Blogging is the ultimate form of expressing yourself on the Internet and getting your opinion out there, yet there is still a vast amount of people without access to Internet.

CTWUG, Cape Town Wireless User Group, is a free city wide wireless network spanning across the greater Cape Town area. CTWUG offers their users access to all kinds of services for free every month like Gaming servers, VOIP, WugTube a video sharing site like YouTube and now blogging.

Some may not see this as a big deal, but I do. Currently the CTWUG network has over 130 active members where a lot of them currently does not have access to the Internet. A year or so back we started moving all our public web services over to the local network allowing these people without Internet to be able to make use of these services via local wireless traffic, this included our main website and forums, wiki, IRC chat servers as well as our image gallery.

Now the latest addition to the CTWUG website is the blog section. Users with or without Internet access are now able to write to their hearts content about any topic they would like and make it viewable to the Internet. The blogs are currently aggregated with MyScoop and Afrigator so chances are good that other people will notice it and read it. I am all for social networking and I see blogging as the seed that started social networking, thus I always urge people to start blogging if they can and have the time.

I would like to welcome all the new CTWUG bloggers and would like to urge everybody to start blogging be it about the latest games, series, gadgets or even personal experiences. Anybody can blog about anything they like or dislike.

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Just a week after Twitter added the new local trends feature, they are at it again with a new feature. Twitter just introduced a new feature to some of its users called Hovercards.

Hovercards is a new way of seeing someones profile without actually visiting the profile. In an announcement on the official twitter blog, spokes person Jenna Sampson told how the new feature works:

On any timeline, as its namesake suggests, Hovercards are cards which appear when you hover over a username or avatar. The cards display additional information about the person and allow you to interact with them while staying within the context of your page.

These new Hovercards will come in real handy when you want to find new info on retweeted people and allow you to follow them right there and then. Hovercards also allows for faster sending of direct messages without moving away from the page.

As with the previous feature releases Hovercards isn’t currently active for everyone. Just like all the other releases Twitter Hovercards will be phased in over time to all Twitter users.

If you  are on Twitter you might be interested in my Twitter SMS notification system TweSMS or you can follow me on Twitter.

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We all know how annoying it can be to chat using the notification bar at the bottom of the browser when visiting Facebook. Every time you navigate to a new page you have to wait for the Facebook chat bar to load again.

Now you can use Facebook chat without even opening a browser. Again this time it was done using Pidgin, just like the Mxit Pidgin plugin you now get the Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin.

The Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin connects to the Facebook chat IM service without the need of an API key. Currently the plugin can log into the Facebook servers, grab the buddy list, send/receive messages, add/remove friends, receive notifications, show your inbox count, organises friend lists/groups, search for Facebook friends and set your Facebook status all from the comfort of your desktop.

You can get hold of the Facebook Pidgin plugin here to use Facebook chat from your desktop.

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WordPress just released their WordPress for Android application to the Android Market for download. WordPress for Android will enable bloggers to manage their blogs while on the go.

If you are used to the popular wpToGo application for Android you will feel right at home with WordPress for Android as it was built on the foundation of wpToGo. WordPress for Android is open source, if you would like to contribute to the project please visit dev.android.wordpress.org

Features include:

• Manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation and ability to reply to comments
• Create and edit posts as well as manage categories, tags and photos
• Create and edit pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

Here is a short video demonstrating WordPress for Android

To get WordPress for Android search the Android Market for WordPress and install the application published by Automattic, Inc.

If you have a barcode scanner install just scan the barcode below.

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Recently I started working on my own project called TweSMS, the ideas was spawned by Rafiq Phillips after there was a demand for twitter users outside the US to receive their tweets via SMS.

After I started working on TweSMS I eventually saw the great potential there still is in the mobile market, especially in Africa. Think about it this way, how many people own a cellphone? Vodacom reported in their latest financial report that they have 40.5 million mobile users, now this is just Vodacom and what if you add MTN into the equation who dominates the African market. I would say we can look at a figure like 100 million mobile customers in Africa.

Now ask yourself the question, how many of them doesn’t have access to Internet? I would say 90% if not more. This just shows you how much potential there still is in the mobile market.

