A new daily paper is expected on the streets of Spain on Thursday and when it comes out, its 31-year-old editor, Ignacio Escolar, is likely to set an international milestone: the world’s first blogger to become editor-in-chief of a national newspaper. Actually, Escolar is a journalist, and he has worked as such in many small […]
2007
Posted inMedia, Tech
Online marketing in the mix
Upon pondering a topic for what would finally be my first and long overdue post on Thought Leader, I began wondering just why all the talk is around Facebook, YouTube, blogging and various other forms of social media. Has this discussion not been the core focus for months now? It is certainly the longest-running topic […]
Posted inTech
The paradox of technology
“Advancement” and “technology” are words typically mentioned in the same breath, and in most situations technology has made our everyday lives much easier — no more standing in queues in banks, no more taking cheques to people for payment and no more expensive phone bills to communicate internationally. People tend to forget, though — or […]
Posted inGeneral
Biko’s barren legacy
South Africa’s liberation would likely have been long delayed, had it not been for the brave leadership of Steve Bantu Biko — the struggle hero beaten to death at age 30, exactly 30 years ago this month. It was of course “his” Black Consciousness movement that reignited resistance and fed the youth rebellion, which in […]
Posted inGeneral
Isn’t life wonderful?
Here’s a disruptive thought: life is a spectacular thing, all the time. Life is what we are given. Or, to put it differently, it’s what we have. It’s the brute, unchangeable fact that connects us all. It’s what we all absolutely have in common, the singular reality on which there is, and can be, no […]
Posted inLifestyle
Isn’t life wonderful?
Here’s a disruptive thought: life is a spectacular thing, all the time. Life is what we are given. Or, to put it differently, it’s what we have. It’s the brute, unchangeable fact that connects us all. It’s what we all absolutely have in common, the singular reality on which there is, and can be, no […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
The blogging Player of the Week
After four weeks of excuses masquerading as blogs on “related topics”, the first blogging Player of the Week can be announced. The choice will not be a popular one among the blogging elite, but then this exercise is about recognition, not affirmation. First a recap: the original idea behind the Amablogoblogo is to recognise special […]
Posted inLifestyle
Livin’ the dream
To all those struggling writers out there, desperately sipping cups of cold coffee and dregs of red wine, smoking cigarettes until the ashtrays overflow and typing furiously until 3am, I have a message of hope: the dream is true. And to all those un-exotic writers waking up at a reasonable hour and studiously sitting down […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Steve Fossett, Amazon.com and some extra cash for you
Steve Fossett is a millionaire adventurer who disappeared with his plane, somewhere over the Nevada desert. You want to help find him? Head over to Amazon.com. The online books-and-everything-else seller has a rather nifty, but not well-known, service. It is called Amazon Mechanical Turk and its tagline is “Artificial artificial intelligence”. Basically, it is “a […]
Posted inTech
Drink a galon of jin, die, get in a tomb and relaaaaax (sic)
In my life, I have a sense that a lot of pwnage has happened but I never really knew what it meant or even how to say “me & the l337 pwned you n00bz” properly. Today I decided it was time to get my facts straight about the origins of the words “pwn”, “l337” and […]
Posted inSport
Good news on the local football front
Well some good football news this morning with the announcement that English Premiership side Tottenham Hotspur has signed a partnership agreement with Premier Soccer League side SuperSport United. The deal will see both clubs’ academies working closely together, which will surely benefit our local players. (No cracks about Spurs’ dreadful start to the season, please, […]
Posted inSport
Long live the underdog
It was 2003 and I was working for the Rugby World Cup’s internal news-wire service. Based in Perth, Australia, covering the Springboks’ pool, the Georgian national team were one of the teams with whom I spent a bit of time. What I found was a bunch of athletes whose dreams of representing their country in […]