In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama called America a nation of Facebook and Google, citing that, when it came to sparking the creativity and imagination, Americans do it better than anyone else.However, Obama, an avid enthusiast of leveraging social media on a political platform, may have his optimism level set a bit too high this time. To quote Obama:"Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a ...

At a recent debate entitled, “The wild wild web – who polices the internet?” South Africa’s most famous political cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro (better known as Zapiro) spoke about a racist, right-wing website that had published some of his work.They had used it out of context in order to support their agenda. His concern was that people would find the site when searching for him and think that he endorsed their beliefs.Unfortunately the web is pretty wild and we have ...

The first downloadable content extension for Call of Duty: Black Ops goes on sale today around the world, exclusively for XBOX 360. The offering is called "First Strike" and it has five new levels in it and four brand new multi-player maps and a zombie level called "Ascension."The game has been a worldwide smash hit. Within 24 hours of going on sale, Call of Duty:Black Ops had sold more than 7-million copies, 5.6-million in the U.S. and 1.4-million in the ...

Most of us have come a long way with Facebook in a short space of time. We've loved it, we've hated it and some of us have practically given up on it. Over the past year or so, I’ve transitioned heavily to Twitter and have of course adopted the requisite supercilious attitude towards Facebook and its members.As is so often tweeted, "Facebook is the people you went to school with whilst Twitter is the people you wish you ...

Google's smartphone operating system Android has passed Nokia's Symbian and become the global smartphone market leader, market research company Canalys said Monday.In the fourth quarter of 2010, 32.9-million phones running Android were shipped compared to 31-million handsets running Symbian, according to Canalys.Based on shipment figures, Google's percentage of the smartphone market share leapt from 8.7 percent in 2009 to 32.5 percent, while Nokia's shrank from 44 percent to 30.6 percent."But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smartphone ...

I love this quote from Debra Ellis of Target Marketing: "Not since the Pony Express have there been so many obstacles to getting mail delivered. Bandits, rugged terrain and wild animals have been replaced with blacklists, spam filters and apathetic recipients."To drive home this fact, a report by ReturnPath Reputation Benchmark Report states that the presence of just one spam trap can drop your deliverability rating by up to 53%.While email marketing newbies can be forgiven for ...

Online anonymity is an issue fraught with emotion. It often inspires passionate arguments from both sides and opens windows into the deeper and darker aspects of our societies. So what, exactly, is the big deal?Firstly, it is important to clarify exactly what online anonymity is. It is very closely related to the issue of personal privacy. While the matter of personal privacy online relates to companies using so called ‘private’ data for advertising profiling purposes (to give one example), personal ...

The New York Post reports Mustafa Fteja of the city’s Staten Island borough is suing Facebook for half a million US dollars, after the social networking site cut off “his access to friends and family around the world, as well as to personal memories and photos”.The 39-year old said he has asked Facebook for months to provide an explanation, but has received no response to date. "You call, they don't answer the phone. You write, they don't reply," he said, ...

People all around the "twitterverse" have been bragging about signing up for an exclusive invite to a site that does... well, hmn.... what it does is still unknown.But the site in question, Hipster, is a placeholder that has been generating some serious online buzz. Click onto the site and all you get is a beautiful picture of a city (if you are in the United States, your city specifically). You are welcomed by the rather cryptic message "Something cool ...

South African internet users in January were more interested in finding out about last year’s Matric results than SA’s latest overseas cricket tournament, reveals Google Zeitgeist -- a tool that provides insight into search trends."Matric results 2010" tops the list of fastest rising searches in SA over the last 30 days, while ‘cricket sa’ and ‘cricket’ claim third and fourth position respectively.Education seems to be a focus for the new year, with UJ (University of Johannesburg) coming in ...