Afrikaner-Gangsta** rapper Jack Parow makes me laugh out loud… ie “Ek is America, jy’s Iraq”… I mean, where does he come up with this crap?

I wish I had a better handle of Afrikaans, but I manage to pick up most of it –the videos are hilarious. He should consider singing a few more in the international language… I reckon he could go viral like Die Antwoord if it hit the spot.

** Gangsta in the leafy suburban-Stellenbosch sense of the word.

Video below and linketjie here:

I’m from an artistic family — and I love the arts. My father is an actor, my mother runs a drama company in the Eastern Cape, my younger brother Daniel is a Joburg-based actor and my other younger brother a philosophy doctorate genius in the States.

So this cause in particular appeals to me. It’s with great sadness though that I have to write this post. I received a mail from Sue Rutherford appealing for help to save Cape Town City Ballet, a 75-year-old institution. It’s is in trouble. Unless it receives urgent and significant funding, the company is in very real danger of being forced to close its doors in the near future.

The site is appealing for donations. Donate now!

It’s been an interesting couple of months. I started memeburn in December last year. Funnily enough I did the first install and the first lines of custom code while I was in the inspirational setting of Paris, at Le Web. In fact quite a bit of the critical work was also done at Charles De Gaulle airport (of all places).

I found the domain name around about January, I had spent three months looking at options and using various domain tools to come up with creative solutions. I eventually found “memeburn” lying inconspicuously in the text of a small New York-based marketing blog — the owner of which was moaning about the increasing “memeburn” he’s being seeing on Twitter. The other name I had ready was memecube.com, as well as five others that never made the grade.

It’s been a long time since I’ve put on my propeller cap to code, but I started hacking the PHP, HTML and CSS myself. This last month it’s been late night after late night trying to pull everything together. Tim Gane and Daniel Bailey of Creative Spark have been key guys on this project. Dan has been our PHP guru, diving in to do the complex stuff and doing amazing work with our adserver. Tim has held it together from a project and content point of view. My old friend Vincent Maher also helped me with the early design work, font choices and been a good counter-foil to bounce the odd idea around.

We haven’t had so much fun and stress in a long time. I didn’t care that we were working until 4am in the morning for many nights. We’re doing what we enjoy.

We’ve been blown away at the enthusiastic reception the site has received from the tech community. A good reception also translates into a good deal of pressure too. We love pressure. Bring it on.

We now have around 60 top quality analysis and insight articles on tech, social media and online media trends. We collected these over a two-month period from some very busy, and some very influential people in the technology and media industry and related fields. There are key people that we still need to talk to, and some that are in the process of coming onboard. It’s kudos to them and testament to their desires to grow the industry — people put their money where their mouths are. Call me naive, but I don’t see competitors — I see an ecosystem.

Some facts about memeburn:

• We have more than 60 opinion pieces from emerging leaders, influencers and leaders in the tech and online sector;

