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.

I’m not sure what a Systemologist does but Warwick has just showcased The Times’ new Multimedia Portal on one of the Automattic blogs and you can read the full post here.

The TimesURL FireFox Extension is my first official attempt at a FireFox Plugin and I’ve had great fun in the process, along with some nasty headaches as well.

The add-on allows you to shorten and share a website directly from your browser. Simply click the TimesURL icon and the add-on will automatically shorten the URL for you and present you with the short version that you can share with your friends via email, post to Facebook or bookmark on Muti.

This extension has been tested to work on FireFox 2.0.0.13 as well as the latest Beta version 3.0b4. It’s really simple to install and it’s a great addition for those of you that use Twitter or just want to share links with other people.

We’re working really hard at turning TimesURL (pronounced times-earl) into a destination to share information rather than just to shorten links and there is a lot under development to create this enhanced sharing experience.

If you haven’t used TimesURL before then what better time to start using the service with an easy to use FireFox add-on?

Finally I can now officially announce that I’ve left The Times and have taken up a new position as the Digital Innovation Manager at Avusa‘s new commercial applications unit known as the iLab.

The iLab was formed to create online, offline and mobile innovation within the Avusa group and I’ll be heading up a small team from this point onwards. I will still report directly to Colin, who is now the Publisher of Times Online, but he will also work very closely with us on the strategy and implementation of new products and services.

We’ve also been busy with recruiting new staff and I’m very excited that Gregor has joined the iLab, in a highly strategic role, as our New Media Specialist. We’re really going to diversify Gregor’s skills and it is without doubt that he’ll be an invaluable addition to the team.

From the 1st of April Ian Barnes will join the iLab team as our Lead PHP Developer and I’m really excited to have his skill-set on board. Ian was responsible for the development of the Vault9 network as well as the blog traffic exchange site Blog Mad, so he has a proven track record in delivering high-quality websites.

There is little doubt that we’re building up a formidable team in the iLab and we’re not done just yet. We’re still on the lookout for a killer Web/Multimedia Graphic Designer so if you want to work with an innovative, dynamic and super-cool bunch of guys then pop me an email.

Exciting times at Avusa and I’m looking forward to reporting on some of our developments in the coming weeks and months.

This was a very interesting exercise so I figured that it might be interesting to expand on this and explore the stats available on South Africa. I’ve now created the first of hopefully a monthly report and you can view the stats in greater detail below, download the PDF version or grab some high-resolution images to use as you see fit.

Because I only had some figures from November 2007 I was only able to do a comparison of the total registered users on Facebook but this will obviously be expanded somewhat next month.

What I did find interesting (even with the limited data) was that the growth rate of registered users on Facebook only grew by 41,680 people in a three month period.

I have no official stats but I know from watching the trends in the past that registered users from SA had been growing at a phenomenal rate and this current figure tells me there is a major slow-down and possibly even a saturation in users.

As a result we dropped from #9 to #10 in the world for registered users while Turkey and France nearly doubled their figures during this same period.

I hope that this information is of value to some of you and I’d love to hear some feedback, if possible.

| View | Upload your own

If you’ve never heard of this plugin before here’s a quick excerpt detailing what the plugin is all about.

The TimesURL Sociable Plugin for WordPress gives visitors the ability to shorten urls, email, and share pages they find on your website. It works by adding icon images below each of your blog posts that, when clicked, sends your blog post details to a range of South African and International social bookmarking websites.

The plugin has matured somewhat and this important update forms part of a new structure which we’ve implemented to work with the WordPress plugin directory.

While there was an automatic update function in this plugin what I found was that WordPress’ built-in plugin update notifications only work with plugins that are contained within the WordPress plugin directory.

Version 1.3 is now compatible for use with the plugin directory and I urge anyone using this plugin to upgrade as soon as possible so that you can be notified as soon as newer versions of the plugin are available. Detailed upgrade instructions are contained within the readme.txt file.

I’ve also added a couple more South African sites for you to chose from.

Now if you speak to Vincent he’ll tell you I attract bees (which is true) but this has gotten out of hand and I decided to take some action. Here is a copy of the letter I faxed to our office manager, Bongi, this afternoon.

FROM THE DESK OF JUSTIN HARTMAN

January 28, 2008
Bongisiwe Khumalo
Office Administrator
The Times
4 Biermann Avenue
Rosebank, Johannesburg
South Africa, 2196
Right Fax: 011 *** ****

Dear Recipient,

I am writing to you as a concerned employee of Avusa. I am not sure if you are aware but we have a very serious African Bee issue (not B.E.E.) in the smoking court outside the offices of The Times.

