Media

Tiger Woods does not have a lot in common with Jacob Zuma. Clearly, they’re both rather, ahem fond of women, and both have found themselves at the centre of sexual scandals — an entire rape trial in the case of the president. But there’s an important difference that is becoming more and more apparent. When […]

Sometimes an advertising campaign is so completely and utterly on trend, so obvious in its attempts to capitalise on the zeitgeist, that to ignore it would be remiss. And so it is with the latest Dockers campaign from the US, one which is worth taking a closer look at. In South Africa, we’ve just been […]

It’s often said, in one of the more glib truisms of the age, that everyone has a book in them. Somehow, writing a book and seeing it published and available on the shelf seems to be one of those fundamental drivers of the human psyche. Maslow should have added another level to his hierarchy of […]

If I had wanted to be really thick, I would have entitled this piece “I’m Declaring Gategate on ‘-Gate’ “. But there’s a limit to how much a human being should be permitted to suffer. We all know who to blame for all of this. If, however, you’ve spent the last 37 years at the […]

I’ve never had a good idea sitting at a desk. Ever. All of my ideas have arrived apparently unbidden, usually while I’m doing something totally unrelated, like standing in the shower, drifting off to sleep, or strolling aimlessly around Sandton City. Driving is especially productive, I’ve found. For some reason, perhaps because my mind is […]

This is not something I’ve done before, mind you. I bought him on Saturday afternoon, for R550, and what an interesting experience it was. I felt like, all empowered and stuff, expressing the power my corporate salary confers upon me and using it to turn stereotypes on their head, yadda yadda, and all in the […]

Spartans prided themselves in never using more than six words when one would do. This is why they would have been brilliant on Twitter. Each tweet has a maximum of 140 characters. This explains why Moammar Gadaffi is not on Twitter. You have to use as few words as possible when expressing, explaining and replying. […]

Whenever I drive to or home from work during the week there is nothing I enjoy more than listening to 94.7 Highveld Stereo. It’s great fun because the last thing I need or want to hear at that time is some of you lot waffling on about politics on 702 or one of the other […]

Do you ever think about what the advertising for the beer you drink says about you? Are you downing the cool beer, the beer for average guys, the working man’s beer, or the beer for metrosexuals? Beer ads have long been an interest of mine. I devoted a chapter of my doctoral thesis to the […]

Stewart Brand, at the first hackers conference in 1984, famously said: On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and […]

The other day I found out that South Africa is the 10th largest Twitter user on the planet. 10th! That’s pretty damn cool. The US is by far the largest in terms of users right now, but we are right up there with the big boys, like the UK and Sweden, and ahead of many […]