I am surely starting to shift my attention from web start-ups to mobile start-ups, or at least something that combines the two. In fact I already have plans for a new mobile service in the education arena that involves SMS messaging.

If you have plans or dreams to try and make it big, try shifting it towards the mobile market as there are still plenty of undiscovered opportunities in the market.

If you would like to stay up to date on whats happening in the Mobile Arena check out WebAddiCT(s);

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If you haven’t heard of TweSMS, its my new sideline project to bring SMS notifications to countries that twitter does not support for their own SMS notification system.

TweSMS is currently undergoing some major changes week by week with a few testers helping me out. TweSMS currently supports receive of DMs and Metions. Twitter users have the option to either receive all DMs or Mentions or either or only if it is from certain twitter friends.

I’m proud to introduce the latest feature for TweSMS, the Clickatell Gateway. Users can now use their own Clickatell accounts for SMS delivery. To setup a Clickatell gateway do the following.

1. Log in at Clickatell
2. Go to Manage My Products
3. From the Add Connection drop down choose HTTP
4. Enter TweSMS for name
5. Choose HTTP GET from Callback Type
6. Enter a Username
7. Enter a Password
8. Click Submit
9. Log in at TweSMS
10. Go to Clickatell API Settings
11. Enable use own Clickatell account
12. Enter your settings you set up above and save

If you have any problems getting this working please contact info@twesms.com or @TweSMS via twitter.

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This morning while posting something on Facebook I noticed a new popup that grabbed by attention. It was a small lock next to the share button and upon clicking it I discovered some real handy new privacy settings.

You now have the choice to customize with who you would like to share certain statuses or links you post. A nice addition is the fact that you can customize it to a degree where you can only allow a selected few friends to see the status or link, or disallow a selected few friends from seeing it.

This sure is a great feature and one that was needed a long time ago. I see the ladies gossiping even more now via Facebook.

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So the web is currently flourishing with posts on how awesome the new Apple iPad is, but is it really that awesome?

It’s no secret I am no Apple fanboy, in fact the closest I have gotten to owning a Apple was the Granny Smiths in my kitchen. Its not that I can’t afford it, it just there is always something lacking when it comes to functionality in Apple products and I always find that there is something better for either the same price or cheaper.

Last year when I had to choose a new phone I was torn between the iPhone or the HTC Hero, eventually went with the Hero and the reason was simply that the iPhone and multitasking is just not big friends and I haven’t looked back yet on that decision I made and thought maybe I should have gone with the iPhone.

There I was last night, tuning in on the live streams and blogs awaiting this awesome product, after 45 minutes just closing everything in disappointment without listening further. What I saw was just an oversized iPod Touch renamed as the Apple iPad.

The bezel is just plain huge, sure you are saying its to prevent touching the screen accidentally while holding the device. I you don’t want to touch the screen then don’t buy a touch screen device. Then Steve Jobs went and said the iPad was there to do things better like browsing the web and consuming digital media. How can the iPad do this better when it doesn’t even have flash support? And the fact that the iPad does not support MKV format for high definition video also lost me. Not that I would use it for watching videos or playing music, that’s what I have my LCD and Home Theater system for.

Was the iPad designed for portability? I for one would think so as it is something between a laptop and smartphone, but don’t think it will replace either. The iPad has no built in camera so there goes shooting some movies or pics on the go, and typing a full article on a touch screen device that takes up half of the screen? I would rather stick with my netbook for that.

One good thing that I would say the iPad could be good for is to bring competition to the eBook market, and clearly Apple is targeting that market with their release of their iBook store. I bet new Kindle users are kicking themselves in the head right now.

In all I don’t see the Apple iPad replacing my netbook or smartphone anytime soon, and I certainly won’t be carrying another device around with me. The iPad does have that nice look as do all the other Apple products, but when it comes to functionality I won’t just buy one yet.

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Looks like the guys over at MAD TV predicted the Apple iPad long before Apple even knew it would launch it.

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Popular technology blog TechCrunch was hacked around 10:30 pm on monday and made it back online about an hour later but then went back down again for several hours before it was restored.

Now this morning it has happened again, and this time with some cheeky messages regarding the new welcome page ad.

Technology blog TechCrunch hacked again

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