Archive for February, 2009

Posted on February 25, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

The Afrigator / 24.com Integration – what it means

So the big news today is the announcement we made via our blog about the integration between 24.com Blogs and Afrigator.

For a few months we’ve been working with Alistair Fairweather and his dev team at 24.com to try and make this work and I think that as a phase one we’ve done pretty well.

I really believe that this is a significant step in the social media space in Africa. For the first time one of the largest media companies in Africa have opened up their doors to work with an independent and at the same time we’re gaining further credibility within the industry.

From an Afrigator perspective this step moves us closer to becoming the authoritative figure within the space as we are now able to easily aggregate blogs from a portal that was once closed off to the outside world. The 24.com platform is by far the largest of its kind in Africa and it now opens the doors for us to apply a similar model to other blogging platforms.

In the blogging space in South Africa we’ve noticed two very different schools. One is the early-adopter space that are generally all members of Afrigator already while the other is the niche, closed communities that are often much larger than the early-adopter one. These closed communities, while much larger, are not really aware of what’s happening outside their space and I think it’s safe to say that 24.com Blogs is one of them.

By integrating with Afrigator, 24.com bloggers are now exposed to a very different audience than before. In addition these bloggers are now able to get detailed stats about their blog which is something that was not possible prior to this move.

I am of the belief that early-adopters need to be exposed to the closed communities in just the same way. There are some extremely valuable and influential bloggers within the 24.com network and we hope that this integration helps shift perceptions and encourage bloggers to interact outside of their normal environments.

I guess time will tell what happens but for now I’m really pleased to be involved in helping to change the landscape.

Posted on February 19, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

DA invites bloggers to Social Media unveiling

The Democratic Alliance today unveiled their new social media strategy to a small audience in Cape Town comprising journalists, party members and, believe it or not, bloggers. I was one of the lucky ones to crack an invite yesterday afternoon and I have to admit I was extremely excited to hear what the DA had up their sleeves.

Cape Town City Mayor and DA Leader, Helen Zille gave the first speech highlighting the DA’s progressive and forward thinking strategy. Mayor Zille said that,

this new digital strategy will reach South African voters in exciting and groundbreaking ways. Our approach is to build a personalised relationship with the DA’s supporters by involving them in our activities and campaigns.

The speech was followed by another from DA CEO Ryan Coetzee and he took us through the elements of the new communication strategy. This new strategy includes some of the following:

• Two Interactive websites
• Online advertising and marketing
• SMS communication
• Mobile web access
• Engagement with voters via social networking and in the blogosphere

New DA website launched

Then the two new websites were unveiled. The first was the DA’s main website www.da.org.za which has seen a major facelift and integration with various forms of Social Media. Some of this include videos embedded via Vimeo and Times Multimedia, a new forum component and various other social tools for sharing information. It’s cutting edge, usable and really puts the pressure on the other political parties. A job well done.

Contribute To Change

The new contribute to change website is equally impressive at first glance. The core of the website is to allow people the freedom to bring upon change in our country and the site has a strong social networking aspect to it that facilitates this process. In addition to the social networking you can pledge your support to making a change in the following ways:

• Build a team by recruiting your friends.
• Spread the word by sending letters to all the major newspapers and talk shows.
• Attend or host a DA event.
• Make phone calls and reach out to voters.
• Go door to door.
• Donate some cash.

Each of these allow individuals to take action and contribute to change as Helen puts it. I noted that while this website was extremely well put together I worried about what the value proposition was for end users and laymen like you and I. My first impression of the site was that this is very heavily directed to helping the DA and while this is positive I struggled to see how this benefited consumers – in other words, what were the DA doing for us in return.

For those who have heard Helen Zille speak you’ll know that she delivers a convincing and strong message and she was very quick to answer my concerns. The whole aim of the DA is to ultimately shift focus on opposition toward the focus on our country and how we as citizens could help make a difference. While I do respect this and it was a convincing argument I am still concerned that an ANC or COPE supporter wouldn’t use this website as it’s too heavily focused on the DA.

I wanted to ask, but thought not to at the time, whether or not the DA had given any thoughts to making this website agnostic – similar I guess to the new SA Elections website – as this could really bring the whole country together and not just DA supporters. If the Contribute To Change website was powered by the DA yet remained in the background I think this website could be far more successful in the long term.

