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 ...

At first glance, it would seem that Google has a smash hit on its hands. According to a tweet from @Google, the new Google Voice service which allows you to make calls from inside Gmail has already been used over 1 million times during the first 24 hours.That's an impressive start, even by Google's high standards, and confirms the suspicion that Skype executives must be wringing their hands nervously and praying that this is just a passing fad and ...

Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta has conceded the search battle to Google without even firing a shot. Instead, he’s adopted the mantra of his co-founder Mike Markson: own a category or die.The challenge for Blekko is that the company must figure out exactly which category it plans to own; then work to define it. At present, the most accurate term for what Blekko does is vertical search, which has been a highly elusive category for large-scale, consumer-level ...

A new digital player called Native has arrived on the South African scene, formed from a merger of three established digital agencies: Johannesburg-based Brandsh and Cambrient, and the largely Cape Town-focused Stonewall+.The new CEO of the entity is former 2.0 Media Chief Creative Officer and film-maker Jason Xenopoulos, who apparently put the deal together with a vision of creating a "full service digital agency". Memeburn understands that the merger was put together in a remarkably short amount of time ...

Many journalists working for traditional media are reticent about joining the digital revolution, but there is little doubt that social media has helped build a more cohesive and supportive traditional journo community.Here are five ways in which Facebook has bolstered the solidarity of those still working for ‘the old order’:Emotional support In the movies and in real life too, many newsrooms once came custom-fitted with a dingy whiskey-soaked bar across the road where journalists in scruffy old leather jackets would ...

YouTube continues to grow at an astonishing pace, with 24 hours of video uploaded every single minute. As an acquisition and branding channel, placing ads on YouTube has become a simple, yet sophisticated way of reaching potential customers. With a global audience now exceeding 400 million people and a massive diversity of available content, it’s important for marketers to know how to place ads on videos which are relevant to your brand.Google recently released a Beta version of their Video ...

Do you remember how to create a graph by hand out of a set of data, or how to design a survey? Probably not. Or what about that course you took on an introduction into statistics and methodology? Remember how it took a year to learn the basics, only to discover you couldn't really use them at all.Thankfully the times have changed and the toolbox of science is now wide open for everybody. The rise of cloud computing and the ...

Time Magazine released its list of top 50 websites for 2010 yesterday, featuring what the magazine rates as the top online properties in a range of categories from news, health, education, games and social media.In the social media category, Time reckons the top five sites for 2010 are Gowalla, Foodspotting, LinkedIn, StockTwits, and Tumblr.Gowalla, says Time is a "more fun" Foursquare. Like Foursquare, Gowalla lets you "check in" to real-world places using your smart phone, and the site plots ...

Gmail users have just received a completely new weapon to add to their arsenal of total communication: The ability to make cheap voice calls from your Gmail account to mobile phones and landlines.Before this new development, the ability to communicate using voice required both Gmail users to be logged in and sitting in front of their computers. All that has changed and the folks over at Skype must be shifting nervously in their chairs.In a bid to encourage ...

The value of Linden Lab, which operates the virtual world Second Life, has plunged by more than 21%, according to SharesPost, which tracks the private secondary market.In late June, Linden Lab brought back founder Philip Rosedale as interim CEO, after CEO Mark Kingdon stepped down.The current value of Linden Lab is estimated by SharesPost to be about $271-million or about $100-million less than a year ago.The plunge in value appears related to recent news that the company is closing the ...