Hi and welcome to my blog! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and do come back.

Last night, instead of joining the thousand or so people partying at the iPhone 3G launch, I was slaving away at my laptop for almost 5 hours.

This is not to say that I didn’t have a blast, the VIP section was a treat as they always are.

The event was one that was intended to be a tester for the Zoopy JHB crew. It was our first major live event that we covered.

Terri Hayward and Klaus Bauer (the Zoopy crew) did a sterling job if I do say so myself. They proved that Zoopy can get the interviews, be on top of events and provide top class coverage as it happens, when it happens - to quote a great radio station.

Some of highlights included speaking to Shameel Joosub, the MD of Vodacom, DJ Fresh from 5FM, the very first official Vodacom sold iPhone owner and Dot Field the Chief Communications Officer at Vodacom. We were taking photographs, doing interviews and uploading for almost the entire evening and it showed.

Zoopy recorded some great stats yesterday and a great achievement for us was having our content shown on CNBC Africa over lunch and in a late afternoon show.

So here’s to many more events being covered, many more shows being seen and many more interviews being done.

If you have an event coming up that you think could do with some almost live coverage, drop me a mail: nic at zoopy dot com.

Do Not Date Him has been making waves of late. I took it upon myself to not judge and instead get the information I wanted from the source. So I did just that and got in touch with the founder of the website, Yolandi van Rooyen (28).

Here is the interview a nh.com exclusive:

Do not date him is a very intriguing concept. Should guys be worried about this particular website?

I do understand that most men feel very worried about the site. The main goal of the website is to make women aware of conmen as well as men that are physically,emotionally and sexually abusive. The idea is to be more pro active about these concerns in society and to help women to make more informed choices next time they start a relationship with a man.

Why did you start the website?

I’ve been in an physically and emotional abusive relationship myself and I wanted to prevent other women and their children to experience the same pain and suffering.

The idea isn’t yours, tell me a bit about how you set up the website, did you hire developers and designers or is it all your skill?

I read about the American website Dontdatehimgirl in a magazine and I immediately thought that this could be very effective with South Africa’s high domestic violence statistics. I did call in the help of developers and a designer and I also had to get a lawyer to help me setup the terms and conditions for the website.

You aren’t very shy, you were written about in the Saturday Star recently. Aren’t you nervous of being outed as the founder?

The Beeld published my name in their article and I have to say I did feel a bit nervous about everyone knowing that I am the founder but now that the cat is out of the bag I have accepted the fact. I am still very camera shy though.

How are you going to prevent abuse of the your service? What is stopping any woman from gaining revenge through your site?

I do moderate all the profiles myself and I am definately in the process of evolving the website into a community site where women will be able to get information and healing. Any user can report a page for any abuse or foul language and when I communicate with my users I encourage them to be responsible with their comments and posts.

This site portrays men in a very bad light whether you like to admit it or not. Is this not just perpetuating the cycle?

Yes it does make some men look bad, but I,allot of women and men feel that it is time to seperate the good men from the bad. For many years and generations this topic has been a taboo and that also didn’t help to stop the cycle. If women can see a very dangerous man’s profile on my website it can prevent her from entering a relationship whith this man and can possibly stop the cycle from jumping from one abusive relationship to another.

Are you aware of any legal action taken by outed men against the original Don’t Date Him Girl website?

Yes, Don’t Date Him Girl had two lawsuits in 2006 and they won both of them.

Have you received any hate mail yet?

Yes,

What are your plans for the sites future?

I am already in the process of evolving the website into a site for information, discussion and healing. There will be experts writing articles about issues that envolve women and the struggles they are facing on a daily basis. A legal expert will help women with issues concerning their rights and the correct procedures to follow. I am also excited to introduce a forum and a rating system.

Do you have a Do Not Date Her in mind?

The domain was bought on the 3rd of the September when the news of Donotdatehim broke. The site launched this week.

Do you plan on making money off the site?

Unfortunately I do still need funding to pay for the hosting monthly and to keep the website live.

And finally, do you have anything you would like to add?

I would like to invite all men to join the fight against women and child abuse. It is not going to help if we stay silent and action have to be taken to eliminate this evil in society.

I’d like to thank Yolandi for being so transparent and getting involved online. I truly do hope that the site reaches its intended goal of protecting women and spreading the word against abuse.

