Let’s start with what we already know… With the advent of the Internet, and even more so with Web 2.0, the world has shrunk: vastly different cultures and people are connected in ways never thought possible. It is no longer strange to have friends, family and acquaintances in Indonesia, Moscow and Peru and interact with […]
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Posted inGeneral
Search vs social
We’re talking Search Wars: What does it mean to you? On Monday Robert Scoble wrote what I thought was a brilliant thought piece on Microsoft potentially buying out Yahoo!, and concurrently also Facebook. Scoble’s take on the matter was that should Microsoft venture this way, what with social media, and particularly FaceBook in this case […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Xenophobic racism and other general idiocy
When I first heard that people of Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Malawian descent had been attacked in Alexandra, I did what I always do when I hear such news. Not to be callous or anything, but I shrugged and wondered out loud why people always seem amazed when these things happen. I have received a lot […]
Posted inGeneral
There is insanity in IT
I suppose this is usually the part where I’m supposed to say this is my first post and blah, blah … Now that has been said and done, with great appreciation of the minds that did it before, I will get on to the real issue. For all the time I have been involved in […]
Posted inGeneral
Time to stop wallowing in self-pity
What Jews and Afrikaners have in common, a son of a leading anti-apartheid activist once said to me, is that they will never let you forget about their past suffering. He could say this, being himself part Jewish and part Afrikaans. In reality, though, it is true of virtually everyone. Whereas contrition and self-criticism do […]
Posted inGeneral
Image, art, language and gender
Art as practice, phenomenon, activity, always exceeds any specific artist’s production. It therefore embodies a certain self-transcendence, which is why every era witnesses anew the problematisation of art. Art has to become a problem as soon as it seems self-evident to the people of an era, because its domestication would rob it of its function […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Zimbabwe: Let Vavi act as mediator, Mbeki is needed at home
With all the problems arising out of, inter alia, the Ginwala commission, xenophobia and power shortages, perhaps the time has come for the president to travel less and spend more time in office. In his stead, appoint Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, to act as mediator in the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Xenophobia: Residents of Alexandra owed an apology
Wading through the tons of articles on xenophobia, I am of the view that while some — such as Jacob Zuma, the ANC as a party, Cosatu, AfriForum and Patricia de Lille — are hitting the nail on the head, others are just taking gratuitous pot shots at the people of Alexandra without any insight […]
Posted inNews/Politics
On makwerekwere…
Submitted by Boitumelo Magolego The inside cover of my Oxford English dictionary features a word with which I have become all too familiar: the word is kwerekwere. (It may be more familiar to you with one of its vernacular language–dependant prefixes prepended — the Sotho singular being le– and plural ma–, the Nguni singular being […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Business unusual — during apartheid
Judge Korman was the lone dissenting voice against the appeal of the Khulumani lawsuit in October 2007. The appeal was lodged against the judgement dismissing the plaintiffs’ claims under the United States’ Alien Tort Claims Act. The Khulumani Lawsuit, on behalf of Khulumani Support Group and less than 100 named plaintiffs, charges 23 foreign corporations […]
Posted inGeneral
VoIP finally meeting early expectations
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which allows Internet users to make phone calls to each other at no cost, is finally taking off among South African businesses, four years after it became legal to use it outside company networks. This is the key finding of the VoIP in South Africa 2008 study, released today by […]
Posted inGeneral
The case for identity management
Identity management (IdM) has become a buzz phrase in the industry surrounded by more confusion than facts and experience. So what exactly is an identity and why do we need to manage it? An identity consists of attributes describing a person — typically name, surname, ID number, email address, etc. IdM concerns itself with the […]