matthewbuckland.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Thanks for visiting!

Been meaning to write about this for a while now. The ZA Tech show, journalists “indulging in beer and opinion”, is fast turning out to be one of the country’s top podcasts. This week’s podcast, with Simon Dingle, Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard, Jon Tullett and Duncan McLeod, is particularly good. They have the hilarious David Bullard as a guest… love him or hate him, he’s hilarious. Bullard speaks about his firing from the Sunday Times over his controversial column, and his relationship with editor Mondli Makhanya.

They also look at the “future of media” with Stuff Editor and gadget guru Toby Shapshak and discuss the future of print and newspapers. I think newspapers will be around for while, they’ll just become more niched. In many senses, it’s almost non-sensical to talk about the death of newspapers or magazines when they are still cash cows for their organisations. It’s also an irony that most original online quality journalism is derived from newspapers whereas online news sites tend to carry wire reports or be aggregators, yet it is print that is under threat. Yahoo! which has one of the biggest news sites in the world has only a handful of reporters. And let’s be frank, although blogging is a wonderfully democratic expression of online publishing — bloggers just don’t have the resources, co-ordination or training to produce investigative reporting on the same scale of reporters at a corporate media organisation. It’s naive to think any differently. I believe that blogger-big media partnerships produce some of the best results.

The podcast also looks at Grand Theft Auto IV, which is the hottest game release of the year and the reason I am going to be divorced soon. The ZA Podcast is a good listen, although they need to sort out their design and logo, as well their browser icon, which looks a bit rough and lets the overall product down.

It’s a cookin podcast — so, if you haven’t done so already — point your RSS feed there and geddit.

Making the wrong technology choice can cripple your online business. It can mean expensive maintenance and development costs down the line. It could mean downtime for your website and make the simple act of publishing an article a trapeze act.

You don’t want this. A site’s Content Management System (CMS) is the engine of your site, and if your engine don’t work, you’re going nowhere.

Most major publishing websites are two sites in one: The front-end part, which the consumer interacts with, and the CMS part, which is the back-office, administrative area that your non-technical staff use to update the site and keep it running on a daily basis.

Getting the CMS right is critical to being able to run your site efficiently and cost effectively. It’s generally a political process with conflicting demands from the site’s editorial staff, business staff and development team. It’s a painful process every online business has to go through and it means months of work behind the scenes, which often detracts from your focus on the main front end site.

But it has to be done. In bigger organisations skilled project managers mediate and embark on skilled diplomacy to produce something cohesive that works for all. In smaller organisations it means lots of meetings, and perhaps an occasional chair through the window.

The next question is: what technology choice do you make? To put it a bit crudely, most web outfits have a choice of going the open source or Microsoft route. Yes, there are others like cold fusion and java, but for this post, I’m going to limit it to the “popular” choices. In recent times my preference has been with open source languages, like PHP. I find that programmers from this school are typically self-taught, pro-active and resourceful – valuable attributes for a creative, fast-growing web company. They are in the zone and generally understand the culture of a web 2.0 outfit. We’ve never had a problem with “lack of support” — all the support we need is out there on the web. Any conundrum that can be answered, is solved with a Google search.

Some equate using open source languages as being an ideological decision. Going this route means you are “anti-establishment”, “making a stand”, or “anti-Microsoft” or not a bona fide business if you use open source. Believe it or not, there are some who still think in these terms. Well let the ideologues rant – for me it’s about what makes good business sense. It’s made good business sense for some really big websites, including Facebook with its 30-million or so monthly users and our local iol.co.za with its 1,5-million users.

Another critical decision is whether to build your new site or CMS from scratch or build it by customising and building on something that already exists. Web applications such as a job sites, CMSs, classifieds, IM clients, or email clients are increasingly becoming commoditised. Their value is no longer in the actual code, but the execution of it and the community and content that you manage to build around the sites. From a CMS point of view, I’ve preferred to build the thing from scratch so that it is tailored to the specifics of our business. It really depends on how complex the site is. For complex sites, build your own. For simpler sites get something off the shelf. Generally for a classified or jobs site, I’d much more readily buy something off the shelf and customise it as there are established best practices to running these sites.

A third option would be not to build your own CMS, but licence it from another company. I’m always wary of the licensing model as it ties you to the company providing the service, and you don’t really have the control you should have of this critical part of your business. You also never own your CMS, so just don’t have the flexibility and you are not building up skills internally in your organisation. Fine for the short term, but it’ll bite you in the long term.

Then, of course, a company needs to consider whether it wants to do its development inhouse or outsource it. I’d only outsource if your website is not core to your business - for example, if it’s a basic brochure site. But you may also have to outsource if you do not have sufficient in-house capacity to manage developers. If you’re primarily an online business or a media company, where the web is core to your current operations and your future, I wouldn’t outsource the development, unless there are exceptional circumstances or you have an exceptionally good web development outfit working for you that really understands your business. They are rare – but they are out there. If you find one, tell me about it!

Another downside is that outsource arrangements are not as flexible as in-house ones — and unless you are particularly organised and thorough, you’ll rack up the bills quickly for every billed hour you spend going backwards and forwards with their programmerrs. You also run the risk of the outsource company not sharing your passion or vision, which, unfortunately, happens often.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the body responsible for running South Africa’s elections, are to consider inviting and accrediting bloggers alongside media. I was invited to present a paper (pdf) on new media at the IEC conference called “The Role of the Media in Promoting Electoral Democracy” at the Reserve Bank in Pretoria on Thursday. It was a conference attended by media, politicians and IEC officials.

