I have been asked by this newspaper to be a contributor to its blogospherical initiative Thought Leader. This is my maiden input. At first, I was sceptical of the newspaper’s invitation. Well, I still am. I thought to myself: whatever it is we call the “blogosphere” is meant to be deinstitutionalised, far removed from the […]
Tech
Posted inMedia, Tech
Interview with danah boyd, social networking expert
danah boyd (she insists on the lower case) is one of the world’s leading experts on social networking sites (SNSs) such as MySpace and Facebook. She is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. I interviewed her to try to understand […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
‘To twitter’ gets a new meaning that has nothing to do with birds
There are more than 540 000 words in the English language. This is apparently about five times more than during Shakespeare’s time. Among the many new words or meanings fighting to get accepted on to the hallowed pages of the Oxford English Dictionary would be “twittering”, and that would not involve birds. It was early February […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
The Red Plug-In City
Plug-in City seems the right way to imagine how a large number of optional connections can be organised, randomised, mixed or matched. So says the Communist University (CU) in its launch of its Plug-In City. The CU is a blog, training workshop and more broadly an attempt by the “left” to use the internet to […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
The future of media
If we want to understand how communications could change in the next 15 years, we must look back over the same period — to a time before the cellphone and the internet. Only then can we appreciate and prepare for the potential revolution that still faces us in the future. Here is a tale from […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
What is the meaning of Facebook?
There comes a time in a man’s life when biting another Zombie chump, waiting four days for your growing gift to turn into a money tree or refreshing the page so that you get status updates in your news feed doesn’t get you excited any more. It’s depressing to be so bored with Facebook that […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
The service domain?
Last year sometime, I registered a handful of domain names with a South African company. Having finally got some of the basics done, I thought I would have some use for one of the domains. So I contacted my company, and lo and behold, someone else owned the domain name. I phoned the company and […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
It’s all in the attitude
Yesterday was a fun day. I was offered an LG Viewty phone to play with and to comment on, and it’s a fine-looking phone. And I get to keep it. I am beyond tickled pink. I am tickled all the shades of the rainbow. Why the excessive celebrations, one might wonder? It’s because I am […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Tech
Google’s Android: About time mobile service providers woke up
My recent mobile internet access experiences with MTN remind me of the internet in South Africa circa 1996: download speeds can barely handle text pages, access can bankrupt you, browsers can’t display pages correctly and my phone is desperately seeking a “blue screen of death” alternative to just plain freeze-reboot. I recently read that both […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Free advice to anybody wishing to start another Facebook
This is the kind of business about which people dream and fantasise. Facebook was launched in February 2004. In November 2007 it was reported that Microsoft bought a 1,6% share of the company for $240-million. You can do the sums to check out how much the market seems to think Facebook is worth now, in […]
Posted inTech
A rough history of the web industry in South Africa
A personal account of how the web industry got started, and some of the colourful characters who populated it I guess it’s starting to feel like I’m running out of time to write this piece. I’m getting, well, old, frankly. The next web generation has arrived and is hard at work creating all kinds of […]
Posted inTech
Make space for the PC in the museum
Three days of wonderful inspirational stuff at the Flash on the Beach conference has regrettably come to an end. As an aside, I got a beach towel and beach thongs, or flip-flops for the South African readers, in my free handout kit. It’s all of something like 14 degrees during the day and four degrees […]