WATCH: dramatic video of Cape Town cash-in-transit heist emerges

The internet has been buzzing lately with talk of the threat to net neutrality posed by the proposal between Verizon and Google, which proposes a framework for regulations to ensure net neutrality, through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Although the policy is only a proposal and is not yet legally binding, it has caused uproar from net neutrality proponents. The criticism has largely been levelled at Google for selling out their cause. Google has long been a staunch advocate of net neutrality and the policy proposal has called into question whether Google’s “Do no evil” motto has finally...

At the recent Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco, it was categorically stated that the social media future has already arrived in the US property sector. This was evidenced by the fact that almost all of the 2000 property professional attendees carried social-media-enabled smart phones, while 25% already utilised the cutting edge iPad. Formal research confirms these empirical markers. A recent report by eMarketer says that 60% of internet users aged 35 to 44 (and 50% of those in the 45-to-54 age group) will use social networks at least once a month, and that 57.5% of all internet users (127-million...

Many South African blogs in 2010 have moved from a fun sideline project to a lucrative form of business. Keeping in line with this trend, the SA Blog Awards have also matured and bloggers will see statistics from their site forming part of the evaluation criteria for the judges in each of this year's categories. Now in its fifth year, the awards will take place on 25 September, and will feature more judges per category than in the past. The judges will be experts in their respective fields with a keen interest in social networking. Given the past success of the...

Lars Reichelt, CEO of Cell C, announced some time ago a strong push by the mobile operator into innovation and social media. The smallest of the mobile operators, behind Vodacom and MTN, Cell C has caused a recent storm by launching a new advertising campaign, straddling both traditional and social media, involving popular comedian Trevor Noah. The campaign has attracted both praise and criticism, and quite an outburst in the blogosphere in particular. Reichelt must be one of the few CEOs in the world who has joined the fray, personally commenting on various articles on this site too, and...

Has Google lost the battle against the companies that game its system of ranking search results? It certainly seems that way from my anecdotal usage. John Byrne, the former BusinessWeek editor seems to feel the same. He recently launched a site that looks at business schools: Poets and Quants. He published a post detailing his frustration at Google's listing of the site, or rather its failure to list the site. C-Change Media Inc.: Google? Where are you? "One of the most fascinating aspects of our debut is what Google has been able to discover, or fail to find, about the site. "...So what...

Twitter is an acquired taste. If Facebook is checkers, then Twitter is chess. It's the VIP room to MySpace's open house party, the platform with almost direct access to celebrity's biggest and brightest entertainers, to politicians, brands and thought leaders, it's undoubtedly the juggernaut driving today's social media. And I do mean, literally, "today's". There's probably another platform on the rise in some kids dorm room as I type this --TwitMySquareFace -- or something of the ilk. But, right now, if you want to sit at the cool kid's table and not be the elephant in the room, then...

During a relaxed and informal panel discussion at the Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg entitled “Building for the Global Market. Lessons and learnings from the coalface”, Leila Janah of Samasource, Sheraan Amod of Personera and Malcolm Hall of Open Box Software spoke about the challenges of building tech companies while being based in Africa. The discussion was facilitated by Toby Shapshak of Stuff magazine. ON BREAKING INTO THE AMERICAN MARKET Leila Janah: The biggest challenge we face is that Africa has a damaged reputation in the service sector. And being a non-profit doesn’t exactly help us either. There is a...

At the Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg, Clearleft’s Andy Budd spoke at length about why, given the choice, users will always pick easier to use products over better architected products. Using real world examples, Budd explains how this principle should be applied to website design in order for websites to compete effectively. Decide whether you sell a product or an experience Using the coffee industry as an example, Budd spoke about the coffee farmer that makes around 1p for a cup of coffee while a gourmet coffee shop in London sells that same cup for upwards of £2.30 a cup. The...

Alex Hunter is an independent digital ninja, brand consultant and angel investor who built a grassroots marketing campaign for Virgin America before heading out on his own. He shares his insights on getting large brands online, paywalls and what the future of online advertising might look like. MB: Should online publishers be looking at more innovative ways of generating revenue online? AH: There are so many digital options available; from wap sites and apps, to websites, to Facebook pages, to viral video campaigns, to email campaigns – how does a brand decide what to prioritise, what to tackle first and...

While aid programs in developing countries are ubiquitous, precious few empower the people they’re trying to help on a sustainable, ongoing basis. One that bucks this trend is Samasource, a non-profit based in San Francisco that distributes digital work from large US multinationals in manageable chunks to poor but educated workers in developing countries such as Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan and Haiti. Samasource workers do basic digital work required by US companies that American workers wouldn’t necessarily be willing to do. For example, Google Maps has local business information that changes when a company moves, expands or shut down....

Steve Song has spent the past two years as a fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, looking at ways to lower the costs of communications infrastructures. On Day 1 of the Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg, he introduced the fruits of his labour to a captive audience, the Mesh Potato, a low cost wireless mesh device that you can also plug into a normal phone to provide cheap and simple connectivity. During his presentation, Song made a passionate plea for lowering the costs of communication in Africa, arguing that innovation will never take place until, in the words of Clay Shirky, we...

A Question and Answer session at Johannesburg's first Tech4Africa conference featured developers from some of the world’s best known tech companies, and revealed insights on everything from startups vs corporations, San Francisco’s tech community, mobile/web development to making browser upgrades a global warming issue. The panel was chaired by Andy Budd, UI guru and MD of Clearleft, who posed questions to Dustin Diaz, a Twitter user interface engineer, Joe Stump, the SimpleGEO founder and former Digg lead architect, John Resig, who created jQuery and Jonathan Snook, a lead prototyper for Yahoo!. On the hardest challenge you’ve ever been faced with: Stump:...

Measuring a brand’s value is an inherently tricky business. Even in a supposedly clearcut case like Coca-Cola, which is essentially commoditised sugar water dressed up in world class marketing, the actual value of the brand is difficult to separate from the product (or service) itself. Yes, crowds of fans spontaneously sang the Coke song during the World Cup, but how much is that sort of thing actually worth to a brand? Do the people who talk about your brand actually buy it? What about recommending it to their friends? A fascinating new study by Vivaldi Partners - a marketing consultancy -...