At the end of my presentation I urged the IEC to extend an invitation to local and international bloggers to cover the upcoming elections alongside journalists. My proposal received a positive response from Dr Brigalia Bam (Chairperson) and Ms Pansy Tlakula (Chief Electoral Officer). At the end Ms Thoko Mpumlwana (Deputy Chairperson) announced to the audience that the IEC was committed to looking into the idea of inviting bloggers to cover the elections and seemed enthusiastic about it.

This is a breakthrough and I applaud the IEC for its open-mindedness and commitment to democracy. In many ways the internet is the ultimate democratic medium. The web has made media and publishing more democratic and ensured a plurality and diversity of views. At the core of this phenomenon is the fact internet has made it easy and cheap to create and distribute content — and that is a profoundly democratic thing. This is now being extended by the mobile web, which is making the internet even more accessible.

I also spoke about how both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are campaigning online heavily and using social media. These savvy politicians have set up their own Facebook groups and are represented on a host of social media sites, including Twitter, Flickr, Linkin, and YouTube. In fact, Obama has racked up more than 11-million You Tube views and is by far the most popular candidate online. The battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate is being waged as much online as it is in the real world.

Read full paper, “New media and democracy” (pdf)

Just got a press release today about 24.com’s new answerit service. It’s based on a similar Yahoo! service, which apparently has done pretty well. 24.com are one of the few players in the country who can launch a service like this, because it requires volume. Last time I checked, they have the volume, or more than 3,000,000 unique browsers.

At the heart of the site is an innovative points system which regulates users’ answers and ensures only the good stuff stays at the top — it’s a fairly complex crowd-sourcing excercise and, I have to say, is very well conceived. If I were them, I’d also get the universities and schools involved, students and academics.

Here’s the release:

Think you have all the answers? Got a smart question? It’s time to share and expand your knowledge on Answerit, a new site on the 24.com network.

Be a part of South Africa’s Internet-based community of collective intelligence. As a social media tool, Answerit is a new online public forum that allows users to ask questions among a range of more than 20 categories and get answers from real people. From sport to science, politics to pets and computers to cars, users can browse and contribute to the site.

Over the past two years, U.S. visits to Question and Answer (Q&A) websites have increased 889 percent, according to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. The top two Q&A websites are Yahoo! Answers and Wiki.Answers.com, which between them receive more than 91 percent of the market share of U.S. visits.

“Online users are increasingly seeking advice from question and answer websites that leverage shared knowledge contributed across a community of experts and enthusiasts,” says Heather Dougherty, research director, Hitwise. “The popularity of user generated media has helped to establish a category for social knowledge where consumers can obtain answers from a single aggregated source developed through others asking similar questions.”

According to Elan Lohmann, General Manager of Social Networking and Media at 24.com: “One of the core principles of the World Wide Web is that we live in a shared world where shared knowledge is valuable. Answerit is an online tool for South Africans to interact and share knowledge that is particularly relevant to their local experience.”

How Answerit works

Questions go through various stages as they are asked, answered and resolved. To keep the new questions fresh and interesting, there is a limited time period for a question to stay open in the system. Once a question is resolved it forms a permanent part of the Answerit knowledge base where it can be searched, added to people’s favourites and shared with others via email.

By asking and answering questions, users can accumulate points and build a reputation as a guru in a certain topic or simply climb the leaders’ ladder by providing the best answers to various questions. Users can browse the site without signing in, but to participate (ask, answer, vote) one must sign in as a member of 24.com. Points may be earned by Joining Answerit (it’s free), Logging in and answering questions, Selecting a Best Answer for your own questions, Voting for the Best Answer to other people’s questions,Winning a Best Answer, getting a ‘Thumbs Up’ and introducing a new member. You can also lose points if you have a question or answer deleted due to abuse, or delete your own question or answer…

Some media companies have embraced the online era and are now reaping the rewards. Others have been slow to wake up to the promise of online publishing. Here are four media companies, where we may see greater things:

Avusa (formerly Johncom): It’s probably wrong to call this media company a sleeping giant, as it has recently woken up. For a long time it’s been a laggard in the online space, despite having big media assets. Its archrivals, Independent in IOL and Media24 in 24.com, have stormed ahead of Avusa.

But we are seeing a turnaround. Avusa’s online strategy has seen an injection of energy and talent. The company is climbing up the local web rankings, hovering near the top five mark. Avusa has also solved a branding problem with their flagship brand, “The Sunday Times”. It’s a powerful brand, but the “Sunday” never worked in the dynamic web context.

The new umbrella online brand, “The Times Online”, has given us a glimpse of greater things to come. Their brave, new converged newspaper-web operation has an aggressive multimedia and blog strategy. They’ve also cleaned out one of the brightest Rhodes University new media classes, literally hiring an entire year’s worth of students to run with the new strategy. One gets the feeling there is more to come here, although there doesn’t appear to be a strong commercial model attached to their sites, which look like they are run more as cost centres than profitable entities.

Sabcnews.com: This is the poorest of the performers and the most disappointing if you consider the resources the public broadcaster has at its disposal. With the SABC’s extensive TV and radio assets, it is has some of the most powerful multimedia in the world. In the online context, it could easily be the “BBC.co.uk” of Africa.

