Cybersurf

Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – your weekly window on the web. I am Steven Lang.

It is not often that a web site actually begins to churn out money – in fact if you ever decide to invest your life-savings in a web site – be careful, be very careful – the Googles and e-Bays of this world are very few and very far between.

There are however success stories, and they are encouraging, so in today’s Cybersurf, I want to talk about some of the successes.

Let us start with site that was originally conceived as a platform for venting.

In the “about” section of MYADSL.co.za it says, that the site - also known as MyBroadband - was formed in 2003 to serve the South African broadband and IT community. It provides visitors with up-to-date coverage of local and International IT and Internet related news, and gives them a place to give their views and share information on these issues – end of quote.

You could say that its main objective is to discuss broadband in South Africa, but you could also say that it is a forum where geeks complain about how Telkom is strangling development in this country.

MYADSL.co.zawas set up in 2003 by Rudolph Muller – a university lecturer who is passionate about getting affordable broadband access to all South Africans. He has managed the site so successfully that it currently generates more online traffic than most well-financed news web sites in South Africa.

Myadsl is supported by a number of high profile sponsors that appear to be devoting a considerable amount of money and time to the web site.

Last week, a conference organized by MyADSL, attracted a broadband who-is-who to participate in discussions about the future of broadband in South Africa. Top speakers from Sentech, iBurst, MTN, Neotel, and Vodacom compared WiFi, to WiMax, extolled the virtues of HSDPA over Three G and shared at least some of their strategic plans for the future.

The only missing player was Telkom.

Sentech was often the target of harsh criticism at the MYADSL conference so that Winston Smith – the company spokesman on broadband – only half jokingly put on a construction worker’s hard hat to protect himself.

But at another venue – Sentech fared much better – At the African ICT Achievers Awards held in Sandton at the weekend Sentech’s CEO Sebiletso Mokane-Matabane was named Top ICT Business Woman in Africa 2006.

Other category winners included three candidates who had previously featured on Cybersurf – Translate.org.za winner of the Top Civil Society to Bridge the Digital Divide in Africa category – was on this program about three years ago.

Glory Mushinge - from the ICT Network for Development in Zambia won for her Excellence in ICT Journalism in Africa. Glory was on AM Live during the highway Africa conference in September.

And Nomfundo Nguse – managing director of Shesha Technologies – was named Top ICT Youth Innovator in Africa. And she was on Cybersurf just a few weeks ago.

So congratulation to the winners, thanks for listening to Cybersurf and do join me again next week, same time same place for more on the best of the web.

// posted by Steven Lang @ 11:50 pm 0 comments

Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – news flashes from the virtual side of the Internet. I am Steven Lang.

Only yesterday, the country’s prime Cinema and TV festival drew to a close with the announcement of the jury’s awards. The Sithengi festival appears to have been a huge success that you might want to read about on the sithengi.co.za web site.

So you couldn’t make to the festival itself, no problem, visit the site and you will feel as if you have just been there.

Staying with a film theme, the movie I have been dying to see is the one where Borat visits the USA. You can visit the movie site at http://www.boratmovie.com/ - it is a fairly routine movie promo site, but the short, downloadable trailer is hysterical and whet my appetite even more.

The next two sites, I will tell you about provide a classic example of when the UNofficial site is better than the official one. What’s the difference between an official site and an unofficial one? – We presume that in the case of an official site, the site owner and the product have some kind of agreement with each other. Most often, the unofficial site is simply put up by fans without an OK from the celeb in question.

The official Borat site – at Borat dot tv is an ugly mess, with a few peculiar photographs, flashing links and an advert for Ali G videos – it is disappointing.

On the other hand, the unofficial site at boratonline.co .uk – that is boratonline dot co dot UK is neatly organized, content rich and appropriately over the top. In fact, whoever designed this site has an unhealthy obsession with the fictional, boorish reporter from Kazakhstan.

There are glowing articles about the cult status of the movie, gloating reports about how the movie outstripped all competitors at the box office and many links to other Borat sites.

Let’s take matters a little more seriously now.

The Genographic project has one of the most incredible sites on the internet. It has quite a complicated web address, so it is easier to get to the project site by navigating to the national geographic site at nationalgeographic dot com and then finding the link.

The Genographic project is a five year effort aimed at understanding through our DNA, how humans evolved over the last sixty thousand years or so. Project coordinators sample the DNA of thousands of people from all over the world, and in this way build up an Atlas showing how humans evolved in Africa and then migrated to all corners of the earth.

The Genographic site is fascinating – it explains how the scientists are able to use DNA to calculate a person’s probable lineage. It also invites users to participate in the project by purchasing a Project Kit – but my favourite part is the Atlas of the Human Journey.

It is a beautiful flash presentation, with embedded video clips, that begins 200,000 years ago when the first modern humans are believed to have lived. It then moves through various periods that correspond with important paleontological finds over the last hundred and fifty years.

The Genographic site is essential viewing if you are at all interested in human evolution, or if you just want to see a well designed web site.

And so we come to the end of another Cybersurf. All the web sites mentioned in today’s program will be published on the Cybersurf Blog, at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. One more time, Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. Thank-you for listening and please join me again next week for more on the best of the web

// posted by Steven Lang @ 7:02 pm 2 comments

Hello – how do you do, and welcome to Cybersurf, a weekly look at what is happening on the internet. I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang.

Just in case you did not know, this week is Geography Awareness Week, with the international focus being on Africa.

And so this is a good opportunity to look at some web sites that provide excellent material on our continent.

Let’s start with the Smithsonian Natural history web site that has a special section called African voices. Right on the front page there is a quote from Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya who said in 1966 that “People, like words, are enduring.”

You can find the African Voices site at www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices.

