I Love The Web

Are South Africans ready for “Politics 2.0″ ?

Sep 15, 2008 Mobile, Uncategorized

“Politics 2.0″ according to wikipedia is ” the idea that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns” and I would like to append that not only the political campain but the politcal process in general”

Unless you have been banished to a far flung Island totally isolated from all media over the last 4 years or so; the name Barak Obama has to sound familiar to you. Depending on the level of media that you may be exposed to, his name (Barak Obama) has become synonymous with the word CHANGE !

That message has been communicated and promised so well that even the means; with which that message is spreading; has changed. For the the change has been social media. The use of social media tools such as blog, shared video (Youtube), instant messaging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook et al) has done much to popularise and spread Obamas election promise.

Visiting websites for the major political parties in South Africa one soon realise that the political parties sit at varying levels of readiness for a robust political campaign that takes advantage of social media.  At the most basic level at least they all have a web presence of some kind.

ANC	Y	Y	N	N	Y	N	N	15-Sep-08
DA	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	N	N	15-Sep-08
FFP	Y	Y	Y	N	Y	N	N	15-Sep-08
ID	Y	Y/N	N	N	Y	N	Y	15-Sep-08
UDM	Y	N	N	N	Y	N	N	15-Sep-08
ACDP	Y	Y	N	N	Y	N	N	15-Sep-08
PAC	Y	N	N	N	N	N	N	15-Sep-08

However most lack an RSS feed which to my mind is the most fundamental element required to really give wings to a political opinion published on their websites. I thought it was curious though that among websites visited they all seem to have a representation in one form or the other on Facebook.

No doubt the use of the tools has some significance but how relevant are all these tools in South Africa ?

Broadband penetration in South Africa sit at a low and depressing mark ( around 1%  at best estimates  source ),  This does not compare well with  the US at 57 % (source).

We do on the other hand have  one of the highest mobile phone to user ratios in the world. This ubiquitous state in my opinion is the most widely ignored means of communication by political representatives. However, looking at the agenda on this years MobileActive08, I am convinced that perhaps some light will be shared towards that “Politics 2.0″ Euphoria I long to see.

Tags: Politics 2.0, web 2.0

The way the web is going ..

Sep 10, 2008 sematic web

I happen to be the most computer literate person in my immediate family. In other words I am a geek of sorts. Most geeks will be familiar with social moments, either with family or with friends where you are asked about what the next big thing on the web is.

While you may regret having to mention “we are headed for a sematic web”, here is an example  you may find useful to show them what is to come.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Tags: sematic web

Image Hotlinking, Good idea, Bad idea ?

Sep 8, 2008 SEO

I stumbled upon this humorous image. This gentleman had built a site with images hotlinked from another site and he writes to the web master complaining about the removal of the images he had hotlinked. Hotlinking refers to the use of an image on a site that is located on a different host than your own.

This used to be a big web ettiqutte faux pas. The two common reasons this practice was frowned upon are bandwidth costs and copyright infringement. I think if you are hosting your sites in South Africa the bandwidth costs will probably be closer to your concerns.

There are numerous examples of web masters discouraging this behavior including this ingenuous example where the hotlinked images are swaped with  images advertising the original site. Which led my thoughts to pupularity in page ranking.  As you may know, when you talk about page ranking, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a very relevant topic.

I know very little about SEO beyond the odd tweaking of the page headers and a plugin or two into wordpress but I spend enough time on the web to notice that hotlinking as been a relevant topic among SEO magicians. This is hardly a new topic but I really want to know from knowledgable poeple out there, is Hotlinking the web version of the ugly duclking that turned into  a beautiful swan ?

Tags: SEO

does ‘6 degrees of separation’ apply on Twitter ?

Sep 3, 2008 Social Netoworking

So I was bored and started poking around profiles on Twitter.  Soon I came to the question : does the 6 degrees of separation theory apply to Twitter ?

For the slightest remote chance that you have no idea what  Twitter is, I think of it as yet another social networking (or is it social NOTworking application) that allows you to track what others are doing. It can be used as a way of letting your readers know that you posted a new title on your blog.

Your readers then receive that instant message;  in a manner that is not too different from a ‘text’ or ‘SMS’ you receive on your phone except of course you receive it on your computer.  I should mention that you can receive those messages on your cellphone but I will tackle that separately as a topic.

As I was hopping from one profile to another, building a network of sorts for people i find interesting, i began to wonder how long would it take for me to stumble upon a profile of someone I would recognise or someone that I have actually met in person ?

It did not take long, I did infact find the profile of someone I knew. More about that in a moment. Soon I wanted to find out if  a ’six degrees experiment’ has been done on the Twitter network before.  sure enough I came across Eric Gehler’s post talking about the exact same thing. Eric , I wish you luck and I will follow you.

Anyway here is how my little experiment went.

• I followed Sisiwami
• Sisiwami follows Mongezi
• Mongezi follows Themba
• Themba follows Noto whom I have known for years!
  

Now, i have no idea how the 6 degrees theory works but I think Twitter has just improved on it. Is there a moore’s law twist to the theory ?

Tags: Twitter

Abondonware everywhere !

Sep 1, 2008 DOS

Back In 1995 I stepped into the university computer lab and my eyes glowed. For the first time in my life I was allowed access to a computer. For someone who has yearned access to a copmputer since the days of the Commodore and the ZX spectrum; a decade before ; the anxiety is understandable, i think.

Soon enough I had the opportunity to practice all the things I had read about from a magazine called ‘The South African Computer Buyer Magazine” ( now called “South Africa Computer Magazine (SACM) ). I had been buying the magazine since early 1994 while preparing for my trade test back at Vaal Reefs in the North West Province (western Transvall).

Computing in those days was something new and really exciting. While word processing was a familiar concept to me thanks to the magazine I spoke about. Spreadsheets and database were very strange concepts. We were introduced to applications such such as ( As Easy As, Wordperfect 5.1, dbase III)

I remember playing around with early DTP software such as Printshop and one called News. Yes we used these old programs and made Dotmatrix printers choke. These programs did not make us very popular with the computer lab minders of the day.

Anyway, I have found a site that hosts all these abondonded programs and I am certain you will find software that brings back old memories of your own. Go to Vetusware.com

For more Early Computing vist earlycomputing.com