What has really impressed me though is that the DA are by far the most progressive political party in South Africa. The ANC’s attempts at social media have been dismal and these two new sites by the DA really highlight their commitment to long term change in our country.

Both the new DA and Contribute To Change websites are built off open-source technology, specifically WordPress, BBPress and BuddyPress, and it’s great to see the use of open-source to drive the DA’s campaign.

I have to commend the DA, their web development team and the guys running the social media strategy behind the scenes on a job well done. I’m only worried that the Contribute To Change website is a little too advanced for a South African audience but only time will tell.

Posted on February 18, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Vinny Lingham raises $20 million for SynthaSite

I just received the following email from South African Entrepreneur, Vinny Lingham. I hope he doesn’t mind me republishing it but I feel it’s well worth spreading the news.

To all my friends, family & colleagues,

Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite. I have attached the press release for your benefit – there is also an article on TechCrunch today about the announcement: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/synthasite-gets-a-20-million-boost-for-simple-website-creation-software/

When we began building SynthaSite from our humble base in Cape Town, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.

In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco (where I am now based fulltime), keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals across both offices, supporting over one million users and growing rapidly.

I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning…

Now say what you want but to get an additional $20 million funding is a massive achievement – not for a South African but for anyone trying to get venture capital in Silicon Valley. As most know, there is an economic recession right now and people living in the Valley are simply not able to get any money.

Startups are closing down, VC is drying up and larger Internet players are retrenching staff at a rate of between 10% and 50%. I don’t know how Vinny did it but this is the biggest news out of Silicon Valley all year IMHO.

Vinny’s success is testament to his hard work and dedication and I’m extremely happy that he’s a real South African success story. I can’t wait to see what he has in store with SynthaSite over the coming months and years.

Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

SA Elections website launched

The Times newspaper has today launched a new initiative – a website dedicated to the upcoming SA Elections. The SA Elections website was developed by Avusa iLab and is by far the best election-related website I’ve seen in a very long time.

While the design is fantastic I have to admit the real value is really in the functionality and features of the site. First up you can vote for your party of choice and the top-ranked parties are displayed near the header area. I love this and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the online community vote in relation to the rest of the country. I’m guessing it will be a lot closer than the actual elections.

The other feature that really stood out is the aggregation of news, not just from The Times, but from all the major news sites in South Africa. While this is a Times powered initiative it’s brilliant to see a site dedicated to the interests of democracy and not just re-purposing existing content from their stable.

There are detailed profiles of each political party as well as the key members of each party and in true Web 2.0 fashion the political profiles have been aggregated from Wikipedia.

This is a great site and really useful but I also have to bring in a few flip-side suggestions. If the guys are reading this then I’d like to suggest the following:

• There needs to be an easier way to comment on stories and commentary. Use the WordPress model and allow everyone to comment without the need to register.
• The comment form is not so lekker. Might need a little sprucing up.
• Finally, I think SA Elections needs to have an Afrigator feed in the “from the blogosphere” box. At the moment it’s only aggregating The Times blogs and I think this blogosphere box needs the same spirit as the news aggregation box.

I think this site is going to be massive for The Times and I wish them all the best with its continued development. Well done guys!

Disclaimer: I used to work for both The Times and Avusa iLab so take this into consideration when reading what I have to say. Despite this I still feel they’ve done a sterling job without me having to be biased.

Posted on February 12, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Creating a mobile site with Yahoo! Blueprint

Yahoo! Blueprint, in theory, is an amazing and agile mobile development framework. Yahoo! describes Blueprint as…

…a platform for developing and distributing rich mobile Internet services. It offers a standards-based language, an easy-to-use toolkit, innovative features, and support across multiple runtime environments—allowing developers to maximize their reach across thousands of mobile devices.

When we first came across Blueprint at Afrigator we got really excited about the possibilities. Here you can develop a mobile site in a standard XML format and by integrating your mobile application into Blueprint it would interpret the markup, detect the mobile phone a user is on and in turn render an optimised mobile version tailored just for their device.

Well not really! To test it out I created a very simple mobile application that will return all the header information sent from Yahoo! to your webserver about the mobile device. All I did was use a simple getallheaders function wrapped in the Blueprint XML. In theory this simple application should render perfectly across thousands of devices.

Here’s my entire mobile application file which is accessible at bp.justinhartman.com.