• Some names who have contributed include: Steve Newton (Head of Google SA); US ambassador to SA (Donald Gips); Basheera Khan (Techcrunch); Brendan Jack of Crazy Monkey; Rob Stokes of Quirk; Rob Van Vuuren aka Twakkie; More here
• It will cater for the broader emerging market, but will have the obvious local bias to start off with;
• It is not “another Thought Leader” but something entirely different: we’ll be carrying news too plus gadget reviews;
• Memejobs: is a job resource for a particular kind of person and a particular kind of company — The kind of person who likes working in a startup, where work in this industry is passion and 9-5s have no meaning;
• Initially we started serving the ads on OpenX, but at the last moment switched to Google ad manager, thanks to a conversation I had with Charl Norman;
• We completed changed the header template just two days before the launch because we felt the site was too “bloggy”, whereas we want a hybrid blog-traditional publisher feel.
• It’s on wordpress. I have a love affair with wordpress. We started off with a simple base template, which has now been hacked beyond recognition.
• The site has a forum section. For me this is back to the future, but forums have incredible community value. I’m going to be interested to see how it works out…
• We are not happy with our serving situation — and are watching keenly for performance and speed issues. Hope the site holds (watch this space);
• It’s launching with advertising, Mweb (who have been fairly savvy in targeting bloggers with their latest Uncapped ADSL announcement), Thusa (Durban based startup), Cobii Interactive, Yola and iBurst
• In between the hecticness of Memeburn, Shaun De Waal of the Mail & Guardian asked me to write a 1,000 word piece on my time running the Mail & Guardian Online for a book that is to be published. I ended up writing 4500 words. Then add to that setting up Creative Spark with Tim and Dan and finishing off at 24.com;
• I’ve been speaking to Dan Gillmor and Dave Sifry — who have indicated they are keen — but I still need to receive their pieces (nudge, nudge)
• I tried to get unusal writers in different fields, ie anthropologists writing about social networks. I tried to bring on emerging writers and I tried to ensure a diversity of backgrounds on the site — not just the usual faces;
• My less personal blog posts have been moved from this blog to memeburn as an archive;
• I released the beta url by mistake three weeks ago on a closed list of some of the top tech journalists in the country. Not everyone noticed, because it was hidden away — but we saw a rapid spike of 90 uninvited visitors the following day. No one has said anything. Very polite.
• I’m not sure if I’ve got one child or two: I think their names are Isabel and Stella. I owe them big. I owe my wife Bridget big too;
• This here blog will redirect to memeburn for a while at a later stage. My own name will carry more personal blogs in the future. Industry stuff will be written on Memeburn.
• It launched lastnight.

Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic
safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.

The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.

We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.

We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.

Bloggers who are involved in the protest:

http://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane
http://rwrant.co.za
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/
http://blogs.news24.com/needpoint
http://capetowngirl.co.za
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo
http://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith
http://letterdash.com/one-eye-only
http://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.com
http://amandasevasti.com
http://blog.empyrean.co.za/
http://letterdash.com/brencro
http://6000.co.za
http://chrisroper.co.za
http://pieftw.com
http://hamishpillay.wordpress.com
http://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.com
http://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessa
http://watkykjy.co.za
http://fredhatman.co.za
http://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/
http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/
http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com
http://nicharalambous.com
http://sarocks.co.za
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/
http://helenmoffett.book.co.za/blog/
http://01universe.blogspot.com
http://groundwork.worpress.com
http://iwrotethisforyou.me
http://fionasnyckers.book.co.za
http://attentiontodetail.wordpress.com
http://blogs.women24.com/editor
http://www.missmillib.blogspot.com
http://snowgoose.co.za
http://dreamfoundry.co.za
http://www.vanoodle.blogspot.com
http://www.exmi.co.za
http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com
http://alistairfairweather.com
http://www.zanedickens.com
http://www.nickhuntdavis.com
http://guysa.blogspot.com
http://book.co.za
http://baldy.co.za
http://skinnylaminx.com
http://blogs.african-writing.com/zukiswa
http://www.mielie.wordpress.com
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/gatherer/
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten
http://stii.co.za
http://blogs.news24.com/FSB_AP
http://twistedkoeksuster.blogspot.com
http://whensmokegetsinyoureyes.blogspot.com/
http://trinklebean.wordpress.com
http://commentry.wordpress.com/
http://matthewbuckland.com
http://blogs.news24.com/colour-me-fran
http://gormendizer.co.za

I’ve resigned as Head of 20FourLabs to focus on building a new Cape Town and Joburg-based startup. I joined 24.com in 2008 from the Mail & Guardian Online, initially as the GM of Publishing and then went on to set up Labs.

I’m going to miss 24.com and the Labrats. My resignation is as a result of a long-standing need to go on my own and start my own thing. I’ve lost count how many times people have asked me “why aren’t you on your own?” — so I’ve decided to finally take the hint

20FourLabs has been a special experience. Probably the most recent highlight for all of us was scooping the continent-wide Nokia Innovators Competition for our Afridoctor app — one of those ideas sourced organically from within the division and then the sizable award money split amongst staff. There are now some plans afoot to take the app to the next level, but to top it all off — it’s a mobile app that potentially can make a real difference to millions of lives.

