In a rather illuminating article in the latest Trendwatching brief, the discussion is about free love. It’s about businesses offering goods, services or experiences to consumers for free and making their money from other things. Prime examples that come to mind are the home printers that are dirt cheap but where you have to take […]
Tech
Posted inTech
What business can learn from the open-source movement
When was the last time you thought “I love the company I work for?” Google came out tops in a recent Fortune magazine “Best Companies to work for in the US” survey. They were lauded for their generous employee benefits and facilities. These types of tangible benefits are easy to see, measure and appreciate. It’s […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
African leadershift: social capitalism
There’s an emerging realisation that the strength of distributed nodal power bases is almost unconquerable. Guerrilla movements, social media and small, focused niches of the Long Tail cause disruption that produces evolutionary economic shifts. Market-making is shifting into the hands of some unlikely new leaders in the quick online world. The butterfly effect of the […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
e-Filing is e-driving me e-mad
You can file your tax returns on the internet! What a good idea, I thought. (I think we should be able to vote on the net as well.) But we should have been given some vital information. We should have been told: you can file your tax returns on the internet if, and only if, […]
Posted inTech
The end of a long relationship …
I’ve loved Firefox since the day I installed it. I was an early member of Spreadfirefox.com and have been evangelising it prior to version 1. I even had my name in the New York Times as part of an advert for Firefox 1.0. Sadly, almost four years later I’ve just switched. It was a tough […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Web 2.egO
I’ve been pondering, recently, the rise of narcissism as a disease of our world. Depression used to be the problem, everyone swallowing handfuls of Prozac and eating chocolate cake in their pyjamas. Now, I believe, fuelled by our inherent egomania and facilitated by (among many other things) Web 2.0 social-networking sites, a kind of global […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Tech
Evolution and endurance
Sometimes the things we need to learn most aren’t to be found in books, through transplanted wisdom, in lectures or by way of extraordinary mentor … there are some things not even Google can solve. The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Bullies-R-Us
The armed forces always believed that subordination of the troops to the command was essential. If there were strictly enforced rules of behaviour maintained, then the soldier next to you would be able to rely on you performing according to drill during the times when the battle made everything else unpredictable. At what stage does […]
Posted inTech
Seven things I learnt from one year of blogging for money
The first thing I learnt — and admittedly it took a fair number of months — was that I should not have given up my day job. Alright, I didn’t give up the day job as I didn’t have one to start off with. But still. I would have starved if I had depended on […]
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Divided we stand
As a socially conscious, free-thinking African with a will to do good and a keen interest in technology, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the issue commonly called the digital divide. Simply put, it connotes the perceived difference between technology haves and have-nots. The haves are thought to be in a […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Tech
Give me the info, but make it quick
I’ve developed a curious reading disorder and I’ve established that I’m not alone. I hardly read in the strictest sense any longer. I’m stretching if I have to read a piece of more than 500 words without getting to the point. I ignore articles that have vague headlines. Ninety percent of my knowledge of current […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Eskom — it’s the information, stupid!
I am quite unable to see why some of Eskom’s computer geeks have not been able to solve at least one part of the energy crisis. Everyone keeps complaining that they don’t know when the power is going to go down, and that Eskom’s website is very unclear. Why not simply put a map of […]