Blueworld is a South African social community where you can create a customizable online presence for yourself and meet new friends. Think of it as a South African version of Facebook.
Apparently the site has a easter egg, go check it out, pretty cool. To view the easter egg do the following:
URL shortening is becoming more and more popular with the use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Bit.ly is currently the most popular URL shortening service being used on social networking sites, especially on Twitter where posts are limited to 140 characters.
Google and Facebook has now come to the party with their own URL shortening services. Facebook launched fb.me thats already in use for mobile and page link sharing, while Google has launched Goo.gl the official Google URL shortening service.
In a short announcement, the tech giant revealed that the Google Toolbar and the FeedBurner syndication service now utilize Goo.gl for link sharing.
The company also made sure to preach the strengths of its URL shortener and why it should be chosen above others. Google’s three key talking points are stability, security, and speed. These are no surprise
Facebook and Google are trusted brands with huge audiences and very good short URL domains. This may just mark the beginning of a new battle for the URL shortening market.
Gone are the days of typing your search queries into Google, Android users now have the ability to just take a photo and search the web with that.
Google Goggle is the latest hip among Android users, imagine you are in an unknown city having a look at landmarks and have no idea what the landmark is you are looking at. Just fire up Google Goggles, take a picture and it will tell you exactly what landmark it is that you are looking at. Same goes for books and art. Want to know some information about local businesses? You don’t even need to take a photo, just point to the business and Google Goggles will display information regarding the business on screen.
To get yourself a copy of Google Goggles, open up the Android Market and search for Google Goggles. Just note that it is only available for Android 1.6+ so no luck for South African Hero owners for now. Have to wait for Leaf to give us the latest Android firmware, scheduled for release somewhere in December.
The Internet is, well it’s really huge. Just to show you how huge it is, the guys from Gizmodo has put together a nice Infographic to show us just how crazy huge the Internet is, and what 210 billion emails, 3 million Flickr images, 43 million gigabytes (on phones) sent on an average day really means.
Just saw that Chris over at iMod did a post about setting up MXit on your iPhone so I decided I might as well do one about setting up mxit on Android seeing that I just got my HTC Hero yesterday.
So for those of you using a Android based phone, here’s how to get MXit on it.
Open up your browser and head on over to http://www.mxit.com/wap
Follow the link to the Android Market where it will show you the MXit download
Choose MXit from the Android Market
Choose install and wait for the notification that it downloaded successfully then open it up.
Thats it folks, now enjoy MXit on your Android based phone.
Today I started thinking about how I could encourage more people to leave comments on my blog and in turn give something back, and came up with the brilliant plan of removing nofollow from the comments links.
NoFollow is a relationship property that gets set by the blogging software on all links that is contained with in comments, if a search engine finds a nofollow relationship it simply ignores the link and thus not give links back to the sites of the people commenting. Backlinks are a great way to improve your search engine rankings but its always difficult to get your links out there on other sites.
I am for sure no SEO guru but I know the basics and enough to realise how much a backlink is worth, thus have I came up with this plan. Every time someone now comments on my posts and fill in their website URL I will remove the nofollow from the link and ensure a backlink to their site. This hopefully would encourage people to leave more comments and get something back for partaking in my site.
I believe if you give you shall receive. I wrote a small WordPress plugin to disable nofollow links on your comments, please note that it only removes the comments from the author website link, nofollow is still added to links inside the comment. Download my plugin called DoFollow here. Just upload to your plugins directory and activate.
Remember to leave a comment to get your backlink.
Invictus is a feature film based on Nelson Mandela’s life during the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film stars Morgan Freeman as the then South African President Mandela, and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the South African team captain. The story is based on the John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation.
Invictus is a look at Nelson Mandela after the end of apartheid. The story is about Mandela’s release from prison, his election as President of South Africa and his attempts to use the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a vehicle to bring his people together. Led by their captain Francois Pienaar, the South African team wins the tournament, upsetting the favorites New Zealand 15–12 in the final.
Just too bad that the accents doesn’t really suite the characters for the film.
Last week I got the news that I was eligible for an upgrade, at first I wanted to port to Vodacom to get the iPhone as I have played around with a few of them and love it, but after some consideration and a hefty price tag my attention turned toward the HTC Hero or iPhone killer as some say.
It was a mission to get hold of one, as everybody is either out of stock and only expects new stock in the next year or does not get the phone until next year. Lucky for me the guys at Durbanville MTN shop got hold of an HTC Hero in only one day, great service from them, and I picked up my Hero yesterday.
The phone is absolutely superb, I’m loving every aspect of it and can see why people are saying that it’s the iPhone killer. The HTC hero is lightning fast with applications and menus opening instant without any sign of hesitation. A nice feature is the Accelerometer, one example I tested was with Google Maps in street view. Enabling the digital compass feature and physically moving around with the phone in your hand made the street-view move around as if you where standing in the street and looking up, down, left or right.
Out of the box the Android operating system asks you for login details to social networking sites like Facebook, twitter and Flicker and integrates it into your home screens if you would like to. Importing contacts was a breeze specially since I had all my contacts in Gmail, Android just asked me to sync with my GMail account and voila there all my contacts was imported.
The Android market place is also a breeze to operate with all the apps you can think of, 99% of the kind of apps I searched for where free.
The 5 mega-pixel camera of the HTC Hero is also very nice, it takes very high quality images that is sharp and crisp. One downside of the camera is I would have liked a flash, but its not the end of the world.
I’m definitely a Android fan now, and won’t turn back anytime soon. The Hero is sure to give Apple iPhone a run for its money.
If you are due for an upgrade have a look at the Hero, I’m sure you’d like it. I’ll be writing more about Android and Tips and Tricks for the HTC Hero and Android marketplace from now on here.
Schools will be closing this week and the holiday is upon us all. This holiday I’m sure most of us will be going away for a while to take some time away from our busy schedules.
Today I saw a number of bloggers posting about their holiday plans and when they will be going away and for how long, this made me think, is it wise to divulge all your holiday plans online?
The internet is an great way to express your views on things and share stories of your live with fellow internet users, but it also make certain information freely available to crooks. What better way is it for a burglar to go search the web for posts about peoples holiday plans and then have enough time to burgle your house or office while you are away.
So please if you are going to tell us about your holiday plans keep it simple, do not give away exact dates and information that could be useful to criminals.
I know chances are slim that house burglars are really tech savvy, but you never know. What do you guys think about giving away such information on your sites?
Google recently signed a deal with micro blogging site Twitter to index Twitter feeds in real time. The end result is Google’s real time search.
Imagine you need to head into Cape Town but would like to know how the traffic is to plan your trip. Well all you would have to do with Google’s real time search is type in CapeTraffic and it would show you latest tweets from the CapeTraffic hash being used by Capetonian tweeters.
Not only does Google Real Time Search index Twitter in real time but freshly published web pages, Tweets, MySpace updates and shockingly, Facebook public profiles. Check out the demo video below.
Want to see real-time results for any query right now? Go to http://google.com/trends and click on any of the hot topics on that page. Replace the search query in that page’s URL with a new search term and if real time results are available, you’ll be able to see them.
Awesome don’t you think?