But “SABCnews.com” has a poor website and apparently not much of a strategy. The design is weak and the navigation clunky. If you consider that the internet is able to transcend boundaries in Africa and all over the world, it’s strange that the SABC has not taken it’s online publishing arm seriously.

The media conglomerate’s news site was ranked a mere 33 on the Online Publishers Association rankings, behind single magazine websites that have a fraction of the SABC’s reach in print terms. SABCnews.com should be the leading news site not only in South Africa, but the continent. It should be a national asset that we are proud of. Perhaps the public broadcaster is too embroiled in politicking, to care about innovation?

E.tv news: This is a giant that you would bet will soon awake. E.tv, unlike the SABC, did not attempt a half-baked web strategy. It just stayed clear of this, until it could be done properly. Currently, its website is a basic collection of TV listings.

The company has a strong news brand and a culture of innovation. It has been dabbling with a mobile presence for some time and is now set for a 24-hour channel on Satellite TV. In many respects, E.tv is poised to own the multimedia online news space, especially as broadband takes hold.

Caxton: The company is a dark horse when it comes to online strategies. It has established a website for the Citizen newspaper, but the site was launched quietly and is largely incognito. Its rather sparse website shows potential, but there doesn’t seem to be significant investment in it. Given the company’s legendry fiscal tightness, it’s unknown whether the web will be a core part of Caxton’s future for a while. The web needs investment, and a company needs to weigh up the short term investment to benefit from the long term reward. Most experienced online media outlets are beyond this point, with their online media divisions already showing profits.

M-Net and DStv: While their online media properties are still to reach the big numbers, there are a number of advanced strategies in place by respected visionaries working at the company. Already, Multichoice is a world-wide pioneer in interactive or enhanced TV. They are pushing the mobile envelope with broadcasting to phones via DVB-H. On DStv, there is an enhanced, quasi-interactive, TV version of “News24.com”. Most M-Net programmes are accompanied by strong, interactive websites that add value, especially for “reality TV” series. The eventual arrival of cheap ubiquitous broadband will see these strategies rocket.

“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one” - Albert Einstein

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted” - Arthur Miller

So let me start with this: People who are accusing me of being Bolton Deventer, know only half the truth. I don’t know who Bolton Deventer is. I wish I did so I could congratulate her or him on their brilliant parody. I have great admiration for both the character and person who started it all.

For those who don’t know, Bolton Deventer is a manufactured, satirical character of a clueless, but ethusiastic smalltown net marketer from Ermelo. He burst onto the local blogging scene last year and had us all in stitches. As Times editor Ray Hartley wrote on his on his blog, the Bolton Deventer riddle was the “great internet hoax of 2007″.

I resurrected the character on Twitter a few weeks ago as an experiment, but mainly for a bit of fun. Everyone has been accusing me of being Bolton Deventer, but no-one guessed that the Twitter-Bolton and the Wordpress-Bolton could be two separate people.

Before, it would have never occurred to me to revive Bolton because his character had been “killed” on his blog — and I don’t believe in ghosts. But during the blog awards, Bolton miraculously burst to life promising to reveal his true identity. For me that meant Bolton was still alive. It’s also interesting to note that during my Twitter escapade, no-one noticed that the Wordpress Bolton quietly went back and deleted the posts that had briefly resurrected him for blog awards, reinstating the original post from October 2007 proclaiming his “passing away”. Perhaps it was a message that Bolton is dead, and should stay dead.

I would have eventually come clean about the Twitter-Bolton. I probably would have kept it going for a few weeks longer. I was having fun, especially listening to the theories swirling around. In fact, within seconds of creating the twitter-Bolton, it was with disbelief that both FM journalist Duncan Mcleod and Bizcommunity journalist Simone Puterman, who Bolton had just invited, got me on GTalk, asking questions about Bolton’s reappearance. I thought somehow they knew, but managed to divert their suspicions.

As Twitter-Bolton, I was also aware that I needed to stay true to the character and that the original Bolton creator would be sitting somewhere nervously wondering what the new Bolton zombie would say next. I was careful not to abuse the character in anyway. There is a legacy to protect, I thought.

While twittering as Bolton, I had some interesting observations:

1. Bolton’s arrival on twitter was not as popular as I expected. I thought there would be a flood of followers, but only around 40 joined. The Bolton arrival post attracted only 4 muti votes. Maybe people are bored?
2. By the reactions of certain people to Bolton’s tweets and the direct messages I received, I now have a pretty good idea of who isn’t Bolton. I have also developed a new theory on who Bolton is, and I think I know with some certainty now…
3. It’s not as easy as you think keeping two twitter profiles going. They’ve got some weird cookie-profile linking thing going on.

And I would have got away with it if it wasn’t for the sharp eyes of Simone, who then informed Kerry_Anne. I had been meticulous and careful in executing the master plan. But on the fateful day, I became sloppy and I just had too many browsers open, a slow bandwith problem, and two profiles feeding off one cookie. I’d also become lazy, posting within in minutes of my own personal tweets, which aroused suspicions.

So when I posted the Bolton words that mistakenly appeared via my own Twitter profile, I was faced with a split-second decision: concoct an elaborate plan by pretending to speak like Bolton or just delete the tweet and hope no-one would see. It was up for less than a milli-second, so I deleted. It would have been easier to get away with it if it hadn’t been a direct message, in this case to Nomadic conference organiser Dave Duarte.

These things conspired to bring down the curtains. But mainly, it was the dogged investigative skills of Simone, even going as far as finding a twitter archive, Tweetscan, that would ensure twitter-Bolton was busted!

