2008 is coming to an end...

As this is my first year of blogging I'm still getting use to all the norms and from the blogs I follow I see quite a few people summarising their year and making predictions for the next year. I don't think I'm going to quite do that but will outline a couple of things.

First of all something I just read on TechCrunch is the logo that MobileAge is using for their iPhone icon, take a look and see if you can see what it really is:
Pretty funny stuff, wonder if the designer could see it or just had a case of looking at it too long he couldn't actually see it.

Interesting video below on a new book 'The toilet paper entrepreneur', I might place an order soon.






Otherwise have a good Christmas and New Years, I'm off for a couple of days - can't wait. But in the mean time there are plenty of things to look forward to in 2009.

1) Launch of Allthingsmobile - my new site
2) My mate finishing the Cairo to Cape Town cycle race for charity - go donate now
3) The new SEACOM underwater cable coming online in June which will hopefully decrease prices
4) Telkom coming into the wireless broadband scene and possibly as a new mobile operator
5) The 2009 elections in SA

The best commercial ever

Warning there is some nudity in this advert (topless ladies)...

Recently posted on TechCrunch.com a Danish advert advertising a washing machine directed viewers to their 'actual' advert which was posted on the internet as clearly is wouldn't have been allowed on TV.

Watch it here:

Link:

Sex always sells and its one way of insuring your advert spreading itself virally across the internet. Whether you would want your company associated with this type of advertising is up to you though... I think I would like a great viral campaign but I would have kept the bikini tops on.

Google Friend Connect vs Facebook's Connect

Wow, talk about timing - both were released yesterday almost at the same time even. For once I think Google was out done a bit as Facebook was a bit more organised having allowed some big websites to implement and test the features way before its release so that on the day sites like TechCrunch had already implemented Facebook Connect.

I've been playing around with a both and here is a quick early summary:

Google Friend Connect is very very easy to implement and adds nice structure to quickly have a login system that works pretty well and allow users to write on a wall or make reviews but it stops about there. For it to be so simple its gone and created widgets to just implement and so for me even though it only took me 30min to implement it is not enough...

Facebook Connect now here is something powerful... just go look at TechCrunch and see how nicely it works! The 2 things that make this the better option for me are:
1) the posting to your Facebook wall of your activities outside of Facebook
2) the ability to see what your friends have done on the website when browsing it, makes it a lot more trustworthy when you see your friends have been using it.

I will be following this up some more after I've used both a bit more.

Is Facebook a phishing scam site?

This morning when logging into Facebook via Google Chrome I received a warning notice indicating that the social network site maybe a phishing site.



I was a bit sceptical at first and tried to login again but received the message again, I then clicked 'proceed' and was logged in. I get no error message when I use Firefox but according to an article on Techcrunch the problem also occurs in Firefox. The domain name that is causing the problem is 'http://fbcdn.net' which is registered by Facebook.

Have been a few reports of it happening in Safari also, seems like it may be something to do with the roll out of Facebook connect.


Twitter is a buzz with this

Viruses now on Google Mail

Wow, they certainly are keeping me on the run. I first encountered viruses coming via MSN Chat earlier in the year and because of that I had a lovely little spam bot on my pc sending out thousands of mails all the time (sometimes a gig in a day). Eventually I got rid of that and left MSN mail and chat alone and moved over to Google cause there would never be any chance of viruses there...

Then along comes Facebook and Facebook Chat and Facebook messages and millions of users so the little people who make viruses focus their attention their and presto - viruses on facebook in the forms of messages sent to your entire friends list and posts on your friends walls with links etc... I still use Facebook how ever.

Now to my horror people have cracked GMAIL and are sending spam/viruses to all your contacts - I got a mail from a good mate of mine the other day and this was the subject line
'Dear Sir/Lady: Sorry to disturb you. We are a wholesale company in China. We mainly sell...'

Obviously I knew my mate hadn't moved to China suddenly and started a wholesale company so I ignored it. Sure enough later that day another one came...

Seems that no-one is safe once the hacker community turns their eyes onto you.