General

Thanks Nic for inviting me to blog on Techleader — appreciate it. I’ve been considering what a good enough first post would be (there are a couple of ideas that didn’t make it saved elsewhere), and when I was sent the log-in details to Techleader, I realised I’ve actually never used WordPress, not personally and […]

I found this interesting — yet another example of social media being considered a viable facet of a marketing strategy. Lenovo has sponsored this portal for athlete bloggers at the Olympics. The site is well designed. Lots of bloggers writing content. Some local representation. A Twitter feed. And, an interesting approach. Seems like the site […]

I’ve been fairly cynical of some South African businesses’ recent forays into the world of social networking — specifically Facebook. It’s a helluva cluttered environment to play in, with an audience that ranges from 12 to 70, demographics from pink to purple and work sectors from rabbit hunting to banking. Cutting through that clutter takes […]

When PdV started talking about creating a culture of responsibility amongst our players and teaching them to think on their feet and play the situation, he was derided. The All Blacks first try was a direct consequence of an antipodean player doing such and showing why it works. Ma’a Nonu threw a stinker of a […]

We are the middle children of history, He said Ours is that dislocation between spirit and identity faith and question integrity and fascination We are the middle children of history, He said Ours is the time of romantic Solar powered watches Paperless documents Controlled births Political hungers And negotiated hate, for We are the middle […]

Julia Kristeva is a very original thinker. This Bulgarian-born, French-educated philosopher, practising psychoanalyst and novelist has contributed to humans’ self-understanding in many different ways, not least with her concept of the “abject”. It was first proposed to explain something that may appear to some to be a lacuna in Lacan’s account of the emergence of […]

What a pre-season of discontent. Ultimately, though, it was much ado about niks. Cristiano Ronaldo gave us his own version of a Julius Malema-risation by suggesting that he was a modern-day slave (for those not versed on the matter, a “Julius” is a statement that is uttered with not much forethought, thus leading to much […]

This week on Let’s Talk Jeff Fletcher from IS joins me to talk about IS Labs, Facebook fears and more. What exactly do you do Jeff? I work for Internet Solutions, helping them build new products and services and in exchange they let me work on IS labs. I also manage the growth of two […]

What is the purpose of the parliamentary sports portfolio committee of Butana Komphela and company? What does it achieve — other than controversy from statements that regularly stir up a furore, normally with a racist flavour? It never refers to anything meritorious about what is being done. The committee’s statements seem intended to remind us […]

This past weekend I decided to buy a new couch for my home. Wearied of endless trips to Fourways, battling through the traffic, wasting petrol, dodging Metro Police roadblocks, I decided to check out online catalogues for the stores before traipsing off there. Genius. First port of call: Google. Search “couches johannesburg”, “furniture johannesburg”, “couches”, […]

THE love-hate relationship between perennial country snob Benni McCarthy and Bafana Bafana continued unabated at Nasrec this week. Benni, the lad many folks would love to loathe, is back in the Bafana Bafana squad. And already the bets are going around on whether or not the ‘Prodigal One’ will check-in at the London hotel on […]

In 2000 when everybody started taking South Africa’s World Cup bidding process seriously, a high-level delegation of FIFA officials toured the country on a fact-finding mission. They left with images of thousands of wide-eyed children calling in unison for the right to host the showpiece of the beautiful game and Vicky Sampson’s My African Dream […]