Another reason not to emigrate to Australia

I was amazed to read the following on a post entitled "Top 10 Countries Censoring The Web":

Bonus: Australia

The rundown :
Discovering that countries like Iran or Yemen are censoring the web is not a big surprise. Most forms of independent media are already restricted there, and their levels of human rights are among the lowest in the world.
But what if we told you that Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, is also trying to censor websites inside its borders? Now that is scary!

How does the censorship work?
In 2007 a bill passed giving the federal police the power to block the access to any website. They already had a filtering system is place, but it was very limited in scope.
Many privacy groups and critics from the around the world claimed that this decision will directly threaten the freedom of speech on the Australian web.

What kind of content is blocked?
The government claimed that the police will be blocking mainly phishing and terrorism related websites. The problem is that the law brings a much broader definition for the potential targets: basically they can block any content that encourages, incites or facilitates criminal activity.

I always knew that Australia was a nanny-state but this seems to be taking things a little too far in a country where freedom-of-speech is espoused.

You may also want to take a look at the No Clean Feed site from Australia.

Bloggers Helping Bloggers - A Mutually Satisfying Experience!

This year sees the 4th incarnation of Blog Day.

The idea here is that on 31 August bloggers post links to 5 other blogs on their blog. Each blog listed will be reviewed to guide visitors on their journey to new and exciting blog destinations.

All the necessary info can be found at the Blog Day homepage.

I will be posting my five links on August 31st. Be sure to check this blog on that day to find out which five blogs I've chosen to direct you to!

Dance with a pipecleaner

Time on your hands? Make sure you set aside some time for this as it is very addictive!

You are in control of a pipecleaner dancer using the top 3 rows of your keyboard. Select the music by choosing one of the 7 letters on the screen and go crazy with some new moves.

With practice you can design some fairly groovy moves!

Click here to experience the fun...

Come on SA - Just add it!

Earlier this week I posted information about the TEAM SA Facebook app. Quick update - South Africa has dropped from fourth to eighth place in the list of countries with the most fans. We now lie behind Australia and Italy!

Come on all you SA Facebookers - add the app and show some SA love!

Click here - TEAM SA Facebook app

I know this may seem rather silly but what the heck, its fun!

Use Facebook to show support for SA Olympic team

With the Olympic games just around the corner why not begin to garner support for our Olympic team using Facebook?

When you add this application to your profile you will also be learning more about the team and be able to track their progress through the games, read athlete's blogs and relive some great SA Olympic moments.

You can add the application by clicking here - Team South Africa Facebook App

SA Blog Given International Recognition

SA Blog Of The Year, the Mail & Guardian's Online Thought Leader, has been named as an "official honoree" by the Webby Awards. This places it in the company of big players such as blogs by CNN, CBS News, the New Yorker and Time magazine.

This puts Thought Leader among the top 11 political blogs in the world and the only blog in its category from outside the United States.

Well done to the guys at M & G for this outstanding achievement. It is good to see our local bloggers receiving recognition outside our borders as well.

For more information on the 2008 SA Blog Awards see this review by Eishman at Eish!

Getting In On the Act

Okay so I've been caught out! By Blogger no less!

Have you been RickRoll'd?

For more information on this internet phenomenon check out the following sites :

1) Wikipedia entry

2) Urban Dictionary

If you want to protect yourself from being RickRoll'd, go along to the RickRoll Database where you can also enter the URL of a site that sent you to Mr Astley's 80's hit song!

Is Your PC South African?

With so many people now using open source software the people at Translate.org.za are hard at work releasing versions of Firefox, Open Office, Thunderbird and more into the 11 official languages of South Africa.

Yesterday they announced that an Afrikaans version of the Firefox 3 beta was available for download.

They also have a South African keyboard available and spell checkers for local languages.

If your mother tongue is not English and you would like to use your software in your home language you need to take a look at these :

1) Open Office - in all 11 official languages

2) Mozilla Firefox

3) Mozilla Thunderbird

4) South African Keyboard

5) Spell Checkers for South Africa

A glance at the Translate.org.za news page gives much information about the state of languages and their use in local software - worth a look.

A feather in the cap for our local open source software translators is that their translation tools are now also used by the One Laptop Per Child project, as well as Sun Microsystems for the translation of OpenOffice.org and OpenSolaris.org. Well done to the folks at Translate - more South Africans making a global impact!

