Wild Wired Predictions for 2007

With three day to go before we have to get used to writing '07, Wired has published an article on some of the wildest predictions for 2007.

I have not listed all of them but have chosen my favorites:

Here are some Wild Wired predictions for 2007:

• GoogleStock Hits $1,000 per Share
• Second Life Ends a Life: Skullduggery in Second Life - probably digital adultery- ends in a real-life murder.
• Year o' the Laptop: Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops of which 20 percent will be Apple's MacBooks.
• Print to Web: A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.
• PaedoSpace: Sex offenders start their own social networking service. It's popular on Capitol Hill.
• Greenland Becomes Green: As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.
• A human embryo is cloned for real.
• Don't Don't Be Evil: Google drops "Don't be evil" as its corporate mantra.
• NYT Goes Free:The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it's more lucrative to be the internet's paper of record than charging readers for individual stories.

If you're interested in some 2007 Web predictions have a look here: 2007 Web Predicitons

Let's wait and see what will happen, wishing everyone some great last days of 2006!
Pic by: squidish CC-BY-2.0

Labels: 2006, 2007, predictions, web

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

Intruding festive spirits!

Normally I don't jump up when Father Christmas slides down our chimney, it is a very noisy and messy approach, but since it's Christmas it's expected.

But last night my jump was justified. Whilst watching TV around 1am a metal shatter frightened the living daylights out of me, this was followed by my brother pressing the panic button, resulting in the alarm siren waking the neighborhood.

And for the first time in many years this was unfortunately not a false alarm.

Luckily the festive intruders did not get into the house and no one was harmed, except our wall, and the accompanying barbwire. So after 2 hours of park and property search, security statements and a very wound up family discussion about the houses' security it was back to bed...starting Christmas with a little scare this year!

Labels: alarm, barbwire, christmas, crime, intruders

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

Merry Christmas from the groogle!

So it's nearly Christmas, meaning the holiday has started and the blog will take a break till the new year.

So I wish all a very merry and festive christmas, may it be relaxing, exciting, and fulfilling (from all the food of course)!

Found this image on flickr and could not resist. That's the African Rudolf right there :)

Pic: by cobalt CC-BY-SA 2.0

Labels: christmas, happy, ho ho ho, holiday, merry, xmas

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

Local Marketing Podcast announced

Mike Stopforth and Dave Duarte have officially announced the launch of Amplitude - A New Marketing Podcast for South Africans (by South Africans).

Am listening to it whilst writing this post and am impressed with the quality and content of their first (virgin) podcast. What I really enjoy is that it flows and is based on a completely natural conversation. The cast discusses these topics:

• Introducing the podcast as the first and last show of 2006
• Mike and Dave chat about what they want to do with the podcast
• They discuss the Mike Arrington vs. Sam Sethi kerfoefel and how that affects their brand
• E2 in Regent Road SeaPoint has the Marketing Maneuvre of the week
• The SA Banking industry is the collective Tonsil of the week

As far as I know Dave was sitting in Cape Town and was talking to Mike via Skype. This could explain a slight quality loss from Dave's side, but it could also just be the microphone he used.

Look out for this podcast, its new, fresh, and boasts a great local feel.

Labels: dave duarte, marketing, mike stopforth, podcast

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

Comm-on, just CC your blog!

Adding an appropriate licence agreement to your blog just makes sense!

Forget copyrighting and limiting your content as a blogger, especially if you quote other peoples blogs, like most bloggers do anyway!

This sudden spurt of excitement results from a post I just read by Chilibean , who writes about using a Creative Commons licence for your blog (and thanks to his CC license I can quote him without having to worry about any legal ramifications) :

If your intention, as a blogger, is to have your content and your thoughts distributed as widely as possible, then reserving all your rights to your content is counterproductive.

I strongly recommend reading Chilibean's post as it outlines, and in detail, explains the ideas and the functions behind using Creative Commons licenses as bloggers - and when one actually thinks about it, it seems like a commonsensical idea! Trying to limit your content by using a full copyright statement just is'nt that smart!