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<?php
	header( "Content-Type: application/x-blueprint+xml" );
	header( "Cache-Control: no-cache" );
?>
 
<page>
  <content>
    <module>
      <header layout="simple">
        <layout-items>
          <block class="title">Mobile Headers</block>
        </layout-items>
      </header>
	<?php
	foreach (getallheaders() as $name => $value) {
		echo "<block>".$name.": ".$value."</block>";
	}
	?>
    </module>
  </content>
</page>

Accessing bp.justinhartman.com on my iPhone the application returned the following results which I was really impressed with.

So now I know the iPhone version works as expected but what about a Nokia 6610? Well the results are really disappointing. Instead of seeing the mobile headers all I get is a screen displaying my site description text (A simple application that shows you the headers from your mobile device.) with a message saying I need to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini to view the application.

I tried to Install Yahoo GO! on the Nokia 6610 but I got another message saying my Windows Mobile device was not supported. How did a Symbian operating system become Windows Mobile? Anyway, I digress, I then installed Opera Mini as this was my only step left but alas more problems exist.

When accessing bp.justinhartman.com from within Opera Mini all I get is the same message, this time in French, asking me to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini. Now I’m not sure if this is a Nokia 6610 problem as Opera Mini won’t work either but Yahoo! Blueprint has just failed a very simple test.

Yahoo! claim that they support thousands of mobile devices and as long as a mobile supports XHTML (including tables, forms and GIF/PNG/JPG images) and CSS2 then it should render perfectly. As you can tell my results are not as expected.

For now Blueprint has been thrown out the window as a new framework for us to develop Afrigator’s new mobile site. If it can’t even handle a 6610 then I have to wonder what phones it really will support.

I wonder if you guys can help me by accessing bp.justinhartman.com on your mobile phone and letting me know what you see. If you manage to see all your mobile headers then you know it’s working. If you do decide to help, please post your mobile phone manufacturer and model in the comment form below. Also, let me know if it works in Opera Mini on your side.

Posted on February 2, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

The Parlotones Concert

I’ve been trying to remember what the defining moment was that got me to listen to The Parlotones for the first time. Initially I thought it was a live performance I had been to but in truth it was actually as a result of a documentary I saw on SABC 3 about the band a year earlier.

The documentary was playing in the background while Colette and I did something else but I do remember telling her that almost every song that they played I really enjoyed. Needless to say a few weeks later I bought their third album A World Next Door To Yours and I’ve been a big fan ever since. I even got their Unplugged album for Christmas!

So yesterday the family and I shipped off to the Kirstenbosch Gardens for the Parlotones leg of the Old Mutual Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts.

Watching live bands is a special thing but even more so when you know all their songs so I had a fantastic time. It was Luke and Ben’s first concert and while Ben slept through most of it Luke was banging away at a tin cookie drum in tune to all the songs. You really can’t ask for a better setting than to have a family-orientated concert in a place as beautiful as Kirstenbosch Gardens. People have told me how special it is but until you experience it for yourself you really can’t appreciate it.

My only criticism of the band is that they played too much of their new stuff. They’re currently working on their latest album and they tested four of their new songs yesterday. It’s great to do this, and I’m sure many fans liked this, but I felt that during these times they lost the crowd a little because nobody knew the words. I would have limited the new songs to two and played more of the hits like Rock, Paper, Scissors (seen in the video below) which never got aired at the concert.

Apart from a fantastic concert I have to admit I was also extremely impressed with the whole organisation of the event.

We arrived at around 16:00 (gates opened at 15:30) and I was expecting chaos however this was not the case. Parking and entry into the Gardens was simple and efficient and despite being 75% full at the time we had no problem at all with finding a place and relaxing in the 30 degree heat.

Similarly, when the concert ended we experienced very little problems in getting to our car and traffic was slow but moving freely. The concert was sold out and there were allegedly over 5,000 people at the event and I have to take my hats off to the organisers (whomever you are) – you did a fantastic job.

I can’t wait to go to my next concert at the gardens! If you want to see more pics I took have a look here.

Posted on February 1, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Coolest Guy Internet Update

So on Friday I posted a video called coolest guy on the Internet and I must apologise if it seemed somewhat random.

See the thing is we’re running a little competition within the MIH Group in which we’re trying to see if we can rank number one on Google for the search term coolest guy on the Internet.

The competition is a short one that won’t last very long and in due course I’ll post my techniques and other strategies and evaluate where and how I performed. Until then, sorry for the randomness!