So everyone, you aint completely correct — I was the twitter-Bolton for a while and had ya fooled, and hopefully laughing. Bolton is still out there. Maybe Bolton will be resurrected again, and again. He is now a popular culture icon (if not a bit niched), so owned by the people who find this funny and care.

There will be some that won’t ever believe me. But I guess only me, the wordpress Bolton and Barbs know the real truth. I do hope one day we’ll find out who the real Bolton Deventer is. Maybe this will finally bring her or him out?

Bolton is dead, again, but the mystery continues…

Here’s a riveting read from Wired magazine, “How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong”, analysing the factors behind Apple’s success. Wired argues that despite Apple’s sexy image, it flouts the ideals that represent many of the new, progressive and forward thinking tech companies of today. These values include embracing open platforms and encouraging interoperability, cultures of openess and transparency, and treating your employees “like Gods” . The thing is, consumers don’t really seem to care.

Controversially, the article shows that even Microsoft — generally portrayed as a staid, uncreative tech company of the old school — is in many respects a more progressive company than Apple these days, adopting many of these values.

Here’s a good excerpt which I think sums it up:

…Everybody is familiar with Google’s famous catchphrase, “Don’t be evil.” It has become a shorthand mission statement for Silicon Valley, encompassing a variety of ideals that — proponents say — are good for business and good for the world: Embrace open platforms. Trust decisions to the wisdom of crowds. Treat your employees like gods.

It’s ironic, then, that one of the Valley’s most successful companies ignored all of these tenets. Google and Apple may have a friendly relationship — Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board, after all — but by Google’s definition, Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn’t do that either. But by deliberately flouting the Google mantra, Apple has thrived…

…and now observers, academics, and even some other companies are taking notes. Because while Apple’s tactics may seem like Industrial Revolution relics, they’ve helped the company position itself ahead of its competitors and at the forefront of the tech industry. Sometimes, evil works…

Agree or disagree?

Well, well, well, it seems to be the month of awards. The news came in lastnight that our very own political blog, Thought Leader, has been named a Webby Honoree at the 12th Annual Webby Awards, also known as the “Oscars of the internet”. Taking a quick look at the other sites that were also bestowed with this award — Thought Leader is in pretty esteemed company. The blog was named an honoree together with political blogs from the New Yorker, NY Times, the CNN political ticker and blogs from CNBC.com and CBS.com.

Our news in photos site was also named an honoree in both the newspaper and the photography section, together with Washingtonpost.com; New York Obeserver, Globe and Mail and Las Vegas sun. Nice to be mentioned in the same breath as these world famous online media brands.

The Webby Honoree says that this award places the Thought Leader among the top 15% of the 8 000 entries submitted to the Webby awards. This latest accolade comes hot on the heels of Thought Leader last month winning both “Blog of the year” and “Best political blog” at the local SA blog awards. It’s great to get the recognition.

Many publishers that have signed up to Google News, probably now the world’s largest news aggregator, have instantly (ie results within a day) doubled their traffic. We are not talking about traffic off a low base either. That is how important Google news is as a traffic provider to organisations. So, it’s with interest that I read on the Google News blog about some of the theories surrounding ranking on Google news. Hardly a revelation, but interesting none-the-less:

• Having an image next to your article improves your ranking MYTH
• Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News TRUE
• Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking MYTH
• Articles that are just images or video won’t be included TRUE
• Publishing a sitemap helps my rankings MYTH
• Redesigning my site may affect my coverage in Google News TRUE
• If I put AdSense on my site, my article rankings will improve MYTH

More explanation here. Thanks to Gal Arav of newsflashr.com for pointing me to this.

According to a report on Reuters last year, world wide mobile phone subscriptions reached 3.3-billion users or half the world’s population. Compare this to television usage (about 1,5-billion users) or desktop internet usage (about 1,1-billion users), and it is not hard to see why there is so much excitement about the potential of the mobile web.

In Japan more than 70% of internet access is via mobile phones as opposed to desktop internet access. Japan’s present is the rest of the world’s future – and we will see the same trends emerge here and elsewhere. The mobile phone is poised to be a key medium on which publishers will deliver content and on which advertisers will reach consumers.

Internet in this country has always been hamstrung by cost factors. Buying a computer is not a cheap exercise and broadband is expensive. It’s probably why the internet is still regarded as somewhat of a niche medium with around 4,5-million monthly local users visiting local sites.

Four-and-a-half million is nothing to sniff at. It is double the size of the Irish online market and perhaps comparable in size to Norway and other European countries. It’s an attractive proposition to advertisers because it reaches people in the country with buying power and disposable income. However we can’t escape the fact that it is still way below our potential, because it represents less than 10% penetration in our country of 50-million people.

Enter the mobile web. Internet access via mobile phones has the potential to be a truly mass online medium, cutting through the demographic constraints of desktop web access. We are already starting to see this trend in the developing world: last year one of the world’s biggest online news players, the BBC, reported that 61% of its international WAP user came from Nigeria and 19% from South Africa.

With relatively high mobile phone penetration rates in many developed and developing world countries, it is not hard to see that the mobile phone is poised to be the mass media device of the future.

