It’s been a long time coming but Letterdash Phase 2 has finally arrived!
I must start off by saying that Phase 2 was really the brainchild of the great Alistair Fairweather (whose shoes have proved REALLY big to fill) and Matthew. I just had the honour of putting the wheels in motion and getting what has turned out to be a huge and wonderful improvement to our blogs, launched. … Continue Reading

As a geek I quite welcome the idea of time travel. Some of my favorite sci-fi movies involve, in part, the idea of stepping into a rectangular box where time and relative dimensions in space make little to no sense at all and the overly-calculating hero battles household appliances and gets to be called a Doctor without the necessary qualifications. The concept of a time machine has had me fascinated since I first happened across HG Wells in those early infant years. I remember watching Back to the Future repeatedly so much so that my Dad would jokingly mention that he had returned from the future only to find me watching Back to the Future there as well. I remember developing entire science debates in high school around movies such as Twelve Monkeys, Planet of the Apes and The Terminator. My fascination with time travel became my crazy obsession and I would always wear two watches, set exactly two days apart but never really showing the actual time.
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With the Argus Cycle Tour around the corner and every avid cyclist frantically increasing their cadence to reach a fitness level that would possibly give them a chance of catching up to and getting a glimpse of the 7 time Tour De France winner, Lance Armstrong, it’s no surprise that SA roads will be dominated by cyclist during February and early March.

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I was fortunate enough to be burdened with the task of heading to Barcelona for the MWC2010 event that takes place here annually. Although a beautiful city with loads of culture, the freezing temperatures are something to get used to.
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It’s time for another update on the mobile applications we’ve been working on at 20fourLabs over the last few months.
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So we have another social/microblogging/lifestreaming service, called Google Buzz. It is, without doubt, Google’s boldest social play yet. Despite dominating pretty much all the key areas of the internet, it’s no secret that social is one area that has eluded the search giant so far. … Continue Reading

I remember once, out with a friend for dinner, ranting about the hectic day I’ve had. About the different difficult users I’ve had to deal with, when they suddenly jumped in and asked: “Do these people actually pay to use your site?”

I must say, this was rather deflating. I mean, why was I doing what I do, when there is no direct monetary value attached to it? But it’s a very simple business equation really: Traffic = Advertisers = Profit.

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So, as you know, we are in the process of rebranding and personalising our mobile site (m.24.com), and I’ve been doing some research on what handsets are being used on our site.

Who would have thought that Blackberry would be the most used handset? … Continue Reading

Following on the success of Afridoctor winning the Nokia innovations competition, the labrats have done some planning to take the application to the next level.

Below is an edited version (for we cannot reveal all :)) of a powerpoint presentation, by myself and Blueworld’s Bradley Voges, which describes our future strategy. The original idea for Afridoctor came from wizz-kid Werner Erasmus — his idea beating 12 others in an “ideas” competition we had internally in 20FourLabs.
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Google’s Nexus One has officially launched and while I haven’t yet been able to get my paws on one (still sadly unavailable  in South Africa), I have managed to gather some  reviews, comparisons and useful specs to help shed-light on the first official Google Phone. However, unlike most blogs, this will NOT be a Nexus vs iPhone type post. … Continue Reading