Nothing better than golf on a Sunday

Played a round of golf yesterday at ParkView. What a beautiful course. Makes me love this country everytime I step on to a golf course with the sun shining and good mates around me.Here's a photo:

MTN - Unlimited bandwidth within 8 weeks

Can someone please explain this to me. I drive past this banner advert on a lampost every day. I still have no clue what it means.

My Wikia Search preview photo Features on TechCrunch!

Very cool.My photo from the Icommons innovation event is currently being featured on TechCrunch. I am extremely chuffed!Anyways, here's the screenshot!

Screeshot of the Jimmy Wales "Socialpedia"

I seem to be the only person who managed to snap a photo of Jimmy Wales' new project. So I thought I should post it here for people to see.Matt has a great couple of posts that were picked up by Mashable! Good on you Matt!

Bring bloggers and editors together

My post about Charl Norman and Intelligence magazine seems to have raised some interesting issues.Bloggers vs journalists, ethics and standards and a broad lack of writing integrity.Vincent has come out and said that he is willing to organise a meeting between bloggers and mainstream media editors (or editor). What do you think?From Vincent:

If any bloggers are interested, I would be happy to organise a session between bloggers and our editor as an ethics and legal primer. Anyone interested? Email me vincent@vincentmaher.com

I think that this is a great idea and one that can benefit various people on various levels. Email Vince and let's get the ball rolling.

Conflicts of interest -What happened to ethics?

Any trained and qualified journalist knows that ethics are of great importance when writing an article. The topic, angle and genre of the article are irrelevant when it comes to ethics. They should always be present.I would like to take Charl Norman to task in this regard. I read this Muti'd article from his blog and have an issue with the entire concept.Firstly the list that Charl has compiled is obvious to an extent, no problem with that for the most part. However there are two inclusions that I think fall under conflict of interest. What is this list based upon? Opinion, choose, random selection?How could Charl have written an article wherein he names two of his own products as top web startups to watch? It's one thing to claim this on your personal blog as a blogger. But when the byline of the article states that the writer is a blogger, freelance journalist and web entrepreneur and then advertises his own blog I have a problem.That is some sort of paid advertising or an advertorial article. I immediately get the feeling while reading the article that the idea for the article stems from a want to promote Blueworld and to a lesser extent ZoopedUp.I am not saying this is the case, I am just saying that this is how I feel when I read the article.Intelligence should be weary of making this sort of thing a habit. The article is fine but would have been better served written by a journalist not involved in the content directly. In fact the best outcome would and should have been to look at Charl's blog post and ask an "objective" journalist to base a more extensive article on the blog post.All that Intelligence have done (in a not-so-intelligent manner) is helped to promote Charl's projects and along the way maybe include some other cool projects.I am all for promotion of web startups in SA and any promotion is great. But comes a point where the line must be drawn. The thing that really urks me is the fact that this article is branded as journalism. There is a fine line between bloggers and journalists. They are not one in the same thing at all and don't claim that they are. The article that appeared in the magazine was an expanded blog post for an author looking to self-advertise, on some level at least.Ethics are becoming scarce and I hope this isn't a trend that continues. New media is not a quick fix for larger magazines to fill pages with content. Let us not fall in to that trap.

Morning Joke - Them Greeks

After having dug to a depth of 10 meters last year, Italian archaeologists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.Not to be outdone by the Italians, in the weeks that followed, Turkish archaeologists dug to a depth of 20 meters. Shortly thereafter, headlines in Turkish newspapers read: "Turkish Scientists have found traces of 200-year old copper wire, and have concluded that Turks already had anadvanced high-tech communications network one hundred years before than the Italians !One week later, "The Kathimerini", a Greek newspaper, reported the following: "After digging as deep as 30-meters in fields near Athens, Sakis Petropoulos, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing.Sakis has therefore concluded that 300-years ago, Greeks were already using wireless networks.

