Coolest guy on the internet

I couldn't help but reblog this: Coolest guy on the internet. hahahahahaha... let's see how this turns out.

Fantastic Nike viral advert

Nike is not mentioned once. The tick appears two or three times on Gossip Girl star, Taylor Momsen but I immediately knew it was Nike. Brilliant.Plus it received almost half a million views on YouTube in a couple of weeks.

The next killer app wont be a killer app at all

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.

The first

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.

The second

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).

The third

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.From the Copyblog post:

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?

Get inked - SIX in Cape Town

I am an addict, I have confessed before but do it again now: I am addicted to Tattoos, and I am pretty bleak that I didn't make my way down to Cape Town for the Southern Ink Xposure event.The event looked huge and it's really fantastic for me to see how widely accepted and practiced tattooing has become. I will definitely be making my way to the event next year. Maybe the Missing Link crew will come down for the ride too.

Whipped on the golf course

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.

Discovery Health Vitality and Planet Fitness Rivonia SUCK

I have just had my Discovery Health and Planet Fitness gym contract revoked. Why? Because according to them I did not attend gym the required number of times in 2008. That number currently sits at 24 times per year or twice a month. Not impossible by any means.Because I am on Discovery and make use of their Vitality benefit (which I pay a monthly fee for) I qualify for a great deal at the gym. For about R800 I can sign up to either Virgin Active or Planet Fitness forever. Yes, R800 is a once off fee with no monthly cost if you stick to one gym. Forever. The condition is that you attend gym the required 24 timer per year.Planet Fitness in Rivonia has a bit of a problem on their hands and have had this as a recurring problem for the whole of 2008. They do not have a sign-in system that consistently works. Which means that for much of 2008 members at Planet Fitness in Rivonia had to sign in manually. This relies on a Planet Fitness employee to enter the CORRECT membership number in to their system and to provide you with a slip (which you now need to carry around with you for the extent of your training session). It is your responsibility to make sure that the employee signs you in correctly, provides you with a slip, doesn't lie to you that they've done it, remember to do or insist that they have done it.Forgive me for being lazy but this, in fact, is not my job. I pay Discovery every month so that all I have to do is attend gym. And I am not the only one. I know of at least 5 other members of Planet Fitness Rivonia who have all received letters of notification that they have not attended gym enough and their contracts have been suspended.Last year I attended well over 24 sessions at Planet Fitness Rivonia. But there is no way for me to prove every single one of the times I was there. I can, however, prove one instance. To gain points on Vitality and up your status you can do various tasks set out by Discovery Health. One is a fitness assessment. I did my Fitness assessment at Planet Fitness in Rivonia, which means that I was actually in the gym on the 21st of October but that date does not register on my Planet Fitness Workout dates (I Worked out after my assessment).Here's the proof from my Discovery Vitality profile online:This basically means that in spite of signing in to gym, on their computer system, according to their database I wasn't present to attend gym, but attended gym that day to do a fitness assessment. Therefore I was one short in spite of not being one short and lost my gym contract.In a nutshell, thanks to Planet Fitness Rivonia I have lost my gym contract. Oh the irony. I am blogging about this because I have been waiting for 4 days for Discovery to call me back with a response.

This is what is wrong with our music culture - Rattex is poison

I was sent a press release about this fantastic new artist breaking in to the market locally. Rattex (seriously?) is his name. I am always very open to promoting new music in South Africa so I decided to give the music video a watch:The above is precisely what is eating away at the soul of the music culture in South Africa and providing our youth with the misconception of what it is to be famous, young, successful and funky. This is a discussion that I have been having for years and years, since I was in a band back at university. We tried very hard to be local, have flavour and maintain bits of our heritage or at least we thought, as much as we could. It's tough though and I will give muso's that much, it's tough to be local.But is it really that tough? Is it so tough to be local that you mimic American artists down to the background colour of your music video, your caps, baggy shoddy denims and "bling". Why are our young rappers trying so hard to be American? Everyone hates America and the only person who could change that perception is Kenyan? African is cool, can't they see that?And what's more is that Rattex claims to be proudly South African:

