This is how you grow a Mo, Bro

So to all those who said that my Greekness wasn't showing itself with my hair growth on my upper lip. Well I'm back in the game.

Mo-Grow day 7

Here it is. In all it's glory, my Movember 1 week growth.I'd just like to make a public statement that this is my growth after being clean shaven. I started growing on November 1st. I've seen many Mo's out there that clearly began before Movember. I'm keeping it real.

Mo-grow day five

Here it is. I feel like I'm going for a full Mo of grossness. But if you're going to do it, do it properly.

The two-day mo-grow

Movember began two days ago. I shaved on November 1st at 7am. This is my growth so far:Here's a link to the original post where you can see my Movember commitments and list of sponsors!

Why women should NOT withhold sex over Movember

This blog post started off as a "what does it mean" blog post. It has now turned in to something quite serious. Women should NOT be withholding sex, action, kisses, love or any other form of pleasure from men who grow Mo's. Mo Bros are growing their Mo's for a very serious reason: Men's health. We're raising awareness and promoting the health of men. This is a serious topic that has recently been glossed over. Not anymore.Directly from the Movember global website:

Movember (the month formerly known as November), the month long moustache growing charity event held each year to help raise funds and awareness for men’s health is officially in South Africa.Having started in Australia seven years ago, Movember has grown to be an international event, taking place in six countries. This global expansion looks set to continue with demand from Mo Bros and Sistas around the world wanting to grow moustaches and celebrate Movember in their own countries. As a direct result, six new countries have been added to this year’s campaign, of which South Africa is one!Movember is about bringing back the moustache for a serious cause and sees Mo Bros, supported by the Mo Sistas in their life, register at Movember.com and then start Movember 1st with a clean-shaven face. They have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache, whilst raising funds and awareness.

I particularly like the part about Mo Bros getting support from their Mo Sistas. Don't be that woman, don't have double standards. You know that if you (ladies) told us that in the name of Breast Cancer you weren't shaving your legs for a month we'd have zero ground to stand on and would definitely NOT withhold pleasure from you for standing up for something that is important to you.So buck up, back your man and if you don't have a man then pursue a Mo Bro this Movember.This Movember I will be growing what some term an "uber-tash". Basically it's a normal moustache, but it just happens to be sitting upon my face, a Greek face, a face that has experienced shaving since the tender age of 12 years old. Yes, you read that right, I started shaving at 12 years old.But I think that this Movember is going to mean a little bit more to me this year.This is the first year that I'm going to be growing my UT (uber-tash) in Cape Town.Movember will mark the beginning of the third month that I have stopped smoking.I'm going to be trying to run by the sea every week day at least in Movember.Healthy eating is going to be the final stage of the changes happening in Movember.So all in all, things have changed a lot for me this year and it seems like Movember is the month that it all comes together.A massive thank you goes out to the rocking Richard Mulholland who is sponsoring my Movember trip this year. I'll be donating half the money raised to a charity close to Rich called Liefling and the rest of the money to Footprings Play.Rocking times. Business is booming, Cape Town is gorgeous, my health is on the rise, I'm finally running again and life is good.

How we got Venture Capital in South Africa

On August 1st, 2010 Vincent Maher and I Co-Founded Motribe; a mobile-web start-up. We launched the product on September 14th 2010. We received a seed round of venture capital from 4DI Capital and below are a few thoughts on my experiences with Motribe and what we went through to get our company off the ground with a Venture Capital partner.

The people

Some say that business partners are like married couples. I don't think so. Marriages are very easy to exit out of, divorce is rife. Getting out of a business relationship is exceptionally difficult and should be so for various reasons. I also think that the marriages are entered into after a lot of flailing about and stumbling. The business relationship that I've entered in to with Vincent is a very carefully considered, rehearsed and tested one. There are contracts in place, there are plans for the future and there are defined roles. We have worked together for about 3 years in various companies and in various roles. We know that we work well together in high-pressure situations and we know that we can make it work. How do we know this? Because we've done it before.The level of trust and work experience that Vincent and I have makes us a trustworthy and reliable partnership. It's hard enough to build a business, try building a business while trying to build a partnership. That's difficult.

The business plan

Our business plan grew and moulded and changed over a period of 4 months. The best thing to happen to our business plan and revenue models was pitching to Venture Capitalists (VC). Through the pitch process and a very humble approach on our side we managed to weed out the bad parts, the unnecessary parts and the long and boring parts. In the end we were left with a business plan no longer than 10 pages in total that outlined our business idea, our revenue streams, our first 18 months of expenses and potential and projected revenue.

