General

A quick reminder, we’re asking questions and trying to answer them in a way that will get people to change. The questions are: Why is the Internet advertising spend in South Africa one sixth that of Switzerland or even Belgium, when we share similar audience sizes? Why do brand marketers keep telling me that on-line […]

I’m reminded of a once popular song by a South African kwaito artist, Senyaka, which asked the question: “Romeo, o swa jang o nkolota?” (Romeo, why do you die when you still owe me?). Before proceeding, it might be necessary to pay my condolences to the family and those close to Charles Dempsey of the […]

The web is not about technology, it’s about communication. Yet, in the ultimate schema of things, it becomes evident to the end-user only via HTML and clever client-side jinks. Despite our clever plans, middleware, and thousands of hours of social meddling, we are stuck with ouputting to a 1024px wide box encapsulated in virtual chrome. […]

Peter de Villiers’ style of coaching adds a unique dimension of team togetherness and camaraderie, that surpasses previous recent Springbok coaches. Previously, the Springbok teams were treated like a constellation of stellar individuals playing for the Springboks. In many instances the overwhelming and intense media attention on some of the players made them start believing […]

“If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Paarl Web, a subsidiary of Naspers, printed R3 million worth of party propaganda for Mugabe after Caxton declined the deal. Business Day reported the story, and now there is some uproar about this. We are, admittedly, dealing […]

There’s been loads of discussion lately about using WordPress as a CMS platform. The recent WordPress meetup held in Cape Town saw some discussion around the the topic. Adii presented a very compelling argument for the fact that WordPress is essentially a database with different type of data which can be used in many different […]

So what have we learnt from Peter de Villiers’ tenure so far? Certainly there hasn’t been enough sustained evidence of the promised shimmering new expansive game plan in the three Tests thus far. That though, I believe can be attributed to the nature of the opposition and the very fact that well, it’s only been […]

I spotted a new “social movement” site the other day, which piqued my interest. ForGood positions itself as “a social movement that inspires, guides and connects different people taking action to make our society safer, healthier, happier, more informed, more compassionate, caring …” So I set up the following text interview to delve beneath the […]

Isn’t it ironic that Robert Mugabe, while claiming to protect Zimbabweans from colonialism and imperialism, is in fact the catalyst through which the recolonisation of Africa by gangster warlords might take place? And isn’t it even more ironic that in order to stop him and his maniacal party, Africa might finally realise that true liberation, […]

A few things about Twitter have been irritating me recently and this has everything to do with its lack of versatility. Twitter’s alert function, which can syndicate “tweets” to any third party device or application (Mobile, Facebook, etc.), leaves much to be desired in terms of customising its functionality. For one thing, I would like […]

In an attempt to illuminate a view that South Africa is a complex case, and not special per se, I said that “South Africans have been consistently giving most of us an impression that we are developing some form of national identity. Public opinion surveys have been showing a trend of improving ‘social cohesion’”. All […]

It was with much difficulty that I accepted a directive to pack my bags and haul my great self off to the land beyond the Lesotho Mountains for business purposes. Trust me, had I a choice, I would have never chosen to go to Bloemfontein, but alas, the man that pays my salary demanded it […]