It’s a trend that goes beyond mobile phones, but applies to all digital devices. In the future a digital device that is not networked or connected via the internet will be a strange thing. All digital devices will be connected to the internet and networked to each other for a feature-rich experience. It will be the mobile phone that is the driver of this trend.
The main factors driving web access on mobile phones are:

1. It’s getting easier to access the net via handsets. In the past it was difficult, but many phones arrive from their service providers with internet settings preloaded and dedicated buttons pushing users to the mobile web.
2. The entry level features for phones are rising all the time. High resolution, colour screens conducive to browsing are now standard.
3. The mobile web is starting to expand as publishers realise the importance of it… most serious online players now have mobile-optimised versions of their sites.
4. We’re a society on the move and it is simply convenient to access the web on your phone to either email, get the latest news, or hop onto a mobile social or business networking site.
5. Ironically, South Africa’s bundled mobile data rates are among the cheapest in the world. Compare this to general internet access, which is among the world’s most expensive. Internet access via mobile phones and everywhere is generally getting cheaper.
6. We are an early adopter nation, as witnessed by the fact that we were at one stage the sixth biggest country on Facebook and number 11 in the world for internet usage in the late 90s. We hit saturation point early and our position drops, but this is unlikely to happen in the mobile context.
7. Expensive internet perhaps has paradoxically caused people to use their phones to get cheaper net access.
8. The social networking revolution and location-based services are particularly suitable for the mobile device, and this is driving usage. It’s clear that South Africans are crazy about social networking.

Mobile advertising
Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, but is set to grow rapidly in pace with the growth of the mobile web. If you consider its potential reach, it’s going to be a key advertising medium of the future, easily surpassing traditional online advertising. As a sign of its growing acceptance, last year the US-based Mobile Marketing Association released guidelines for mobile banner and text advertising.

The big guns are pouring resources into mobile. Google has launched its mobile version of its contextual search advertising product, Ad Words, featuring “call me” links instead of “click here” links. Recently, the search engine behemoth took a big bet on mobile especially with the release of its Android OS. Here in South Africa, new local Google head Stafford Masie announced last year at an informal briefing of top industry players that Google would be making a “big mobile play” in the country. That’s not surprising on a continent that has more mobile users than fixed-line telephone users.

A few weeks ago, Double Click launched their mobile advertising server, DART Mobile, in Johannesburg. Recently Admob, purportedly the biggest mobile network advertising provider in the world, dropped into the country from the US. They were here to service their market in South Africa, which they say is one of their biggest.

South Africans are accessing mobile web services like there is no tomorrow. The Admob execs said that South Africa was their third biggest market after the US and India. Admob reports that young South Africans are accessing mobile social network sites in their droves. It’s not hard to believe with the success that the online chat service MXIT has had.

The beauty of mobile advertising is that it is achieving high click through rates — of about 10 times more than that of traditional web online advertising. Mobile sites tend to be simple and uncluttered with relatively few choices on the small screen, so a mobile advert usually looks good and stands out on the small screen.

Advertisers are still working out their mobile strategies, and there will be a period of trial-and-error to discover what works and what doesn’t on the mobile web. One thing is clear however, the mobile phone is set to be a key content and advertising medium of the future.

Adapted from a piece I wrote for Vodacom’s mobile division newsletter

Just got a call from Vincent Maher and saw on Twitter that this, here, blog won best Business Blog at the SA Blog Awards 2008 in Cape Town lastnight.

I was in some very esteemed company (to name a few) and I really didn’t expect to win. Gottaquirk, in particular, is one of my personal favourite blogs and its an honour to even be in the same category! So, it turns out, that those late nights and early morning blogging sessions have been worth it after all. Pity I couldn’t make the awards this year in Cape Town to accept in person. Thanks to my readers and thanks to the judges for the award. Man, I love awards.

Update: Also just saw on Twitter that our very own blog aggregator amatomu.com won best site promoting blogs and Thought Leader won BOTH best political blog AND the coveted BLOG OF THE YEAR! Yeah baby!

Congratulations to the other winners. A big thanks to the readers, contributors and everyone who voted. A big thanks especially to our very special Thought Leader contributors that have made the blog such a success.

The growth of these awards are testament to how blogging is becoming ever more popular in this country. And that’s good news.

Full List of winners:
South African Weblog of the Year: thoughtleader.co.za
Most Humorous Blog: blog.ecr.co.za/breakfast
Best Overseas South African Blog: cooksister.typepad.com
Best Blog about Politics: thoughtleader.co.za
Best New Blog: blog.ecr.co.za/newswatch
Best technology blog: imod.co.za
Best Business Blog:matthewbuckland.com
Best site promoting blogging: amatomu.co.za
Best Green blog: urbansprout.co.za
Best Undiscovered Blog: livinglifebreathlessly.blogspot.com
Best Entertainment Blog: blog.ecr.co.za/breakfast
Best Post: mushypeasontoast.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-not-to-buy-condoms.html
Best Original Writing: mushypeasontoast.blogspot.com
Best Photographic Blog: jenty-mylifeinpics.blogspot.com
Best Blog about Food and Wine: cooksister.com
Best Music Blog: peakperformances.co.za
Best Podcast: blog.ecr.co.za/justplain
Best Group Blog: blog.ecr.co.za/breakfast
Best Sports Blog: keo.co.za
Best travel blog: capetowndailyphoto.com
Best Personal Blog: tertia.org

Well, well, well. It turns out that Douglas Merrill, former Google CIO, is heading off to struggling record group, EMI.

It was barely two months ago that he was out here to sell the newly launched Google South Africa to the local media. Merrill received quite a bit of criticism from bloggers at the launch for being guarded. He generally came across as flat during the presentation. Now we know why.