Rattex is now at the forefront of the new school of proudly South African rappers who understand that Hip Hop, more than any other musical art form, is about addressing important issues and representing where you’re from. It is therefore not suprising that Rattex is one of the pioneers of the ‘Spaza’ movement, where lyrics are performed in a combination of isiXhosa, English and Cape Flats slang.Rattex has always been a true Cape Flats soldier, representing Khaltsha (Khayelitsha) wherever he performs. His music has also been on heavy rotation on community and campus radio stations (such as Zibonele, Bush Radio and UCT Radio) across Cape Town and the Cape Flats. Noteable performances include the Fire on the Mountain festival, Drudge Dialect II, the Hype Magazine Live Session and the Planetary Assault launch party. Rattex has also performed on Channel O’s number 1 rated show, Mzanzi Ridez. Most recently, Rattex supported legendary Brooklyn-born super lyricist Wordsworth on his tour to South Africa.

Read the full bio at his website. What goes through the head of an artist who claims to be from the flats, to embrace South Africanism and then puts on a music video feature his hommies, big cars, bling, scantily clad women and a distinctly western flair to it.I am sorry but I cannot believe that any artist who produces this sort of tripe can claim to be proudly South African.Have a look at a couple of "big rappers" in the following music videos from the States:Spot the difference. Just like his name, I think that Rattex and this Americanised-afro-wanna-be culture confusion is poising poisoning the music and culture in South Africa.

The Fresh Drive, Hellopeter and some very sad listeners

I absolutely love listening to DJ Fresh and his team on the afternoon drive on 5fm. I heard about the following complaint against the Fresh Drive on 5fm and I had to head over to Hellopeter and get the full story:

I always listen to 5fm when getting ready. On Wednesday 7 January 2009 I heard an advert to call in NOW to win tickets to Mafikizolo performing at Emperors Palace. I LOVE the group so called in immediately. I got through and spoke to the morning show (Koula and team) they said no- I should call the fresh drive it is their promotion.That's what I did and I actually got through again. Spoke to Fresh and said i'm calling regarding the Mafikizolo tickets. They commented that it was yesterday's promotion. I told them my whole story and said it is false advertising. (which it is)Fresh was very nice and said I should hold the line they will get me tickets. I spoke to Catherine- she took my details and said she'll call me back. She did on the day and said she can't get hold of the promoter but will call me the following day.I never received a phone call from them again.I was really looking forward to my first highlight for 2009 and I'm really dissapointed in the Fresh drive. It seems they only want to sound cool on air and don't follow up on on air promises.

The user on Hellopeter is alidek, she (I think) is a very sorry case. If all you have to do in your day is bitch and moan about calling in a day late for a FREE giveaway, receive personal contact from the on air DJ and members of his team and then still moan after they try and can't help repair your tardy entry to a competition then I am sorry but you need to catch a bloody wake up.Apparently Fresh was notified of the "problem". What this lovely lady decided to omit from her complaint was that Katherine - part of the Fresh Drive team - promised to send the lady CDs to make up for her disappointment. When Fresh found out about this woman's pettiness, he decided to revoke her CD pleasantries from the team and publicly told her off. Good on you Fresh.

