I have just installed the new blackberry wordpress mobile application. Very easy to use and even more simple to download.
I tried to attach a photo but that didn’t work. Apparently you need to make a folder in wordpress writeable. You can take a photo with your phones camera and add it to the post which is nifty.
The app even tells you your battery life and signal. Nice one. Get the wordpress application now in the blackberry app store.
I loved my Nokia N95, LOVED IT. I can’t verify that fact any more than stating it that emphatically. It truly was a great piece of hardware and software in combination. But the nature of technology nowadays pushes companies to develop new tech that attempts to outdo the old.
The Nokia N96 was such a piece of tech. It tried to outdo the N95. It succeeded in many areas yet struggled in others.
I’ve been using the phone now for a few months and overall I like it. I think. It has some issues, one being speed. It’s one of those phones that does a lot and achieves it all but very slowly. So opening up your contacts, loading an application or receiving a text message takes a bit of time – when I say a bit of time I am part of the generation that is frustrated when Internet on a plane doesn’t work and when I wait for 20 minutes to get on to a giant piece of metal that flies. So it’s not really THAT slow but takes that extra 5 to 10 seconds to search for a contact or read a text msg.
With that said there are some pros to the phone. The GPS is fantastic and has allowed me to not purchase yet another technological device to clutter my car. It is seemless, effective and works 99.9% of the time.
The multimedia capabilities are great with a 5 megapixel camera and fantastic video recording. Once you’ve got the media though it’s a bit slow.
I also made fantastic use of the phone’s mp3 player on my trip to Kenya to listen to music – the 16gb flashdrive is a great help with this.
Overall I must say I wouldn’t buy this phone at it’s going rate, I’d rather wait for the N97 to come out. But I am glad that I’ve had the chance to mess around with it and make great use of it in presentations and for much of my citizen reporting.
I need to say this out loud and as bluntly as I can. It’s cool that the DA are trying to get social with social media and a newly launched website but are we “social media experts” all so far up our own arses that we can’t see that in the big picture of the 2009 elections the DA’s social media campaign is relatively insignificant.
What the DA is trying to do is actually COMPETE IN THE 2009 ELECTIONS. I am extremely curious to figure out how the DA’s social media campaign fits in to the bigger picture of their general election campaign.
I’m not convinced that social media is going to make much of a difference in the numbers that the DA is looking for as the official opposition for the 2009 elections. I think that it’s essential that they are in the space of social networks, mobile activity and engaging with an online community. But let us get real here for a second, when we say “engaging with an online community”, who do you think we are talking about? Is it 500 000 South Africans with broadband access? I don’t think so. My 20 or so friends who aren’t particularly active online have never seen or engaged with DA online. So what’s the point? When we talk about engaging with social media we are probably, effectively talking about 20 000 or so people at an absolute push. I stand to be corrected here, these numbers are thumbsucked so please correct me if you know the figures.
Why should we be criticising the DA, analysing their every move and be excruciatingly anal about the things they do and the way they do it online? It’s actually ridiculous.
I asked Helen Zille a question online a few days back on twitter. I was wondering what her stance is on Cope integrating politics and religion. I didn’t receive a reply. But let’s be honest Helen Zille is competing in one of the most important elections since our democracy came in to existence, what the hell difference does it make if she answers my question? I want her to do the best job she can do in POLITICS not in social media to be perfectly frank.
And don’t try and pull the Obama card here. We are not the USA, we cannot claim to be and we should try to be. This would lead us in to all sorts of confusion and trouble. We are, majority of the SA population, without Internet and in need of some very distinct things, one of which is not social media let me tell you. The important things right now, in the build-up to election day 2009 (22 April) is to keep the focus of this election on the people, the rights, the voting, elections, masses and not on social media unfortunately.
Many people have covered, blogged and written about the DA and what they are doing online. It’s quite interesting to me that there isn’t much hype, noise or talk around the other political parties. Yet the DA is getting it in the neck. It’s like we, the online community, are berating one of the few political parties who bothered to actually make an effort. Why are we not giving the other parties hell as openly as the DA? Why does it matter? Surely our countries democracy is more important than proper use of Facebook, social tools and multimedia?
I am interested to know how much money has been put in to the DA’s social media campaign and what sort of return of investment they have and will receive? I wonder if in our country that money could not be better used somewhere else? Marketing the DA differently to a wider audience? Because let me tell you, if we all praise and hail the DA as the online guru’s in politics but they get trumped in the election then I will feel betrayed by social media and so will they.
Walter wrote that the DA’s response has him puzzled well my response is simple, in South African politics I would be more concerned if the DA was spending more time answering the social media folk than concentrating on their political campaign. We, as social media people, need to get over ourselves and look at all of this in context.
I want democracy, I want a viable opposition and I want leaders who can engage without being sidetracked from what is important. I also want politics and religion to be separate but that’s another story that shall be told at another time.
Every year around this time there is a buzz. It’s a very strange buzz that arises and expands beyond industry, colour, creed, or any other classification you can think of. January/February is a very special time for me. It’s a time where people think things through, imagine things, create and define things. It’s a time when predictions are made or attempted and a time when everyone seems to be looking for the next big thing.
