General

In my profession I have to analyse a lot of websites on a daily basis. And what I just don’t ever get is the fact that there are still so many badly created websites out there? Not necessarily just from design point of view, but functionality too! And it’s not just the latent–old–school–frames–embedded websites, what’s […]

I’ve been fascinated by the term Web 2.0 since the phrase was coined. So were a lot of people from all different camps. Is it a design style? Is it development methodologies? Is it the way users interact with platforms as a service? The democratization of data? API’s? Social Networking? Eeeeeek…! Where does it begin […]

Google Friend, launched on Monday evening, brings to a close the era of social networking sites, and makes “social” a standard part of using the Web. This trend has been clear for a while: the OpenSocial initiative has effectively allowed you to share your networks of contacts across them. I doubt this was first prize […]

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 […]

Since the late 1960s Western culture –- and the rest of the world’s cultures were not far behind –- has increasingly moved into a phase commonly referred to as ‘postmodernity’. To be able to operate in this cultural environment in an informed, knowledgeable way, regardless of the field within which one works, it is imperative […]

Isn’t South Africa just the most fun? We live in a land that is marked by one of the most incredible digital divides. Forget Third World South America, or Middle Africa. That’s different -– technology just never got off its feet and it’ll take many years, plenty discarded US laptops and OLPC’s from heaven before […]

Social media websites have only but taken over the WWW. Anyone spending time on the internet is signed into at least one of these websites, and more than likely signed into several. To name a selective few there are: Facebook, Myspace, Furl, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Rojo, Meetup, Linkedin, Technorati, Slashdot, and more. With […]

What makes a philanthropist? What do philanthropists do? Is it about money or does it include time and skills that are donated for the betterment of our society? When can someone be called a philanthropist? These are some of the questions that arise out of the call for nominations for the Inyathelo Philanthropy Awards that […]

Shopping for domestic appliances is the seventh circle of hell. You have to go to four or five shops to compare prices and each shop is in a different shopping centre. This means finding parking, getting out of the car, walking to the shop, trying not to get distracted by the other things in the […]

Submitted by Demaine Solomons My intention with this piece is to attempt to connect two issues that still generates a fair amount of debate and controversy; Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations article and the idea or perhaps the possibility of the universality of human rights. However, I do want to do this from another perspective, […]

Whoever said that the wheels of justice grind slowly must have had Dr Malcolm Naude in mind. Almost seven years ago, he was dismissed from Nelspruit’s Rob Ferreira Hospital. At the time, government would not provide post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) — a course of antiretroviral (ARV) medicines to reduce the risk of infection following exposure to […]

A few weeks ago (April 25), in the “Courses” section, the Mail & Guardian carried two pieces in counterpoint to each other. The question was “Is religion a threat to rationality and sciences?” and replies were provided by the eminent philosopher Daniel Dennett (on the “yes” side) and someone called Robert Winston, a retired professor […]