Mentez.com, a FB app competition and ownership issues

This sort of thing is really dodgy sometimes and thanks to the Sharepointexpert I got wind of this one.The idea that Mentez.com is proposing is immediately enticing. Especially when R40 000 is up for grabs. But at a second look the terms and conditions are somewhat concerning.The competition seems to be run in rounds. First you send in an idea, then the best ideas are accepted by judges then you have until sometime in January, 2008 to develop the app. Then, simply by entering the compeition you:

11. By submitting a registration form, each Participant fully and unconditionallya. Agrees to these Terms and Conditionsb. Authorise Mentez to use their personal data for the purposes of running and promoting the Contest this year and/or in subsequent years;c. Will be deemed to have read, accepted and agree to be bound by these Contest Terms and Conditions. Participants are advised to print and keep safe these Terms and Conditions.

The full terms and conditions are available here. But let's move on.To me, the R40 000 is miniscule when considering the potential of a brilliant local FB app. IT feels like the website is asking brilliant SA developers to write these apps. Then host them with Mentez and negotiate a contract regarding the app thereafter. Hmmm... and who owns the app? The competition winner? The writer of the app? The company, Mentez, who?

15. For the applications that are selected to pass to the development phase of the contest, the participants will have to sign a development, hosting and monetization agreement with Mentez.com. This agreement is readily available for your review and is required to qualify for the second stage of the contest.

Then it seems that if you are unhappy with the outcome of the event you are not allowed to say anything:

22. Participants must not act in any way or fail to act in any way or be associated with any cause or group which would have a negative impact on the reputation of Mentez, the Contest or the Judges.

What happened to freedom of speech? We've seen this before on the local scene with the podcast competition earlier this year and others. Now can these competition people stop taking us for accepting, naive bafoons and realise that if we are going to make FB apps, we want the glory, which probably equals more than R40 000 if the app is great. Just my thoughts.I invite Mentez.com to email me and let me know their thoughts and clearly explain the terms and conditions. I am intererested to focus on the questions of hosting the app, ownership and profit share specifically.What do you think?

Sugar we're going down - in fast forward!

This Youtube "star" makes me laugh. What a great idea but what a pointless one too!!

Googlethu lives

I was in CT this weekend. In all the over-Africanised paraphenalia that I stumbled across there was one gem for a geek in CT... Googlethu. Laugh It Off does it again:

Is Facebook going the Myspace way?

50cent has a Facebook (FB) page. Yes, it's true. It is a custom page made for 50c (hahaha) to promote himself and his music and events.I don't know if this is such a great idea. How does one differentiate between the "real" 50 and an imposter?I think this could be the start of something bad.Oh, also, while you're at it check out the new Facebook Ads platform.

I finally found a use for Facebook

Eventually I did something worth while with Facebook today. I conducted an interview for SA Rocks with a girl who lives in the US of A.That's about the most productive personal thing I've done on FB in the last 4 months.

Congratulations for the Sprout!

I haven't blogged in a while, I know, bad blogger blah blah blah. But this is just a quick post to say Congratulations to Paul and Gina Jacobson!I received an SMS from Paul at 7:42 this morning to announce that Sprout was born! A healthy boy and two very happy parents I am sure.If you are so inclined feel free to check out Paul's Flickr page and see the beautiful boy in the flesh!Again, congratulations to you both!

Is it wrong to like Britney Spears?

I know, I know, I have a problem. "Hi, my name is Nic and I like the new Britney Spears song."I am sorry, It just happened one day. I heard it once, just once and I was hooked. Now everytime that I hear it my head starts to "bop" slightly and my mouth begins moving. Words protrude from the gaping whole in my face and I begin to actually "enjoy" the song.BUT SO WHAT?So flipping what? I can't help if she has a good producer, if they edit her voice, if they get themselves a Timbaland sounding bit with frilly vocals at the end. I can't help it that I like to see her suffer and then make a semi-comeback of altogether irrelevant proportions. I just can't help myself anymore.If you are reading this and shaking your head then I know one thing for sure; you are a closet Britney fan and think that someone might see you agree with me.I just can't bloody help it any more, I dig the new Britney song and is that so wrong?

