Today five years ago YouTube opened up its beta version to the world, today it has more than two billion video views per day.

Five years ago after months of testing and preparation, the first beta version of YouTube was opened up to the public. YouTube had one mission in mind and that was to give anyone a place to upload their videos, whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could “broadcast yourself.”

YouTube has released the YouTube 5 Year channel today to celebrate their 5 year anniversary at www.youtube.com/fiveyear. There, you’ll find the “My YouTube Story” project which features people from around the world describing how YouTube has changed, or shaped, their lives.

YouTube is inviting users to share their videos of how YouTube has shaped/inspired them.

YouTube has also launched their YouTube South Africa site today, the South African version brings us content related to South Africa. The local YouTube site will enable users to find content that is relevant to them faster and easier.

This is all good and well, but when are we going to see local servers YouTube? Yes I know with Uncapped Internet now freely available in South Africa this should not be a problem, but speed wise I would still prefer a local server.

Congrats YouTube on your 5th anniversary and on launching the new local YouTube portal.

Check out the video of how YouTube became what it is today.

Last night at the CTICC the Microsoft Office South Africa team demonstrated to a few of us the capabilities of Microsoft’s latest Office suite, Microsoft Office 2010.

Microsoft has set its focus on online editing and social media integration with its latest Office 2010 package. With Office 2010 users are now able to collaborate and work together on documents and spreadsheets at the same time with the new Office Web Apps.

Office 2010′s online editing capabilities are really astounding and I see it at a aim at Google’s Docs application that also allows users to edit documents and spreadsheets online. Users won’t feel uncomfortable with the Office 2010 online editing software as it replicates the same interface than you would see when editing you file in either Word or Excel.

Microsoft also souped up their email application, Outlook 2010, by adding some new nice to have features and also adding social networking capabilities with its new Outlook Social Connector

“Through Outlook, people can keep track of email conversations, stay up to date with their co-workers, friends and family, see Facebook updates and LinkedIn pictures for their e-mail contacts, and add a contact as a friend on social networking sites — without ever leaving the application,” said Bester who demonstrated the Outlook features.

The Outlook Social Connector currently only supports LinkedIn and MySpace but they are busy with Facebook and Windows Live integration.

It is evident that Microsoft is worming themselves into Cloud Computing to compete with other providers like Google with the release of Office 2010, and from what I have seen they are doing a great job. Office 2010 might just be the saviour for their Office suites as Windows 7 was to their operating systems.

Office 2010 also comes in a lot cheaper than previous versions, starting from R899 for the Student Home edition and  the Office Web Apps will be free to use through a Windows Live account.

There is also a beta program available to share and edit document on Facebook, if you are interested in being part of the beta, search for Docs on Facebook and apply for a beta application.

It is without a doubt that HTML5 is the future of the web. With almost all the major web browsers already starting to support HTML5 what has you as Web Developer done to become familiar with HTML5?

With HTML5 allot can be done using only HTML and Javascript code where previously Flash or Silverlight was needed to accomplish the same task. Things like video and audio playback can be done natively with HTML5 without the need for any third party application. Developing 2D and 3D games also just became allot easier. With the new HTML5 canvas developers can now do 2D and 3D graphics with just a few simple lines of Javascript code.

The question is what have you as Web Developer done to become more familiar with the new HTML5 capabilities? Have you started reading up on it and tried your hand at some examples?

Most mobile phones out there today does not support Flash or Silverlight, even the new iPad which I would say was designed to be a web device does not support these third party applications, but one thing they do support is HTML5. This is why I would say it is so important for Web Developers to start experimenting with HTML5.

I took the weekend to do some tests and familiarise myself with HTML5 and I must say I am impressed. I will be doing some basic tutorials during the next couple of days to showcase the capabilities of HTML5 and just how easy it really is.

Are you HTML5 ready?

South African ISP RSAWEB known for their hosting has introduced True Cloud Servers that enables them to deploy a fully operational server in a matter of just a few minutes.

Currently there are other cloud servers available from other ISPs but what makes RSAWEB’s True Cloud Servers so spectacular is that they can deploy a fully operational server in a matter of only minutes.

What are Cloud Servers?

Simply put, Cloud Servers behave in exactly the same way as physical servers, but differ in that they draw their resources from a pool of hardware, rather than one specific device. An intelligent cloud management layer and user control panel allows additional resources to be added on-the-fly and applications to scale dynamically as needed. Root servers and resources are available on demand – no need for capital outlay or costly server maintenance

So say you have your Cloud Server and see that you need more RAM or HDD Space or perhaps need some more CPU power, without going through the tedious task of physically going to the server and adding a RAM chip or upgrading the CPU, extra resource can be allocated and be active in minutes.

Cloud Servers gives you full access and control over your server, you can even choose between various flavours of Linux. You only pay for the resources you need.

At first glance the new local Cloud Hosting packages from RSAWEB looked great but one thing that bothered me was the small bandwidth allocation specifically on the lower-end packages. Great news is that RSAWEB has now doubled the bandwidth allocation for its lower-end packages.

The Server 256 and Server 512 comes in really affordable if you are wanting to start out small with an online service and require full control over your server.

Great news is that RSAWEB is allowing you to try out their True Cloud Servers for free until the end of May, simply sign up with promotion code CLOUD1

MWEB the company that revolutionized uncapped Internet for South Africans by making it affordable has kept everybody in suspense over their latest announcement. Word is now out and MWEB in conjunction with DSTV will now offer subscribers free Video On Demand.