Photograph: Getting creative with CC, one of the winners of the CC Swag contest, by Franz Patzig, CC BY 2.O

Labels: blogging, copyleft, copyright, Creative Commons, licence

By: Gregor | Thursday, December 21 at Thursday, December 21, 2006 | |

Discovering lost treasures!

I began the series when I was in London, being a tourist myself and snapping away, when I suddenly noticed that I was standing in the background of a couple who's picture was taken. I thought to myself that I am probably on quite a few strangers' pics and that that is quite an interesting thought...do you know on how many pictures you actually are, and that you might be gazed upon subconsciously by a Japanese family after their visit to the Lost City? In that moment my focus was redirected, away from Westminster Abbey, to the actual tourist, taking pictures of them documenting their surroundings.

Additionally I edited the pics allowing the original colour only to stay with the actual photographer, symbolically representing the background as the picture taken by the photographer.

Labels: candit camera, F80, flickr, nikon, Photography

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

Flickr-ing away!

So I used to have a flickr account for my social development project here. Then there was the Blogging Indaba for which I was taking the official pics, and they where hosted here. For over a year now I have been a dedicated flickr pro member and have finally transferred all my images onto my main pro account. A little frustrating since the images had collected some commentary on the other accounts, but now they are at least all together, under one roof and much easier to manage.

So if you wondering why the latest pics are dated back to mid year it's because they where taken then :)

Labels: flickr, Photography, pro account

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

Best time in JHB

Is it because everybody is doing their last minute xmas shopping? Or are people going later to work, or generally chilling somewhere on SA's coastline?

The weeks before and after xmas are normally the most tolerable in this city. I speak from a drivers perspective here. My drive to work literally takes half the time than usual and I arrive way more relaxed and in good spirits since I did not have to dodge cars squeezing in-front of me, nor speed up to rid those fog lights sticking to my bumper. There is a real sense of calmness on the roads at the moment, making me wish that these few holidays weeks could go on for ever.

What scares me though are the amount of people in shopping centers...did they all walk there?

How the traffic in your city?

Pic: poagao ny-nd 2.0

Labels: holiday, Johannesburg, people, shopping, traffic, xmas

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

Unsound podcast - rather use your voice!

Curious as to what is happening on the quiet campus of Rhodes University (and waiting to check my final results) I visited the Universities Studentzone, finding my way onto the StudentZone news page.

And surprisingly I find podcasts under every news entry.

Now, I really don't know if they have been purposefully created to humour the idea of podcasts, because the actual podcasts consist of text-to-speech generated content. A text-to-speech program has been used to 'read' (and horridly mispronounce many phrases) the content available on the site - offering an extremely boring, monotonous and sometimes undecipherable podcast.

A quirky idea to try out , but definatly no means of catering for an audience who enjoy the idea of podcasts - have a listen here and decipher the message.

Labels: podcast, text-to-speech, unsound

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

"Local is Lekker"...

.. is what chilibean says after announcing having had bookmarked South African blogs on his del.isio.us account for quite a while now. And it is indeed "lekker" (lekk-irr with a rolling r - SA slang for nice, good, great, cool or tasty) because the list offers a very wide verity of local blogs and also shows that the SA blogosphere is quite large and expanding!

The ever growing del.isio.us list and the popular SA blog directory offer some great resources!

Labels: blogs, chilibean, delicious, local, south africa

By: Gregor | Tuesday, December 12 at Tuesday, December 12, 2006 | |

iCommons podcast coming up soon

So today we produced the first iCommons podcast. The day began by driving around town finding a decent microphone, not an easy task since we were looking for a multi-directional mic and ended up purchasing a standard desk pc mic. It picks up sound and is part of the experience of trying out various technical equipment until finding the perfectly suitable one for this kind of recording.

As I write this, the podcast is being recorded in the office. Reuben Goldberg has introduced the team, including Heather Ford, Rebecca Kahn, Matthew Buckland, Paul Jacobson, and Whispa, the winner of the recently held ccmixter competition. Topics discussed are the ccmixter competition, the idea and a review of open source movies and a story of a successfully used Creative Commons license.

The podcast seems to be going well, the mic has to be passed to the person speaking but everybody is eager to discuss and add their point of view. Once the podcast has been edited and added to the iCommons site I'll provide a link, it sure is worth a listen and is the beginning of a series of interesting podcasts to come.

