Thought Leader

Ideas are free. Developing them into viable businesses, not so much. Developing them into viable online businesses…well…take a number. Especially if you live in South Africa. Entrepreneurs with exciting new ideas for online ventures usually have two problems: 1. They are unable to get funded for the first stage of developing their product 2. Their…

A reasonable, basic, start-up desktop PC with all the necessary accessories and running Microsoft Windows’ notoriously atrocious Vista will set you back at least R8 000. Add in broadband connectivity and the mandatory ball-and-chain contracts, and the whole rigmarole will put a ten-to-twelve-grand hole in your family savings. That’s right now. Tomorrow it will be…

So often conversations about technology tend toward the obvious and taken-for-granted, riddled with assumptions and unsupported conjecture. This post challenges you to think. Think different. Ask the difficult questions. Create interesting insights for yourself. Let me know what you think. 1. You don’t have the right to choose: Why do you have a mobile phone,…

Exclusive: The 12 hours of the Matsepe-Casaburri presidency, revealed through the acting president’s diary September 25, midnight: Yippee!!! I’m the president! No, the President, with a capital P! No one can stop me now! I’m so happy I could change a law! 12.01am: Just heard my first President Matsepe-Casaburri joke from the Internet. Q: What…

What lingered in my mind after his speech on the nuclear future for South Africa was not Dr Rob Adams’ confident prediction that we would have another 10 Koebergs in the next 20 years. It was his assertion, in replying to a question from the audience in the Rhodes University lecture theatre on Tuesday, that…

Every now and again I find myself low on creativity and in need of some inspiration. The thing with creativity though is that you can’t force it on. Instead, you need to feed it with “creative fuel” (random stimuli) and eventually your AHA! moment takes place. I’ve listed below some websites that I often visit…

The annual Highway Africa conference at Rhodes U in Grahamstown does not so much set the agenda as tap into the agenda of where new media is going. Case in point is the contribution of Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media and global thought leader in citizen journalism. Back in 2003, we both participated…

Google South Africa has abused its position of dominance in the online advertising market and has used underhand methods to win a major online advertising account with the SA Yellow Pages website. [Update: Allegedly, of course.] You can read the full press release here. In a nutshell, Entelligence was awarded the online marketing contract for…

Today may have seen the beginning of the end of the dreaded monster lurking in the tangled forests of South African telecommunications law. When Justice Norman Davis ruled in the high court this morning that value-added network services (VANS) must be allowed to provide their own networks — and that the regulator is obliged to…

As any South African who has tried to make money online undoubtedly knows, Paypal does not allow us to receive funds via its system. We can only use it to spend money at other merchants, most often via our credit card. This has been a huge bottle stopper in the e-commerce climate in this country….