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.

Today is my last day working at Financial Mail and I can now announce that I am starting a new job at M&G Online on the 19th of May.

My official job title is business manager: mobile and recruitment. But I am sure that more regarding my actual day to day activities will come out as soon as I move in and get involved in the team.

Working with Matt and Vince is definitely going to be one of the great things about my new position. The job is innovative and in a market that is about to burst and is still fairly unconquered in the media sphere.

Obviously moving in to a new market and media house is a big leap for me and one that I am cautiously approaching (with some level of excitement). There are some nerves which should be expected but overall I can’t wait to sink my teeth in to the challenge.

Financial Mail was a phenomenal place to work and to gain some extremely valuable knowledge and experience. The people were sterling and I learned more than I thought I could in a year. But for my career, my brand and the moves I’m trying to make in the industry this is definitely the right move for me at the perfect time.

Things are hotting up in SA, the market is about to explode and I am itching to bury myself in it.

This post has been sitting in my draft folder for a while. To be honest it really feels like an out there mish-mash of thoughts that have surrounding Google Reader (RSS reader by Google) and social networks.

I am really becoming tired of the buzz around social networking. Don’t get me wrong there is value in it and I am not saying it is dead or dying, I am just tired of reading TechCrunch daily and feeling like I’m reading the same post with a different startups name plugged in.

Anyways back to my point. Google Reader (GR) is great, I love it and swear by it. It allows me to follow and read some of my favourite topics, streams, memes, bloggers, blogs and insights. I think that I make fairly good use of most of the services on offer at GR.

Why do I think that Google Reader takes the form of a social network?

Basically for me, in my little world social networking means networking with others. Whether it is friendly-friend sort of stuff or basic “this is what I am reading”, I would consider it a social network.

Thus, therefore and hence, I believe that for me Google reader can be and is a social network.

There are two distinct features that I use in the process of connecting with others:

1. The “Discover” feature that was recently added to the service.
This feature allows you to discover feeds that GR thinks you might like. You can peruse them at your own pace and delete ones you aren’t interested in. This allows me to discover things that I might like and really get rid of things that I don’t. Therefore allowing me to spread my network of subscriptions and giving me more to share with my friends. Which brings me to point 2.

2. Shared items

This is my favourite and most sociable feature. I have a wide network of Gmail chat friends that I interact with daily. I can never find enough tim to talk to them all about valuable things relating to the web. Instead I simply view their shared items. How is that possible? Easy, GR places their shared items in my GR homepage under the heading of “Friends’ shared items”. I can then see who shared what, when and why. I can then interact with them on an effective level targeting a specific topic with them that I know they are interested in.

I can also share items. These items will also be sent to my friends GR pages as well as a specific url that the whole world can see if they want to.

All you need to do to share an item in GR is click the little “Share” button at the bottom of any post in your reader. Simple, effective, networking on a targeted content basis. Too easy.

I’m sorry but what is that? This monster received a whopping 28 years in prison for the following:

In his plea and sentence agreement with the state, James admitted that he had raped the girl in bushes on November 5, 2006, and sodomised her before stabbing her in her side, bashing a rock over her head and throwing her into a fire.

Let me list those things for clarity:

1. Rape
2. Sodomy
3. Stabbing (attempted murder)
4. Bashing a rock over her head (attempted murder)
5. Throwing her in to a fire (attempted murder)

For the above Abraham James received a mere 28 years in prison. He is 30 now and will then get out close to his 60th birthday. That is if he doesn’t get off earlier for “good behaviour”.

One thing I left out, is that the girl that this maniac attacked is 7 years old.

The only solace I can find in his sentence is that even lowly prisoners can recognise that child rapists deserve death and often put the convicted through a living death in prison. Let’s hope there are some fathers in that prison who have 7 year old daughters. Let’s hope it’s James’ cell-mate and let’s hope it hurts. Bastard.

source: IOL

Spam is everywhere, it’s mass, it’s personal, it’s viral and now it’s on Twitter. Twam is really baffling me and consuming a fair amount of my strategic thought.

I am trying to understand a few things:

1. How do these twammers choose who they are going to follow to make up the 20 000th follower.
2. What value does it offer them? If I don’t follow them I can’t see what they tweet.
3. Are they real people who have actually clicked “Follow” 20 000 times?
4. Why would you follow and receive updates from twammers?

