The internet has a critical role to play in democracies. Likewise, it will play an important role in the country’s upcoming national elections. This is now being recognised by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which for the first time had “new media” on the agenda at its national media conference in Pretoria — a high-level…
I’ve often thought that many name change critics approach the debate with a certain intellectual dishonesty. Most of the time I hear that South Africa should not change a name of a city, road, river or geographic region because of the “cost” involved. Critics will usually juxtapose the cost of the name change with how…
The official Google news blog has alerted us about a new feature on Google News that will help readers “quickly and easily” find original stories from news publishers. This should be interesting to watch, particularly in the local context where the vast majority of content on South Africa’s major mainstream news sites is replicated from…
The existence of Facebook, the smash-hit social-networking site, may unwittingly kill off a host of other Web 2.0 start-ups. This is mainly because of Facebook’s inclusive and all-encompassing nature. The site appears to be blogging (lite), Twittering (short blogging), multiplayer gaming (simple games), dating, social networking, online photo management and even emailing all in one….
The Sunday Times story surrounding our embattled health minister has been a good example of integrated journalism. The newspaper broke the big story, yet the online presence went further than just plonking a repeat of the story on the web. Nowadays, media companies are publishing source material and the original supporting documentation of their stories…
So Google is not satisfied with world domination, but wants to rule the universe too. Hey, even space shuttles need search engines. Ok, at a stretch. So it transpires that the new version of Google Earth now comes with sky imagery or a “virtual telescope”, as Google calls it. As the official Google Earth blog…
I was surprised to see Talk Radio 702 morning presenter John Robbie named the
It just had to happen. Someone had to “define” Web 3.0. And it wasn’t just an ordinary someone. It happened to be Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google. According to Read/WriteWeb, Schmidt “said that while Web 2.0 was based on Ajax, Web 3.0 will be “applications that are pieced together” – with the characteristics that…
Ars technica has reported that Google news will be accepting comments from users. This is sure to fire up the already-simmering relationship between the big online publishers and the search engine behemoth. Online publishers have a love and hate relationship with Google. The love part is that Google gives publishers masses of traffic. At Mail…
