Gareth Knight

Gareth is a technology entrepreneur. Educated as a zoologist, he is a veteran of two dot com bubbles in London, one acquisition, and runsTechnovated, which has recently “pivoted” into an ecommerce play, and is backed by respected investors in London and South Africa.

Gareth is also the founder ofTECH4AFRICA.

Tim O’Reilly and four big ideas about Open Source

If you’re interested in what’s happening on the Web at the moment (driven by open source technologies), then taking a moment to listen to Tim talk about the challenges to the Open Source model will probably be useful.

by Gareth Knight 21 July 2006 11:59am 0 comments

More money for Jobster

There’s an interesting post on TechCrunch on Jobster and the amount of investment it’s recently received ($18 million if you’re wondering, with a total of almost $50 million), which raises some really interesting questions about Web 2.0, Bubble 2.0, the UK and whether bootstrapping really is the way to go.

by Gareth Knight 21 July 2006 11:57am 0 comments

Why are you using Web 2.0 technologies?

I've been working on a project lately where there are elements of Web 2.0 (specifically Ajax stuff) that keep being raised, almost without thought for form or function.

The end result is that I've forced the client in question to seriously consider why they want to do something, and what the benefit to the end user is. Of course, this adds caution to future thinking!

by Gareth Knight 21 July 2006 11:51am 0 comments

FeedBurner acquires BlogBeat

FeedBurner has acquired the blog analytics provider BlogBeat in an interesting move which can only be described as good news for users.

by Gareth Knight 18 July 2006 10:53am 0 comments

Diggnation – Digg relaunches and widens potential appeal

If you’re a user of Digg, you should know that it recently redesigned and relaunched its website. This in itself is not that interesting since we always knew that was coming soon – however, what is interesting is that new categories have been added which make the site more useful to a wider audience.

by Gareth Knight 17 July 2006 13:11pm 0 comments

Understanding the blogging ecosystem

On the topic of blogging, it seems worthwhile to talk a little about the blogging ecosystem, both for discussion and future reference (things change fast!). Like an ecosystem, blogging is a feedback mechanism, is most useful when you understand what is being said about you on the blogosphere, and unlike an ecosystem giving freely is more beneficial.

by Gareth Knight 17 July 2006 11:19am 1 comment

Dell leads the way with blogging

Recently Dell launched a blog where their “intention is to address issues that are important to use and our customers”, and at present I feel that can only be a good thing, so long as Dell are committed to listening and acting on what they’ve already stated.

by Gareth Knight 13 July 2006 11:58am 1 comment

Free Web 2.0 software doesn’t mean better…

TechCrunch posts a heads up on ActiveCollab, a new open source alternative to popular online project management tool Basecamp, by Web 2.0 poster children 37Signals, and talks about the possible threat to current monopoly and current business model if the software is of high quality.

by Gareth Knight 13 July 2006 12:03pm 0 comments

Web 2.0 needs to be agile to be successful

I’ve been dealing with a few clients of late, most of which have heard the ruckus around this newfangled Web 2.0 thing, and most of which want to do something Web 2.0 with their projects. Some want to implement blogs, others are interested in Wiki’s and podcasting, and surprisingly most of them want some Ajax features. The list goes on.

That’s really good because I’m always happy to talk to people about getting more out of the web, specifically around creating better and more valuable user experiences, but the problem I have (and which I communicate) is that Web 2.0 doesn’t just stop at implementing a blog engine, podcasts, a Wiki or Ajax.

by Gareth Knight 11 July 2006 14:07pm 2 comments

Blogging almost going mainstream?

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ll probably feel that it’s old hat. The principle is simple – you talk about something that you’re interested and/or passionate about, and through that you find people that are interested in the same sort of things that you are.

Over time if you’re a good write or really passionate or you simply create / get hold of good content, you’ll rise to the top of that niche vertical interest, which in turn will result in more readers.

The problem is that until very recently blogging was kind of hard to do – you have to be at least a little technically literate to be able to use the blog software interfaces. The result being that until recently blogging definitely wasn’t part of the mainstream consciousness.

by Gareth Knight 05 July 2006 11:34am 1 comment