Lamu island, Kenya - no TV, no laptop, no meat

Kenya is an extremely interesting culture and one that I hope to return to very soon (see Kelele).I was very specific with my intentions for a December holiday after an absolutely manic 2008. I wanted it to be calm, relaxed, non-technologically based and quiet. I wanted to read, to wander around a beach if I felt like it, to eat great food, meet great people and generally forget everything.We could not have picked a better venue for this and as you can tell by the title of this post I did not watch TV, use a laptop or eat meat (purely by coincidence) for the entire trip. Not too shabby if you ask me.The people are friendly, exceptionally friendly and to be honest by the end of the 12 days I wanted someone to swear at me actually. Friendliness is one thing, being over-friendly is an entirely different experience. The locals on the island of Lamu know where their bread is buttered and that is tourists. To be more precise, obnoxious British and American tourists. But more on that lot a bit further on.We were taken for a ride or two, spent a bit too much on Dow rides (the local means of transport), paid a bit too much for a meal here or there and definitely got absolutely screwed over by the colonial capital of the island, Peponi Hotel. Peponi is owned by a drunk, presumptous, wealthy Brit who clearly couldn't give a crap about anything other then where his next drink was coming from. It's a pity really because his wife seems to work incredibly hard, the managerial staff, waiters and barstaff also worked themselves silly, not the owner. He remained relatively drink the entire time. Thankfully I didn't have the misfortune of staying in the hotel, we visited occasionally for a drink and for new years eve - mistake.The first six or so nights we spent at a quaint little B'n'B in Shella (the "Europe" of Lamu as the locals say) called Sea breeze. The staff there were helpful, pleasant, friendly and I would most definitely suggest checking them out if you are heading to Lamu. It's very basic in the setup, a bed, a shower/bathroom/toilet area and a cupboard. That's it and that's more than you need.A few things I learned on the trip:1. Don't take closed shoes.2. Take two pairs of boardshorts.3. ONLY take t-shirts.4. Take insect repellent, buy it, steal it, just have it.5. Don't take anything a local says as the truth. Get a second opinion.6. Bargain prices down.7. If you feel like you have found a deal, take it.8. Experience the local culture.Number 8 on the above list was somewhat harder to achieve specifically because you are actually living the daily lives of the locals anyways on Lamu. They kept saying that Lamu is a 365 holiday. Which it appears to be. But in order to achieve the real authentic feel of the island we took guided tours of the "slums" of Lamu, we stayed in a self-catering unit for the final 5 nights which pushed us to go to fishmarkets, fishermen, vegetable markets and more to ensure that we were well equipped for our stay. That was one of the highlights for me. Seeing the fresh fish, cooking with fresh produce and co-existing as much as two relatively white tourists can do in the space of a two week holiday.I truly hate going to a place and feeling like a real life tourist. I love experiencing culture for culture in the true sense of the word. If this is what you are after and have a good way with people then Lamu is most definitely the place for you.Here are some photos and videos of the trip:

Online Salaries in 2009

I just received the Bizcom newsletter. In it there was a very interesting salary survery. I downloaded it, opened it up and scrolled slowly down to the online survey results.Here they are - click to enlarge.So where to you stack up? Where do you fit in? You can download the full document by clicking here.It's interesting for me to note that the "heavyweight" jobs aren't even surveyed for anything less than 5 years experience. I completely agree with this method of sorting as I think there are too many overpaid, under-delivering "guru's" in the online market.

The new Camel packaging

I am a smoker. No shock there, everyone's seen me smoke, many photos online feature me with a smoke in hand. I am also a dedicated Camel man. I have been smoking Camels for over 5 years now.In this time I've seen various designs and brands. I still swoon over the old camel box that was white and tasted so much better. But what can you do?Here is the latest Camel Box:

Welcome to 009

Just a short post to say that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. That's not possible, they haven't really believed that since, um, sometime ago I think, like a few centuries or so.I have a new theme, it's clean and simple, no ads. I'll still be making some changes. I figured that I don't get enough reads right now to worry about editing a live theme so you might just have to deal with that for a few days.This year is going to be pretty intense. Let's get it on. 009, shaken and stirred.

Did and did not do 2008

At the end of last year I wrote a blog post of To Do's for 2008.It has been absolutely incredible year for me. It hasn't been an easy year or one filled with much certainty other than that of my own gut feel and decisions. Those I have learned to never doubt. Ever.

Here is the list:

1. Play more golf - at least once a month, the goal is twice a month.1.2 Get a golf membership at a club - I’ve chosen JCC.2. Skydive3. Bungee Jump4. Get my deep see diving license (or is it an open water license?).5. Travel to an African country - This I have never done before. Embarrassing, I know.6. Organise a boys weekend away over a long weekend - This can involve golf or not, it’s really up to you and circumstance.7. Have more fun in general - Yes work is hard and yes I love my sleep. But this is not an excuse not to have fun. I want to go dancing, go clubbing, have sundowners, cocktails, dinner parties and more. All with Jen, my friends and people who I appreciate.8. Organise a dinner party and cook the meal myself.9. Go for cooking lessons - My preferance is Thai food and Wok cooking.10. Learn how to make sushi.11. Cook dinner at home, myself, for family and friends at least once a week.12. Learn how to relax - In other words, get offline more often.13. Make use of weekends more effectively - This involves going away for weekends, getting out of the house, not sleeping in late for no reason.14. Invest my money - I am on the road to that one already.15. Buy my first property.16. Learn how to code php.17. Go fishing.18. Reconnect with one friend who I’ve lost touch with.19. Go overseas - Preferably to somewhere I’ve never been. I hear Thailand is beautiful.20. Start another blog - I have already put this one in motion with a friend of mine. More on this in the new year I think.