It's about the jockey, not the horse

Ideas are everywhere. If you've got an idea I can promise you there are many other people with the exact idea or at the very least something very, very similar. Do not hedge your bets on a good idea. Truly great, unique and new ideas are come around once in a generation and no offense but you probably don't have it (I sure as hell didn't).So what you need is a good jockey to build the idea. You need to be an executer, a builder or someone with more than just an idea. You need to know how you are going to make money from your idea, how you are going to grow and you also need to prove that you have the skills, the experience and the potential to get it all done.

Timing, timing, timing

I actually cannot express enough the importance of timing. Sometimes good ideas emerge, launch and fail for one reason: Bad timing. Sometimes an average idea with average people behind it in an average market will make it big because the timing was right. We've had a hefty dose of good timing and better luck. We built our business plan over a holiday, the very first VC we met with was the right one, the other VCs who turned us away (and yes there were many of those) did so for the right reasons, we resigned from our jobs, moved to Cape Town, had the right experience, met the right people, tipped in to right market from the right country with the right relationships all the almost perfect time. Everyone says mobile is booming right now and we're riding that wave. People need what we have right now, not 6 months ago or in 6 months time, right now. It's about timing.

Domain Expertise

Once you think you have an idea that might become profitable, you have a business partner (or are going it alone) that can't help you travel down this path, the next thing you need is domain expertise. Don't go to a VC coming from a street-sweeping background and tell them that you have this idea to build the next space station close to Venus. You don't have the domain expertise to do this and they will point that out. If you are pitching a mobile company then you need to prove that you are an expert in the field of mobile and that you have a track record that reflects this.No one is investing on a hope and prayer, no one is going to give you money because you ask them to politely. You need to be one of the very few people in the industry, country or perhaps even the world who can execute the idea you have.

A Non Disclosure Agreement is NOT a dealbreaker

If the VC, investor, advisor or loan manager wont sign an NDA, who gives a shit? As I've said and will say again, you're idea is not new. The best advice that we received regarding NDAs was this: If you force a VC to sign an NDA you are showing weakness and lack of faith in your idea, you are also showing a lack of trust in the VC and yourself. If you back your idea and yourself, if you have an execution plan and are ready to roll with it then who cares if someone else builds it, you need to know that when you build it, it will be the best, the first and the only.There are obviously exceptions to this, if you have a unique, once in a lifetime, groundbreaking, revolutionary idea and there is a reason that you believe someone could take your idea, then defend it, but not so violently that you lose sight of reality (If you think you have one of those ideas, contact me).

Shop around

Don't be naive enough to think that the first person you go to will look over your business plan, look you in the eye and hand you a cheque for a bazillion dollars. This will not happen, ever. In fact it probably hasn't ever happened. The process is long, arduous and treacherous. There are risks involved so try and mitigate that risk. Take your business plan to various investors, VC firms, angel investors, wealthy people you know and see what they say, get responses, learn and wait. But please, don't think that the one VC you got to owes you anything, they don't and nor does the second or third VC firm. But if you shop around and plug away at it hard enough, one of them will start to take you seriously.

Go with your gut

We did shop around for various offers, as I have stated above. But in the end we went with the firm that we met with at the very beggining. We partnered with the guys who were the most honest, the closest fit to our culture and the most open and transparent.4Di Capital told us to shop around, they told us to use lawyers of our own to check through contracts, they offered us a deal that we felt was fair and they gave us terms that we understood and we felt comfortable with. In the end, we went with our guts.

Risk it

I resigned from my job well before we knew that VC was coming our way. It wasn't about the VC. We were going ahead with our business whether we had a financial backer or not. If you don't have this level of belief in your business, business partner and skills then don't bother asking for VC.

Keep at it but listen

People will tell you that you are stupid, that the idea is old, outdated, lame, can't monetize and wont work. But listen to me when I say this: If you have domain expertise, experience, a track record, the right idea, the right partner, the right timing and a pure unadulterated faith keep at it. However when people tell you that there is a problem or a hole somewhere, mend it, fix it and mould it. There are people out there, many of them, who know better than you or I. Learn, listen and keep at it.