What is video on demand you ask? Well to put it simple you can now watch your latest series, movies, sports, etc when you want to.  No need to set your PVR anymore simply get your favourite program from the DSTV video on demand service.

As a MWEB customer, you now have access to so much more than just superfast Internet. All MWEB ADSL Customers with a DStv Premium Subscription have exclusive access to DStv ON DEMAND and will be able to download or stream their favourite shows to the computer. DStv ON DEMAND is available to both Capped and Uncapped ADSL Customers but given the amounts of data consumed MWEB recommends their Uncapped ADSL to enjoy the benefits of DStv ON DEMAND without ever having to worry about your data cap.

To be eligible to enjoy the DSTV On Demand service you will need to be a MWEB ADSL customer and have a DSTV premium subscription. Also a 4Mbps line is recommended for a optimal viewing experience.

For more information regarding the MWEB DSTV Video On Demand service check out the MWEB website.

Yesterday I wrote about Twitter that was about to introduce a way for you to embed tweets like Youtube videos into your site. Twitter has now released the functionality and I will now show you how to do it.

1. Find the tweet you would like to embed.
2. Copy the tweet URL located when you click on the date underneath the tweet (eg. halve a minute ago)
3. Head over to Blackbird Pie and enter the URL in the box and click Bake It!
4. You will be presented with how the tweet looks and the code you need to paste to embed it.
5. Paste the generated code where you want it to show on your site.

It is still kind of a mission to embed it, would have been nice if Twitter added a link underneath tweets that automatically generated the code for you when clicked.

MWEB the company that brought cheap uncapped Internet to South Africans in an effort to free the web is at it again. The company has told followers on their Free The Web Facebook page that they will be announcing some exciting news today with regards to better Internet in South Africa.

Social Networks and Technology forums are a buzz with speculation as to what MWEB might announce later today.

Some users are speculating that MWEB will do away with capped accounts and lower the price of their uncapped offering even further where others suggest that MWEB will offer unshaped bandwidth after hours.

MWEB will be making the announcement around 10:30AM this morning so keep an eye out.

I for one am really curious as to what this exciting news is that MWEB will be announcing, I am looking forward to see how they will further Free The Web in South Africa.

What is your thoughts? Do you have an idea as to what MWEB’s announcement will be?

UPDATE: MWEB and DSTV launces Video On Demand

Twitter is set to introduce embeddable tweets later today. Gone are the days of taking screenshots and adding it to your content, now you will simply embed it like a video.

Quoting text is an important part to portray the real story behind something, yet copy and pasting normally result is people misquoting what really has been said, but not anymore.

With embeddable tweets you can now quote a tweet from Twitter by simply adding some HTML code to your article like you would do with embedding a YouTube video.

Twitter told Mashable in a email the following about embeddable tweets: “It’s a super super simple piece of code to help people generate nice HTML tweets instead of using screen-grabbed images. It’s something that Robin Sloan has been using for Twitter Media & is now sharing. That’s it!”

Would surely make things allot easier for people reporting on news seeing that Twitter nowadays break the news before the news sites does, just last night Twitter broke the story about Lolly Jackson, Teasers strip club owner, being shot 15 times before any news source could report on it.

For long there was no real statistics about local Twitter usage except for where we ranked in the world, but a company called Fuseware has changed that.

Fuseware has profiled millions of tweets and thousands of local Twitter users during March and April 2010 to help us better understand the local South African Twitter user.

According to Fuseware there are 55000 active Twitter users in South Africa with about 1.5 million tweets being sent each month. Twitter is currently South Africa’s 7th most visited site with 4.5% of all local sites referencing content from Twitter.

South African Twitter users mostly tweet during 7AM and 12PM daily and also at night between 7 and 8PM. The most popular days to tweet is Tuesdays and Fridays with weekends being less active than during the week.

Most of South African Twitter users are located in Cape Town with Johannesburg following closely. It is clear that tweeting is confined to developed cities and Information Technology hubs, while users in cities like Pretoria, East London and Port Elizabeth does not take that much interest in the social networking platform.

For a detailed presentation on the state of the South African Twittersphere check out the Fuseware South African Twitter Report here.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Fashion Evolutions the company well known for their role in the development of crowdsourcing in South Africa with Springleap has brought eKomi, an advanced online customer feedback service, to South Africa.

eKomi allows online businesses to showcase their customers’ views and and ratings publicly, which has proven to increase conversion rates by 25%.

eKomi is a first for Africa, eKomi will ensure that no fictitious feedback and manipulation are submitted and will only allow customers that has gone through the transaction process to submit feedback and reviews.

Eran Eyal, Springleap co-founder said “We are very excited to be spearheading this joint venture forward in South Africa and surrounding regions with what has become THE standard of certification of authentic customer experiences in the industry across Europe.” Eyal also added “South African institutions will benefit immensely from having customer feedback with a premium level of certification and authenticity. The uptake is sure to be swift and ubiquitous. Simultaneously, the eKomi certification standard affords the customer a never before experienced level of surety and comfort. Knowing that any institution carrying this prestigious standard deals with clients in a transparent and trustworthy manner and that their ratings are authentic.”

eKomi comes in 3 different packages each with one month free trial.

Orders exceeding the monthly allowed are charged at R190 ex Vat per 200.

For more information about eKomi and how to obtain it for your brand visit the eKomi website.

The question now remains will eKomi give current customer feedback system Hello Peter a run for its money? Up until now businesses did not have any option but to use Hello Peter for their customer feedback and reviews, but now with eKomi they have a choice. eKomi seems to have more control to avoid fictitious and manipulated feedback and reviews, and their prices doesn’t seem to bad either.