What I did:

1. Play more golf - at least once a month, the goal is twice a month.5. Travel to an African country - This I have never done before. Embarrassing, I know.6. Organise a boys weekend away over a long weekend - This can involve golf or not, it’s really up to you and circumstance.7. Have more fun in general - Yes work is hard and yes I love my sleep. But this is not an excuse not to have fun. I want to go dancing, go clubbing, have sundowners, cocktails, dinner parties and more. All with Jen, my friends and people who I appreciate.8. Organise a dinner party and cook the meal myself.11. Cook dinner at home, myself, for family and friends at least once a week.12. Learn how to relax - In other words, get offline more often.13. Make use of weekends more effectively - This involves going away for weekends, getting out of the house, not sleeping in late for no reason.14. Invest my money - I am on the road to that one already.15. Buy my first property.20. Start another blog - I have already put this one in motion with a friend of mine. More on this in the new year I think.

The Explanations

1. I managed to successfully play more golf than I ever have. I've been playing for ± ten years. This year was the first out of all of those that I took it more seriously. I played over 50 rounds of gold this year and managed to take my scores down from 100 - 104 (yes, I know, VERY bad) to a consistent 91 - 92.5. I am heading to Kenya on the 26th. Fantastic.6. We went away for a long weekend to the Vaal. Stayed with my brother and 7 best mates. Played two rounds of golf, braaied and had an absolute riot. Golf scores were crap! Thank to the Brandy.7. This year was definitely the year of balance, enjoyment and lessons. Matt and Vince taught me some very good lessons while I worked with them. If you can't get your work done between 9 and 5 then you are either not planning your day well enough or your priorities are all screwed up. I learned, with the help of my girlfriend that being offline can often help your online profile and life.8. This was done in conjunction with various other parties on varying scales. But I most definitely reacquainted myself with my love for food, wine and great conversation.11. Surprisingly this was one of the more difficult consistent goals to achieve. We all know how busy life can be, but this has to have been one of the most rewarding things I did all year.12. A quote: "If you take your laptop with you to Kenya you can go alone." Needless to say the laptop is staying at home.13. Taking up a job with a Cape Town head office has been a surprisingly pleasant experience. I've learned that hopping on a plane, heading off to Cape Town, DBN or wherever involves nothing more than a maximum of two hours in a plane. That's it. It's done.14. The investment of money is probably the thing I am most proud of myself for doing. My mother (wise lady that one) pushed me to plug away much of my monthly earnings in to an RMB money market account. This was undoubtedly the best thing that I have done for myself, ever. It leads me to point 15.15. Buy my first property - I've been holding off blogging about this for various reasons. It's always tricky announcing something this large in ones life for reasons that you can understand if you apply yourself. Nothing more to say other than I am moving in on February 1st 2009. This will become my project for 2009.20. Number 20 was completed with the launch of Nudjit. Thanks to Justin and Gregor for helping to make this one a reality. I also launched another blog with a little HELP, Why Vote that will yield much more action in the coming months.

So Long 2008

All in all, out of the 20 goals I set for myself I achieved 11 of them almost down to the word. The nine that I did not manage to get around to matter not. Why? Because I can assure that the nine I did not achieve were almost certainly replaced with an infinite amount of lessons and smaller victories for me personally and professionally this year.Oh yes - something that wasn't formally on my list but will be on every list of to do's that I put together, my newest addition:Photo courtesy of Renee.