29 Feb - A Special Day! 30 Feb - Yes It Once Existed!

So is it true that once every four years, on February 29, women can woo men and ask them for their hand in marriage?

As usual I go to the folks at Snopes.com for an answer - read all about it here.

10 famous people born on Feb 29 :

1) Pope John Paul III (1468 - 10/11/1549)
2) Gioacchino Rossini (1792 - 13/11/1868)
3) Morarji Desai (1896 - 10/04/1995)
4) Jimmy Dorsey (1904 - 12/06/1957)
5) Dinah Shore (1916 - 24/02/1994)
6) Tempest Storm (1928 - )
7) Henri Richard (1936 - )
8) Anthony Robbins (1960 - )
9) Saul Williams (1972 - )
10) Ja Rule (1976 - )

Keeing up with the maths :

February 2008 has five Fridays - it starts and ends on a Friday. Between 1904 and 2096, leap years with same day of week for each date repeat every 28 years which means that the last time February had 5 Fridays was in 1980 and next time will be in 2036. (taken from "Life Is Like That")

Did you know that 30 February actually once existed?

Sweden and the Soviet Union once had a February 30 in their calendar. Check it out here.

Need More Visitors To Your Blog?

Have you noticed the new widget on the right-hand side of this page? Take a look now - its okay, I'll wait!

Say hello to "BlogRush" - a free traffic generator that works by displaying your latest blog headlines on a desktop widget. You install the widget on your page and see the headlines of blogs related to your particular subject matter.

The system also has a referral component which means you earn traffic credits off 10 levels!

As the system is brand new this is a great time to come aboard. Every site needs traffic and it seems to me that this is a great way to generate traffic that is already interested in the subjects you write about.

Sign up by clicking here.

To see other traffic generating tools - click here.

Facebook in South Africa - Are You Being Paid?

Social networking online has fast become the darling of the internet. The South Africa network on Facebook now has over 260 000 members! It had to happen sooner than later that some bright spark realised that with millions of people logging in every day and the resultant advertising revenue increasing, those who were making use of tools such as Facebook and MySpace should be benefitting too. After all, it is the users who make these sites so successful - why not reward regular users for their efforts?

Enter Yuwie - a Web 2.0 social networking site that pays users for their normal everyday activities and links this to network marketing model that pays 10 levels down!

Think of how many times you log into Facebook during the course of a week. Imagine getting paid every time you altered your profile, invited friends, left messages on your friend's walls, participated in a group... Not only that - what if you were paid every time one of your friends participated in activities such as these as well - down to 10 levels? This is the magic of Yuwie.

Some questions answered :

1) Is it legal? Yes Yuwie is completely legal.Yuwie is marketed as a Social Networking site with a Multi Level Marketing business structure. You see Pyramid schemes involve users paying a fee to join, and that fee gets divided up and paid to the users above them...and Yuwie is not one of these. Yuwie is free to join. It costs nothing, so there is no way it can be considered illegal, or a pyramid scheme.Yuwie gets it's revenue from advertising

2) How is my income calculated? Your income is determined by the Yuwie - Revenue Sharing Rate (RSR). Here's how it works. After each month, a report will be generated in your earnings area...See your "Control Panel" and look for the money bag. It will show exactly how many views your referral tree accumulated on each level. It will also show your earnings for each level. Here's the actual calculation:

RSR x (Page Views/1000) x Level Percentage = Your Earnings

3) How long has this been around? The Yuwie.com Domain was Created on May 21, 2007 and the business is run by a gentleman (Korry Rogers) out of Norman, Oklahoma


This is a great tool for buiding a business network with the benefit of being paid at the same time! Its like having an advertising agency pay you for using their services!

Why not head over to my Yuwie profile and get the ball rolling! I really do believe that this tool will be become as popular as Facebook over time - get in now! Sign-ups are over 1000 per day - you really don't want to miss this opportunity!

Check it out now...

South African Government And Internet Censorship - Busted!

A free media is central to democracy - the voice of the people needs to be aired and made public so that all, including those in power, have a sense of the mood of the people. It is consensus among most South Africans (my opinion, not based on research!) that the SABC is the government mouthpiece. It was under the apartheid regime and continues to be so under ANC rule. What we don't need, or want for that matter, is for the electronic media to become the voice of government and we certainly don't want government interference or censorship in online publishing.

