What lingered in my mind after his speech on the nuclear future for South Africa was not Dr Rob Adams’ confident prediction that we would have another 10 Koebergs in the next 20 years. It was his assertion, in replying to a question from the audience in the Rhodes University lecture theatre on Tuesday, that […]
Tech
Posted inMedia, Tech
Twenty websites to spark your creativity
Every now and again I find myself low on creativity and in need of some inspiration. The thing with creativity though is that you can’t force it on. Instead, you need to feed it with “creative fuel” (random stimuli) and eventually your AHA! moment takes place. I’ve listed below some websites that I often visit […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Blogging, the next chapter
The annual Highway Africa conference at Rhodes U in Grahamstown does not so much set the agenda as tap into the agenda of where new media is going. Case in point is the contribution of Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media and global thought leader in citizen journalism. Back in 2003, we both participated […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Google does evil?
Google South Africa has abused its position of dominance in the online advertising market and has used underhand methods to win a major online advertising account with the SA Yellow Pages website. [Update: Allegedly, of course.] You can read the full press release here. In a nutshell, Entelligence was awarded the online marketing contract for […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Oh frabjous day! The telco Jabberwock is dead
Today may have seen the beginning of the end of the dreaded monster lurking in the tangled forests of South African telecommunications law. When Justice Norman Davis ruled in the high court this morning that value-added network services (VANS) must be allowed to provide their own networks — and that the regulator is obliged to […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
One step closer to Paypal
As any South African who has tried to make money online undoubtedly knows, Paypal does not allow us to receive funds via its system. We can only use it to spend money at other merchants, most often via our credit card. This has been a huge bottle stopper in the e-commerce climate in this country. […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Towards the digital donga
It’s comforting to know that South Africa now has a formal, cabinet-approved digital migration policy, and even more so that our digital TV future will be curated by a Digital Dzonga (“digital south”) Advisory Council, drawn from the industry, labour and public, and reporting to the Minister of Communications. The announcement will come as a […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Power saving made fun and clever
Since we all have to think about saving electricity from now on – if not in the hope that it will avoid future load shedding than perhaps to keep our personal the electricity bill down – I thought it might be a good idea to find out what quirky inventions are out there that could […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
‘Bush speaks the truth. Hell freezes’
Ha! My favourite six words of fiction. “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” come a close second. I am a sucker for brevity, and appreciate writers who can cut a long story short without losing the essence of the plot. (Unlike Woody Allen who said he “speed-read War and Peace. It was about Russia.”) So, […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Farewell to Facebook: Confessions of a cyber-addict
My last status update simply said: “Alex says bye”. And then I did it. I deactivated my Facebook account. The decision to leave the ubiquitous social networking site even took me a little by surprise. How on earth was I going to survive without the website I compulsively visited several times a day? The more […]
Posted inTech
Do marketers understand the power of the mobile phone?
Did you know that mobile is considered to be the seventh mass medium? In an excellent article on Communities-dominate, the argument is made emphatically. Here are some of the points. These are the current mass media:- print, music recordings, movies, radio, TV and computer based internet. The mobile phone, at number seven, has a huge […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Is it only me, or has economic news stagnated?
Is it only me, or has the media’s leverage of technology allowed its coverage of economic news to stagnate? The technology is now available to plug so many automated feeds into tracking of daily market indicators that the people responsible for economic coverage no longer think about what they are reporting. Usually, a sure sign […]