links for 2007-01-31
Uno as Uncategorized
Jan|31|2007
Attack of the clones!
Uno as Web2.0
Jan|31|2007
YouTube Clone Script
In case you hadn’t noticed, YouTube clones are popping up all over the place.
This site offers a script it claims enables you to make your own clone.
Technorati Tags: youtube, myvideo.co.za, web2.0, south africa, clone
Death to the Clones
Jan|30|2007
Damnit, I should probably stop with this naysaying…
But:
Mashable reports:
They [YouTube] also claim to have fixed the messaging so that the spam filers won’t
catch legitimate messages, and they’ve improved the “block user” feature - you
can now block YouTube “haters” by simply clicking a button next to their
comments. They’ve made the profiles more customizable, too, allowing users to
remove modules they don’t want. They’ve stopped short, however, of embracing MySpace
layouts or html embeds. Customizable profiles is one area where YouTube
rival LiveVideo really
shines.They’ve also added a new social filter - you can now rank clips by the number
of video responses they’ve received. And there’s a new account type: in addition
to Comedian, Musician and Director accounts, there are now “Guru” accounts for
experts on certain topics. That could be bad news for VideoJug,
which wants to be “YouTube for How-Tos”.
See how easy YouTube can take out a competitor if the other company doesn’t differentiate itself drastically? But that might just be me being negative.
Oh yeah, this is on-topic with Myvideo.
Another interesting thing:
Google Bombs - Google Bombing, the process of trying to get a
site to the top of Google by mass linking (like putting George Bush at the top
of searches for “miserable failure”) has been halted by an algorithm change at
Google. (via)
Technorati Tags: myvideo.co.za, south africa, youtube, clone, web2.0, video
reblog:Chessboxing
Uno as Comedy
Jan|30|2007
From Mentalfloss:
The Domain: Chessboxing
The Master: Bulgarian Tihomir Titschko is currently the European chessboxing champion—and, because the sport hasn’t really spread to other continents, that makes him the de facto world champ. Chessboxing starts with a four-minute round of chess, followed by a two-minute round of boxing, and then it’s back to the chess. A judge decides the winner after 11 rounds (six of chess and five of boxing), unless the match is stopped first by a knockout or checkmate. And if you’re thinking Lennox Lewis could probably beat Bobby Fischer at chessboxing, you’re right. While it’s important to be not horrible at chess, it’s more important to know how to survive in the ring.
That one’s for you Niel
links for 2007-01-30
Uno as Uncategorized
Jan|30|2007
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Jon Udell’s January 25, 2007 blog post Unintended consequences of syndication is an interesting read, especially if you’re trying to figure out your personal bookmarking strategy.
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welcome to buddystumbler an instant messaging exchange, instant messenger search, and im lookup engine for aim, yahoo!, google, and msn
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Starting a Social App? Find a niche and work outward
Real Time distress info
Uno as Web2.0
Jan|30|2007
Two separate taxi accidents left one person dead and several others injured in Johannesburg on Saturday. In Midrand a taxi crashed after its brakes failed, leaving one person dead and 12 injured at the Boulders Shopping Centre in Midrand. The taxi went down Church Street through the intersection, over the pavement, through a picket fence and bushes. It drove over a traffic light and lamp post before landing on a bakkie in a car park. The 30-year-old manager of Tactical Reaction Services, who was inside the bakkie, died instantly. “The man sustained massive blunt trauma and died of his injuries at the scene,” said Nick Dollman, spokesman for Netcare 911. Paramedics attended to 12 people on the scene. “Police will open a case of culpable homicide against the taxi driver. Metro Police confiscated his licence and the taxi was impounded as it was found to be not roadworthy,” said Superintendent Wayne Minnaar of the Johannesburg Metro Police. In another accident in Rivonia under the N1 bridge, a minibus taxi overturned after colliding with another vehicle and a lamp post. Seven people were taken to hospital.
Mike says: “A real-time map plotting radio distress signals from the National Association of Radio-Distress Signaling and Info-communications.”
Via BoingBoing
links for 2007-01-29
Uno as Uncategorized
Jan|29|2007
Muti will eat itself
Jan|28|2007
A while back Kottke.org had this posting:
People who have bookmarked del.icio.us on del.icio.us.
People who have bookmarked the people who have bookmarked del.icio.us on del.icio.us.
Ed. note: At this point, the del.icio.us web server started singing “Daisy, Daisy” and soon after, Skynet achieved consciousness.
And now, in following with the Muti.co.za trend… a South African web developer are to be proud to bring us:
blik is geinspireer deur muti - maar is bedoel vir Afrikaanse mense. Hier kan jy op hoogte bly van wat ander mense aanbeveel om te lees (dit gee jou ‘n blik op dinge) - dikwels goed wat sopas geskryf is.
**sound of hand slapping forehead**
I’ve definately been picking up a difference in the content being posted, the Afrikaans content is much more political (en oe, tog so kwaad!). And also, Blik has some serious competition. All that News24 needs to do is develop its own Digg and Blik is pretty stuffed. Come to think about it, a lot of the local developers products would fold if News24 decided to develop some quality products. At the time I took a look most of the new sites in Blik were News24 sites. The Top section is luckily a bit different.
Technorati Tags: muti.co.za, blik.co.za, south africa, web theory, clone, afrikaans, –>
Newspapers vs Magazines
Jan|28|2007
Matthew Buckland from the Mail&Guardian published a piece on the different levels of development in the online presence of newspapers and magazines:
Magazines aren’t big online. Websites of print magazines have had a rather low profile in more than 10 years of internet in this country. Compare this to the high-profile online news brands that rake in big numbers and you will see what I mean. It’s no secret that the news brands dominate the top half of the local online readership rankings, whereas very few magazines even make the top 50 sites.
