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Uno de Waal’s online space covering everything about web2.0, social networks and internet related developments in South Africa and how it fits in with the rest of the world.

Web2.0 will eat itself

Uno as Uncategorized

May|2|2007

Techcrunch is following the story:

To say what happened today on Digg was a â€œuser revoltâ€ is an understatement. The Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.

That just got the Digg community fired up, and soon the entire Digg home page was filled with stories containing the decryption key. The users had taken control of the site, and unless Digg went into wholesale deletion mode and suspended a large portion of their users, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it.

This is where you need to be really careful with web2.0 type tech.
In similar news: Del.icio.us will eat itself
Apparently, a lot of other things will eat itself as well. Mostly Pop.

Technorati Tags: techcrunch, digg, user generated content,

1 Comment

How to fight for Local Bandwidth

Uno as Uncategorized

Apr|17|2007

At the moment I don’t have the time to take up this project but I’d love it if someone with some free time would do it (I can start again next week..):

Someone start a wiki at: www.ISupportCheaperLocalBandwidth.co.za
It isn’t up yet and it’s up for grabs I can imagine.

The idea is that everyone in the blogosphere (and anyone in particular) puts a little badge on their site linking to this site that outlines the high costs of local bandwidth and campaigns for no more softcaps and cheaper hosting costs for SA hosted sites. Sites like Amatomu and Afrigator have really shown how popular SA sites are (they aren’t even listing SMME’s or other big-bandwidth hitters!) while ISP’s and Telkom maintain that there isn’t enough demand to support lower prices. Bullshit!!
This will do a few things:
Stimulate the economy as more people host locally.
Develop and support local web-startups providing a nice incubation zone (e.g. rather upload to MyVideo than YouTube as it is cheaper)
Provide incentives for other SMME’s to get online.
And a shitload more.

Why I propose a wiki:
It needs to be user editable in the sense that you can tell your own story.
Add pages where e.g. “People who Host overseas but would instantly host locally” “People who host locally but are feeling ripped off” include research that users have submitted. AND more importantly, give ISP’s/Telkom a place to be able to reply to opinion (as opposed to a forum methinks).

So who’s going to do it?
It needs:
Hosting (If PayPal was local we could have used it!)
Setting up Wiki
Widget Development
Spreading the word (I’m sure this will sort itself out though)

Is it not ironic that as I finished this post and I clicked on Publish I realised that my domain servers I had changed had kicked in… (yes, I’m on Amplehosting now) and that means that I just spent the same amount of time trying to post this as I would have spent setting up this project as I now needed to reinstall wordpress again from my backed up backup. argh.

5 Comments

Tag you’re it!

Uno as Uncategorized

Apr|15|2007

I’ve been postponing this… Tyler tagged me while back (in Feb!) and I missed it, only picking it up in my references now that I moved my blog. Then Adii tagged me more recently.
Tyler has the “things you didn’t know about me” meme, and Adii the 5 things you obsess about. I’ll try and combine the two, five things you didn’t know I’m obsessive about:

Music: It’s pretty much right up there. I’ve been collecting music since I got onto the internet going through Napster, Audiogalaxy (still one of the best resources!), Kazaa, Soulseek, DC and torrents. I DJ at Mystic Boer in Stellenbosch sometimes and then I’ll play breaks, electro, techno, hip hop, trash and anything you can throw a doiley over. I’ve got a set out you can listen to over here (playlist coming soon). My collection is a haphazard 112GB, but I rarely listen to everything on there (I know… hoarder!). At the moment I’m listening to DJ Shadow again. It’s haphazard because I don’t really know where everything is.
Cycling: I’m a keen Mountainbiker. I was a provincial sub-junior rider back in the 90’s. It doesn’t count much really, there wasn’t that much competition. My latest riding has included the Cape Epic in 2006 (2007 we Day Tripped) but it’s hard as nails and I won’t do it again soon.
Projects: I get involved with too much and am forever telling people “Yeah it would be great to help out on that, just send me an e-mail.” I need to stop this…
Tattoo’s: I have 4 smallish logo-type ones (Africa, heart, star, asterisk). My artists are all at Wildfire (Simon White and Manuela). I am planning a bigger one as soon as I have the funds, time and design. It’s a big floral thingy. Big one. On my leg.
Short Films: I love the stuff, and music videos. I have a good collection from RES Magazine and some DVD’s from the greats like Gondry, Cunningham etc. We might be holding a shorts evening one night. Keep a lookout for it.

I’m tagging:

Stefan Sessa (because he’s been tagged before and hasn’t done anything about it either)
Kobus Ehlers (because he needs to blog more frequently)
Johan Swarts (because his blog is interesting and could spread this meme into the afrikaans blogosphere)
Annelie Mare (because she’s going to be irritated that she needs to take time out from Die Matie).
Niel Bekker (because he’s ridiculously interesting and needs to write/blog more)

Technorati Tags: meme, tag, stefan sessa, kobus ehlers, johan swarts, annelie mare, niel bekker, tyler reed, adriaan pienaar, uno de waal