It is very colourful and has beautiful graphics linked to the exhibition in Washington, but even if you can’t get there, you can still enjoy a fantastic learning adventure navigating though the site.

The African Voices ironically provide a great visual experience, but there are not only pretty pictures there is plenty of substance under themes such as “wealth in Africa” – “Market Crossroads” “working in Africa” and others.

The only drawbacks – well because of the rich graphics, the site is not the fastest and secondly, because it is designed for people outside Africa, one has the feeling that it is a site about Africa, but not OF Africa.

Our next site is the one set up for the Pan African Parliament which is currently in session just outside Johannesburg.

The PAP site can be found at pan hyphen African hyphen parliament dot org. That’s a little complicated so let me repeat that one - pan hyphen African hyphen parliament dot org.

It is a well designed site – navigation is intuitive; the look and feel are easy on the eye, and it downloaded quickly – and if you can sense a but coming up …. Here it is.

One of the stated aims of the PAP is to give all Africans access to the decision making forum, and a web site could be a good way of broadening this access. Unfortunately it does not achieve that, there are no web casts and no updates of what is happening this week.

One of the best sites about Africa can be found at the My Wonderful World Blog – here’s the address – mywonderfulworld dot typepad dot com – that is mywonderfulworld – dot typepad dot com

Again it is a foreign viewpoint of Africa but it has very good content and excellent links to other sites that carry African related material. So for example there is a link to the African Music Encyclopedia another one to African Songs, Chants, and Games.

Much of the material in mywonderfulworld has an educational bent including the quiz to test your Africa IQ on Google Earth.

These are only a few of the best sites about Africa, but I am sure that you will have noticed that most of them are set up outside our continent. It is time for Africans to produce the definitive site about Africa.

But until then, check out the Cybersurf blog for links to some of the most interesting sites about Africa.

You will find the Cybersurf Blog at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com – one more time – Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com.

Before we sign off, let us thank the news research unti of SABC news for assistance on this program.

And please join me again next Wednesday for more on the best of the web.

Examples of websites publishing lists of Africa online resources and/or Africa content:

- http://mywonderfulworld.typepad.com/

- http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/mywonderfulworld/docs/gaw.html

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index.shtml

- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/africa/explore/index.html

- http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/

- http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AfricaFocus/

// posted by Steven Lang @ 8:07 am 0 comments

Let’s start off with a quick look at the Reporters without borders web site – you can find it by typing in rsf.org that is rsf dot org. The site is dedicated to fighting for press freedom, and regularly publishes list of countries that curtail media freedom.

The reporters without borders web site also carries prominently a press freedom barometer informing users that as of yesterday – 66 journalists and 29 media assistants had been killed in the line of duty this year.

One hundred and thirty one journalists, three media assistants and 61 Cyber dissidents have been imprisoned in this same period.

Yesterday, the site published a list of Internet enemies – thirteen countries that suppress online free expression. This latest list coincided with the launching of a 24 hour campaign against Internet censorship.

The list of shame reads as follows in alphabetical order:

1. Belarus –
2. Burma – where computers in internet café execute screen captures every five minutes.
3. China – described as the country with the world’s most advanced internet filtering system
4. Cuba –
5. Egypt - a new entrant on the list for its systematic harassment of bloggers
6. Iran –
7. North Korea
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Syria –
10. Tunisia – where it is impossible to access the Reporters without Borders site
11. Turkmenistan
12. Uzbekistan and
13. Vietnam – where ten people have been arrested for what they said online this year.

The good news is that Libya, the Maldives and Nepal have recently been removed from the list because of significant improvements in the freedom of online expression in these countries.

As part of the campaign for online freedom of expression, Reporters without borders invites the user to vote against censorship by clicking on a particular button to register your disapproval.

The site looks good, but most of it is in French, and the voting section appears to be taking the strain with some serious online traffic.

Nevertheless you can still vote – the campaign ends at eleven am today.

Some other news flashes –

This week Microsoft announced that it will be shipping the business version of its new Vista operating system by the end of this month while the consumer version should be out early next year.

In the UK where online fraud is increasing dramatically, a recent survey showed that Britons are more concerned about being victims of a cyber crime than of a physical crime such as assault.

And to close of Cybersurf for today, some good news – a US based company called ZANGO has been fined three million dollars for “unfairly and deceptively” downloading its software onto people’s computers.

The American Federal Trade Commission ruled that Zango had installed adware more than seventy million times generating six point nine billion pop-up ads.

Well I think Zango got off rather lightly but at least they were fined.

With that we end this week’s edition of Cybersurf, please join me again next week for more on the best of the web.

// posted by Steven Lang @ 8:13 am 0 comments

This week the Internet Governance Forum or IGF is taking place in Athens, Greece; with the purpose of taking forward some of the aims of last year’s World Summit on the Information Society.

There are many presentations, debates and discussions at the Forum, but the real aim of the meeting is to work out a way of transferring control of the Internet from the US government to an international agency. Quite frankly I don’t think they will succeed but don’t take my word for it, go to igfgreece2006.gr – let me repeat that igfgreece2006.gr.

At that site you can follow proceedings live on web casts and read transcripts of the various sessions.

(T) Back home on a completely different issue, I managed to speak to one of the candidates for this year’s African ICT Achievers Awards. The awards are presented every year in recognition of people and companies who have made significant contributions to information and communications technologies in this and other African countries.

The nominee that I managed to chat with quickly dispelled any myths about ICTs being the domain of the pale male.

INSERT

That was Nomfundo Nguse owner of Shesha technologies a nominee in two categories for this year’s African ICT Achievers awards. Remember that name – Nomfundo Nguse – I have the feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot more about her.

And so we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf, be sure to tune in again next Wednesday, for more on the outcomes of this week’s Internet Governance Forum

// posted by Steven Lang @ 10:46 am 0 comments