Jo visits iCommons

Some great news. Jo (Jo's Toolkit) has been acknowledged my iCommons. Check the story here. A big thanks goes out to Daniela Faris, she wrote this really cool article!

iCommons Incubated by Creative Commons, iCommons is an organisation with a broad vision to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open content, access to knowledge, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.

Labels: Creative Commons, iCommons, Jo's Toolkit

By: Gregor | Friday, September 29 at Friday, September 29, 2006 | |

Pageflaking - a useful application!

Pageflakes is your personalized Internet. You can add what you like and remove what you don't like - and it's totally simple.

This is very cool, it is like an EVERYTHING CONNECTOR. One can set up personal sites that aggregate a whole bunch of feeds on one page are set up group pages, where multiple memebers can share bookmarks, rss feeds and images for example. Vincent and I are testing a group page at the moment and are considering setting up a page for the class, would be an interesting experiment.

Netvibes works on the same priciple and offers the same services as Pageflakes. It seems like it offers a few more extra apps but I like the look of Pageflakes more.

By: Gregor | at Friday, September 29, 2006 | |

Boxing kangeroos in China and giant hornets in Germany

One story more random than the other. The one could be defined as bestiality the other purley as a beast.

Can you believe that in China they have boxing competitions between Kangaroos and men (read here)?

Even freakier, ever seen a giant hornet (see here)? Google Earth found it in Germany.

Must stop surfing the net, finding too much random stuff...

By: Gregor | Thursday, September 28 at Thursday, September 28, 2006 | |

Like clouds? Wanna see some clouds?

I do tend to stare at clouds, waiting for them to morph into some funky shapes. It is quite a therapeutic exercise. So if you like clouds then follow this link to some really cool images.

Wish my pc display was a live feed to some moving clouds...

By: Gregor | at Thursday, September 28, 2006 | |

Nokia N95 ... Dear Nokia, please send me...

Found this on Engadget... "5 megapixel camera, integrated GPS, 802.11g WiFi, HSDPA, microSD, 150MB of internal memory and pretty much any other spec you could ever care to have stuffed into your phone by a Finnish "multimedia computer" manufacturer. The 2.6-inch QVGA screen should provide plenty of room to partake in all this specification glory..."

Check out the rest of the specks and images here...

I kinda like it. I kinda want it.

By: Gregor | Tuesday, September 26 at Tuesday, September 26, 2006 | |

Captivate - a conference to remember

Paul and I are busy running the last workshop on blogging. Well, at the moment he is running it and I am submitting this post. But all in all, the Captivate Student Media conference was a great success.

The speakers were diverse, provided some really interesting insight into the industry and into the future of student media. Today was really great as we tackled the issues that student media face, and there was some healthy debate conversing between the delegates and the speakers.

Studentwire and Jo's Toolkit were introduced this morning and seemed to have created some interest from the delegates, a good sign, as these two entities aim at providing transparency, information and control to student media practitioners. I presented Jo's Toolkit (see pic) and hope to have triggered some motivation from the delegates to participate.

Thanks Vincent, Paul and Mark for your posts on the presentation and for contributing this weekend. A big up goes to the entire Captivate Comm, they did a tremendous job organizing a conference which proved to be well worth participating.

The lack of participation of lecturers has been discussed here; I don’t want to get into it right now!

View the Captivate blog here to see what has been happening!

Conferences for the year are over. No more running around, driving around, organizing this and that and most of all, no more conference food! YAY!

By: Gregor | Sunday, September 24 at Sunday, September 24, 2006 | |

It time to Captivate!

Get ready for a kick ass student media conference this weekend. The organisers of this conference have worked their butts off to bring this conference together. No doubt it will be a success.

Some of the speakers who will be joining the conference are Graeme Joffe (Highveld Stereo and CNN), Natalie Dixon (SL Magazine) and Matthew Buckland (Mail and Guardian Online)

Unathi (Yfm) was supposed to come as well but cancelled abruptly this morning, in my opinion an extremely unprofessional and dishonourable move.

Highlights will be tomorrows speakers, tomorrow evenings party (with Craig de Sousa) and of course my presentation on Jo’s Toolkit, hehe.

A blog has been set up for the conference, click here to view it and see what people are saying.