Venture capital is not for everyone

A Mosque at 9/11 Ground Zero

I was going to let this one slide by unattended, but I can't.I'm blown away by the following video:Let me state upfront that I'm not 100% certain that Mr Pat Condell is serious, ironic or just plain ignorant and blinded by religious dumbing. Maybe a combination of all of the above.I'm not convinced at all by his uneducated and ignorant response to be honest. I think he is being far too simplistic in his views. He isn't delving in to the core issues - it's still not proven beyond doubt that the attacks on 9/11 were Islamic driven (and to insinuate that an entire religion orchestrated an attach is just stupid), if it was a small faction of zealots, a small faction of terrorists, an attack conducted by US internal agencies to prolong the war on terror and war in to Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan for their oil and political power or if it was a political and financial play by an elite group of politicians and bazillionaires. Tell me you know for certain, with irrefutable facts, who is behind the attacks and I'll make sure to call every major publication in the world and let them know. You can't, I know you can't.Further more, his response is as dogmatic and impractical as he states the Islamic religion is. Would it be OK to build a Christian church there? What about the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other religions who had followers perish in the attack? America preaches freedom to a point of ridiculousness, so surely any company/organisation/institution is free (by law) to buy and build on any piece of land and not be judged by their religion?To continue along religious lines - It's ignorant to assume that all of Islam as a religion and culture dictates jihad in the form of killing others all the time in every form. What about the crusades many centuries ago? Should we prevent Christians from entering the societies of the countries that were once conquered? I think that's just silly.Condell seems to have some innuendo with his little rant. He appears to have an agenda and that is perfectly in line with any other religious rant that has ever taken place in the history of the world. Nothing ever appears to be what it actually is. Ever.

Africans Can't Be Trusted - Let's Make Some Money

Erik Hersman wrote a good post on the experience that African people are treated like second-class humans merely because we live in Africa. And let me just say; Erik has a point, a very valid point and an incredibly frustrating point. But his point leaves us with a massive gap in the market that no developed world companies or global corporates are willing to push in to. Africa is our playground and while the rest of the world avoids us and punishes us, we need to make inroads to block them out and own this market.Basically we're seen as untrustworthy by the rest of the world and are punished for that. The perception is definitely greater than the crime here. Africans appear to be untrustworthy but are by no means the biggest offenders when it comes to internet crimes as Erik showed in his post.Erik suggests two solutions:

Too true, and there are only two ways that this might change:First, we in Africa come up with our own payment and business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.Second, the global corporates wake up and realize that there is quite a bit of spending power and money to be made in Africa, just like the mobile operators found out in the 90′s.

I'd like to pitch a third and more challenge-orientated solution; screw them. Forget those who punish us for being African. There are many, many business models that don't have to include Paypal or the multitude of global corporates that punish us for where we live. Mobile is booming and Africa is at the cusp of this movement. We are setting the trends and defining the direction of where truly mobile products are going and should be going. We are the ones in control.Yet the problem exists that we, as Africans have a persecution complex and insist on needing validation from certain places, companies and organisations to justify our success and movement forward. This is absurd.Don't get me wrong, I understand that there are viable reasons which make us need validation from Paypal and require us not to be banned by Google and blah blah. But there are many, many flourishing startups in South Africa and Africa that are not running off the back of these giants. I can name 5 off the top of my head.We need to start setting the trends, bucking the trends and developing the roads instead of deciding that the roads aren't tared with gold for us as Africans. We need to stop settling for mediocrity and start striving for cutting edge excellence that we define, as Africans on our continent.The very outdated notion that there is not enough money in Africa to create a viable business model or revenue stream is long dead. There is money on this continent, there are users on this land that we occupy and there is massive, massive potential and hunger for new products and creation of wealth.What we need to do now is stop leaning on the developed world, toss them to the curb and take control of our continent, businesses and business models. It might be a hard road to travel but in the long term it will be the most profitable in my opinion.