UPDATE: visit the iCommons site to find and listen to the podcast!

Labels: iCommons, podcast

By: Gregor | Friday, December 8 at Friday, December 08, 2006 | |

A short update

It's been a long, but good week(oh, it's not over yet!). Working for Creative Commons is very rewarding. The work at this stage is always interesting as it is something new and always part of some larger project / idea. I've been doing some web development this week, also laying out website wire frames, collecting content for databases and reading through quite a bit of legal guidelines for upcoming projects. I'm involved with a South African podcasting project which will prove itself highly beneficial in close future, or so I hope. Last night was the iCommons xmas party, with a lot of good food, drinks, and interesting discussions. It is so nice meeting new people (most of whom where Rhodes alumni, but so am I now I guess) and getting acquainted with the office staff on a more social and relaxed level.

Furthermore, Gregoogle is now active in Second Life, flying around and trying to figure out how what works and why – next mission is to visit the Creative Commons Island to meet some commoners - then again, my avatar is quite a scary looking fellow :P

Labels: Creative Commons, iCommons, secondlife

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

The Loftcube is ready - give me land or a skyscraper!

So living in Johannesburg is an expensive task. Paying rent or purchasing a place is an even more expensive experience, especially since the property market is perversely overpriced. This sad fact comes at a time where I am looking for a decent place to stay. But thanks to Cherryflava I have found an option which I would (if I could) really consider...

It is called a Loftcube, designed by Werner Aisslinger, and is a prefabricated mobile home, looks very modern, compact, clean, and you can take with you wherever you decide to live...kinda...


















Cherryflava describes it as

“a prefab, pod-like lair that you can have helicoptered onto any unused flat surface. No mess - no fuss...brilliant. Interiors can be customised to your tastes and possible pod-landing areas could include the top of high-rise buildings, to unused land in plett”

The interior space is a modular structure, offering customised partitioning via wall panels. The gross living area is just 39sqm, a tad small, but then again it is a mobile home. The Loftcube costs round about €55,000 (or about R522 000)...then there are of course still the property costs, you think they'll be very high? Top of the Carlton Center maybe? Or in your friends backyard?

















The Loftcube website is great. It's interactive and explains the concept of the Loftcube with strong visuals and animated story lines.

Labels: future, living, loftcube, mobile home

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

iTube you bru*!

This is cool. No, this is really cool! I've been wondering for some time now how to safe YouTube vids onto my laptop, and now I found an even better compromise.

A freeware known as iTube (PodTube for Mac users) makes it really easy to downlaod, convert, and add YouTube videos to your computer AND your iPod (the video iPod that is)

Using iTube on Windows, one simply pastes the YouTube URL into iTube, at which point it also downloads, converts, and adds the file to your iTunes library.

Its a really small application to download an works like a charm. Now I can stock up on some videos and use them to kill some time when waiting for meetings or people arriving late to lunches

PodTube (Mac) [djodjodesign.free.fr via Epic Empire]
iTube (Windows) [benjaminstrahs.com via Epic Empire]

Thanks to Lifehacker for the link.

*Bru, South African slang for "brother" or "friend"

Labels: itube, itunes, podtube, youtube

By: Gregor | Tuesday, December 5 at Tuesday, December 05, 2006 | |

Tackling the commons...

I am currently working at the iCommons offices in Johannesburg, doing an internship for Creative Commons South Africa.

Firstly, the team I'm working with is great. Together with Heather Ford, Daniela Feris, and Rebecca Kahn I'll be tackling various exciting projects, ranging from content, multimedia and web development for the CCsa site, and also a very interesting legal pod casting project. On the list of tasks is of course making tea, shining shoes, fetching the post and polishing the doorhandles (hehe, actually not just yet).

The working environment is fantastic, a small open office with 4 people (including myself) caters for easy interaction and transparency – and with so much happening in the world of CC at the moment I am bound to have an awesome experience here.

I'll be linking to some projects and sites that I'm working on soon. Till then – free your content! :)

Labels: Creative Commons, iCommons

By: Gregor | Friday, December 1 at Friday, December 01, 2006 | |