An analysis of the names on the lips of the chattering elite who inhabit Web 2.0, or at least the world of blogs, Facebook and user-generated content, shows that it is really a one-horse race: Jacob Zuma versus not Jacob Zuma. Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa barely feature in the succession debate in blog content. […]
Tech
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
eBay: How big can you go?
eBay is a notoriously dominant property in the online auction/marketplaces space, where the market value of an item is uncertain. The most significant element of this dominance is attributed to network effects in its marketplace business. In eBay’s business, the money side of the platform is the marketplace sellers and the subsidy side is the […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Google’s cash machine: How sustainable is it really?
Barriers to entry have typically been used by traditional offline players to deter entry into an industry. This has the effect of creating a business environment where healthy profits and sometimes even monopolistic (economic) profits are possible. In the online space, there are few of these barriers to entry, but there is something else that […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Beware the business blog: Seven ground rules
These guidelines for business blogs were written in early 2006, but still apply: 1. Blogs are forever — or at least their content can be captured and stored elsewhere, even after you change or update it, so don’t write anything you may wish you’d never said. South Africa has already had a few blog lawsuits […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Innovation to the top — climbing Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair
Bern Goosen is a South African quadriplegic, and tomorrow he will begin his third attempt to mount Kilimanjaro. In a wheelchair. He won’t be pushed. He won’t be carried. He will use his brute strength to get there, and you can watch it all on your computer. Thanks to the collaboration of local technology companies, […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, Tech
Blogging Player of the Week: One more, with feeling
You may not have heard of this week’s choice for blogging Player of the Week, but you have probably come across her writing, reporting and commentary — probably in isolation of the bigger picture of the amazing work she does in her blogs. Damaria Senne makes her living from covering technology issues for ITWeb, but […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
Radiohead’s brave new world
On Monday Radiohead sent shockwaves through the music industry and paroxysms of fear through the major record labels when they announced that their new album In Rainbows would go on sale on the 10th October as a direct digital rights management (DRM) free download from their website. The price: whatever you feel like paying for […]
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SA’s top 51 blogs
These are the blogs that make it into the top 100 000 ranking on Technorati. They are competing with about 70-million other blogs, so being popular or widely read only in South Africa is not likely to get them this ranking. In other words, these are more than likely blogs that have a worldwide readership. If […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
SA’s poor-quality and pixellated picture sites
We can all agree that due to increased bandwidth availability over the past years, online media quality and quantity have grown substantially. So why the hell are local online publishers dragging their feet and being so schnoep with their bits and bytes?! Gone are the days of 800×600 resolution! And gone are the days where […]
Posted inTech
I hate it when it all comes together
When it comes to technology, I’m an early adopter. Heck, I’m more than that. While others are filling in the adoption papers, I’m nursing the gadget into adolescence. In 2001, for my 30th birthday, a group of generous friends chipped in to buy me an MP3 player. None of them knew what the hell this […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
How much is a blog worth?
There is a blog up for sale, at auction, and I wonder if you can predict how much it will sell for. (I am not going to give out the URL, because I don’t want you to see what the current bid is, but if you think you might want to buy it, give me […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Charity 2.0
It is becoming harder and harder for charities to raise funds. There is an increasing public indifference to the endless lotteries, fetes and nude calendars trotted out by charities each year and general suspicion that the bulk of funds collected finance the administration of the charity rather than the intended recipients. Whether these perceptions are […]