Code Café

Vuvuzela

Truly the vuvuzela is the undisputed newsmaker of the world cup. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the plastic trumpet favoured by South African soccer fans is on prolific on the internet – from spikes in Twitter trending topics, to news articles, to parody videos on You Tube. My favourite one at the moment is a Lord of the Rings one. Some folks have way too much time on their hands.

But the best so far is You Tube adding a soccer ball to their player that plays a vuvuzela sound when clicked. Now you can drown out the sound track of any video of your choice.

Go vuvuzela!

POSTED 24/06/2010 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Star Wars Day

May 04 is Star Wars day. For me every day is Star Wars day. But today you can get a Darth Vader voice for your Tom Tom GPS. How cool is that?

May the fourth be with you.

POSTED 04/05/2010 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

3D TV

The age of 3D Television is upon us. This year several manufacturers will be releasing 3D TV's to the consumer market.

But why do they think I want to watch TV wearing special glasses? What about people who already wear glasses to watch TV - they will have to wear one pair over the other. And I quite often like to fall asleep watching a movie - that's not going to be particularly comfortable wearing glasses. Hubby says that I shouldn't be sleeping in front of the TV anyway but I think that's a moot point.

So I think this is silly and cumbersome technology and I won't be buying one. What they really need to make is a TV that does the 3D without glasses - perhaps with a lenticular cover plate over the screen or some such other clever device. Now that would be cool.

POSTED 07/01/2010 | COMMENTS (1) | POST COMMENT

I love my Kindle

We’ve had a Sony ebook reader in our house for a couple of years now and we love it. Of course, we have had to share the thing, difficult when we both have gotten to a good bit and want to have a good read at the same time, but at least the device remembers where you were in each book and it reads a multitude of formats. The biggest trouble we have had with the Sony is that the official Sony ebooks store does not want to sell to us lowly South Africans.

Now we also have an Amazon Kindle and boy, do I love it! Yes, it only displays Amazons proprietary format, but that really is no problem as Amazon offer two conversion services of numerous formats, – one totally free delivered to your email account, and a costs next to nothing (I’m talking under a US Dollar here) service delivered directly to your Kindle. I’ve been using the free one & the conversion comes back within 10 minutes every time.

The Kindle is fast, funky, fun & easy to use. And it’s all legally shipped to us here in South Africa and we can get the majority of Amazons Kindle book offering, which at the moment is close to 300,000 books and rising daily. I recommend it if you are in the market for an ebook reader. Downloads are via 3G that Amazon picks up the tab for, and they are fast. You can browse the store directly from your device and download a sample of a book, which is usually the first chapter. If you like it, buy it, if you don’t, delete it. The features of the device are way too numerous to mention here, if you are interested have a look on the web.

So why ebooks, then? Is it a fad? I personally don’t think so. I think ebook readers are the next big leap in personal gadgets and will become as ubiquitous as the iPod. You can put a massive amount of books on one – the kindle has a 1GB drive and that’s the equivalent of about 1400 novels. You can read them anywhere. The screens use a unique electronic ink system that makes them look like paper and you can read even in bright sunlight. It’s so easy on the eye. No backlights at the moment so you still need light, but that does not bother me and who knows what is next. There are several makes and models appearing in the US market and it is one of the biggest growth areas in personal electronics.

The books are cheaper, too. An average bestselling new release novel in the Kindle store is about $10. That’s substantially cheaper than buying the paperback, in many cases almost half the price. And it saves paper. And shipping. And going to the mall.

Yes, they run on batteries and regular books don’t. But I’m on my 4th book in nearly 3 weeks on my Kindle, and the battery has just clicked over to the halfway mark. I’ve had the 3G off for most of the time, except when I’ve been showing it to friends. I think that is pretty decent battery life. I’m thinking about getting a solar USB charger from Think Geek. They ship to South Africa, thankfully.

So if you love to read, think about an ebook reader. I don’t think I will ever buy a paperback novel again.

POSTED 08/12/2009 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Understanding Webstats

Webstats are really useful things and can help you make good decisions about your website, provided that you understand them.

One of the biggest problems is understanding what HITS are. HITS are a fairly useless statistic and mislead the uninformed into thinking that their website is doing better than it is. In essence, a HIT is an item that loads on a page. The more items on a page –graphics, text sections, backgrounds, menu items etc – the more HITS are counted. So if you have 15 items to load on a particular page, 15 HITS will be counted. This does not mean that 15 people looked at your page. HITS should be largely ignored when looking at your websites performance.

A meaningful statistic is VISITS. This counts the actual views of your page. A UNIQUE VISIT is a first time viewer, some webstats will also give you numbers of RECURRING VISITORS, this means people who have returned to your website after visiting it before. So you should look at VISITS to get an idea of how many people are looking at your site.

You should also look at the popularity of your PAGES to see which ones are most looked at. If you have pages that are not frequently visited you may want to ask yourself if the content is relevant or if the page is too difficult to get to.