I have my reservations about the potential success of the site, prevention of abuse and proper use of the service but in the end only time and lawyers fees will be able to tell if the site succeeds or not.

Sounds like a plan to me. I am unbelievably disappointed with the officials involved in this.

Springbok scrumhalf Ricky Januarie was arrested on Sunday morning in Durbanville, Cape Town, for drunk driving.

This article was written on September 15th at IOL. Guess what? Ricky Januarie is playing rugby on Saturday for Western Province.

What is wrong with society that sports people (celebrities) are allowed to go free in spite of an arrest? Surely Januarie should be suspended until his court hearing? Surely the Western Province board doesn’t care that much about winning? Surely it is more important to create a sense of responsibility among the idols of SA rugby?

I am going to say it again, I am exceptionally disappointed with the situation and believe that Januarie should be indefinitely removed from professional rugby. This is not his first offense either and that should be even more cause for concern. No, not in our rugby ranks. Here drunk driving is an acceptable crime. Placing other people in danger on the road is seen to be an acceptable way of existing in society. Well I think not. What if Januarie had killed someone? What if he had rammed his car in to someones wall, car, child, mother or grandmother? What then?

It seems that Ricky Januarie will be able to play the rest of the year since his driving under the influence of alcohol case has been postponed to 29 January 2009.

“Januarie, who was arrested by police in the early hours of Sunday morning in Durbanville near Cape Town, has been named to play for Western Province in a Currie Cup match against Griquas at Newlands on Friday. WP coach Allister Coetzee confirmed this week that he will continue to select the player, despite the scrumhalf’s off-field troubles.” - source

But instead January walks free and gets to earn more money and play more rugby all the while, leaving a great trail for the youth to follow. Well done Januarie, well done.

I’ve just surpassed (with this very blog post) my 1000th article on this blog.

I am very interested to know how many blog posts people have on their blogs.

Bloggers seem to have been around for ages and ages and I think I’d be surprised how many of them have actually written a boat load of posts. I’d love to know how many the likes of Mike, Matt, Vince, Cherryflava, coda, Justin, Keo, Paul, Charl, Rafiq, Elan, Gino, Tyler, Vinny, Quirk, Ideate, Tertia, Ray, Chris and Mark have written.

If you have a count, pop it in the comments.

We’ve just sent out a press release from the Zoopy HQ:

Zoopy increases media delivery speed with local hosting

Two months after receiving investment from Vodacom (which now owns a
40% stake in the company), South African social media site Zoopy has
started to roll out some of the large scale community improvements
they hinted at when announcing the Vodacom deal.

Members of Zoopy.com, which launched in March 2007, are able to upload
and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs - both online and via a
choice of mobile applications. Until now, users have been doing so
using international bandwidth to connect to Zoopy’s overseas servers.
This is standard practice for most medium to large online businesses
in South Africa, who are often left with little option but to host
internationally when faced with much higher local hosting fees. The
downside to hosting outside of the country, however, is reduced
loading speed of websites and, in Zoopy’s case, media files like
videos and photos.

According to Zoopy CEO, Jason Elk, this is now a thing of the past for
Zoopy visitors. “As of today, we have servers in South Africa that
will deliver Zoopy content using local bandwidth for South Africans.
The significantly slower international speeds and low bandwidth caps
in SA (many users only budget for the 3gb they receive per month) have
left us as frustrated as any other internet user in the country. So
we’re prepared to do what it takes to deliver our media at amazing
speeds, whether viewed on Zoopy.com or embedded on other sites or
blogs. And for our members, an increase in upload speeds when adding
media to your Zoopy profile will make things quicker and more
convenient too,” says Elk.

Zoopy has also just increased their upload file size limit from 100mb
to 200mb. Elk explains, “If we’re giving visitors a quicker and more
comfortable experience over local bandwidth, we wanted to add to the
enjoyment by giving them more space to express themselves as well.
Members now have 200mb to play with and can upload longer or better
quality versions of their videos, for example. As always, this service
remains completely free.”

“These improvements are part of a determined plan to bring the Zoopy
community everything they need to manage, view and share their media
in all the ways they’ve hoped for, and more”.

This is a very important step for us for various reasons. I wont go in to much detail as there is an entire blog post dedicated to the topic on the Zoopy Blog so head over and read it.

For now visit muti and digg and vote up the post.