The future of mobile internet

The advantages of mobile internet and how its the next big thing for websites to target has been talked up for years. One of the main reasons for talking it up is the sheer numbers of people with cellphone handsets as opposed to people who just use the internet. Everyone said it was just a matter of time...

In South Africa it is said that there are some 5million internet users and that our cellphone user base is around 30million. I agree with all the figures here but I am still some what skeptical about the use of cellphones and people browsing the internet.

Matthew Buckland recently blogged about it, read here, and there were quite a few post comments regarding his article. I would like to mention 2 of them:

The first about Soccer Laduma's new mobile website and how it already has twice as many people using it than its website.

The second is a post by 'biobot' that purely stated that web surfing sucks in pure user-experience except for on an iPhone.

In terms of user-experience and mobile websites for now that doesn't quite go, unless a reader out there knows of some websites done really well (let me know). For now its going to be more text-based and very basic sites that will be easy to use and quick to load.

I know that I've often been in the shops and wanted direct access to my website, but I have not yet set up a mobile site for it yet (on my to do list)... So I think the benefits and advantages of mobile websites definitely outweigh the cons.

Windows 3.1 comes to an end...

Wow, what an end of an era - on the 1st November 2008 Microsoft officially stopped issuing licenses for the software that made its debut in 1990.

I remember first using it in the early '90s and I like the graphical interface but still preferred MS DOS as I felt I had more control over the system I think people using PC's for the first time would have preffered the graphical user interface just because of the ease of use compared to using MS DOS.

I actually (bit embarrassing) used to think that they were competing companies... MS DOS vs MS Windows, it took me a while to realise they were the same company. Bare in mind I was only about 10 or 11 at the time.

Microsoft maintained support for Windows 3.x until the end of 2001 and since then it has lived on as en embedded operating system used mostly on some of the Virgin Atlantic and Quantas long haul flights to power the in-flight entertainment systems. I wonder why they used that to power their systems? Will have to look into it.

The Old specs on Windows 3.1 was the following

8086/8088 processor or better

with a clock speed of up to 10MHz

at least 640kb of RAM and 7 megabytes of hard drive space

and a graphics card that supported CGA, EGA and VGA

My first computer was defintely had a CGA graphics card and was something along the lines of a 8086... wow, my little cellphone kicks that computers but!

Yahoo shares sore...

Jerry Yang has or is stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! and today the shares of Yahoo! rose by 11.19% to a whopping $11.82...

My how the shareholders must still dream about Microsoft offering them £33 per share... I wonder if their was some conspiracy between Google and Microsoft to wipe Yahoo out a bit as they have both dropped Yahoo in the last couple of months.

Cairo to Cape Town on a bicycle!

From January 2009 to May 2009 a good mate of mine, Tim Gane and his pal will by cycling from Cairo to Cape Town. They will be covering a distance of 12,000 km's and averaging 120km's per day, each of them has put in lots of money to cover their own personal costs as its an expensive event to enter and organise. Click here to view their website and donate.

So, what are they looking for? Just R180,000 to help out a school in the Eastern Cape and build 2 more classrooms for the kids who really need it. Now, this is only (in today's rates) £11,486.91 or $17,928.86.

Which really isn't that much - for those of you who are from the UK/USA, you can definitely contribute a healthy contribution.

My pal, Tim and his mate only need to get 1800 people to contribute R100 (£6.38) - to the people in the UK/USA I think you could def contribute a lot more than that and I'd like to hear from you if you do.

Its time we stop living in our own small secluded worlds and open our eyes to see how the greater majority of the world really lives, we need to stop been selfish and just give a little back. A little is a good way to start!

I'm going to be helping out in terms of marketing, helping them manage their site, financially and hopefully even cycle one of the stages. Click here to go to their official website and donate!

Crunch Time: Obama vs McCain

So in my last blog I spoke about the world wide support for Obama and that I would most probably vote for Obama.

My blog posts get posted on Facebook and one of my friends in the USA commented on my post disagreeing with me, I asked him why and the 2 main reasons he came up with were:

1) Experience (age and time in office)
2) Lack of understanding as to what is required to steady the American ship

Now from my side and the rest of the world we just read bits and pieces that gets put on the web, from all the news I've been reading I initially wanted Hilary Clinton to win and since Obama won I've been generally 'supporting' his nomination.

BUT is this what the world needs, is this the right decision based on what we read from the news... The reason I bring this up is because if this is my opinion from here all the way in South Africa what are the people's opinions like in the USA/rest of the world and how easily is it swayed?

For me, I just want the republicans out of the Bush mess but who is better - McCain or Obama? I guess we'll see in a couple of hours.

But I can definitely see its quite a heated matter as I just made a few comments on Facebook and got quite a few replies quickly from my American friends.