Also — it was only three days ago (yes, Sunday) that Merrilll appeared on the country’s premier actuality show Carte Blanche, singing Google’s praises in prime time: Oops, again.

Has the recording industry finally woken up?
It’s particularly interesting that Merrill is moving from what is considered to be one of the most innovative companies in the world, made possible by the internet, to a struggling company that is slowly being killed off by the internet. Or rather, it’s more a case of Merrill joining EMI to save the record label and breathe life into its old business model.

It’s simple really. The music industry needs to switch to a subscription model, allow mp3 downloads, and charge a fraction of what it is currently selling music for. Record labels can do this because on the internet there are no distribution, packaging charges or cost to produce CDs. Downloading songs off the internet comes at a fractional cost. From a user point of view, users don’t mind paying for a reliable service that has variety and that is legit. It’s just got to be priced right. I guess this is why they hired Merrill.

While at the Park Lane Hospital this afternoon, I bumped into Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel and their entourage. The lady next to me saw the expression on my face and just said to me: “Yes, that’s him”. In less than a minute, a crowd of citizen paparazzi had developed around the former South African president, all snapping on their cellphone cameras. Excuse the poor quality of the pics (below). My mobile phone camera is not terribly good. More pics here. (This is the genuine article, not an April Fools Day Joke).

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has now issued a press release that “welcomes Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s statement supporting the aim of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP)”.

If this confuses you, then you are probably not alone.

It was under a week ago, that WAN released a terse statement calling on Google “to respect the rights of content creators and embrace ACAP”. It criticised Google for acting in “its own commercial self-interest” by its apparent reluctance to accept the new search engine protocol known as ACAP. Gavin O’Reilly, President of WAN and Chairman of ACAP, did not mince his words, warning the search engine behemoth not to “glibly throw mistruths about”.

The earlier statement was in (over?)reaction to comments made by Google European executive Rob Jonas. According to WAN, Jonas was quoted as saying that Google was happy with the status quo, which “provides everything most publishers need”. The implication of this, says WAN, is that Google was saying it was not keen on embracing the new protocol.

Speaking to a reporter in Sydney earlier this week, Schmidt said that the only barriers to Google’s implementation of ACAP were technical, and he denied that Google was reluctant to embrace the system because of commercial self-interest. “It is not that we don’t want them (publishers) to be able to control their information,” he was quoted as saying.

Schmidt’s statement now appears to clarify Google’s position regarding the publishing initiative.

ACAP is a new publishing standard that allows website terms and conditions to be placed in machine-readable format so that publishers can have a say in how news aggregators and search engine companies use their content.

According to the newspaper umbrella body, Schmidt said that ACAP, as currently specified, is incompatible with Google’s proprietary search engine technology but that “we have some people working with them to see if the proposal can be modified to work in the way our search engines work.”

O’Reilly responded: “We are pleased that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that they would be willing to implement ACAP if it were not for some technical incompatibility issues. As Mr. Schmidt knows, we have worked very closely with Google at a technical level throughout the past year in the ACAP project phase.

“Naturally, we are disappointed that we have yet to overcome their remaining technical barriers to ‘live’ implementation, but we have always stressed that we will do whatever is necessary to make ACAP work technically and seamlessly for all search engines. Our aspirations for ACAP have always been led by business needs and not by any preconceived technical solution,” he said.

So where does that leave us? Either Jonas’ comments on ACAP have been misunderstood or the initial response from WAN was an overreaction, or perhaps its a case of Google’s senior execs not singing from the same hymn sheet?

Did this interview Gareth Richards from Mags Magazine on online media…

1 Can you give me your views on how important your online presence is to the newspaper? Has it grown more quickly/slowly than the paper version?

At the Mail & Guardian we are in the fortunate position where both our newspaper and website are showing record readership. It may have something to do with the fact that the newspaper is a weekend weekly, not a daily therefore the website does not compete directly with the paper, but complements the paper. Our website is essentially the company’s daily news arm.

We take the web very seriously and see it as core to our strategy. The Mail & Guardian Online has been identified as critical to the future of our company, and a way of disseminating M&G content to the widest variety of platforms and formats. We stopped viewing ourselves as a newspaper company some time ago. We see ourselves as a digital media company.

2 What have been the main recent trends/developments in online publishing for your company?

The growth of online advertising has meant we have been able to grow our online division, with the aim of it being a profitable entity. Gone are the days where online is seen as added value, or a loss leader. The online division contributes more than 15% to the overall revenue of our company. It has its own editor and sales staff.

Two trends have emerged in recent years. The first is mobile. Mobile devices will outstrip desktop internet access via PC or Mac in the near future. This is a key platform of the future for web access, and will be a mass internet medium unlike traditional desktop web browsing. We have established three mobile sites to take advantage of this: 1) mobile news (m.mg.co.za), 2) mobile entertainment listings (m.theguide.co.za), and recently, 3) mobile blogs (m.thoughtleader.co.za).

The second is the rise of citizen media and the blog revolution. This is all about understanding your reader differently. Readers are also potential publishers as bloggers. As a media company we have taken the blogosphere seriously and built a sites such as www.amatomu.com (a blog aggregator); www.thoughtleader.co.za (quasi blog/media site) and amagama.com (blog hosting site) to participate in this revolution.