Let me explain; a twammer by my definition is someone who insists on following thousands of people and in return hopefully get a percentage of those people following them.

Example:

This person

And this person

Another form of Twam is the constant links that are posted from people promoting their blogs. Mass twammers who follow thousands of people are the worst sort of link-twam posters. It’s frustrating.

I am all for posting links to your blogs if they relate to the current discussion or if you genuinely feel that people will find it of interest, but don’t twam me with every post. I have been trying out twitlink-something-or-other (there are too many apps nowaday to rememeber all their names). I don’t like it and will be removing it soon as I can remember where it is!

Basically I just don’t know how it is that I am lucky enough to be chosen by people like the two above as someone worth twamming. Is it when you reach a certain number of followers? Is it location driven, can they possibly be following your content and think you have a common ground? Surely not. Whichever it is, leave me alone.

Strange. I honestly did not believe that Answerit would manage to take on the mighty Google with a question that I posed.

Yet I stand corrected. Answer it might not have provided me with the perfect answer at all but I was able to narrow the answers significantly. While on Google I was wading through ten tons of word related answers to a question taken out of context. One. word. at. a. time.

So this was my test question: What is the largest website in the world?

It’s broad so the answers could vary, specific enough to warrant a genuine answer, and relevant to the people who might be interested in the topic. So I did help the service out a bit. It was a fairly easy question to garner some answers.

People took to it like wildfire (relatively of course). In 3 hours I received 9 answers. That’s good odds I think. Of those nine there were some relevant answers, some ill-researched ones and a question or two posed back to me. Very community orientated.

When I asked Google the same question, the answers were fairly dismal. Nothing that was relevant or helpful.

This is only one question, one example and very, very early in the life of Answerit. It is not a search engine, don’t misunderstand me, but let’s be honest, we all use Google as an question/answer service.

I have some reservations that can only be proven in time. One of these is the Wikipedia phenomenon. This is basically a temporary version of what Wikipedia is or has become. You can pose a question, on a topic and have a host of people (in the future) rally to find you the right answer. Wikipedia is permanent and it appears to me that questions posed on Answerit are available for a week. So it’s much more of a quick fix answer service. Nice.

But how can we actually trust these answers? Are sources sighted? Are the people answering community members or hired by 24.com? Are they average joes who sit in their dark basements taking pleasure out of giving me incorrect information? You laugh, but those people exist and they are screwing with your mind right now.

So basically, I like the service, I think it needs a bigger community and I think it might need to explain a bit better why we should trust the answers it provides.

When those spammy, mass, rubbish emails that state that you MUST send this mail on to 10-gazillion people or face a frightening and certain death consisting of horns, the devil, skin-melting-torture and any other rubbish…

are sent to you.

I am surprised that I have never seen this video before. It is interesting and a true while being a load of codswallop at the same time.

The video is titled: Epic 2014

It talks of Google and Amazon forming Googlezon while Mircrosoft tries to compete. New York Times competes with Googlezon’s new media algorithsms in the supreme court and lose, they subsequently go offline in protest to a hegemony that is dominating media and democracy where everyone has access to everything all the time.

I wonder how real this is, will be or can be?

Have a look here and here

I admire Apple on so many levels for so many different reasons. Lately It has been thanks to my MacBookPro that I admire Apple (I am converted).

However right now it is the Iphone “IFrenzy” as I have coined it, that has me intrigued. Apple makes announcements but there is no need for them to. They simply need to fart and people like the aroma. The Iphone is set for release in the states very soon and this information has people in a tizz. Bloggers are blogging about it, techies are teching about it and laymen are wishing they knew what it could do.

Here is a video to give you a bit of insight:

Wow. But with a price tag of around $499 I think I’ll give it a skip. In fact, I wont need to as it is unavailable in SA for the next, um, ever just about.

Back to my fascination with Apple. I am sure they have had their ups and down as a company. Hell with Microsoft capturing a large majority of the industry Apple have done a sterling job but not without their fair share of stuff ups.

What absolutely amazes me is that they cannot go wrong at the moment (last 3 or 4 years). They simply “let something leak” to the press and they are sitting pretty and riding the wave of rumours that extend throughout the blogging community world wide. Let’s just be serious for a second here, they are so good at what they do that as a South African blogger with almost no access to the IPhone I am blogging about it and posting video footage about it. That is incredible.

