After four weeks of excuses masquerading as blogs on “related topics”, the first blogging Player of the Week can be announced. The choice will not be a popular one among the blogging elite, but then this exercise is about recognition, not affirmation. First a recap: the original idea behind the Amablogoblogo is to recognise special […]
Tech
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Steve Fossett, Amazon.com and some extra cash for you
Steve Fossett is a millionaire adventurer who disappeared with his plane, somewhere over the Nevada desert. You want to help find him? Head over to Amazon.com. The online books-and-everything-else seller has a rather nifty, but not well-known, service. It is called Amazon Mechanical Turk and its tagline is “Artificial artificial intelligence”. Basically, it is “a […]
Posted inTech
Drink a galon of jin, die, get in a tomb and relaaaaax (sic)
In my life, I have a sense that a lot of pwnage has happened but I never really knew what it meant or even how to say “me & the l337 pwned you n00bz” properly. Today I decided it was time to get my facts straight about the origins of the words “pwn”, “l337” and […]
Posted inTech
The size of the internet
This weekend, one of my friends asked me how big the internet is. So just to make sure that I know these facts, I did some research that I would like to share with you. Everyone is in agreement that the internet is humongous. According to Netcraft, a company based in Bath, England, in September […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Department of Crony Capitalism
Chris Barron of the Sunday Times went in search of meaningful answers from the director-general in the Deparment of Communications. He found none, but published what he heard anyway.
Posted inTech
Can the UN control online privacy?
Every time you use your credit card online, the number is parsed through six countries. Many of those countries have no policies at all when it comes to privacy in general, and certainly no policies when it comes to privacy in the internet sphere. Google’s privacy chief, Peter Fleisher, addressed the United Nations Educational, Scientific […]
Posted inTech
The reason why bloggers blog
According to Technorati, an internet search engine for searching blogs, the company is currently tracking 104,6-million blogs and more than 250-million pieces of tagged social media. There are certainly blogs that are written by employees of companies trying to put a good spin on their organisation and products or services they offer. There are political […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics, Tech
Can convergence serve democracy?
After attending a few sessions at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown last week, I struggled to find an answer to the question: How will convergence make our democracy better? Discussion about digital media and convergence tends to focus on the medium rather than the message; on the technology of communication rather than the content. […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
On Second Life, sushi projects and ideas cities: Japanese innovation
Last week I talked about how openness is driving innovation to new levels in the digital world. This week, fresh off the boat from a one-month stint in Japan, I’ll tell you how the Japanese have gotten innovation right on the button in so many ways. Firstly, the City of Sapporo. Ever heard of it? […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Tech
The value chain, from A to Zim
Most of us who pick up a magazine or newspaper rarely think about the value chain resulting in the words we read ending up on paper. The chain for Y Mag, for example, starts a decade or more in the past, probably on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast when pine trees are planted in anticipation of […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Martha Stewart is my friend!
So next time you need to rearrange your flowers or need to make a quick buck on the stock market, call me. I’ll put you in touch with the right person. Yes, this really is Martha Stewart. And no, she is not really a friend. But both facts raise interesting issues: First, how do you […]
Posted inTech
Eighteen rugby fields filled with servers
Not a day goes by that I am not amazed by the power of Google, the functionality of its products and the amazingly easy to use tools that are at my disposal. But when I speak to friends, family and colleagues about these cool tools, I discover that they do not know about them. So […]