Google flexes muscles - companies crack under pressure

This post is a bit of a bitch, a bit of a rant and me showing a bit of concern.Google's recent attack on paid text links has me a bit baffled. Have they not enough? Have they not more than they need? When does it stop? I guess it doensn't.This is the way I see it and why this whole thing concerns me. In ever governed state there are strict and stringent rules against monopolies in almost every industry. This helps push prices down thanks to competition, it helps jobs to be created, it promotes equality and fairness (amongst a host of other things that I am not educated enough to mention).The thing here is that Google doesn't necessarily operate within or infringe upon any states monopoly laws. The simple fact is that anyone is allowed to compete against Google but none will survive for now.If you run an online agency that centres around selling clients paid text link ads then your business is done fore. Not because Google is operating in your space, buying your business or infringing upon your ability to do business, but because Google doesn't like paid text link ads.The simple and sad fact is that if I was penalised for having paid text link ads on my blogs and my Pagerank dropped from 5 to 1, I'd be pissed and I'd take the links down. That means that the company who sells these ads is in a bit of a pickle.What's stopping Google from doing this about everything? What's stopping them from saying that Facebook is satan and that if you are associated to Facebook in any way you will be penalised in one way or another? Nothing is.It all just makes me uncomfortable.

iPod Touch Hack - iJailbreak

Jailbreakme is all the rage right now for setting your iPodTouch free. It's a one-click app on your touch safari browser that might not work if you are an international user of the touch. I am and it didn't.I had to use the iJailbreak Itunes hack for Mac. This hack is incredible for various reasons, one being the 13 year old boy who created and broke the entire "Jailbreak" concept. Stunner, he's 13, can you say loser complex over here?Anyways on to more important things:Hacking my IpodToch (IpT) really wasn't as tough as almost every flipping guide made it out to be. You know what I did?I dowloaded this software from the wunder-kind's page. I then proceeded to follow some or other stupid guide centred around the kids software and eventually found the Ipod Touch Fans support forum. This forum is the be-all and end-all of everything you need that is touch orientated.From there I found this video:I followed the video and wham, bam, spank me man, it worked. Too easy.I can now check out the weather in JHB, check my mail via the app, without connecting to gmail through safari, write and email notes via the touch, I have an etch-a-scetch and many other things. Oh, I also located my house on Google maps...Incredible.Do yourself a favour and try it out, if you feel uncomfortable just restore your touch or iPhone to original settings and you are back in business.How to restore your iPod Touch:1) Connect the iPod Touch2) Press and hold sleep+home until the device reboots.3) Keep holding until that "please connect me to iTunes"-screen appears4) iTunes says something about having detected a touch in recovery mode. Allow it to do its thing.If you get the -18 error, proceed:5) Disconnect the iPod Touch6) Close iTunes7) Reconnect the iPod Touch8) iTunes launches and shows message as in step 4, but this time, the recovery will workThere is a list of working iPhone apps for the iPod Touch here.If you have any questions or concerns ask away, I can't promise an answer but I will try.

The Facebook song

Myspace: Tom lied about his age...who cares?

I don't give a toss that "Tom" lied about his age. Not. A. Single. Toss.Apparently this is newsworthy stuff according to Newsweek.

CherryFlava steps it up a notch

I love the Cherry sites. All of them. The man sees a niche and he guns for it.The latest addition to the Flava arsenal is The Cherryflava Show.The content of the video is great, it is centred around a social butchery. Simple concept for us bloggers. Social meaning many people involved, butchery meaning meat. Easy.So basically Cherry goes to Mzoli's and experiences what a community shop is like. One shop contributes the boose, another the bread, a third the cutlery or anything else that you need and then Mzoli's provides the meat, the braai-ers and the rest. You pay, you sit, they braai and bring. Simple, social, effective.And it works.The CherryFlava TV show works too. Jon Cherry and Heinrich Hattingh do a great job at hosting the show and keeping it interesting. Productiopn is great as well as the backing track.If you got a second, check out the show now:

The best no-smoking advert ever

Wow, this is scare and brilliantly put across. Brilliant.
Do You Smoke? U Got To Watch This... - The top video clips of the week are here