Mapping the Twitter networks of #legendsofecho

Ed's note: This is a guest post from Nicky Allen who has been doing some incredibly interesting data-mining and representation using Nodexl.Twitter is such a great way to gauge whether a brands PR campaign is working. Until now you had to rely on some dodgy report and some old fashioned press clippings from your PR agency .A few weeks back saw the launch of the “Legends of Echo” a multiplayer social game for mobile phones launched by The Grid team. It’s a cool game that maps South Africa in the echo and players build battle gear, trade and battle. So after a week of action I mapped Twitter activity of #legendsofecho and it’s pretty impressive.This nodexl map shows the action across Twitter on #legendsofecho. Everyone on the map has mentioned, replied or retweeted #legendsofecho in the first 4 days. The lines between the participants indicate a tweet containing #legendsofecho. The bigger and messier the birds nest, the better. This indicates lots of conversations and a dense network. The size of the images indicates the number of followers that participant have on Twitter, which indicates that there are a number of rockstar participants.So what does this really tell us?Right now Legends of Echo is on the right track, the right people are saying cool things about the game. This is what every brand aspires to in a launch phase. But Legends of Echo has a way to go because right now the tweets have not yet expanded far enough beyond the product team. While there is conversation around the core group, @Nicharry is still central to the tweeting. In time the team wants to see many duplications of the map above, see it growing and @Nicharry and the @Legendsofecho tweeting becoming less central, then they will have reached an effective virality on Twitter.I pulled this map a couple of days ago, about 5 days after the last one. It shows some interesting development. The twittershere around the core group has become quieter but there are some interesting developments, Legends of Echo has been picked up by people completely unconnected to the core group, this is show by the individuals and the small 3 and 4 connected groups along the bottom. This is good and bad news for the team. While it’s really exciting to see Legends of Echo picked up by unconnected others, however most of these peoples tweets were not retweeted or replied too (hence the isolated individuals). What one wants to see is that these groups grow to the size and bigger and mirror the birds nest type activity of the core group.All in all it’s been a good first few weeks for echo on Twitter, I’ll keep watching and map the progress with interest.*Disclaimer: Nicky Allen is the Marketing Coordinator for Legends of Echo.

Jack Parow – DANS DANS DANS Official Music Video

The new Jack Parow video is absolutely freakin' fantasties. I love it. I dig his cocky arrogant vibe, I dig Mr. van Coke rocking out hard. I think the quality of the music video production is brilliant and it could easily pop over on to MTV and no one would know the difference.I especially love the very loose use of the curse words that rock through the song. These guys are fast becoming my new heroes on the music scene.Do it, buy the album, watch the video, blow the lid off this song and give these guys the exposure they deserve.Here it is:* Originally published on SA Rocks.

Legends of Echo goes live

Today marks the launch of a project that I have been working on at Vodacom for the past 11 months or so. Legends of Echo is a massively multiplayer online location based mobile social game (and if you feel like it, you can throw in role-playing game in there). All in all that makes is a MMOLBMSG(RPG). There are going to be a few different acronyms that emerge for Legends of Echo (LoE) but I like the whole bang-shoot.Let me not get ahead of myself here. I've been trying to keep this all in check but working on a product for 11 months means that I have a lot to say about it, it's difficult to put it all out there in a sensible fashion.

Legends of Echo from Cow Africa on Vimeo.