TuneUpMedia - stack, sort and rack your iTunes Library

I am absolutely obsessive about music, about my music and my iTunes Library. I also don't like to purchase CD's often so that means that I occasionally visit some Russian cheapstores and download music for a dollar or a few cents. I also make use of LimeWire.Downloading tracks from so many different sources means that a lot of the time I'm missing album art or genre, or album info or something. It kills me.So I found Tune Up Media. I couldn't help myself and bought a lifetime membership (risky in the current online platform I suppose) but for all of $20US you can sort organise and download your album art for your entire music collection.I did have some trouble initially with the program. It wouldn't open, it wouldn't play, it wouldn't let me register and all of this after I'd forked out the cash.But a simple email to the support staff and I had an almost permanent member of the TuneUp staff helping me. I was asked to do a few things (very laborious work) that would help sort the problem. It didn't work. I then tweeted my problem and was incredibly surprised to receive contact from the CEO of the company who instructed me to email him personally and he'd have it all sorted. Low and behold today, TuneUpMedia is working and I am sorting through all my music/album art as we speak!

Defining 08/09 - analysing the year past and the year ahead

It's fast moving towards the final day of 2008. What a year it has been. I usually (much like many bloggers) put together an end-of-year post that sums up a few things and pulls together events all nicely. I am going to be composing one of those articles but this isn't it.This post is a collection of answers from some of the top people, movers and shakers and industry leaders in the online market. I asked them two questions:

1. What was the single most defining moment in the South African online industry in 2008?

And

2. If you were to make one prediction for 2009 what would it be? And don't tell me that mobile is the next big thing!

So let's dive straight in to the answers:Fred Roed, CEO of digital marketing agency, World Wide Creative.1. Barack Obama winning the election. This meant that digital agencies such as World Wide Creative could justify their presentations demo-ing how messages are accelerated online. We could say ‘See! Look how he did it!’2. Hype around Mobile and Social Media will be removed from the industry, meaning that digital will go mainstream. Following the international norm, marketing agencies will increasingly use online as the major destination point for all the other channels to feed into.Vincent Maher, Portfolio Manager for Social Networking at Vodacom SA1. For me the defining aspect of the whole year is that there didn't seem to be a defining moment. There we a few things that happened but none of them were defining in the classic sense. In many ways this is a sign of maturity in the industry and an indication of resilience to smaller influences.2. The breadth and reach of social networking is going to increase through services like Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect and this will also reveal several vulnerabilities in the form of viruses and spam across these networks. Location-based services are going to become more accessible on the API level for developers to incorporate and, importantly, the global financial meltdown is going to cull a lot of the flimsy Web 2 operations and make the industry a little more intersting.Andy Hadfield, The Internet & Social Media Guy, FNB1. The credit crisis. The credit crisis is probably going to precipitate Bubble 2.0 - which is excellent news. Unlike last time, there have been precious few IPO's, which means while many web startups may go down - they won't take public shareholders with them. And any bubble burst presents a great opportunity for web companies that offer REAL value to rise to the fore. Oh, and Twitter. But it seems 3 million really active users still counts for value in someone's book :)2. The battle to own the social profile will increase. FaceBook vs MySpace vs Google Friend Connect vs Et Al are going to muddy the waters for the first 6 - 8 months of the year. Hopefully, coming out of that will be value driven profiling services which allow you to centrally store your social profile, pick it up whenever you want and hop all over the web. Let's face it: storing a picture, bio and web links is not a value driven social profile. These companies are going to have push the boundaries a little to force consumers to make a call on where their social data and social networking time investment will sit...Heather Ford - Web social entrepreneur1. Quality Vacation Club suing blogger Donn Edwards(http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/) for defamation. I think it'simportant because, while the same comments have come from themainstream media, QVC has chosen to sue the blogger. It will beinteresting to see how this turns out - at the crux, I think, iswhether 'fair comment' on a blog is being seen by South African courtsas equal in importance to 'fair comment'.2. My prediction is that we're going to see greater diversity in theSouth African blogging community next year - people linking to thoseoutside of their social circles, invitations to bloggers' socialgatherings like the 27 dinner, and more training and connections(here's hoping!)Duncan McLeod, technology editor, Financial Mail, and editor of www.FMTech.co.za1. Definitely Altech's victory against communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri which now allows just about anyone to build a communications network in competition with incumbent operators such as Telkom, Neotel and the mobile phone providers.2. Bandwidth caps will soar -- people will get at least triple the bandwidth for the same price -- as Seacom comes online. This will lead to strong growth in online business in SA in 2009.Charl Norman is the co founder and chief operations manager (COO) for Blueworld Communities. BWCOM owns numerous niche social networks based in South Africa.1. Blueworld Communities (www.bwcom.co.za) being acquired by Naspers - this paved the way for other acquisitions in our local space - Zoopy and Afrigator soon followed with investment from Vodacom and MIH/Naspers. This created investor confidence in our small local market and enabled other startups to more confidently seek investment.2. The economic crisis will slow down venture capital investments and startups unable to figure out their revenue model will have their funding reviewed or forced to merge with other similar lower tier startups.Users will own their online identity (e.g. profiles) with tools like Google and Facebook connect. Users will carry this identity along with them around the web forcing online communities like social networks to embrace data portability technology.Social media will also become more mainstream as tools like Twitter will be adopted by the general public and not just geeks. Good companies will have concrete social media strategies as part of their overall marketing strategy.Catherine Luchoff is joint partner and founding member of MANGO-OMC1. There isn't one particular moment I can single out as the defining moment of 2008. Rather, I consider 2008 to be a defining year: One in which social media, crowd sourcing and micro-blogging found their footing and laid the foundation for converged campaigns that will, and have, defined the way we communicate and consume information.2. With filter failure on the rise and information overload rife, community manager positions and descriptions such as 'trusted filter' will become more prominent. 2009 will also be the year in which the foundation for a holistic measurement tool, one that takes all channels into account (online, offline and mobile), will be defined.Interesting stuff. Hopefully those who didn't get to the questions will be able to post their responses in the comments of this post. I sent the email out to ±25 people for their comment.

