It’s become rather obvious that posting to this blog from my laptop ain’t really happening much, now is it? With that in mind I’ve been trying to set up Posting via Email since yesterday, which would allow me to update from my phone. A good idea in theory…
Well what a mission that is turning out to be! When this site was hosted by Google’s Blogger it was a simple set up of an email address and BAM! It’s done and working.
But I had to be a smartarse. I had to move over to WordPress. I had to fix it when it wasn’t broken.
Okay, it was broken, and moving over to WordPress WAS the best thing for this site, but I need to complain, mmmkay?
So if this site goes to shite over the next couple of days it’s safe to assume that I’m still (i) bashing the keyboard trying to enable posting by email, and (ii) bashing my head on the wall when it doesn’t work properly.
What’s slower than Paris Hilton attempting Black Belt Sudoku?
This site apparently.
Poll - who's awesome? I'm awesome.
According to the poll on the left sidebar – which 9 of you have kindly taken so far, the other 1000 or so of you not so much – the results are as follows:
3 reckon it’s faster than Lindsay Lohan rushing for free booze, 4 say it’s kinda average, while 2 feel it’s slower than Jabba the Hut doing the 100m dash. One friendly even chap rates that “Zzzzzz” is way too fast, so he marked “Other” and then clarified this as “slow”. Touché.
Which means I’ve got some work to do figuring out how to speed this thing up. Best I get started.
So I was gonna write a long-winded post all about the awesome new Apple iPad, unveiled yesterday by Steve Jobs, but another site has beaten me to it (thousands of sites actually, but I’m not going to argue semantics here).
Yuneec International, a British company working in China, has introduced the E430, the prototype of an electric aircraft that it plans to mass-produce for the global market.
The appeal of the little two-seat airplane is not only its economy--fuel costs about $2 per hour--but its ease of use. Just plug it in to recharge.
There is never a need to deal with messy gasoline or oil, and maintenance is vastly simpler than for a piston aircraft. In flight, the Yuneec is smooth, quiet, and emissions-free. Extra-long wings provide plenty of lift for flights lasting up to two and a half hours between charges.
Deliveries are expected to start in 2011, with a price of about $89,000. www.yuneec.com.
I want one! That should just about take care of my much-complained-about traffic woes. Additionally, I’ll no longer bore you with constant updates of just how long it took me to get to the office this morning. Which I am fully aware is a vital part of your day, but trust me, you’ll be fine. No no, I swear -- it’ll take a while to get used to, but you need to be strong -- your life MUST go on.
Yuneec E430
Here’s a clip about the little plane in action:
I would pay some SERIOUS cash just to see my boss’s expression when I clunk this thing down in the office driveway.
With the proliferation of groups, pages and profiles on Facebook currently claiming all sorts of skinner and skandaal about Facebook threatening to start charging for access to the world’s most popular social network, I figured it was time to set the record straight.
Enter Spywared.com with a couple of already-prepared articles on this exact subject:
Scam Facebook Pages are kinda dodgy…
Facebook has millions of users world wide and this makes the website attractive to scammers. Several “Monthly charge” frauds are circulating for a few months now pushing gullible users into panic. People are usually invited to join a group to express a protest against upcoming monthly fee. The rumor about charging $4.99 or £3.99 or £14.99 a month is totally made up. However, confusion is not what the scammers seek: members of the group are directed to external websites that are capable of installing malware. Some of the sources can even download 25 different infections automatically upon visit.
The incidents made Facebook delete “WE’RE AGAINST THE $4.99 A MONTH CHARGE FOR FACEBOOK FROM JUNE 30TH 2010” group but a new one appeared shortly after that. The new group is called “I WILL NOT PAY £3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010” and it’s the same fraud as the previous. These two groups are not the only ones trying to confuse people; the monthly charge or the formulation of the name might be different but the purpose is the same: installing malware onto computers.
Facebook representatives have repeatedly declared that the network is not going to charge a basic fee for the main services.
In addition to the groups and pages about being charged for access, a new scourge has cropped up – fake profiles (with token cutie pic of course) with links to not-quite-honest sites. Take a look:
Fake Facebook Profiles are kinda dodgy…
If you have been recently invited by Emily Bennet, Emily Wood or Katherine Griffin to become friends on Facebook, you should be careful as these girls mean big trouble. Especially if they look like the girl in the picture.
Antivirus provider AVG Technologies reported that the users of the LinkScanner service have detected numerous fake Facebook accounts all including the same picture and a link to the “members” home video which actually leads to a corrupt website. Once the website is visited it displays a warning about the computer being infected and imitates performing a security scan and finding various security threats. It then suggests purchasing and downloading a security application that would take care of the problem. Unfortunately, all this is a huge scam made to sabotage the world’s largest online community. Lucky for us, Facebook are no amateurs in dealing with such problems. They have already started removing these accounts and solving the problems that might have caused this fraud.
However, you should still be aware and not share your contact details with suspicious Facebook users and not follow every link that you are given or find on some member’s profile. And you should definitely avoid the girl in the picture – she may look cute, but she just might cause you some serious trouble.
So stop panicking everytime you hear a rumour, and stop joining militaristic groups demanding that “I will not pay to use Facebook!”
By the way: protesting reveals that you may in fact have hippie tendencies, but I ‘m getting sidetracked here… “Hell no, we won’t go! Hell no, we won’t go!”