Due to the apparent lack of cleaning at said smoking court each and every smoker is now at grave risk of being stung by these killer African Bees. These deadly pests are drinking left over coffee in the dustbin and as a result are intoxicated with caffeine and sugar making them more aggressive and prone to attack.

These African Bees are a serious issue specifically because they:

1. Tend to swarm more frequently.
2. Have greater defensiveness when in a resting swarm.
3. Guard their hive aggressively, with a larger alarm zone around the hive.
4. Have a higher proportion of “guard” bees within the hive.
5. Deploy in greater numbers for defense and pursues perceived threats over much longer distances from the hive.

Research has shown that African Bees closely resemble domestic bees in appearance, and the principal constituents of their venoms are identical. However, it has been shown that the African Bee venom has slightly more phos-pholipase A2 (the principal allergenic component of bee venom).

It is also shown that African Bees contain approximately 15 percent less venom per bee, and the toxicity of their venom in mice is virtually identical to that of domestic bee venom. In other studies it showed that domestic bees deliver the entire contents of their venom sacs within 2 minutes. These results suggest that the sting of an individual African Bee has a lower potential for toxicity than that of domestic bees, and the risk from African Bees is their tendency to sting in large numbers during colony defense.

There is complete immunologic cross reactivity between the venoms of African and domestic bees, indicating that patients allergic to domestic bee stings will have allergic reactions to African Bee stings. It is possible that mild allergic reactions to a single sting can become much more serious when a large number of stings are sustained.

I trust that you can see just how serious this Bee issue is and I look forward to receiving feedback and solutions from your department.

Sincerely yours,
Justin Hartman

I’m still not sure why I haven’t had an official response yet?

The main idea behind it was to incorporate TimesURL in an easy to use plugin for WordPress but in the end I decided that we don’t have a current, updated plugin for social bookmarks in South Africa and hence this plugin was born.

It is based on Peter Harkins’ Sociable plugin but because Peter’s plugin is so great I decided that I’d only include the following sites and make it more local by only including popular sites used by South Africans.

• TimesURL
• Muti
• Facebook
• Google Bookmarks
• StumbleUpon
• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Reddit
• Technorati

You an read all about the usage of the plugin on this page and once the plugin is activated in WordPress you’ll see the following below each of your blog posts.

The plugin has been tested to work on WordPress 2.0.11 as well as 2.3.2 and if you’re using WordPress 2.3 then you won’t have to worry about checking for upgrades as WordPress will notify you when a newer version of the plugin is available.

Because it’s a South African plugin I’d like it to be the definitive social bookmark plugin for this country. If I’ve missed any sites out please let me know.

It’s been a busy few weeks for me but none more than this current week. It seems as if all my efforts the last month or so have all come to a head and I’m pleased to announced the new Planet Apps portal for The Times. Planet Apps is a new site that will house all our online applications and we’ve started this portal with one new website and two Facebook applications.

TimesURL is a port of my Tiny Link project and when I showed the guys here what I did with Tiny Link everyone was impressed. After some planning we decided to port that site to the Avusa stable.

TimesURL has a cool new interface, thanks to Colin’s design skills, and we’ll be rolling this out into the newspaper as well as in other projects we have planned for next year. The integration between online and the newspaper is now seamless and we can direct people reading the paper to the exact location online with a simple 25 character url.

Prior to joining The Times we decided that a Facebook app was on the cards and it’s been on my list of todos for some time. On Tuesday I decided to finally look into doing an application for Facebook and by the end of the day I had completed two.

Developing for the Facebook API was much easier than I thought it would be and while the Facebook Markup Language took a little getting used to I’ve now got the hang of it all.

Our two new applications we have for Facebook include a News and Multimedia application. Here’s a quick breakdown of functionality for each:

News App: Displays a list of the latest news from The Times on your profile page. There is also a new icon in your left-hand navigation and when you click on it you are taken to a canvas page with all the latest news items and a blurb for each.

Multimedia App: The Multimedia application also displays on your profile page but you can actually view the latest video direct from your profile. Clicking on the Times icon in the left-hand navigation bar brings up a detailed page showing you all our latest multimedia with descriptions and images.

I’m really happy to be seeing some of our projects go live because it’s been a long time coming! Head on over to Planet Apps now and see what we’ve been up to.

I took an in depth look at Social Media, Web 2.0 and the impact this has on PR agencies globally. There is an interesting case study I did on the Frito-Lay PR department and how they utilised the Social Media sphere to promote the Doritos chips brand among their core target market of 16-24 year olds. I also tried to look at what South African PR companies can do to further promote their clients’ brands in the Social Media sphere.

The presentation, without the sexy Keynote effects and video we included, is embedded below.

Brought to you by The Times

Grab the embed code for your site below.

