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.

… Continue Reading

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

It’s a funny thing about celebrities. Upon inspection their composition appears as a hybrid mix of paranormal hype, unnatural alien-like beauty and enormous amounts of purple ego goop. Furthermore, they all seem saturated in an over-abundance of wealth and fame, both of which appear to legally allow for a constant state of inebriation or raucous moments of paparazzi eye-candy. Celebs live off media coverage often exploiting their positions in society and as recent scandals have shown, I really don’t need to joostify my argument
… Continue Reading

Last month at the Mobile Web Africa conference, Brett Loubser (Samsung Electronics SA product technical and support manager) did a presentation entitled: “Mobile Internet - The African Status. Device availability and Technology Considerations.”

In it he spoke about Open Mobile operating systems - such as Android and LiMo (Linux Mobile) as being key drivers for growth and innovation in Africa.
… Continue Reading

It’s been three weeks since we successfully re-launched 24.com Blogs as Letterdash.com, and already we’re starting work on the next phase.
http://20fourlabs.com/2009/07/29/letterdash-is-born/

The main aim of the next phase is to give our users more of the kind of centralised control over their own pages that a platform like Wordpress offers. … Continue Reading

We recently celebrated a birth at 20FourLabs - the birth of our newly revamped and rebranded blogging engine, Letterdash.

The launch was a culmination of an intensive gestation period, during which Letterdash’s much loved but now outdated predecessor (24.com Blogs) was completely overhauled. Our emphasis was on maintaining the functionality that our blogging community had come to love while giving them more freedom to customise their pages.
… Continue Reading

in the next few months we’re going to be delivering on a really cool Project.
i am not going to mention the name or what we are doing etc, because i think it is still a “secret”.
part of the process for the Project is that we need to decide on a technology/technologies that will we use in delivering what the Business needs (aka wants).

the hard part about making such decisions is that they tend to be biased by your own experience or preferences. a very real example of this would be: “let’s use Python for the system because it is … (you can fill in your own reason here)”. … Continue Reading

Our objective in having these monthly hour long gatherings is to give a ’show and tell’ about an innovative site with technology or concepts that we have not used before and which we want to share.
We look at these sites in order to broaden our own minds and inspire us to create our own innovative sites and products and for us to think of new ways to use the idea or technology behind what we look at.
The added bonus is that each member of our team gets practice giving elevator presentations and starts feeling comfortable speaking to a group.
Read about what we discussed in today’s meeting and let us know what you think?
… Continue Reading

Google unveiled their latest project yesterday, the somewhat ominously named Google Wave. Now before all you surfer dudes get excited, it’s not going to let you Google “6 foot swell Jeffries”. Instead it’s an attempt to revolutionise the way we communicate online.
http://wave.google.com/

The idea is to combine the best features of email, instant messaging, blogging and collaborative formats (like wikis) into a single “wave” of communication. A user starts a conversation (or “wave”) with someone, like starting a chat or sending an email. The other person can respond either instantly or later, and both of them can add other people to the conversation.

All the people in a conversation can simultaneously add text, pictures, videos, sound and links to the conversation and – here’s the kicker – they can also simultaneously edit any part of conversation. Then, at any point you can “replay” a conversation to see how it grew and who added and edited what.

A wave can evolve over seconds or over weeks – so in theory it is useful for everything from arranging a night out with friends to collaborating on a yearly marketing plan with your Australian business partner.
… Continue Reading