That’s fairly true, if you take a look at Alexa’s rankings over here, you can see in the top 50 in the category News and Media. Also, according to this graph:
(max smoothing, 1 year graph)
You can see the disparities when it comes to the different sites. The blue line is Mail&Gaurdian, the 4th most popular online site in the category Africa > South Africa > News and Media
They have an almost DOUBLE amount of pageviews than the 5th site, Moneyweb. That says something. I’m not sure, but it says something. Probably that there is a lot of competition for online attention in the lower brackets, but not so much in the higher brackets.
Although:
That shows the top 3 news sites. Now M&G is nowhere. But then again, it’s a different market in a way. I’m sure you understand what I mean. Quality over Quantity thing.
Ok, so now to get back to the magazines, who don’t feature online in Alexa rankings at all. Let’s look at SL magazine, the student/youth magazine. I’m taking this example because we expect a lot of youth to be more online than older folk (although, methinks research has shown that there are more 35-40 year olds online, which I also think still classifies as “youth” for the National Youth Commission, oh no wait, it’s someone who is between 14 and 35. Woops.).
SL’s ratecard says that out of a whopping, amazing, slap-dashing 540 online respondents, 66% of their readership is 18-23. Now this is probably not figures to go according to (who bases market research on that few respondents? They don’t even say what their circulation figures are), so let’s head over to their Myspace page:
Ooh, how cool is that, you even get a different cover! I was originally intended to go on a bit about how magazines, and especially mainstream youth magazines, are using alternative social networking tactics to reach their intended audience, but I’m unfortunately miserably wrong. I though that they might have used some cool tactics and and spread their meme through the network, but I’m wrong.
They have 611 friends, which is a highish number, for a small outfit. But then their top-friend, the great band LARK has 1,407 friends. That is a lot. Similarly, they have 14026 profile views in response to SL’s pathetic 4,000.
So let’s take a smaller band/group called Sovereign Academy (they played in Mystic Boer last year sometime, it was quite fun but I won’t go out of my way to see them again…). So SA has 685 friends, a few more than the band on their profile. You can’t see their profile views for some reason. (Just remembered, Mystic is really a myspace success story, when you are talking about online presence).
Making sense of the mess
Oraait, so enough of the stats. Now why would I take issue with this? Well, SL is supposed to be an aggregator, which means that if you add SA or LARK to as a friend, you should technically also like SL. And then there are all the Afrikaans Rokkers as well. What I’m trying to get across is that SL has a much broader constituency than the bands themselves and should therefore, in a way, have a larger profile set, or at least a higher level of activity. Remember, this is their age group, the kids that are online and are supposed to read their mag are online already!!. And it really isn’t that difficult, it’s only a matter of some link love, some brand awareness and affiliate marketing. Instead, SL has gone the route of trying to be uber-cool and list international magazines ID, DAZED and NYLON in their top-friends, something that could have been reserved for SA bands or well-networked friends which would have been more valuable. Jou lelike onder-rok steek uit, tannie. Obviously there isn’t an online strategy.
Now, take another step back to BlackAndWhite, an online music culture magazine launched by a friend at Stellenbosch. I’ve been a little lucky to talk to Werner, the publisher, and some people about the site here and there, and grab bits of info from it. So Werner starts a magazine, and it goes really well. Then he stops publishing, and it falls flat (for various reasons). But apparently, speaking to one of the developers behind it, they had some pretty impressive stats. And they were skipping the traditional print route, which methinks is a brilliant methodology. I just spotted another online magazine. They already have about 588 friends. This is where SA youth nu-media webdevelopment is happening.
A few last points
Firstly, I know Alexa rankings aren’t the be-all-and-end-all, although they do give a fairly accurate ranking system for research-material poor buggers like me. Then, SL is predominantly a print newspaper, that’s their core product, which one needs to remember. What I think they are forgetting is that they can add a lot of value to their magazine if they move online and create a community. In fact, there isn’t a social networking site for South African kids yet (I know what you are thinking…). MK89 would be the PERFECT site to start a Myspace-like site, they need to focus around their product offerings and their programming. They have a tremendous following, all them kids in Bellville and Pretoria with ADSL at their fingertips. They’d make a killing and send their ratings through the roof. Never underestimate the power of a
pimply, skinny-jeaned, make-upped, angry poenk rocker. Mamma bought those ripped designer jeans. There’s still money to be made. I reckon I should do a post outlining the benefits of a social media strategy for them… Gawd it’ll be great.
The other point, a lot of publishers are adapting to their constituencies. Hybrid Echo Magazine doesn’t have a homepage, it doesn’t even have an RSS feed. It only has a Myspace page, but it looks like it’s doing fairly good (apart from the poor hit counter). Myspace is sometimes more accessable for youth than a full-on website, and othertimes they need to act as compliments to each other. In SL’s case they are neither. So maybe I still have half a leg to stand on with my original argument on how youth magazines are going the route of under-the-google-radar to add value. Still, the figures aren’t really comparable to the bigger, or even middle-weight players in online publishing.
Just did the math….
Anyone want to advertise on my site? hehehe. The rate card is on SL’s website 
I clean forgot, let us not be forgetting about DIE SON!
Jy weet jy wil…
Technorati Tags: south africa, print, magazine, newspaper, industry, music, culture, myspace, media theory, alternative publishing, sl Magazine, blackandwhite
General midi @ Fiction
Uno as art
Jan|28|2007
Had some good bizznizz at Fiction in Long Street last night.
General Midi was playing an awesome breakbeat/electro set.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/BVNLXZxcoyM]
Technorati Tags: fictionbar, long street, cape town, south africa, bar , club, general midi, party