I cannow that I can already congratulate Carly, Verge, Mags, Paul, Serena and the crew for organizing this event!

By: Gregor | Saturday, September 23 at Saturday, September 23, 2006 | |

Are you a Blog addict? Yes you are!

Well, if you are then it is time for you to visit Bloggers Anonymous and get some help, fast!

I just stumbled across this site and it does offer a refreshing and very humorous aspect to blogging.

Have a look at the following post listing the 10 most signs of being a Blog Addict.

My top 4:

1. You “mental blog” while driving or on the train, and sometimes even when you are alone in the shower.

2. You “binge blog” 3 or 4 posts at once—only to feel guilty and empty afterward.

3. You think, “I can stop at any time.”

4. Your lunch hour has become your “blog hour.” You keep a few posts tucked in your desk in case you need them during the day.

What freaks me out is that I show most of the symptoms, but I’m sure you do to!

By: Gregor | Friday, September 22 at Friday, September 22, 2006 | |

Finally, the Bratwurst

Here we go! I even added Peas into the pic!

By: Gregor | at Friday, September 22, 2006 | |

How’s my driving? 0800 F O O L

Click on this image to have clearer view of this vehicle. Remember it. Tattoo, scratch or cut the licence plate number on your forearm, so that when you are driving you will always be able to check if this special individual is driving in front of you.

I was on my way to Port Elizabeth to fetch the Schnitz when I noticed some nitwits bulbar harassing my exhaust pipe. The Duke of Hazard was so close on my tail that I could not see his bonnet in the rear view mirror, and this at 120km/h! And I had the pleasure of having to drive this way most of the way. Every time an incline approached his car slugged off and once the decline drew near dimwit tried to break the land speed / over taking record.

Luckily I travel with my camera and it was quite funny witnessing the numskulls’ reaction when he noticed that I was photographing his actions.

So – if you ever need a lift, if you are a hitchhiker, a driver, a passenger, a pedestrian, a kudu or a toll booth, please be aware of this number plate RPV 395 GP. It is a company car for BOSTECH Engineering Service - Non Destructive Testing - and give them a shout on 082 372 5077 in case you’d like to scrape your lost dog off their bulbar!

Rant over!

By: Gregor | Wednesday, September 20 at Wednesday, September 20, 2006 | |

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters

Part of the morning ritual entails reading the news online whilst sipping on some hot filter coffee and waiting to gain consciousness.

I have not visited Fark in a while and decided to check it out this morning and found myself spurting out my coffee whilst reading following headlines.

• Obese women found to breastfeed less, have to roll in flour to find their lactating boob
• New study shows lesbians orgasm at a higher rate than straight women. In other news, you can make a living as a reputable scientist studying lesbians' orgasms
• Court rules that "white slut" is not a racist term. Paris Hilton breathes sigh of relief as she will be allowed to keep her nickname
• Liquor thief ends up caught naked in a vortex of water

And moving from the stupid and comic to the interesting…

View the 25 worst websites ever

What a great way to wake up! Good morning!

By: Gregor | Tuesday, September 19 at Tuesday, September 19, 2006 | |

Maher should be a category!

Yes, he did it again. He lazed around, clicked here and there and produced ANOTHER bubble application. After introducing NewzBubbles, he now introduces GroupBubbles!

The application allows people to create and manage groups of blogs and generate bubbles for that group. The application could be anything from people wanting aggregate a bunch of blogs about a conference to a bunch of buddies wanting to aggregate their feeds.

It is quick, it is easy, it is effective, it looks funky, most important: it WORKS! I made my own GroupBubble within a few seconds!

I have only worked with it a couple of minutes now, so I will give an update on how it has been working for me and how it has changed my way of using an RSS feed for my friends blogs.

By: Gregor | Monday, September 18 at Monday, September 18, 2006 | |

I snapped and snapped and snapped

The DCI is over. It was GREAT!

My favourite part, surprise, surprise, was taking pics throughout the conference. I have not had such a fun shoot in a long time. Not being used to shooting conference pics, it took me a little while to get accustomed to the dim lighting conditions and the pacing of the presenters. But I must thank my little baby, her name is Nikon ED 80-200mm f2.8 D, she has never performed this well before!