It was therefore pleasing to see action taken last Friday against a government official for censoring a Wikipedia entry on South Africa's HIV/AIDS policies. The official had vandalised the entry in the online encyclopaedia from a computer that was traced to the offices of Statistics SA, the government statistics headquarters that are situated in Centurion. The offices are part of the State Information Technology Agency.

The interference in the Wikipedia article was discovered by two ITWeb journalists who tracked the deletions to Statistics SA using the IP address of the machine which the editing took place on. Further investigation by Statistics SA then led to the culprit being identified. The employee faces a disciplinary hearing.

According to Carey Finn of IOL the changes to the wikipedia entry were detected by other users and reversed within three minutes. The government official had deleted the topic and supporting references, replaced this with a profane comment, and then removed the effects section of the entry as well as references to an article by Pieter Fourie and the AIDS Portal SA website. All that remained was the section detailing the government’s actions against the spread of HIV/AIDS. Wikipedia’s policy describes vandalism as "any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia".

The very nature of the internet dictates that it is a place where all voices can be heard. Wikipedia taps into this and provides a platform for anyone to contribute to the global knowledge base. It should be a place of fact not opinion and so one would want to keep a check on what is being written. However it is not up to government officials who disagree with a posting to abuse the democractic nature of the site and make alterations to articles which don't suit the official stance of government.

It is pleasing to see government take action on this matter - now let's work at a truly democratic public broadcaster...

50 Top Websites - End Of Survey

On July 11 I began a survey / campaign to source the top 50 South African websites based on user votes. This has certainly been an interesting exercise! There have been those who have entered into the spirit of the exercise and those who have seen it as nothing more than a waste of time and a tool to weaken the South African blogosphere. I have had messages of affirmation and others critical of this initiative.

Running this survey has never been a scientific exercise and in no way can the results claim to be conclusive. There has been no control group, no minimum vote count, in fact it is been a singularly unscientific approach! Readers were asked to vote for their favourite site - end of story!

You will see from the results that the big players have received many votes - indicative of their usefulness to the South African internet user perhaps. However there are a number of relatively unknown sites/blogs that deserve greater attention. Some voters unashamedly voted for their own sites/blogs. Where I picked this up, I have taken away their vote! Please do yourself a favour and visit the lesser known sites - you may just pick up a gem! In fact, why not feature some of them in a blog post to raise their profile.

The top ranked sites were (in alphabetical order) -

* Amatomu
* Grabble
* iBlog
* Keo
* Muti
* MyBroadband
* News24
* SA Good News
* SA Rocks
* SA-Venues

I guess there is not too much surprise in these nominations. These are sites that will be popular with internet regulars because they provide useful and informative content that is updated regularly.

However the following sites also received nominations - although some are corporate and others are seemingly odd nominations, it has to be remembered that this is cyberspace democracy! They all received votes whether we agree with their nomination or not! Take a look here :

* Afrigator
* Bed On Bricks
* BizCommunity
* Blue World
* Cape Gateway
* Cape Town Daily Photo
* Charity Wines
* Cherry Flava
* EishCoZa
* Friends of JZ
* Golfers Information
* Goldfish
* Good Citizens Club
* Grow South Africa
* Hunter of Genius
* iMod
* IOL News
* Jonga
* Jump
* Mahala Media
* Mail & Guardian
* Mnet
* Modelbase
* MoneyWeb
* Mweb
* My Kinda Prices
* MyVideo
* News Phorum
* Pixels For Charity
* Private Property
* SA AirForce
* SA Property
* SA Rugby
* South Africa - sourcing cheap flights to,from or within SA
* SuperSport
* Tertia
* The South African Insult
* Think Money
* Tomorrow Today
* Urban Mamas
* Vottle
* Weather SA
* Webtrepreneur
* Yeigo
* Yuppie Chef

Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this list. I have my own thoughts but will leave these for another post - let's hear what you have to say first!

Spread The Love

Need to send a quick e-card to someone special? Don't want the hassle of registration and confirmation emails? Head over to Spread The Love where you can choose from a large selection of creative and quirky images.

The process is extremely quick and efficient. Make someone's day special - send an e-card today!