Let's begin at the beginning. Vincent Maher is my boss at Vodacom (he's also a great friend of mine but that's besides the point) and he hired me nearly a year ago to help him with a few projects. The most ambitious and innovative was Echo (as it was known back then). My first week I was thrown in to the non-existent deep end of a product that emerged out of Vincent's insatiable appetite for innovation. LoE emerged from a need that Vincent and our technology partners, Afrigis, had to take The Grid's technology to the next level (The Grid is the other major product that I manage at Vodacom).What emerged out of Vincent's mind and the technology that Afrigis had built for The Grid was the desire to build a location based mobile game.There are many different facets to building a game. I had never dealt with any of these different facets. I was a game-building virgin if I can say it that way.So to sum a few things upThis game is not just a game, it's going to hopefully become a way of life for the players in the Echo. It's an alternative reality where role-playing is the order of the day. You can be who you want to be and you define the story. There is no underlying story line here. We wanted the users to take this game to the level that they felt it should reach.There is an entire economy in the game. There is a marketplace that players can use to buy and sell items. You can also use your own home base or Arcanium to sell items. Currency or Elements form a major part of strategy in LoE. But don't be misled, the game does not require players to spend airtime to be successful. Standard data rates apply and that's where the cost begins and ends if you don't want to spend money. You don't have to spend cash to be a legend in Echo.We encountered many extremely interesting scenarios around the mechanics of the game. You'll see them all unfold but one of the most exciting for me was whether we were building another social network where you could play a game or a game that allowed people to socially network. You can decide which one you think it is, but I think we've built a game and integrated social networking capabilities that allow gameplay to be user driven and defined.Many, Many thanksBeing named as the Director of a project of this caliber is incredible and I'm extremely proud of what we are launching today. Having worked with the people I have worked with I need to thank many of them:Vincent Maher provided incredible calm and steadfast guidance when it was called for. He definitely helped us stay on our toes and assisted me in bringing this game to life in absolutely every aspect of the development process. It's always great to work with people who push you to do better and approach the norms from abnormal angles and Vincent is most definitely that person. Whatever happens with Legends of Echo this game has, without a doubt, been the high-point of my career and would never have happened if Vincent didn't hire me and put his trust in me to get this game done. So my main word of thanks goes out to him, no doubt.Pietman du Toit and Armand van der Merwe need special mention over at Afrigis, our technology partners on this project and The Grid. The two of them did a sterling job of managing me while I managed them and worked many, many, many long and hard hours to ensure that this game actually went live.Rob Van Zyl from Pleasant Company did the most phenomenal job of making this game stand out and have immediate appeal. He also created fantastic debate in the group and helped us arrive at a killer game.Cow Africa, our advertising agency went well above and beyond the every day workings of an advertising agency. They will be bringing the game to life in all of our above the line media that is to come. Watch out for that, it's going to be epic.Lastly I think it is necessary to thank Vodacom for having the foresight to allow a project of this nature to exist at all. Being innovative is always easy to speak about but very rarely ever achieved and I think we've come close as a team. We wouldn't have been able to do so if Vodacom hadn't have endorsed our ideas and way of thinking in the way that they have.I am not going to repeat my esteemed colleagues, tech partners and our ad agency by regurgitating definitions and explanations by hand here. What I am going to do is quote Vincent's blog post where he effectively explains what we've been doing for the past 11 months:Be sure to head over and read Vincent's entire blog post on Legends of Echo.

What is Legends of Echo?We remapped the whole of South Africa into a steam-punk-ish world and packed it full of weapons and other items that people can pick up and use against each other.The players are divided into 5 bloodlines – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and we added Industry. Each bloodline has two allied bloodlines and two mortal enemies and as players try to thrive in the Echo they will need to make complex political alliances to get the stuff they need – Elements. Elements are the lifeblood of a bloodline. You need them to build weapons, buy weapons, gifts and other items that you need to survive.The game world has an in-game newspaper called the Echo Enquirer where players get the latest news – for example a massive stash of Fire Elements laying near the Spar in Wendywood, or a shift in the Eastern Cape bloodline domination, or a general call to arms.And underlying all of this, a location-based system that knows where you are in the real world and hence where you are in the game world. There are over 60 000 real locations in the game, excluding every single suburb in the country. You can tell your friends to meet you on Signal Hill for a massacre at 5PM, or that your Arcanium (your house) is near the Engen Garage in Ventersdorp.South Africa looks different in the EchoYour Arcanium is also a shopfront, so if you find stuff in the Echo you can sell and trade it for Elements. Passers-by can enter your house and buy directly from you, even when you are not online.The ArtworkWhen we started this project our goal was to make it as visually rich as possible without breaking the bank. Have a look at some of the graphics below, our creative director Rob Van Zyl from Pleasant Company did a fantastic job of translating and augmenting our vision. Our agency Cow Africa have done a fantastic job of keeping us all sane (unusual for an agency) and have done some amazing things with our launch media, the cinema ad, the radio campaign that will go on air soon and our AWESOME t-shirts.There are lots of different kinds of weapons, powers and items that you can pick up by moving around the country from city to city, province to province. Each one gives you a slightly different edge in battle.Each screen has been meticulously designed to look as good as it can on a mobile phone and there are tons more game graphics, wallpapers and other cool stuff available at legendsofecho.com.Nic and I story-boarded every single screen in the game, every single menu item and all the paths a user can take. There are just over 190 screens in the game with many permutations depending on the context.Social Vs BattleOne of the most entertaining things to do in the Echo is to find a completely random person and challenge her to a battle. The battle is fun and is greatly affected by the weapons and health items that you carry around with you. It’s not all about battle though, you can also chat with other users using intant messaging, or go to their Arcaniums and leave messages on the walls of their houses.There is a Players and Chat section in the game that keeps a list of your contacts, shows you who is online (so you can teleport to them and fight them) and a section for chatting with each other.The TechnologyOur development partners, Afrigis (who also work on The Grid) have done an outstanding job of getting this game as scalable and bandwidth-light as possible. As it’s a mobile game one of the main objectives was to keep the volume of data transferred between the client and the server ultralight and we have got it to the point where it will cost you about R2 (out of bundle) to play for an hour which is really good considering the richness of the experience.The backend is build on Darkstar, a project initially by Sun Microsytems and now RedDwarf at Oracle. Darkstar is build for this kind of thing and it works really really well. We have made some modifications to the code to optimise it for the mobile experience but we’re all quire sure the people at Oracle are going to be stoked to see what we did with their tech.Some background – LoE’s precursor was a SMS game called OpenSeason built by RetroRabbit and Afrigis in 2004 and our script-writer was one of the original team who worked on that game. Things have progressed really far since OpenSeason though, as you will see when you look at the UI.