3 Where do you see online publishing going vs paper newspapers?

I think all media will eventually be delivered and consumed via the internet, including what was known then as “TV” (Internet video) and “Radio” (Internet audio). In the future there will be no specialist print, TV or radio media companies left. All will become fully converged multimedia operations that appear on many digital platforms via the net. In the future print will not become completely extinct, but become a niche, luxury lifestyle thing. It’s a preference, part of that treasured “off time”, a break from the digital noise all around us.

So print readership will come under pressure, but it won’t completely die out. Also it’s critical to understand the timing of this – print will be a strong and viable proposition for years to come, so while it is important to keep an eye on the future it is nonsensical to talk about the “death of print” when most print titles are still performing and are the bread and butter of many media operations. It’s still a long way down.

Print will also be a strong growth proposition in developing world contexts, as witnessed by the meteoric growth of the Daily Sun. But here web access via mobile phones becomes key.

4 Is there money being made/to be made in online publishing or is everybody still scrambling to establish their value proposition?

Established online publishers are viable operations, with growing online advertising and online classifieds/jobs revenue streams.

5 What unqiue attractions does your online presence have for marketers and how can they make best use of them?

The Mail & Guardian Online is the country’s biggest online newspaper. As a generalist news site it is the third biggest site after IOL and News24. We tend to attract a niche reader, interested in quality comment, news and politics. Our readership tends to be web savvy, educated and high earners – and care about issues such as global warming.

I had a feeling this would be the end result. At first there was co-operation and pleasantries exchanged between the media publishers and Google, and then it all went sour. Online publishers and newspapers appear to be heading for a face-off with search engine behemoth, Google.

On Thursday, online publishers and print media in the guise of the powerful World Association of Newspapers (WAN) issued a rather terse statement, calling on Google “to respect the rights of content creators” and embrace a new access protocol for search engines visiting websites, known as ACAP.

In the statement, WAN president Gavin O’Reilly, implied that Google’s reluctance to accept ACAP is as a result of “its own commercial self-interest”, adding that the search engine behemoth should “not glibly throw mistruths about”. This is the first salvo in what will probably become a key battle between Google and media players in the next few years.

ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is a proposed search engine protocol for accessing publisher websites, created by the publishing industry under WAN’s leadership. Publishers world-wide have started implementing ACAP on their websites. ­WAN says that publishers in 16 countries are known to have already implemented it. The consortium includes news agencies, book and magazine publishers, libraries and search engines as well as newspaper publishers.

WAN unhappy with a statement by Google European executive
According to the WAN statement, Google European executive Rob Jonas (who was referred to as “Ron” instead of “Rob” in WAN’s official PR) implied that Google would not embrace ACAP. He was quoted as saying this week that the current robots.txt protocol “provides everything most publishers need”, implying that the search engine was happy with the status quo.

Rob Jonas was at the WAN conference in Cape Town last year and spoke at the Digital Round Table, which I chaired. He’s a nice, approachable guy, reminding me a bit of James Bond, actually. If I remember correctly, his presentation was well received, although Google was both slammed and praised at the conference.

It’s interesting that WAN are firing off at Jonas over his recent comments. It was probably just some off-the-cuff comment he made sometime, somewhere, presumably at some conference. So it might appear at first glance to be an overreaction from WAN, but more likely this is symptomatic of a gradual cooling in relations between the two parties that has reached this point.

How ACAP works
The idea behind ACAP is that publishers would place code on their servers that would control search engine access. Currently the robots.txt method does this, but WAN is saying that it is too simplistic and does not give publishers enough options. Furthermore, it’s not a gatekeeping mechanism that online publishers have a stake in — the current access protocol was something imposed on them by search engines years ago. Here is an example of the ACAP protocol implemented in the robots.txt of the UK’s Times Online (You will see the standard allows for more parameters).

Stormy relationship
So now it appears that relations, which started off rather cordially, have broken down. Either the parties will enter into some serious arbitration or its going to go legal. Fundamentally I think this is all about money. (What else would it be about.) WAN will tell us now that it is about controlling access and respecting their rights. But essentially controlling access will mean that publishers will eventually be in a position to charge Google to crawl or list their content, even in aggregated form.

The relationship between WAN and Google has always been stormy. WAN President Gavin O’Reilly a few years back slammed what he called the “Napsterisation” of content — pointing to the fight between the music download service and the record industry. O’Reilly went on an all-out offensive, saying in interviews that we’re dealing with “basic theft” and “kleptomania” here. Rather strong stuff. I hope it’s not WAN’s intention to tacitly compare itself to the notorious RIAA.

Since these fighting words and the arrival of ACAP, relations with Google appeared to become cordial again. The adults decided to sit around a table and there were sweet words of co-operation for a while. Now that ACAP is becoming a reality, it now looks like the temperature has risen. In many respects Google has become a victim of its own success, and now the rest of internet wants an even bigger piece of the pie. The search engine giant is getting bigger and scarier everyday, or as Wired magazine puts it, going from “guerrilla startup to 800-pound gorilla”.

Two sides of the story
You can see both sides of the story here. The argument against: Why should Google aggregate and list content it does not pay for? This is content that publishers originate and there is a cost associated with it. The argument for: On the other side — how else is Google supposed to behave if it is to be a search engine? It has to aggregate headlines and blurbs, in order to send traffic through to websites. Arguably Google News is a competing news brand, using content that belongs to other news sites. But the search engine has also been very careful NOT to monetise Google News by listing Adsense on it — a move which would infuriate publishers who would claim that Google is directly profiting off content that is not theirs.

