The internet simplified...

Wow, is all I can say the new Firefox add-on 'Ubiquity' is simply incredible and will surely change the way everyone accesses the internet.

Quite simply if you are using Firefox as your web browser you need to add this add-on to it. To access it all you need to do is hit 'ctr - space' and up pops the little window. With this you now use typed commands to run searches on various search engines, translate words, look up definitions, email your friends (currently only with gmail) and the ability to quickly interact with Google's street maps.

I'm supposed to be having drinks tonight at Fat Cactus in Cape Town but I don't know where it is, so all I need to do is highlight '' and hit 'ctr space' in the little pop up I'll type 'map this' and by using ajax it will inform me below my command that it is mapping 'Fat Cactus in Cape Town'.

If I leave it for a bit a little map will display that I can interact with or I can simply hit the enter button and a new tab will open with the google street map there. This map can easily then be added into your email to your friends etc.

The best thing is that its open for developers to add their own commands, can't wait to create some of my own.

My one concern was the little warning message at the end of the 'introduction to Ubiquity'. To combat this they say there'll be a 'trust network' so all I'm saying for now is just to use what comes with the package and my command line that I'll soon be releasing!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 'beta' is released

And the prognosis... well my first impression was that not much was different except its got this cool panel view (ie takes all your tabs and shows them to you on the same page and this works pretty quickly between the pages). Aside from that I'm still sticking to firefox and the major reason why - when I open up a new tab in firefox it happens in less than a second while IE takes a good couple of seconds to 'connect' and then open - DRIVES ME CRAZY!

The word going around the blogging world is that it could hit Google's advertising model as it can hide the audit trail of websites that you have been visited and thus not deliver appropriate advertising.

Now, don't be alarmed this is not affecting Google's adsense program but its display advertising (the reason it paid more than $3billion for Doubleclick) model. There has been no news from Google as yet and I'm still testing. There is some speculation that Google uses other means to collect your history and doesn't rely on cookies but this 'option' that IE gives its uses will be causing headaches.

Any why you may ask because of the famous 'click-through tracking'! All of us who have made some bucks from it will have a bit more to worry about now as we may start loosing out on lots of sales.

Quick count of my lucky stars, out of all this Yahoo revealed that it had to pass on some 'information' to the Chinese government about its users. This information happened to include an email sent and an IP address, the poor journalist was tracked down and jailed for 10years!

Christian the lion dominates YouTube

And I can see why... What amazing footage, take a look.




Brief run down these two chaps (John Rendall and Anthony Bourke) were shopping in Harolds where they found a lion cub for sale (1959). In those days you were somehow allowed to sell exotic animals like that. But the lion cub was enclosed in a tiny cage and they took pity on the animal and bought it.

They then started to raise the animal in their flat and take it to their local church to exercise in the grounds there, quite quickly they realised they wouldn't be able to keep it too long in London (even pictures of them driving in a convertable with the lion in the back seat) and that they would need to take it back to Africa.

They did this and some years later went to visit Christian, the footage is of the reunion. So far the footage has received over 10million views, a must watch!

An update on scrabulous

So after my initial posts Facebook has begun removing Scrabulous from Facebook in most countries except for India where it is still pending a court case.

Facebook received a complaint from Mattel (the company that owns the rights to Scrabble outside of the USA) last month which forced its hand to pull the plug.

For the time being Wordscraper is still available on Facebook which is the replacement App created by the Indian brothers. On the ZA Tech Show one of the champs mentioned something interested and related to this - what happens if somehow the chap who invented chess suddenly slapped a copyright law and forced everyone either stop what they're doing or pay royalties. Think of all the beautifully carved boards you can buy along some of the roads here in SA... Imagine trying to police that.

Finally a chance to make a difference!

So over the weekend a friend sent me a link to a website and a message urging all of us to try help, so I went over and checked it out and was impressed. Take a look here.

This is a website idea that I have thought about for awhile and I'm glad to see that someone else has tackled it and has done a great job, Greater Good SA is an online social marketplace. So basically a charity organisation will register and list services or work they need doing and then people like ourselves can come along and indicate we'll help out with the project. Great idea I think.

So far the site has helped generate R9.5million and 21,000 hours of volunteer work.

I'm going to try get all my mates to help out with 'Do it Day' on the 19th Sep, hope you will too!

The future of television

Today there was an interesting article on the IOL website regarding Intel and Yahoo coming together to make television more interactive with online capabilities (read article here).

They are aiming at developing widgets for the television (mini computer program for those of you who don't know) that will be interactive and could either depending on the advert or what you want keep track of stock prices, display an 'order now' button, message friends or access videos etc.

Now if you are reading your blog you should have read this book, if you haven't read it then get it. 'The Search' by John Bartelle descibes what the future could be like and how computers and your television will interact. The example they used is pretty good, say you go onto Google and search for 'baby products' and you browse through a couple of sites then later that day you sit down in front of the TV to watch the latest 'Greys Anatomy' episode. During that show the advertising slots and Google/Search engine will interact, they will know that you searched earlier for baby products so based on your history they will display relevant adverts. So at the first ad break you may get adverts for diapers, baby food etc.

Some people may feel that this is invading your personal space too much... I'm not sure, I think the television and computer will one day be very close to pretty much the same thing.