I feel I can write a book about starting and running what is essentially an entrepreneurally-minded division in a corporate setting. We got some things right, many things wrong too. This is not a particularly new phenomenon: These types of Labs’ initiatives are popping up all over the world in big corporates under various guises and names, but all have the same goal at heart: build quickly, build cheaply, cut the complication, cut the crap, go for simplicity. As companies get big, controls and processes are necessary to manage complexity. Although necessary, they often can work against innovation and add cost to innovation, which in turn reduces appetite for risk. So it’s question of working out: For which projects do you change these rules and at what stage in their lifecycle?

We also know the barrier to-entry, particularly when it comes to online business and online publishing, is plummeting. We just don’t have the distribution and production costs in an online environment that traditional businesses face. It means that garage start-ups have the potential to go big, quickly and on a shoestring. A low-cost startup can make it huge, and to some extent has the same opportunities as a resource-endowed giant. That’s the theory. Of course it doesn’t always work out like that. The benefit of being part of a multinational group is being part of a big, influential human and resource-rich product network. The entrepreneur-corporate partnerships are often the partnerships that flourish.

It’s been an amazing experience — and I thank JP Farinha, 24.com CEO, for continuing to give us the room to experiment and for showing faith in the division. I enjoyed working with the 24.com exco — notable for meetings filled with robust discussion and debate. I’ve also enjoyed the “hands on” approach and the several ops meetings we’ve had with the Naspers and Media24 executive, including Koos Bekker, Antonie Roux, and Francois Groepe and co. I’m pretty sure I did the first ever Prezi presentation for one of these meetings too

Silicon Cape
Being part of the Silicon Cape also played its part in pushing me to make this move and forge my own destiny. We don’t need to look far to see how many inspiring entrepreneurs there are here — and I get a real sense that it’s a sector that is starting to take off. We’ve been a bit behind. We’ve been shackled by poor broadband that underachieves when stacked up against the middle-income weight of the country’s economy and many world-leading industries here. But this is starting to change…

20FourLabs
Kevin Cupido, the Labs’ Ops Manager, now takes over as the acting head of a division of some of the most talented people I know. There are more than 30 product managers and developers that make up the division, which also includes the guys at Blueworld. Labs now has more than 20 projects on the go — probably a bit too many — but we just couldn’t help ourselves .

Imminent launches include a new Air-based desktop content-sharing app — championed by Blueworld — which has become a remarkable workshopped evolution in content-sharing, from what was initially conceived as a basic RSS reader. Other projects include Utterbuzz, a Twitter aggregator, the new 24.com, 24.mobi, 24.com mobile sites and Letterdash — and some more. The current products are being optimised and expanded, including Afridoctor, flirtaroo.mobi and the various mobile applications we built. I’m sad not to see the fruition of the Hub, which is coming along nicely, but it’s in extremely good hands and evolving in a unique direction.

Creative Spark and Memeburn.com
And so after 24.com, I’ll be dedicating my time to establishing a relatively new venture, Creative Spark — a new digital agency and consultancy based in Cape Town and Joburg. More will be revealed about the venture and the people involved when appropriate. I’ll also be taking some time to focus on the various companies and ventures I have interests in.

Also watch out for the launch of Memeburn, a new resource on tech trends, innovation and startup news covering the emerging market sector worldwide. It’s aimed unashamedly at the tech elite and those interested in innovation — think of it as a Mashable/Techcrunch for emerging market tech. It’s been the result of many nights and there are some industry leaders associated with it, including some big international names — again which will be revealed at an appropriate time.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to everyone at 24.com, Media24, MIH and Naspers for some great working relationships and times. It’s been an inspiring time and I’ve worked with some inspiring people. There is no doubt that our paths will cross again and again and again.