Hippie. In the words of the great Eric Cartman: “Hippies, hippies… they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!”
But anyway, back to the point of this article: Facebook is free. End of story.
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Both articles sourced from:
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Stu’s take on… fan page on Facebook: click here. Yes, it’s free
Looks like soon airline passengers in Sub-Saharan Africa will be able to surf the net, send emails and download videos of ummm… work stuff. Yup, that’s it: work stuff nudge nudge wink wink.
An article posted today on Mybroadband.co.za stated that WirelessG is currently looking into it. Check it:
Sub-Saharan Africans will soon be able to connect to the Internet anywhere they are – even while on a domestic or long-haul flight – thanks to a new technology announcement from WirelessG.
While the technology that will enable in-flight Internet services is depending on Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval, it will be provided through an exclusive agreement with US-based Row 44 who is already successfully offering in-flight Wi-Fi Internet to Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and in 2010, through Norwegian Air Shuttle.
Obviously it’s not without its cons. Whilst you can kill some serious time reading up on whatever takes your fancy, brag on Facebook about your imminent climbing of Mount Kilimanjaro, and of course check out the latest posts on the world’s best site ever (ever ever ever times infinity): Stu’s take on…, it does of course mean that between this and the proliferation of cellphones your boss is now truly able to get hold of you absolutely everywhere.
An article today on MyBroadband.co.za has reported that webmail.co.za, one of South Africa’s premier free email services, has decided to thumb its nose at local hosting and buggered off to Europe. See this snippet from the original article (link) for more info:
South Africa’s largest free email service, Webmail.co.za, has recently moved the hosting of their servers internationally. According to Netcraft the move took place around November 2009, and the new hosting location for Webmail is Nfrance Datacenter in Paris, France.
While the reasons behind this decision are not clear, it may be related to the high bandwidth costs associated with hosting services in South Africa. In South Africa data costs of between 5c and 10c per MB for high end hosting services are commonplace – multiple times higher than international hosting services.
Naturally those users who access their webmail accounts on local-only bandwidth (cheaper) are getting a bit cranky, as they now no longer have that opportunity.
If it is in fact due to the cost of local hosting… then in my opinion I totally get it – local hosting is bloody expensive, and us South Africans are getting sick and tired of constantly playing catch-up to the rest of the world in all things connectivity. If however that is not their reason, my argument about costs is still valid.
A friend of mine has his company website hosted locally, and not only is it far more expensive than international hosting, his storage allocation and monthly traffic is severely limited by comparison.
When I made the move over from the free Google-hosted Blogger to self-hosted WordPress in November last year I went straight to foreign hosting, in this case provided by Hostgator (disclosure note: my affiliate link). For 60% of the price of local hosting I get unlimited storage, unlimited site traffic, and can even host an unlimited number of websites with them. Their technical help folks have also been instantly contactable via live chat 24 hours a day in my experience during the move – no submitting a ticket and then waiting a couple of days. So all in all a win for price, product and service.
As long as there is such a major discrepancy in what you get for your money this will not change – South African sites will continue to host overseas.
Just a quick update for us nerdy types out there – WordPress 2.9 has just been released. Seeing as I’m far too lazy at this time of year to actually write a full post about the new features and myriad updates, bug-fixes, etc. I figured it’d be easier to just post a link to an article that has already achieved just that: Head over to Softpedia to read about it by clicking HERE.
And now that you’ve decided it’s awesome, go download it: WordPress.org.
South Africa is now (finally) up to 3 HD channels -- Mnet HD, Supersport HD, and now Discovery HD Showcase.
Here’s a snippet from the original MyBroadband article that brought this to my attention (article here):
MultiChoice today announced that it will launch its latest channel, Discovery HD Showcase, on Monday. “The Discovery HD Showcase channel will hit the screens on DStv on 21 December on channel 172,” the company said in a press statement.
The channel is the only global high definition television brand offering factual entertainment, selected from various Discovery channels as well as exclusive content that can only be seen on Discovery HD Showcase. The channel covers a variety of programmes including science, technology, people, places and natural history.
Like other HD channels, this channel will be available to Premium bouquet subscribers that have PVR decoders that are HD capable. MultiChoice launched a PVR decoder that is HD capable last year.
Two weeks ago, MultiChoice announced the launch of SuperSport HD on its DStv platform. The addition of Discovery HD Showcase brings the number of HD channels on DStv to three.
Additionally, the DSTV site had this to say:
Offering breathtaking sound and magnetic imagery, the channel covers a variety of programmes including science, technology, people, places and natural history. Like other HD channels, this channel will be available to Premium bouquet subscribers that have PVR decoders that are HD capable.
Two weeks ago, MultiChoice announced the launch of SuperSport HD on its DStv platform. The addition of Discovery HD Showcase brings the number of HD channels on DStv to three.
“This latest addition demonstrates our commitment to growing our HD offering on DStv. Our Premium subscribers will now enjoy a wider scope of HD content, covering Sport, Documentary and general entertainment from the three HD channels” says Nico Meyer, CEO of MultiChoice South Africa.
Check out the promo for the channel:
Looks awesome! Now I really need to try harder to convince the missus to let me get a HD TV! There are some killer specials on them at the moment…
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