Just imagine, wake up in the morning and while eating your breakfast you can watch the morning news (which will be outdated) while the little widget checks your emails, and then you could chat to your friends or order some flowers for your loved one. Maybe the lazy humans depicted in the movie 'Wall-E' aren't too far away!

Earn whilst using your cellphone...

Sounds nice doesn't it, well this is quite a fitting post after my last one regarding cellphones and advertising. I came across a new website today www.eyeballs.co.za which is a website that downloads a program onto your cellphone and then every time you make or receive a phone call/sms you earn bucks back on their payback scheme. At the moment this is limited to possibly buying back prepaid airtime or MXit moola also this will only be available from the 1st of November.

So while this is limited really to people who are on prepaid it may just be perfect for most of South Africa. I think a good target market for them would be MXit, but come to think about it... if you only earn for sms's or phonecalls MXit might not be the ideal target market.

I have not tested this out yet myself, I may wait for November to give it a bash but its certainly a good step forward for South Africa in terms of spreading some of that advertising cash around to the customers.

Good on ya Eyeballs.

Free television on your cellphone?

Free TV shows on your cellphone or a monthly paid subscription?

That is the question that people around the world are trying to decide, in Asia the free television model is working very well with advertising covering the cost of the shows but in the USA its still pretty open.

I personally hate adverts and try my best to avoid them, even if it means skipping through all the channels DSTV has to offer to find something else I can watch for the 5 minutes. Thank goodness for PVR and the fast forward button, now I simply schedule all my fav programs and not worry about watching TV until a lazy Sunday morning comes along and I settle in to catch up on the shows.

All this is very good and all and it becoming to be what most people are doing, the one question that still irks me is 'when are the advertising companies and the big companies who run the adverts realise that their TV adverts aren't working as well as they used too?'

Something that is probably even beating the great invention of the PVR is the amount of pirate movies and TV series available. At a couple of very well known universities I know that on the res networks there are thousands and thousands of movies and TV series's been copied and swopped around. You can even now buy a little portable HD drive that sits nicely next to your TV and plugs in via an AV cable. This neat little device then via a remote allows you to select your TV series/movie and away you go - NO ADVERTS!

Only problem is that its illegal. So what is the solution? On the mobile side companies are trying to get adverts to sponsor the shows and thus enable it to be displayed for free as long as a couple of adverts get shown. I know that if I watch something on my phone and there is a 2min advert before the series starts I'll put the phone down, drink my coffee a bit and then pick it up once its done. And there you go, lots of money wasted on the advert and a zero return on investment.

As a consumer I think this is a great option and one that should be taken as it will allow some money to get back to the copyright holders but been on the other side and thinking up a way to market my company on TV... I think I'd be clutching at straws!

Flight comparison sites in the UK penalised

So Ryanair is starting to lay down the law on flight comparison sites gather the data by doing whats called 'screen-scraping'.

But instead of punishing the sites its also punishing the customers that use the sites and who booked their tickets via the site - Ryanair has cancelled all tickets purchased through these sites and is not honouring the bookings, only tickets bought via www.ryanair.com will be allowed.

Legal action has also been taken against Bravofly Ltd and V-tours to prevent them from harvesting the information.

Customers were being charged handling fees, higher fares and getting inaccurate information from these flight comparison sites. Now I agree with Ryanair that action needs to be taken against these sites, but punishing the customers who had already bought tickets is a bit harsh.

I wonder if this will give low cost flying airlines here in SA a thought to follow the same lines with a site that is doing the same scraping (prefer not to give the name as they are in competition with me) - although this site here in SA only scrapes the data for now I have found it to be incorrect at times, luckily they aren't handling the payments and/or charging the customers higher prices.

We will have to wait and see.

Yahoo, Online battle in SA heats up and Stellies Wine Fest...

Last weekend I took part in my first mountain bike race with some mates, see you the right here as we cross the finish line - I just loose out to Dave, but I must admit my friend has lent me his bike and during the race the back breaks failed, I was limited to about 3 gears and the front wheel almost fell off on a downhill. So I luckily finished the race in one piece and had some good banter from Dave.

Our aim was to not let any under 10year olds finish before us as we were doing the mighty distance of 15km. Now this is deemed as the fun ride for families and younger members it is not to be approached lightly. After that we shared one or two glasses wine at the Stellies Wine Fest, what a day it was revisting past memories of jolling in Stellies as a student.

Meanwhile, aside from the weekend spent outdoors there were some other things happening in the world, namely:

A recent vote of the Yahoo shareholders initially yielded support for poor Jerry Yang and his board but after an audit was held of the results it was discovered that there was an error... Read the full story here
I feel sorry here for Yang after been one of the founders of Yahoo to be receiving all this from their shareholders, I would be pretty pissed in his position. But on the other hand if I owned 10,000 yahoo shares at just under $20 a share and I could have received $33 a share that equates to almost a gain of $130,000.


Apparently the battle of the online websites are heating up with a new job portal website and computer retailer website opening their doors so to speak. The new jobs site is jobs.co.za and the new computer retailer site is click2buyIT.co.za.
With all these job sites it must be a pain for the retailer/agency to have to go to each different site and post the job ad 4-5 times or more and pay a fair bit for that. Why don't the job portal sites get together and make one front-end that they all access, agencies only need to register their job once and presto its on all the sites. In terms of splitting the cake then thats something for the job portal sites to work out.

Keep it classy, South Africa, Keep it classy.