What made this job fun was uploading pics straight away onto flickr, allowing those participants with network access to see the pics of the speakers whilst they where still speaking. Only pic I was not allowed to post was of Peas! I certified all pics under a CC licence in case anyone wants to use them.

Now I have 20 minutes to rest before going to the final DCI celebratory party, wish me luck.

By: Gregor | Friday, September 15 at Friday, September 15, 2006 | |

DCI and Jaegermeister - they should sponsor this event!

The DCI so far has been great, both in and outside the conference venue. Well, I would consider the Rat and Olde 65 being part of the conference venue by now! This week has been absolute madness, I need the weekend, next week and the rest of term to reflect and make sense of it.

And thanks to Apfelstrudel, my skull is pulsating and I still seem to be swaggering infront of my laptop. The Jaegermeister cooling machine at the Rat is the bomb!

But tonight is the final, ultimate and last event, watch my moblog to follow our progress...

Today is the last day of the DCI and the end of a long, long, long Highway Africa week. Have a look at the conference pics I have taken thus far.

By: Gregor | at Friday, September 15, 2006 | |

Jo wins prestigious journalism award

We did it! Jo, Carly and I received a few minutes of fame on SABC Africa, receiving the Highway Africa Awards for Innovative use of in Africa for the student resource website: Jo’s Toolkit.

The awards are given annually at the Highway Africa Conference to recognise and promote the creative, innovative and appropriate use of new media technology in Africa. Judges are looking for innovative applications of New Media in African journalism and the media, and decided for Jo to win this year’s award in the category of non-profit.

Receiving this award is such an honour and an exciting step towards educating, training and developing student and grassroot media practitioners. I am very excited to see where the site will be going from here.

Thanks to all those who have participated thus far, the site would not have been possible without you!

And a big thanks goes to Colin Daniels! He has been an incredible motivator during the entire process, and I am honoured following his footsteps in winning this award. Colin posted some pics of the awards here.

Pic: Paul Greenway

By: Gregor | Wednesday, September 13 at Wednesday, September 13, 2006 | |

DCI - The Blogging begins

From the 14-15 September 2006, the first African Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) will take place in Grahamstown, South Africa, coordinated by Colin Daniels. The aim of the DCI is to bring together bloggers, citizen journalists, media practitioners, industry experts, and representatives from civil society all under one roof.

Vincent Maher and I have set up the official DCI blog. I will be administrating the blog, inviting the speakers and delegates to participate, creating accounts for them, giving them moblogging access, adding them to the blogroll, creating an exciting blogging environment.

If you are a delegate or a speaker for the DCI please leave a comment here, or visit the offical DCI blog, and I will get back to you.

By: Gregor | Monday, September 11 at Monday, September 11, 2006 | |

It's Highway Africa time

By: Gregor | Saturday, September 9 at Saturday, September 09, 2006 | |

Google Image Labeler - Tagging images somewhat differently

Here is a fun way of aiding the tagging of gazillions of images.

Google Image Labeler is a new feature of Google Image Search that allows you to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results.

It is quite fun to participate. Once logged into your Google account you will be randomly paired with a partner who is online and using the feature.

Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session.

Try it!

By: Gregor | Thursday, September 7 at Thursday, September 07, 2006 | |

Bubbles go balistic!

Vincent Maher the director of the New Media Lab at the Rhodes University School of Journalism & Media Studies has taken his newzbubble concept another step forward. He has not only created international news feeds but now also allows you to register your own feed to get your own personalised bubbles for your site, what a great idea!

Bubbles will take over, watch it happen!

By: Gregor | Wednesday, September 6 at Wednesday, September 06, 2006 | |

Jo is running wild!

Just one week after launching Jo's Toolkit the response by visitors has been mind blowing. The comments and the emails we received so far have been really astonishing. Thanks to all who helped and who have commented so far!

Also, the amount of potential contributors interested in adding their input has been terrific. This means our contributor lists will not only grow in numbers but gain even more quality.

All in all, after developing the site with Carls and now running it with her for merely ten days has been a blast and I can only see more exciting times for Jo to come.

There are a few additional ideas which are going to pop up on the site in very near future, so keep your eyes peeled, and continue having fun.

You can now also subscribe to our FeedBurner and get the latest posts sent to your email, visit Jo to subscribe!

By: Gregor | Monday, September 4 at Monday, September 04, 2006 | |