50 Best South African websites

Time.com recently released their "50 Best Websites of 2007". I thought it would be fun to generate our own list of 50 Best South African Websites of 2007.

I invite you to leave your suggestions in the comments of this post. I will collate the responses at the end of this month and post the results in August.

Rules :

1) The site must be based in South Africa
2) The site must be a current site - regularly updated

There are some awesome South African sites out there - lets honour them by giving them our vote!

(Update - 12 July - I have created a Facebook group for this project - click here - feel free to join this group and leave your recommendations there)

I look forward to reading your recommendations!

PushPlay replies

In response to yesterday's post about SA online DVD rental company PushPlay, Debra Wynne of PushPlay has posted a comment which I reproduce here -

Thank you for featuring PushPlay on your blog. We love the exposure and it's great that more folk get to hear about us as we are planning to roll out nationwide very shortly.

With regards to our marketing campaign (or lack thereof):- We have been focusing on our distribution systems, working closely with the post office to development a system exclusively for PushPlay which will ensure the fast delivery and return of DVDs nationwide. I'm sure you can appreciate the amount of work and the time that is involved in this task at a national level, but we are now confident that we are ready to roll-out nationwide. Even without much advertising we have had great response from word of mouth marketing.

With regards to being linked to Netflix:- no we are not. The concept of online DVD rental is one which most South Africans have not yet heard of, which means we are currently in the education stage of the business. On top of this, it can be a confusing concept to explain. We recently added the How it Works page to try and explain to new subscribers what they can expect from the service and what the benefits of the service will be to them. The diagram has been used on our homepage since July last year and Netflix only recently added their diagram to the How it Works page. Who's flattering whom we could ask? We might have taken some guidelines from their How it Works page layout, but it works and it's simple and we like it. If you find us terribly unoriginal we apologise, we are partly guilty.

We'll be in Joburg very soon, and so will let you know. Thanks again.

Table Mountain etc.

One of my favourite cities in South Africa is Cape Town. I grew up there and moved to Joburg when I was only 23 years old. It is a city with a rich history, incredible vistas, wonderful people and a place where life just seems more peaceful.

I was therefore delighted to find Cape Town as one of the cities featured in the global City Daily Photo Blog group.

The blog is called Cape Town Daily Photo and is a fantastic way to engage with the city without being there yourself. Some of the pictures are a little arb but that is the beauty of this site - you are drawn into the day to day of the city, engaging with the everyday people busy with everyday tasks. Each photo is accompanied by a short description and explanation of the shot.

This site is a real labour of love and I commend the site authors, Kerry-Anne and Paul, on their efforts.

Now if only I could afford to visit more often . . .

Digital Photos Don't Last Forever

You've been on the holiday of a lifetime. As a card-carrying member of the digital age you remembered to pack your fancy new digital camera and set off to explore a new destination. At each airport, each bus-stop, each restuarant, each hotel and every other place in-between you snapped away happy in the knowledge that, once home, you could upload your photos to your computer and print those you required to show off to neighbours, friends and anyone else who would listen to your travel tales.

All is well until a week after coming home, your hard drive crashes and your local PC techie gives you the bad news that your entire hard drive is corrupted. Even worse news is that you did not save your photos to any removable media! All those shots lost in the midst of a fried hard drive!

If only you had gone to FlyPhoto! This is a service for South Africans that allows you to upload your photos to their servers where they will be kept for safe-keeping. Once uploaded you can choose which prints you wish in hard copy and they will print them for you in sizes of your choice from as little as R2 per print. If you are in Cape Town you can collect your prints from their office otherwise they will be couriered or sent fastmail to you for a very reasonable fee.

Most people do not have a high quality colour photo printer at home and who knows if your software will be compatible in 20 years' time. Printing photos through these guys just seems to make good sense - they promise prints of the highest quality as they use top-end printing machines. This from their web-site :

FlyPhoto prints, however, are certified archiveable and guaranteed to last for 80 years if properly cared for. All our photographs are of the highest quality, developed by state-of-the-art Fuji printers at Orms - South Africa's leading expert in all things photographic. What's more, we deliver your photos right to your door, which means all you have to do is click and then relax.

Sounds like a great service - can't wait to try it out...

Update - FlyPhoto have offered 10 free jumbo prints to all readers of this blog - see post here