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Mandy de Waal is a writer, thought activist and investigative journalist with a fondness for smart atheists, intelligent writing and well-constructed arguments. Read her Blog or follow her on Twitter.
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Ever wondered why Nigeria gets so little media coverage and why places like Japan enjoy so much more attention from the world’s press? That’s a question that concerned internet intellectual Ethan Zuckerman while he was doing research work at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.“Japan and Nigeria both have a population of about 130 million people. But if you look at a major newspaper outside of the African continent, you are about eight times as likely to see a ...
Ever heard of homophily? If not, there’s a good chance that you’re in a social network where more of the same isn’t exactly sparking your neural pathways or making you smarter. In fact famed internet intellectual Ethan Zuckerman, with tongue firmly in cheek, would go as far as to say that homophily is making you dumber.“I’m over-simplifying and being a bit cheeky when I say that the internet is making us stupid. However what I mean by it, in a ...
It’s been seven years since a little known games company in Stellenbosch, South Africa, was looking for a cheap alternative to SMS and invented the country's first mobile instant messenger service. MXit is now a legend with more than 20-million users in 120 countries which send an average of some 250-million messages a day.According to CEO Herman Heunis, what started out as a small team of eight people has mushroomed into well over a hundred staff after global expansion ...
Clay Shirky is crazy about Ushahidi. He thinks the crowdsource crisis tool is the perfect technology for demonstrating cognitive surplus in action --the positive power of what people can do with their free time and how it benefits society. But what other technology does Shirky rate and what’s his advice to local entrepreneurs Memeburn spoke to the best selling author on the line from New York.“In terms of technology, obviously the most exciting thing is what is going on ...How exactly did Clay Shirky, the best selling author of “Here Comes Everybody”, connect Lolcats and Ushahidi to come up with the concept of “Cognitive Surplus”?The epiphany came after Shirky got pissed off by a television producer who famously asked him “Where do people find the time?”. The off-handed question was elicited by Shirky’s explanation of Wikipedia and issues raised by collaborative crowdsourcing."No one who works in TV gets to ask that question,” Shirky shouted at the producer, ...
An intensely private person who rarely gives personal interviews, Mark Shuttleworth spoke to Memeburn.com about what he values most in life, why he doesn’t want to be a role model, and what the sexiest technology is around today.The founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, Shuttleworth became a billionaire after selling Thawte to Verisign. He is the founder of investment company Here Be Dragons and The Shuttleworth Foundation, which aims to make the world a better place by investing in education ...
South Africa is the best place to become successful says Mark Shuttleworth, who made it big when he skidded over twenty and then promptly became a billionaire by selling Thawte to Verisign for some R3.5-billion.“The fact that South Africa doesn’t have a Silicon Valley shouldn’t deter anyone from being an entrepreneur in South Africa,” he says.“The existence of Silicon Valley is held up as a reason for California’s success with technology. The simple fact is that there were a ...
When it comes to Silicon Valley start-ups, Dave Sifry has been there, done that, and gotten quite a few T-shirts. He founded Technorati as a little science project in his basement, is the creator of Offbeat Guides, and was the brains behind Linuxcare.A software entrepreneur who has spent over twenty years starting up Open Source and Web businesses, Sifry has built, managed, got funding and enjoyed huge success. He’s also experienced the lessons failure can bring. He spoke to ...
The co-founder of Apple and Pixar is the ultimate front man, one of the most charismatic businessmen alive. Steve Jobs doesn’t just present, he evangelizes. And when he gets onto the stage he takes no prisoners – it is difficult to listen to Jobs and not be recruited as an Apple brand advocate.There’s a lot that start ups or emerging entrepreneurs could learn from Jobs, and there’s no person better placed to teach them than Carmine Gallo. An Emmy award-winning journalist ...
At the same time that Chris Anderson was penning a Wired article that would become the seed concept for a controversial best-seller, Vinny Lingham was launching yet another internet business. It was 2008 and both Anderson and Lingham were obsessed with the same concept – making money by giving away things for free.Anderson’s article - Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business – would prove to be the precursor for his book Free. The Future of a Radical Price, ...
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