With reference to the “Fuck you” by Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard in Parliament last week, the sharp advertising minds at Nandos released this advertisement, which I thought was very clever:

No doubt we’ll be graced with a plethora of plugins soon, but if you’re keen to add a Google Buzz button to your Wordpress blog manually to share content (via Google Reader), here’s how I did it:

To get the buzz button image on your homepage posts you need to edit your theme’s Main Index Template (index.php). For it to appear on your posts you obviously need to edit Single Post (single.php)

Right after <h2><div class=”post”></h2> in both these files you need to paste the following code:

<div style=”float:right; margin-left:10px”><a href=”http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>&srcURL=http://[YOURBLOGURLHERE]/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external”><img

src=”http://[YOURBLOGURLHERE]/google-buzz.png” width=”50″ height=”58″ alt=”" /></a></div>

It’s an unfortunate fact that bloggers/consumers/people rarely write about their good experiences when it comes to service. Maybe it’s because we expect it should be the norm. Maybe it’s because we don’t get good service that often. Maybe it’s just that bad service motivates us to write in that single moment of frustration in the hope we’ll cause corrective action?

I’m no consumer activist by any stretch, but I still chuckle about an old ABSA bank charges post of mine which still continues to be the third Google search result after the bank’s own official site. To this day, it sends my blog quite a bit of traffic and I’m sure it’s played a small part in its own way in influencing public perception. Interestingly, no response from the bank has been forthcoming either publicly or privately over it (I’m still a client there).

But this isn’t a post about bad service. It’s about a great experience I had with a local online shop, Stop Shop. I recently bought an LCD/DVD panel for my car because I noticed they had some pretty good deals (and pretty good SEO too) and I needed to replace my old car radio. Isabel decided to use it as a piggy bank, inserting coins in the CD slot that blew all the circuits.

I was suspicious at first of Stopshop because their prices weren’t bad, I hadn’t heard of them, or heard of anyone that had used them. But the professional appearance of the site and presence of telephone and email contact details persuaded me otherwise.

The first unit I bought arrived promptly. I installed it. But I was disappointed at the quality of unit — more a manufacturing issue than an issue with the retailer. Contacting Stopshop I expected the usual adversarial attitude because these units are not cheap and have to be shipped. Instead the online shop’s response was to help me search for a another unit, addressing the concerns I had raised with the first. They then offered to send me the second unit minus the cost of the first, saying I should hold on to both until I was satisfied.

When the newer unit arrived shortly after — believe it or not I now had new reservations about it, specifically around its size (I should have checked this before they sent it to me). I contacted StopShop and complained again, feeling things could now get really bad and they would lose patience with me (these units are not cheap to buy and ship). Again I got into defensive mode, but after a couple of polite calls and a few emails, they said I should take some time over the decision and offered to take back both units and give me my money back, no questions asked.

In the end the second unit did fit perfectly, and it looks great in my car. I feel like KIT has nothing on me. It’s a geek car. My car now talks to me when I’m over the speed limit (not sure that’s entirely a good thing), it charges and plays my iPhone, plays hundreds of MP3s via one DVD, allows me to plug in my harddrive via mini USB, has an SD card — and just looks awesome. It goes on: When I thanked them for their service and asked them how I go about returning the first unit I rejected, they then offered to sell it and refund me the extra installation costs I incurred.

You just don’t get this every day. And it inspired me to write about it. From my own limited dealings with them, if this is their general modus operandi with all consumers that use them — they deserve every success they get.

Credibility and trust are the key issues in today’s information(overload) age where news emanates from multiple sources, including sources other than journalists. More so than ever, news is also real-time and unrelenting: there’s lots of it.

Here, below, I created this pyramid which helps demonstrate news hierarchy and flow in the social media age. It proposes that journalists have an important role to play as interpreters, fact checkers and guardians of accuracy in this new paradigm of  fast, unrelenting, real-time information. It suggests that media’s value lies decreasingly in being first with a story, because for breaking news stories they’ll mostly be beaten every time by their own readers: the millions of users out there.* These are users plugged into social networks, blogs and social media sites. These are users armed with cellphone cameras, laptops or computers.

Journalists are increasingly relying on social networks, blogs and myriad other web-based user-generated content sites as sources.  While using these new real-time sources to enrich the reporting process, journalists should never forget their important role: the value of media, it seems, could lie in providing interpretation, context, analysis and understanding around a story — being that further stamp of credibility and mark of accuracy on raw, real-time news and information that often originates from untested or unknown sources.

Is this media’s role in the social media age?

[ Printable high-res image ]

With credit to: Mashable and Read Write Web.