There are many ways in which properly analysing your webstats can help you. For example, look at what day of the week you receive the most visitors to a particular page. If you frequently update that page you may want to time the updates for your most popular viewing day, or even time of day.

Also look at referring sites, this can tell you where you are getting your visitors from and how many. You may, for example, pay for a listing in a business directory. Looking at how many visitors you received from that site can help you decide if it’s worth the money.

Unlike other forms of advertising, websites with good stats have the ability to give you real information about what you are achieving, or trying to achieve. It’s well worth spending some time with them.

POSTED 03/09/2009 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Webutations

There have been quite a few stories in the news recently, both here in South Africa and abroad, about people loosing their jobs because of their online activity.

The legalities and ethics of this make for great debate, although I am not going to comment on them in this particular post.

The point is that people need to realise that they are up for as much scrutiny online than they are in the “real world”, if not more. But unlike an unfortunate episode at a drunken party that people may eventually forget, being a dumbass online can stick with you for a very long time. You are likely to be researched by anyone from employers and clients, to partners and your boyfriends mother. And that crazy stalker ex-girlfriend, of course – the one that set fire to your car and had 200 pizzas sent to you at your office that you had to pay for.

So, if you don’t want people to be able to see your particular dirty laundry, put it where it is not publically available. We are watching you. All the time.

POSTED 27/05/2009 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Digital rocks in tough times

Digital media is fantastic all the time, of course, but in economically challenged times websites are certainly the way to go in terms of marketing and advertising.
For the price of a decent magazine print ad (and often substantially less!) you can have a pretty respectable website. Websites are there all the time, unlike magazines which get thrown away, recycled or relegated to a dark corner. You can track actual usage of a website and engage visitors in interactivity designed to entrench brand awareness. In short, websites are a much better bet than print ads these days. Agencies and clients who do not want to focus and invest on the web experience are short sighted.
So go forth and digitise – but please do a decent job. Remember you get what you pay for, as with most things. A crappy website will do more harm than good.

POSTED 06/04/2009 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

The Dark Continent

I love the web. I love the way web 2.0 is as much about attitude than it is about technology . I love social networking, blogs, online shopping, recommendation engines, wikipedia, online file sharing and google earth. I tweet and skype and facebook and buy things online. I love the way TV channels in the US broadcast shows from their sites. I love the way Venture Capitalists in the US and Europe pour huge sums of money into online ventures that may only make money in years to come, if at all. I love the way they reckon they know a good thing when they see it.
And then I get a bit miserable about living and working in South Africa. So little of it applies to us. We are years behind in both bandwidth and mindset. Americans have a cultural history of purchasing through catalogues and the switch to online was easy for them. And they trust their postal delivery service. Computers are readily available and internet connections are cheap and fast. My brother in law in the US has the cheapest connection he could possibly buy at home – it is cheaper and faster than the most expensive one I can get here. South Africans are mostly poor, do not have access to the internet or computers and do not have bank accounts or credit cards. And we are distrustful of both providers and delivery systems. We are not a worthwhile investment. The web-savy of us make up such a tiny percentage of the population that local companies see no reason to apply the fantastic new technologies here. It saddens me, it really does.

POSTED 17/03/2009 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Promote your site with 2.0

A website is like a small shop hidden in a residential suburb. An access controlled suburb at that. In other words, when you first put up your website, only you and a couple of your neighbours know that it is actually there. “If you build it they will come” does not apply to the web. People seem to think that now that they have their website, everyone is going to flock to it and their business will increase a thousand fold. Alas the web, as with real life, does not work that way. You’ve got to work at getting people to notice you.
Luckily there are lots of ways to help you get your site noticed, some cost money, some don’t. But all of them require some degree of effort on the part of the site owner (or the people he pays to do so).
One of the best free methods of engaging any community is to become actively part of it. This means using things like blogs, forums and social networking sites to raise awareness of yourself and through association, your site. This means more than just promoting yourself at every opportunity. It means contributing interesting information that other members of your community are going to be really interested in. Otherwise you just being that dreadful self-centred bore at the cocktail party that eventually everyone tries to avoid (sometimes even by feigning death ;-)).
So, step out into the 2.0 web and try to be that cool guy (or gal) that everyone wants to hang out with. It will do wonders for your website, believe me.

POSTED 30/11/2008 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT

Press 7 to curse the phone menu

Technology can be a bad thing. A case in point is automated ‘phone menus. I am continually astounded that corporations will spend so much money just to annoy their customers. Last night I had to call a cellular phone provider. I had to enter more numbers than an accountant at tax time. I had to key in the number of the phone I was querying – I have no idea why because the operator doesn’t actually get that information & asks you for it again. Do these people have any idea how pesky it is to “Press 7 Now” when you have a touch screen phone?

In the US a whole industry is springing up around avoiding the dreaded phone menu. There are online services that allow you to see the flow of a menu for various companies, click the point where you want to connect & the service dials you directly in. Technology to combat technology!

POSTED 29/09/2008 | COMMENTS (0) | POST COMMENT