You can download the game by visiting the mobi site: www.legendsofecho.mobi and choosing the application that will work on your phone.Follow Legends of Echo on Twitter for game updates and information.

e.tv and The Grid break new ground

This post was published on Vincent Maher's blog this morning. It's a project that he and I have been working on in conjunction with the very innovative e.tv Sunrise show. Integrating television and social networks is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting things you can do because of the instant feedback loop you create by merging broadcast and interactive media. At the Mobile Web Africa conference last year Nic Haralambous and I started chatting with the eTV team (eTV is a national television station in South Africa) with the end goal of using The Grid’s location-based mood data to enhance one of their shows.Today we launched the Sunrise MoodMaps on eTV to a national free-to-air audience and so far the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. During this initial stage we are showing the percentage happiness of each province in the country based on the previous 24-hours of aggregated mood data from our social network. We introduced the concept to the audience today and from tomorrow the maps will be integrated into the two news slots and during the Sunrise show. Nic and I are pretty certain no-one has done this before, please let us know if you find another example of a social network adding moods to a national news/weather show.I will post video footage as soon as we get the files but below is a screenshot of our initial designs for the show. They do look slightly different to the on-air version but they will give you a good idea of what we’re doing.

Wrapping it with contentAs things progress we want to move from general to specific in terms of what these maps show and you can see how this can very quickly become an instant mass polling tool that is greatly aided by the fact that we have location attached to our users.While we were looking through the historical data for the week, as an example, we noticed that the murder of Eugene Terreblanche doubled the total volume of people who were angry on Sunday morning. On average though, the whole country was 6% happier because of the Easter holiday.Working with the eTV team has been great – they are an amazingly innovative group of people who really get the space we’re playing in – and we’re looking forward to making the MoodMaps better every day.

SpeakZA - Bloggers for a Free Press

Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democraticsafeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.Blog Rollhttp://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwanehttp://rwrant.co.zahttp://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/http://blogs.news24.com/needpointhttp://capetowngirl.co.zahttp://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyohttp://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmithhttp://letterdash.com/one-eye-onlyhttp://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.comhttp://amandasevasti.comhttp://blog.empyrean.co.za/http://letterdash.com/brencrohttp://6000.co.zahttp://chrisroper.co.zahttp://pieftw.comhttp://hamishpillay.wordpress.comhttp://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.comhttp://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessahttp://watkykjy.co.zahttp://fredhatman.co.zahttp://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/http://mashadutoit.wordpress.comhttp://nicharalambous.comhttp://sarocks.co.zahttp://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/http://helenmoffett.book.co.za/blog/http://01universe.blogspot.comhttp://groundwork.worpress.comhttp://iwrotethisforyou.mehttp://fionasnyckers.book.co.zahttp://attentiontodetail.wordpress.comhttp://blogs.women24.com/editorhttp://www.missmillib.blogspot.comhttp://snowgoose.co.zahttp://dreamfoundry.co.zahttp://www.vanoodle.blogspot.comhttp://www.exmi.co.zahttp://cat-dubai.blogspot.comhttp://alistairfairweather.comhttp://www.zanedickens.comhttp://www.nickhuntdavis.comhttp://guysa.blogspot.comhttp://book.co.zahttp://baldy.co.zahttp://skinnylaminx.comhttp://blogs.african-writing.com/zukiswahttp://www.mielie.wordpress.comhttp://blogs.timeslive.co.za/gatherer/http://thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbrittenhttp://stii.co.zahttp://blogs.news24.com/FSB_APhttp://twistedkoeksuster.blogspot.comhttp://whensmokegetsinyoureyes.blogspot.com/http://trinklebean.wordpress.comhttp://commentry.wordpress.com/http://matthewbuckland.comhttp://blogs.news24.com/colour-me-franhttp://gormendizer.co.za

Mobile SEO is coming. Are you prepared? ...

