twiter may have crossed the chasm, where he described the service as “cheap” in terms of effort required from the user. Combined with the ‘instant gratification’ you get whenever you log-in to Twitter (i.e. updated content), the barriers to entry are much lower compared with many other forms of online publishing.

January 29th, 2008

Prologue = Twitter meets Basecamp

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:23 am

Categories: Blogging, Twitter

Tags: Wordpress, Twitter, Automattic, Prologue, RSS, Smb/Sme, Blogging, Internet, Steve O'Hear

Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com, have released a pretty interesting new product called Prologue. Essentially a re-skinning of Wordpress (the open-source blog software), Prologue is Twitter-esque in its micro-blogging interface and functionality, but also brings to the surface the collaborative potential of such a platform by taking advantage of Wordpress features, including access controls, multiple authors, tagging and RSS feeds.

As a result, it’s now possible using Prologue, to host or run your own micro-blogging platform (a la Twitter) and use it as a substitute for some of the collaborative functionality of a product like Basecamp. Read the rest of this entry »

August 8th, 2007

New York Times to host "Freakonomics" blog

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 7:59 am

Categories: Blogging, Old media

Tags: Blog, New York Times Co., Blogger, Steve O'Hear

It’s being reported that the blog, “Freakonomics” — based on the hugely popular book of the same title — is to relocate to the New York Times, a move which the paper has signaled could be the first of many blog partnerships.

From the New York Observer:

Mr. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt began blogging at freakonomics.com in March of 2005, establishing the site as a spin-off from their wildly successful book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. The blog, too, became a big hit, and now the two are taking it to the majors. As of August 8, the blog will appear exclusively in the opinion section of The Times’ Web site. This is the first time The Times has taken a free-standing, independent blog and published it under the aegis of nytimes.com.

Vivian Schiller, the senior vice president and general manager of nytimes.com, is quoted as saying: “This is the first established blog that we’ve picked up. But it won’t be the last.” Read the rest of this entry »