After all the euphoria, back-patting and chest-thumping of the MWeb uncapped DSL offering, which spurred on other ISPs to follow suit, we are now going through the first major test of what happens when real service delivery (this time not the governmental variety), and genuine customer support is required. The Seacom undersea cable went down […]
Rowan Polovin
Rowan Polovin is the CEO of MEDIAS (http://www.medias.co.za), a web and mobile video entertainment and technology company.
Posted inGeneral
Censoring porn censorship
Recent media reports that have received international exposure have indicated that Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba is spearheading a bill, drafted and spurred on by the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) and its missionary director John Smyth, to effectively ban PC and mobile access to pornography in South Africa. The draft “bill” is […]
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Online movie rentals edge closer to SA shores
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that YouTube is talking to major US film studios about offering movie rentals on the international video site. Speculation suggests they would charge about $3.99 (roughly R30 as of this writing) for on-demand movie downloads. After spending several billion dollars on YouTube (including the $1.65 billion purchase price), and differing […]
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If it doesn’t show up on Google, does it exist?
In honour of Google’s 10th birthday, the company has released their oldest available search index to the public. You can search on it and it will provide results based on 2001 data. It is very interesting to note the differences in the results that show up on the pages and how much change there has […]
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Google pushes mobile to offline South Africans
Reading the (offline) newspaper this weekend, it was interesting to see a selection of Google adverts across various sections. For instance, in Independent Newspapers’ Travel 2008 supplement, there’s an advert with the caption “Find flights to Johannesburg on your mobile”. The advert features a picture of a mobile phone, in this case the Nokia N95, […]
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Design versus content
The old debate of form versus function (known in modernism as form follows function) is given a new meaning on the web. Here we have the debate about design versus content. My thoughts around this matter relate to whether one or either or both (or neither) of these factors contribute to a user’s perception of […]