Mobile SEO is coming. Are you prepared?I don't think that you are, I'm not. No one is.What I should be doing if I was a smart little blogger is move this blog to a mobile domain and spend some acquisition budget on getting readers to visit, follow me on twitter (via mobile) and click on my adverts.But I'm not doing that. In fact before you can just launch in to mobile you need to understand it, entirely and I don't think that there are many people who have a very high-level holistic understanding that is worth while and valuable.You want some free advise? Learn about mobile SEO and sell your skills. Soon.

Blogging made mobile

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.

Install Evernote on Blackberry Storm. I...

Install Evernote on Blackberry Storm.I searched around the web for a while until I found a way to download evernote to a Blackberry Storm. The Evernote site was of no help really. They seemed to bury the links deep in the site. But I did manage to find them!Here are the links for Blackberry Storm and non-storm Blackberry's:BlackBerry (non-Storm): ZIP | OTA: http://s.evernote.com/bbotaBlackBerry Storm: ZIP | OTA: http://s.evernote.com/stormotaSimply enter those URL's in to your phones browser and download the app. I've got it working on my Mac and my Storm. Very simple. Brilliant application. Lovely environment.

OKGo's new single: This Too Shall Pass....

OKGo's new single: This Too Shall Pass. You cannot view this video on YouTube if you are in SA and various other countries. You also cannot embed the YouTube version of the video as the record labels don't earn cash per play if the video is embedded.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Read the open letter from OKGo for more info on the whole situation with the Label and YouTube.

Anderson Cooper - CNN's world-traveling...

Anderson Cooper - CNN's world-traveling investigative war-correspondent recently stepped in to Haiti and broached the #1 ethical debate by his heroic actions. Just a quick disclaimer - the video below verges on graphic content so if you are easily offended and don't like reality, then don't watch the below.Now, the reason that I am quite intrigued by this particular video is that Cooper has dived in and made a very very big statement; by assisting the boy Cooper changed the news. He stepped in and altered his position in the Haiti situation. He is no longer simply an objective journalist, he is no a participant in the news and the one who altered the course of events that he was reporting on.It's not very often that journalists themselves become the news by their own choices. For Cooper to have stepped in he must have felt that the boy was in dire straights and needed assistance that he wasn't receiving from anyone else at the scene.Personally I completely respect and admire him for stepping in. I made the decision a while back that I refuse to be an observer. I am a doer and people who want to do things have to get involved and not just report the news. I cannot do this. So it's very interesting to me that a journalist of Cooper's quality, experience and standing chose to step in, instead of waiting for the news headline to create itself.

Gladly one of my resolutions this year w...

Gladly one of my resolutions this year was not to blog more. If it had been I would have failed in a massive way already.Blogging still bores me somewhat right now. I honestly don't know if I am going to recover sufficiently to allow myself to actually maintain 2 blogs and a lifestream (nicharalambous.me). I'm over it. I'm over talking, writing, opinions, publishing and the bollocks that goes along with it.I'm frustrated and fed up. When is the next big thing getting here? I'm bored.

It's a new year. And? And I'm really ...

It's a new year. And?And I'm really bored of hearing people's resolutions. You resolve what, exactly, that you didn't resolve last year? And that phrase, it also bugs me, "Last year". You mean 5 days ago right? That's all it's been, there is no big revolutionary change that all of sudden will make you able to go to gym more, lose that backstreet boy you ate in 2009, quit smoking or whatever other "bad" habit you want to rid yourselves of.2010 is a mere 4 days in and already I'm irritated by petulant people talking bullshit and singing the praises of the new year. Pah. Idiots.I'm not going to set any new year resolutions as I did not last year. I am going to set myself some goals.Some of these are listed below. Some are new and some (a fair amount are carried over from last year):1. Reacquaint myself with the Greek language.2. Skydive3. Bungee Jump4. Learn a 4th language5. Go for cooking lessons – My preferance is Thai food and Wok cooking.6. Learn how to make sushi.7. Go overseas – Preferably to somewhere I’ve never been. I hear Thailand is beautiful.That's it. Seven attainable goals for 2010 (some actually carried over from 2008. Wow, that's depressing.