Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Making money and drinking wine
Making money on the internet has always been harder than it appears – for most people anyway – but I came across a really fascinating blog call gapingvoid.com yep, that’s it – gaping void dot com – that tells readers how a South African vineyard managed to use bloggers to double its sales in one year.
But before we go there, allow me to tell you that the gapingvoid web site is worth a visit even in you’re not interested in the wine story.
Gaping void is the personal blog of Hugh Mcleod who set up the site to show surfers how clever he is at drawing cartoons on business cards. I never quite worked out why he does this, but his comments are amusing, including the story about Stormhoek – the vineyard that doubled its sales in only one year.
Incidentally – Stormhoek has its own site at Stormhoek dot com.
What they did was compile a list of one hundred bloggers. In order to make the list, the person had to be a regular blogger and had to be over the legal drinking age – it did not matter how many visitors the site actually had.
They drew up the list and sent each person a bottle of Stormhoek wine – absolutely no conditions attached. The recipient was not asked to taste the wine nor write about it – they were not even expected to drink the stuff.
But of course quite a few bloggers did write about the wine and all of a sudden there was a buzz – in at least two senses of the word – on the internet, about this wine
And as a result of this buzz – sales increased and we have a great example on how to use the internet for marketing.
The Stormhoek site itself is quite unconventional – at least when compared to other wine related sites.
It has a very informative section discussing advances in winemaking that have enabled the development of new wine styles. It has news about wine tasting events and other such sections that one would expect from a vineyard – but then it also uses certain four letter words and has links to sites that the SABC firewall won’t allow me to see.
The site is liberally decorated with cartoon business cards from the gaping void and several references to the value of viral marketing online.
The Gaping void owner explains the success of the Stormhoek marketing campaign in a note to himself – and I quote:
"Blogging as a marketing tool is easier when you think of it as a chemical catalyst, not as a hammer and nail."
And there you have it – a review of a wine site from someone who doesn’t drink the stuff. But if I have held your attention so far, you probably do like wine so I suggest you click along to wine dot co dot za – yes, it’s as easy as that wine dot co dot za
It is an extensive South African wine portal that has absolutely everything from wine tasting clubs to grape traders and maps of wine routes. They did not leave out anything.
And that wraps up the wino edition of Cybersurf – Have a glass for me and do join me again next week, same time same place for more on the best of the web.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Huge queues for war game expansion
Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – a quick update on Internet news. I am your Cybershost Steven Lang.
Last night thousands of people packed shops across Europe and
No, it was not some charismatic church calling on the faithful to join in the good fight. Those who stayed up all night were eagerly anticipating their copies of the expansion of World of Warcraft – one of the world’s most popular online games.
The expansion is called – the Burning Crusade – and it will change forever, the way gamers inter act in the Fantasy World of Azeroth.
The Burning Crusade creates a new continent, two new races and new foes to be defeated.
Now if you think this is an irrelevant kid’s game – think again.
Massively Multi-player online role playing games or MMORPGs are big business in all parts of the world where the local telco doesn’t strangle bandwidth. To avoid spelling out this peculiar acronym, some users refer to it as a More Peg.
A More Peg is a role playing game that is played online – as its name would suggest. The fantasy worlds depend on which game you are playing – and they go by names such as – Everquest, Ultima and Lineage Two.
To find out more about MMORPGs you can just go along to MMORPG dot com where you will find out everything you could ever want to know about these games that involve hundreds, or thousands of people all playing online at the same time. The site itself claims to have more than half a million members.
A few years ago, the BBC online published an article quoting a report that said that the value of online gaming was worth more than the GDP of Namibia. I have my doubts about that, but it is true that some people actually earn their living from online gaming. This is not gambling.
Believe it or not, there are professional gamers that accumulate virtual assets in the course of the games and then sell the virtual assets for real dollars on e-Bay. It is not a scam. It is perfectly legitimate and the
Let’s change the music now ….
As from the beginning of this year in the
This week – history was made when a song that you can only by online – by a rock band called KOOPA made it onto the charts in 31st position.
The song, by the way is called – Blag, Steal and Borrow. If you would like to buy this track or find out more about the group then pop along to the KOOPA web site that is K.O.O.P.A which you will find at http://koopatheband.com/
And with that we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf – if you would like to look at the script, please go to the Cybersurf blog which you can find at Cybersurf.blogspot.Com – one more time
Thanks for listening and please join me again next week, same time same place.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Cradle of Humankind and Web albums
Just over a year ago – in December 2005 – Cybersurf did a review of the Maropeng,
Last weekend I decided to take my family to the caves, but couldn’t quite remember how to get there so I checked out the site on the net. At the Sterkfontein hyphen caves dot co dot za site there is some basic information about the caves and about Dr Robert Broom. There are some not very impressive photographs, nothing about the shiny new museum, and a tiny little map showing ants how to get there.
The map is really the problem – how do you expect visitors to flock to the caves – if you can’t get there?
The Maropeng site is more modern looking and it does have a downloadable PDF map that also shows you how to get to Sterkfontein.
The Sterkfontein museum facility is great, the staff are friendly and our tour guide Wez-Lee was entertaining and informative.
Of course once you get home, you want to share your digital pictures with friends and family.
There are many web sites that allow you to post pictures on the web for free. They allow you to share your pictures with aunty in
However, there are two really big players that enjoy a huge market share. PICASA is directly linked to the Empire of Google and FLICKR – spelt without an “E” is hooked up with Yahoo.
Both are very good, both require you to download some software, and both allow you to post directly to your Blog - but then that is where the similarity stops
I have been using FLICKR for about two years now, and only just began using PICASA this year. I fully intend using both until one of them shows itself to be convincingly superior to the other.
If you download your phone camera pictures to your PC and want to quickly upload to the internet, then I believe it is easier to use FLICKR. You can simply go to your windows explorer, right-click on the relevant file and then upload directly.
When you initially download the PICASA software it spends quite a long time cataloguing all pictures on your machine. I believe it goes for all files that end in the usual graphic extensions such as BMP, JPG and GIF.
This might seem a little intrusive, but it does find lots of pictures that you had completely forgotten about it some old files.
The interface allows some basic manipulation of your images and you can compiles albums which you can either keep on your machine or post to the internet for a Web Album.
And so we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf. I will put the script and some links up on the Cybersurf Blog which you will find at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. One more time Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com.
Tune in next week for more on the best of the web.
