Yes, you read correctly, local Facebook numbers have been dropping until today. Today is the first day that the number of Facebook users from South Africa stopped declining since January 3. Well it’s probably been longer, according to Tyler Reed, but I only started tracking them after I saw him post a comment on Twitter. […]
Tech
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
Web 2.008
Here’s what I think 2008 holds. Because I’m an ignorant bastard who avoids newspapers and television and gets all my news from opinionated friends, my list can hardly be called well researched. Still, here it is. 1. Hillary Listen, whatever you may think of Hillary Clinton (South Africans, by and large, don’t seem to care […]
Posted inTech
2008 the same as usual, I should think
Predictions for 2008? Highlights of 2007? I’m sitting in Brighton, speculating about this. Candles are lit, the Christmas tree is still OK, although the needles are starting to moult quite rapidly. And it has roots, so we hope to plant it out in a forest somewhere. That is if we can find a forest where […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics, Sport, Tech
2008: A sneaky preview
Here’s what the coming year has in store for us, courtesy of Nostradamus’s greasy little ball. In January Saru announces what they call a “compromise candidate” to take over the role of Springbok coach. It is Andre Markgraaff, the former disgraced coach of telephone-tap/racist-comments fame.
Posted inTech
Seven web predictions for 2008
I always wanted to be like Siener Van Rensburg, except without the beard, male-pattern baldness and crazy right-wing followers. Predicting the future seems to be a pretty easy gig — if people find out you are wrong on something you simply make up some new predictions, and if you turn out to be right you […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, News/Politics, Tech
Ten Predictions for 2008
Hillary Clinton will become the 44th US president on November 4 2008 and if she is wise and the world is fortunate she will select Barack Obama as her vice-president or appoint him to a senior position dealing with internal US policies. The world will shift intense and expensive efforts focused on HIV and Aids […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Web 2.0: The emperor’s new code
Every time I hear the term “Web 2.0”, I throw up a little. The man behind the phrase, Tim O’Reilly, is a legend, sure. His publishing company, O’Reilly, is a thousand-megawatt leading light whose ideas I filch regularly. But, oh, what a turdy little storm he started when he coined the term back in 2004. […]
Posted inTech
I’ll have that coffee to go, thank you … WiMax is coming to town
There is quite a buzz around WiMax, especially so in developing nations where the high cost of rolling out fixed-line telecoms has left them considerably lower down the broadband pecking order than their First World counterparts. But is it going to live up to all the expectations? The Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (or better […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
2008 looks like another mobile year, but with radio jocks
It’s that time of year again when the predictions brigade publish its wise thoughts for 2008. Wipe off the crystal ball, bring out the Tarot cards, throw “dem” bones. Do whatever you think might help you to peer through the fog and work out what the next big thing could be. For me, the big […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
The cause of the Web 2.0 bubble
Web techies are lazy when it comes to considering the business aspects of their latest Web 2.0 ideas. They spend even less time developing creative revenue models when they see that web businesses with little real revenue can be valued at $15-billion. When Adwords, Google’s paid search-engine advertising program, launched at the beginning of 2003, […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Interviewing the avatar
It may not be a new form of journalism, but it is quickly becoming apparent that interviews with avatars in virtual worlds are going to require a new set of guidelines for journalists. This is one of the first learnings to emerge from an experimental initiative in The Big Change blog. We are conducting business […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Bloggers of the Week: The Mike and Justin show
I’ve been terrified of naming these two guys as Bloggers of the Week. When the concept for this blog was first proposed, the biggest criticism was that it would simply line up the usual suspects of the Web 2.0 world, such as Justin Hartman and Mike Stopforth. But hey, we all have to conquer our […]