As a young businessman I am definitely trying to take a page out of the Apple book and learn from their unbelievable ability to whip up a media frenzy on a whim.

According to an audit conducted by the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) white men are not only paid more than any other demographic, but they also occupy a large majority of the top managerial positions in the media industry. Black women come in at the bottom of the list while black men occupy a mere 6% of newsroom top and senior management.

I find this extremely strange, not unbelievable, just strange. I have been turned down from a few positions due to the colour of my skin and thought it was OK cause shit happens. I think, and had previously thought that the media industry was always fairly balanced with regard to demographics. I guess I was wrong. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

According to SouthAfrica.info nine media houses were surveyed, including SABC, the Citizen, Kaya FM, Media 24, Primedia, the South African Press Association, the Independent group of newspapers, Johncom and the Mail and Guardian. That is an extremely comprehensive survey that leaves very little to debate.

I think that this is an extremely important study done by Sanef and no doubt one that is close to Ferial Haffajee’s heart. Lets hope that reform and change are upon us and that equality in the industry of the watchdog is near!

I have just completed a corporate freelancing job at a Certain Cellurar provided that I wont mention by name. I am astounded as to the consistent remarks that i received regarding the interviewees (recent graduates) impression of the company.

There two opinions were so congruent that I can’t help but think that they were coached. I am almost 100% sure that they were not coached in their responses, however the comments were remarkably close. This has led me to question the inherent corporate indoctrination that is present in major corporations around the world. If you are getting paid enough, if you consistently happy at your job then you shout praises for your employer from the rooftops. Whether the praises are the truth or not, they are true for the person shouting them.

I have also completed an interview with another major corporation in South Africa that deals with electricity in some way or another. The human resources manager is incredibly good at what he does and honestly made me believe that this corporate was the best company in the world to work for, in spite of me conducting the interview. While back at the ranch the public profile of the company is in absolute disarray.

These scenarios are much like the movie Thank you for smoking, which i loved. Can you justify selling cigarettes to a 16 year old if you are getting paid well enough?

At the end of the day it is a personal choice but one that I think I might be struggling to come to terms with.

I read This post on southafrica.info and it made my laugh, then cry, then wonder and then the irony, and perhaps the dramatic irony kicked in. Let is wait and see how this one plays itself out. Till then, remember this post. Oh, The Irony!

The third installment of my Zeitgiest post features, quite appropriately at the moment, Mr Ray Hartley.

It read: Ray Hartley: rock the bells little brother

There is one thing that no journalist can ever control: someone will always question your story. The thing that I have come to realise is that everyone likes to think that they are in the know. When in actual fact they might not be. There might be some sort of contradiction within certain stories, relaying of stories and the facts within the story.

You can never know for certain, 100% and without fail that someone is telling you the truth. People lie for various reasons. What you can do is make sure that you have yourself covered. Here are some tips that I think will help:

• Make sure you have written down your notes.
• ALWAYS try to record your interviews.
• Maintain a good relationship with your translator if you are using one. You never know when you might need them to corroborate your story.
• Check your facts, again and again and again… and again.
• When submitting stories, keep a copy of the original. Things change in the sub-editing process.

I need to confess something. I have been a bad blogger. I have tarnished my consistent loyalties to the blogosphere. I have spent almost and entire day neglecting my blog. I have spent almost an entire day on Myspace.

I know, i know it’s terrible, but it has happened. The network is just so immense. It’s a bit crazy actually. I’m not really sure if anyone really knows what they are doing on there. The design is shit, the layout is shit, the user interface is… you guessed it, shit. Nothing is really made simple in terms of customization for a user who has no coding experience whatsoever. But I digress.

I spent a say on myspace trying to make it “my” space. I tried hard. I did what I could but just couldnt get the freedom. I asked lotsa people to be my friend (I feel like im back in grade 1) and recieved a few invitations back, nice one. But all in all I think that Myspace has no personable aspects to it. It’s all generic and intrusive that allows anyone to do anything and some do nothing. Not my cup o’ tea really.

I have officially hit my first deadline. All stories are in and the necessary people (some of them were unnecessary) have called me back. I managed to get all the interviews done and am happy with the results. Welcome to the world of Journalism… I think