So what is the next big thing? What is going to make you famous? What will be the next Facebook or Google or fraction of these giants?
I have been hearing um’s and ah’s of the next “Killer App” or killer application. This phrase is taking a few different forms. Some more literal than others.
Andy Hadfield, on his blog, asked if Twitter is going mainstream. I knew what he meant but wanted to push the conversation to a different direction. I wanted to know what defines mainstream in South Africa since many of the online guru’s in SA think that the next Killer App is literally that, a single killer application that will launch a career, make a million or few and destroy the opposition.
This, as far as I can see, is an online impossibility right now. In fact, I think that it’s almost an impossibility for the next few years if you are talking strictly about fixed line internet. Even the coming Internet/broadband/fiber-optic revolution is going to take a while to penetrate the masses and therefore no online killer app in South Africa alone is going to be anything close to a killer app. It just wont.
Here’s a quick quote from my comment on Andy’s post:
I would be more inclined to argue that our precise problem here in SA is that we think a couple of thousand people makes something mainstream. The bare fact of the matter is that it needs to be a tool that is mainly used to be called mainstream (in my opinion only). Thus we could almost call facebook mainstream and be justified in that branding.
We could call Mxit mainstream and I would argue that Mxit trumps what twitter is trying to do.
So instead of us trying to push twitter in to the mainstream we should be looking at the ways the the majority of South Africans communicate (cellphones perhaps) and custom build a twitter-like solution that isn’t going to cost a bomb and provide the same functionality. Or would we call that Mxit or The Grid?
I think we need to think bigger, take products to market and then make them mainstream instead of trying to manipulate the word mainstream to suit our needs.
Simply branding something mainstream because the word was featured on the cover of a magazine with maybe 30 000 circulation cannot make something mainstream.
evl – “The prevailing current of thought, influence, or activity” – can you honestly say to me that twitter is a prevailing current of thought in the South African population, no, the South African ONLINE population. Even if we get the number of twitter users up to 10 000 South Africans that’s still probably between 3%-5% of all South Africans online on fixed internet using twitter. that’s not mainstream. that’s irrelevant.
There are three ways that I think Vincent will begin to see more local millionaires.
is hyper-local content. That is what I think the next “Killer App” is. Hyper local is where it’s at when you combine it with the massive cellphone penetration in this country. An application like twitter is one that can be exceptionally successful in South Africa and reach mainstream status but while it is an online-centric application or service it is going to stay on the fringe in South Africa. We need to make hyper-local content contextual, relevant and easy to access. As far as I can see or believe in SA right now the contextualising of hyper-local and simplified content is going to be the winner.
is a combination of things. The first entity is Africa. It’s one of the few untouched, untapped media markets. The second entity is mobile technology. The combination is a mashup of hyper-local, mobilised, African-centric content. I think that this, moving forward, could potentially be the combination of things that take South Africans in to the next realm of success (or the first depending on where you sit).
is foresight. This is something that copyblogger has blogged about recently. We cannot beat those who entered this market first at their own game, especially not from where we sit.
The truth is, some models that worked a few years ago for early adopters are difficult if not impossible for new players to successfully get going today.
The key to avoiding this frustration is to see where things are going and become an early-adopter in the next big wave of the commercial Internet. Of course, even if you’re already doing well, it never hurts to take a look forward, right?
We need to sit where we sit, contextualise our problems, learn about our opposition and where the market is moving and make the first move. If we don’t make the first move we are going to be behind the early adopters again and have to wait man more years to have another chance to become the early adopters.
I am interested to know what others out there think the next Killer App will be, whether it is literally going to be a single application, a concept, a mindset, a minsdhift, a community or a project. Where’s the money at and is it actually about the money?
Playing golf for me is a fantastic hobbiehobby that gets me out of the house/office and away from the computer. I don’t take it to heart too much. If I play a bad round, then I do, if I play well, then that’s cool too but for the most part I really just enjoy getting out and walking a course with some good company.
Over the weekend I did precisely this with Christof Appel, Mike Stopforth and Craig Rodney. We decided on (Craig booked) playing at Randpark course. What a stunning course but one that seems to enjoy eating golf balls. I lost 5 balls in two holes. I’m honestly not that bad.
In my defense I haven’t picked up a club in about 5 weeks. This is a long time when you are a struggling golfer trying to keep the scores and handicap down!
The round didn’t begin particularly well, as I mentioned, but at the end of the day golf is about the walk for me, it’s about the conversation, the networking, the kak-praat and whatever else occurs. Mr Mike Stopforth unfortunately hammered the nail in to the coffin in style; with an eagle on the 18th hole.
In case you don’t believe that Mike has that sort of talent here’s a pic of the score card (it’s not photoshopped):
In a nutshell Mr Rodney and Mr Stopforth gave Christof and I a good lesson in keeping your head down, your mouth shut and your balls in the fairway. This was the first geek round of golf I’ve actually played and the stakes were high. In case you haven’t guessed the losers had to blog about the winners beating them. So this is that post.
Geeks, golf, sun and a good whipping from the elder gentlemen. Thanks gents, twas a pleasure and as Christof has already said, revenge is sweet but best eaten cold. The rematch is coming.