WAN also needs to be careful here. Although it represents a powerful publishing lobby of newspapers and online publishers, the publishing community is anything but united on this issue. Google may aggregate publisher content, but it is also a huge source of traffic and in some cases, revenue, for many publishers. Many online publishers would be reluctant to give that up, especially smaller and mid-size publishers that rely on Google heavily.

Also see: Why we love and hate Google and Google slammed, Google praised at WAN conference.

Duncan Mcleod of Fm Tech pointed me to this funny interview between Guy Kawasaki and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. It’s worth a watch, especially when Ballmer gets on his hands and knees during the interview, searching for the DVD drive on the Mac Book air. Ballmer also fields some tough questions about Vista.

Congratulations to the SA Blog Award organisers for pulling in some big judges on the local awards this year. Getting in Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read Write Web as a judge is certainly a coup. Read Write Web is a world-famous blog that focuses on social media, web 2.0, and web technology news and analysis.

The local judges which include Cape Talk host John Maythem aren’t too bad either. The awards came in for some stick last year as there was a conflict of interest between some judges who were nominees too, but thankfully this seems to have been addressed this year. But still, there is no pleasing some people.

I think constructive criticism is always welcome, but come on guys, aren’t you being a little harsh? How can you possibly think that this is anything but a good initiative? We all agree the awards has flaws, but still it’s a good initiative. I don’t think we should write it off, but support it and help it grow.

Talk about deja vu.

I decided to take the plunge and finally upgrade my home theatre. I had three main objectives:

1. It needed to be completely digital (no analogue connections), ie HDMI/DVI for video and optical connections for audio.
2. It need to be a converged set up where I could view all my multimedia, including my pictures, in one place.
3. I wanted to run my AVI movies and MP3s, previously on my laptop, via a dedicated system such as my main TV screen and AMP, without having to repeatedly plug things in and out. It just needed to work at a touch of a button.

So after quite a bit of research, I decided to go for the Mac mini (with Leopard), because, on top of the converged home multimedia centre, I also get a computer which I can use via my TV. It means I can also surf the net via my TV. (I can see there is going to be conflict over who wants to do what at my house.)

It’s a pricy setup, but it’s the power-user setup. I decided not to go for the Apple TV or the MVix, both which are much cheaper, because then you don’t have a computer to play with. I don’t like the way Apple TV apparently has to convert all its movies and the copy protection — and I wasn’t interested in searching for the hack. The MVix seemed like a good solution, but you don’t get a computer O/S with it and as much control over it. You also don’t get Apple’s Front Row with the MVix, which is a great way of accessing your multimedia at the touch of a button. Also, I wanted to move to Mac. I’ve been a PC user for more than 20 years and now with the disaster that is Vista, have finally conceded that Mac is the way to go.

Digital sound
The beauty about the Mac mini is that it has high quality video and audio output. Its video out is DVI, which apparently is the video part of HDMI. For sound, the 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor Mac mini comes with an optical mini jack out (yes such a thing exists –the optical mini jack has a tiny window at its end that lets through the light). To get digital sound capable of doing 5.1 and 7.1, your optical mini jack to normal optical connection cable is then plugged directly into the AMP. The AMP I bought was an HDMI-capable Marantz amp, with Wharfdale speakers. It has three optical audio ins, which is great — one for mac mini, one for my PVR and then another for the Xbox which I will soon be purchasing. The idea is that I will eventually run everything through the AMP so I control it all centrally.

Digital, HD video
For video, the optimal solution is a DVI to HDMI cable from your Mac mini into your LCD screen. I did quite a bit of research and essentially the DVI to HDMI cable is the same as an HDMI to HDMI cable, except it doesn’t carry sound. (Your sound is via the optical cable from the Mac mini optical jack). The DVI to HDMI would then give you full HD capability. In my personal case however, I haven’t got the LCD yet so as an interim solution I am using an SVideo connector from my Mac Mini to my TV, which works ok for the moment. When I get the LCD, I’ll be changing over to the DVI-HDMI solution. A bit of an unknown to me however is HDCP, which the Mac mini cannot handle at this stage… but I’ve been told not to worry about it yet.

Wireless keyboard, Mouse and Mac mini remote
The thing about these home theatre setups is that they are for viewing. You don’t want to be hunched over a keyboard finding the folders where your movies are or fiddling around with your Mac mini near your TV all the time. You want to be lazy, sit back, press a button or two, and watch. So I opted for a wireless mouse and keyboard which works pretty well. You can also operate it while lying back on your couch. But even better however is that the Mac mini comes with a remote (a bit small and fidgety, but useable) which allows me to go straight to Front Row to choose which video or mp3 playlist I want to run. It means I don’t have to go directly into the Apple O/S and use the mouse or keyboard.

Have to say: it’s perfect.

I love awards. Man, I love them. I see that this blog, my namesake, was nominated in the Business category for the 2008 SA Blog Awards. It would be the first blogging related award I’ve run. The previous award I won was in Grade 2 at Parkhurst Primary for coming second in a long distance race :-P. So, my dear readers, vote for me.

I see also Thought Leader, our M&G Online blog, and Amatomu.com, our blog aggregator are also up for nominations, which is great recognition. My colleague at the M&G, Vincent Maher, is also up for an award. So while you are there, vote for them too. Disappointed to see the Bolton Deventer spoof blog never got a nomination. It’s been one of my personal favourites this year. And I was also looking forward to see who the genius behind Bolton really was.