Zoopy on 5fm - the podcast

Have a listen to the podcast from the show this afternoon:

Win with 5FM And Zoopy

5FM has just launched a new show hosted by Poppy on Saturdays. It's called the KFC Global Express and they have just started to get involved with the online market.Zoopy is the very first website to feature on the show with Poppy.What we need from you is to head on over to Zoopy, register and upload content tagging it with "5fm". It will then be pulled through to the Zoopy 5fm page where you'll be able to see the uploads and share them around.So head over to Zoopy now, listen to 5FM via streaming media and get registered and uploading!

Pownce is is shutting down

I received this email this morning:We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or newpro accounts.To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you cansave your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will notbe accessible after this date.Please visit our new home to find out more:http://www.sixapart.com/pownceOur thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,The Pownce Crew

WeBlogtheWorld tour - get the interviews right here

On Sunday the WeBlogtheWorld US Bloggers tour of South Africa kicks off. As you might know I am fortunate enough to be tagging along (who says blogging doesn't pay?).I am/will be blogging on ±6 different platforms. Count them with me: SA Rocks, this blog, Homecoming revolution, Zoopy, possibly the Zoopy blog, and maybe TechLeader blog (but that's if I have time) as well as being supplied with some space on the Bizcommunity blog too. Phew, lots of blogging.So I have decided that it's best for me to split up the content. This trip is filled with so much stuff and so many angles that I can easily break up the content in to various channels.For this blog I have chosen to try and get as many interviews, chats and discussions with the international bloggers up here as possilble. So look out for the interviews and contact me via the comments section of this post with thoughts and suggestions on what you'd like to hear them talk about.On the other blogs I will be showcasing South Africa, the people, the places we visit an the reactions of the bloggers to the country that we are privileged to live in.

Preliminary blogger results for Speak UP!

I've just had contact from organisers of the Speak UP! blogging census.Seems as though the big guns in the blogosphere relating to number of bloggers is Cape Town. I find this one a tough pill to swallow. I think there were some extenuating factors to consider. But that's just me as a JHB resident talking!Apparently there were ±1000 responses to the census which is relatively good considering there are only estimated to be ±7000 bloggers (allegedly) in SA who are active. So 1/8 turnout isn't too shaby. Not fantastic, but not too shabby.Here's the slide I received about location.I am still very interested to see what the final results will be. Apparently they are coming out on Monday so keep your eyes peeled for those.