In this, the 999999nth version, of the Hitler Downfall meme, the Fuhrer finds out he didn't crack a nomination for the 2010 Blog Awards. Oh dear.Note to readers: The original clip we posted was removed from You Tube. Read "Could this be the dumbest company in the world?" for more background on this. In the meantime, here the clip is again from another video-sharing site, Zoopy:The clip was apparently created by Cape Town-based digital agency, Quirk eMarketing (Stacey Hutton ...

How much media content should I produce? As a professional journalist this has been a question that I've struggled with over the past five years since leaving the Financial Times.I can produce a lot of media content, and hopefully, it is all quality media content. But my concern is that if I produce too much it will cause my readers and subscribers to switch off because there is too much from one source.I know that if some of my sources ...

Traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio and print have pushed often irrelevant and unwanted messages out to consumers of media for over five decades -- and been paid a fortune to do so.This ineffective "spray and pray" format of advertising assumes that one in a certain number of people will buy a product or service and that if the message is disseminated far and wide enough, it will eventually lead to sufficient procurement of that product or service.Before the ...

Carte Blanche, South Africa's version of the actuality and documentary show 60-Minutes, is turning 22 this year and to celebrate they’re throwing a party and inviting everyone.The TV show's "It’s all about you” campaign will make use of its Facebook and Twitter presences to vote on which stories will be seen on Carte Blanche on Sunday, 12 September 2010.At the start of the broadcast, veteran anchor Derek Watts, who believes Carte Blanche doesn’t “look a day over 20,” will ...

Tara Brabazon colonised the stage at the Gartner Symposium's Innovation ITXpo at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre on Monday with a passionate plea for us all to go on a "digital diet".The eccentric, flamboyant Australian academic is the Professor of Media at the University of Brighton in England, and spoke eloquently on “information obesity”, Google, and the problems of web searches in an educational environment.Brabazon began with a food analogy, citing a study that discovered how everybody makes ...

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 ...

Memeburn has been reporting for some weeks now on the imminent unveiling of a new social network from Google, reportedly to be called Google Me.The probability of that event took a giant leap forward over the weekend with the news that Google had acquired Angstro, a 2008 startup that "scours the web and the blogosphere for news about your friends from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and delivers it to you."The founder of Angstro is a man called Rohit ...

Nic Dawes is the editor of the Mail & Guardian, one of South Africa's most respected newspapers. Memeburn sat down with him to discuss whether tweets are on-the-record, the effect that Twitter is having on the reporting of news, and whether or not he thinks it's a good thing.MB: Can the news be reported in 140 Characters?ND: Yes. Of course. It has been since the days of the telegraph. But ultimately the short bursts need to be supplemented with ...

The topic of micropayments has struck a heated note amongst online paywall experts and content providers. There are many who denounce the system, marking it as a tried-and-failed experiment, while others proclaim it as the future of online transactions.A micropayment can be defined as a financial transaction of a small sum of money, usually in an online context. PayPal defines this sum at US$12.00 or less, in terms of its own micropayment system. For the average end-user, micropayments are ...

As frustration with South Africa’s national broadcaster continues to grow, many young film-makers find themselves giving up on their dreams of ever finding an audience for their work. FireStorm Productions, a new local production house, has taken matters into its own hands and used the power of social media to broadcast and publicise their new series entitled “(Almost) Legends”.It tells the story of seven different South Africans and how they hope that the 2010 Soccer World Cup will change ...