<div><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" src="http://data.pictogame.com/gc/gc.swf" width="410" height="340" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="gameId=oHeEPEXPmceB" name="flashContainer644787388"></embed>
<div style="width:410px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.pictogame.com/create.php?from_blog=1&template=13" target="_blank"><strong>Make games</strong></a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/game.php?from_blog=1&game=3Y4go0BpLpvt" target="_blank">Share</a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/gallery.php?from_blog=1" target="_blank" title="play free online games" >Play free online games</a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/?from_blog=1" target="_blank" title="user generated games" rel="tag">User Generated Games @ Pictogame</a></div></div>
<br /><br />
Brought to you by <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.za/">The Times</a>

Within hours I stumbled upon the follow two websites.

Now this kind of thing is happening almost every single time I post a new item and it’s really pissing me off. Not only is my content being scraped but I’m sure this is having an effect on my Google rank? The only good thing about these above-two sites is that they’ve swapped the order of the words in my heading around so it almost looks unique but still……

I have to figure out a way to stop this but I just don’t know how.

After lots of coffee and the abuse of Nino’s Internet connection we’ve managed to track all that’s been written about this in the social media sphere. We’ve setup a dedicated channel on Jaiku which tracks posts from Afrigator, Amatomu, Muti, Technorati and Twitter.

If you’re a blogger and you write about this issue all you need to do is tag your posts with mondli and it will automatically appear in the Jaiku channel. If you’re not a blogger but want to comment on this issue you can also do so by visiting the channel and having your say.

We’ve also got a cool widget for your blog or news site that shows the latest from the Jaiku channel and you can grab the code below.

<object width="200" height="330">
<param name="movie" value="http://static.jaiku.com/images/badge.swf?
feedURL=http://jaiku.com/channel/mondli/feed/badge"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
<embed src="http://static.jaiku.com/images/badge.swf?
feedURL=http://jaiku.com/channel/mondli/feed/badge"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
wmode="transparent" width="200" height="330"></embed>
</object>

Join in on the free Mondli campaign and have your say now.

To give you an idea here are two pictures I took on Thursday morning of the smoking room in the hotel. Not sure if this is funny or just plain scary…

From: Colin Daniels
Subject: Pull your socks up
Date: 27 September 2007 10:26:35 AM
To: Justin Hartman

JJ,

I’ve had reports from an anonymous source in the newsroom who is concerned about your work output.

Apparently this is all you’ve done so far this morning:

9:25: got into office
9:26: touched Gregor’s leg
9:35: got coffee
9:36: gone smoking
10:00: on phone with Colin
10:08: got coffee, forced Gregor to go with
10:09: had another smoke
10:11: watched Vincent on Sky news
10:20: surfed www.powergenitalia.com
10:21: made Gregor translate some german porn email
10:21: phone plummer…

Now obviously this is NOT what you are employed to do. I would appreciate a bit more respect and really don’t want to have to lodge a formal complaint with HR!

I am always available to discuss this issue further if you feel that it is undue condemnation.
–
Kind Regards,

Colin Daniels

Digital Business Development Manager
Johncom, South Africa

Brought to you by: The Times Multimedia

Part 2: The interview continued.

Brought to you by: The Times Multimedia

After calling David a wanker one would imagine the man would never want to talk to me again however he has been a true gentleman about the Bullardgate affair and in particular my reaction to the whole event.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed my lunch at The Grill House with Bullard and I noticed this morning that he sneakily took a snap of me on his new Nokia phone which he’s now trying to sell on eBay.

David, you do realise this picture of me is better suited for Sotheby’s? I am after-all a highly sought after individual.

Now I know I’m largely in the minority here but I honestly believe that Arsenal have a great chance of winning the league this season. While British press and football pundits have written off Arsenal’s hopes of lifting the title I have no doubt we’re going to be contenders.

It makes me sick to listen to “the experts” talk about how Arsenal are going through a transitional period in our history as this is simply not the case. Seemingly if you bring in a whole string of young, talented players to a big Premiership club you’re immediately cast into the “transition” category and any chance of winning is left to the other big clubs.

Arsenal have had an amazing pre-season warmup and winning the Emirates Cup as well as the Amsterdam Tournament, against some very heavy opposition is surely a show of our character? And yes, even despite the loss of legendary Arsenal skipper Thierry Henry we managed to came back on Sunday in the final 10 minutes of the game to seal a very important victory against Fulham.

As our newly appointed captain, William Gallas says:

Last year was not easy because we had too many injuries but this season everything has changed. And I can tell you it changed in pre-season – how the players train, how they fight on the pitch – and when I saw that I said ‘we will do something’ this season.

While we may not be The Invincibles any longer I think it’s naive of the public to simply discount this very experienced and motivated side.