Cybersurf

Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, your weekly window where web matters. I am your Cyberhost Steven Lang. Today the program is chock full of addresses and sites – but don’t worrry if you miss them, I will be putting the full script on the Cybersurf blog.

And we start off with some news from myadsl.co.za – this site has regularly taken potshots at both Telkom and Sentech – so it was with some surprise that I received a press release praising the Mywireless offering of Sentech as the best wireless broadband in the country.

The site’s owner, Rudolph Muller came to this conclusion after an in-depth study of Vodacom’s 3G, WBS’s iBurst; MTN’s 3G and Sentech’s Mywireless.

Full results of the study can be found at mybroadband.co.za –

Personally I cannot comment because I am still waiting for Cell C to come up with 3G – and guess who has a Cell C connection.

I currently use the GPRS connection to surf the Internet and have found it quite useful. It is not practical on most sites as the bandwidth is restricted – but some clever operators have special low bandwidth sites that work rather well on a cell phone screen. For example – check out the BBC’s news site.

I also use it regularly to check my Gmail address and the cost is very reasonable – last month I connected to the Internet ninety times on my cellphone and the cost was under twenty rand

Meanwhile, yesterday, Estonians had the opportunity to vote on the Internet for the local elections. Surprisingly – Estonia has the largest e-voting system in Europe – eighty percent of voters on the electoral roll had the chance to cast their ballots ahead of voting day.

Well, I don’t think we will have a similar system set up for our next local elections, but if you would like to check out how far we are in terms of readiness, you can go along to elections dot org dot za – that is the web site of the IEC - the Independent Electoral Commission.

One of the most useful features of this site is that you can check to see if you are registered to vote. It works very well, I typed in my ID number and within seconds – out popped a result – with my voting district number; my ward number and the address of the school where I can vote. Check it out – elections. Dot org dot za.

And if you are really interested in more detail on the upcoming elections – visit the demarcation board site at demarcation dot org dot za – it has everything you wanted to know about which areas fit into which ward and municipality. It is great – but it does not yet have a date for the next election – it refers to the 2005/2006 local elections.

Now if you are interested a really spectuacular culutral event – you might want to go to the Newtown Diwali festival in Johannesburg next week. It looks very interesting – but don’t take my word for it – check out the site at

www.newtowndiwalifestival.co.za/ - that is newtowndiwalifestival – one word yes – one word.

If you happened to have missed that address or any other mentioned in today’s program – pay attention and do not miss this next one – the Cybersurf blog carries all the web addresses mentioned in today’s program so go along to cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time – cybersurf.blogspot.com

Thanks for listening and be sure to tune in again next Monday for more Cybersurf.

Relevant links:

• MyADSL
• Independent Electoral Commission
• Demarcation Board
• Information about Estonia - in English
• Newtown Diwali festival