Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

2011

One of the most exciting launches in 2011 was the launch of the iPhone 4S, officially launched in South Africa December 16th 2011. The new member of the iPhone family has a dual core processor, improved camera (8 megapixels) and improved video capturing capabilities. With this Apple set a new standard for the development of Super Phones.

After months of speculation Google launched their new attempt at Social Media. Google Plus (Google+) was launched in mid 2011. The platform seems to be a combination of features from existing social media platforms and is visually very plain and simple to understand. It remains to be seen if Google+ will play a big role in Social Media or will it come to an end like its predecessor Google Wave.

YouTube got a little renovation. In 2011 YouTube improved the user experience of their website. They changed the layout to make navigation and finding channels easier and also made it visually more appealing.
Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5B, a dedicated Android partner, which will enable Google to supercharge the android ecosystem.

2012

Mobile! I think a lot of tech companies will be focusing on building better and more functional mobile applications as the market for smart and super phones is exploding. Mobile penetration in Africa especially is higher than some European countries. I think we’ll see a lot of innovation in the mobile application sector especially in terms of location based services, social networking, mobile commerce and mobile banking. I think we’ll also see advances when it comes to mobile hardware especially battery life.

Social media should have a large impact on search engines delivering more personalized search results than ever before. I also think Google and other large search engines will take social media more in account when it comes to delivering organic search results using user generated information to establish whether a website is a good resource or not. See Marcel’s article: The Impact of Personalized Search on SEO

Android will probably increase their market share in mobile device operating systems with the purchase of Motorola Mobility.

Whatever is in store for us for the year 2012 – it will be an exciting year for technology. I am sure we’ll see great innovation in technology in general and especially in mobile devices.

A recent survey by business information solution provider LexisNexis™, compared technology and software usage among working professionals including, Baby Boomers (1946 -1964) , Generation X (1964 – 1980) and Generation Y (1980 – 1989).

According to the survey:

• 60% of  Baby Boomers felt that Smartphones such as the Blackberry and iPhones contribute to a decline in proper workplace etiquette, and believe the use of a laptop during in-person meetings is “distracting,” however less than half of Gen Y workers agree.
• A Mere 17% of Boomers believe using laptops during in-person meetings is “efficient,” while more than 65% of Gen Y do.

• Only 28% percent of Boomers think blogging about work-related issues is acceptable, while forty percent of Gen Y workers do.

Laptops and phones are inefficient tools?  blogging is unacceptable? Who are these people and surely it can’t be so in our technologically inclined world?. Unfortunately, they are the ones who have a lot of power, they are the CEO’s, directors and executives, whilst Gen Y is only just starting out.

So why the great divide? Is it simply a case of baby boomers feeling secure and set in their ways, or being overwhelmed at the rapid growth of new technologies? Truth be told, it seems that Generation Y takes to technology like the proverbial duck to water, this could be a result of having been exposed to such technologies quite early in their development. Nowadays it’s not uncommon that children as young as 7 years old are proficient at using an iPad or latest mobile device, whilst most adults find the technology a bit difficult to figure out.

So how then do we hope to bridge the growing technology gap that exists between the generations?

Working professionals need to  acknowledge that in the ever evolving business world, technology plays a vital role and to simply ignore it could be catastrophic.

“Insanity : Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
- Albert Einstein

We are living in ever changing times. There are more ways than ever to interact, socialise and conduct our work. South Africa is the hub of all this digital activity in Africa and, with the speakers coming from as far afield as Stockholm and San Francisco, delegates flocked to secure their seats at the 2nd annual Tech4Africa Conference.

Tech4Africa was billed as “The premier mobile, web & emerging technology conference” and was held at the Forum in JHB. The speakers over the two days touched on the emerging tech trends, innovation and business ventures and opportunities currently found in South Africa and the rest of the world. The theme was immediately evident with giant screens showing the Tweets from the various delegates scrolling down the screen faster than any normal human can read. All around me people were starting up their laptops, iPads and a myriad of other wireless devices rushing to login to the free wireless on offer.

Being more business and marketing minded I preferred the talks on the emerging digital markets to the technical talks. The talk on HTML5 made by Robert Nyman from Mozilla was entertaining enough especially since talking “code” does not appeal to everyone. Josh Spear hails from the USA and is an independent, free-thinking marketing specialist who is regularly featured in Time magazine and the New York Times. His talk on social media was the most entertaining and eye opening for me. He put the vast scope of influence of the internet and “social” into perspective and it left me feeling left behind!

The afternoon of the final day of the conference was the most inspiring for me as it concerned the entrepreneurial stories of various business start-ups. The talk by Vinny Lingham who is the CEO of Yola.com made me realise that the road to success is sometimes a very rocky one. Vinny also helped start Clicks 2 Customers which is still one of the biggest Online advertising agencies in the world and won the Top Technology Company award in South Africa in 2006. Gareth Knight’s path to entrepreneurial success was also not smooth, but since his humble beginnings he co-founded Kindo.com which was voted in the top 3 most promising Internet companies in the UK for 2008. He is also the founder of Tech4Africa.

Overall Tech4Africa offered massive insight into the digital landscape that lies ahead of us and left me feeling inspired and refreshed. The entrepreneurial stories and successes emphasized to me just how resilient and insightful South Africans are in general. I am so glad to be living in this digital and technological age!

At Tech4Africa this year, Ndubuisi Ekekwe explored this fascinating divide specifically in Africa, and gave highly valuable insights.

Many years ago, Ekekwe explains, ideas and intellectual property had no rights and were free to all.  No one got any recognition for their thoughts and inventions and, for a period of time, people actually stopped inventing.  The implementation of IP rights in the USA saw the expansion of global GDP and higher standards of living.  Sadly, this is not the case in Africa even as of yet, which means there is no mechanism of investment to create the inventions and build Fortune 500 companies.  Minds as creative and inventive as Thomas Edison don’t get recognized financially.  They merely receive praise.

Furthermore, he expands on the fact that anything received for free is not perceived as valuable, leaving no drive or excitement for education and thus no knowledge to drive innovation within the industry.  With our technology landscape narrowing, there is a definite need to move from marketing and distribution to innovation, invention and creativity.

He believes that a monetary system + IP rights + technology will ensure that Africa will become Creators of technology VS mere Consumers of technology.

So what is your technology legacy?  What is our technology legacy?  Are we going to educate, recognize, innovate and lead, or remain comfortable followers?  Success depends on this decision.

“TECH4AFRICA IS THE PREMIER MOBILE, WEB & EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, BRINGING GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE TO THE AFRICAN CONTEXT.”

The conference was motivational, inspiring, informative and in the case of some of the speakers, captivating. I decided to attend talks from both legs (business and technology) and diverse as they were, I was fascinated.

I have had a keen interest in User Experience Design since taking courses in HCI and Interface design at University. “March of the UX designers” presented by Cennydd Bowles and James Box from Clearleft immediately drew my attention. Their presentation highlighted most of the basics of UX design, such as research methods, the emotional connections that users develop in relation to a design, usability tests, iteration and prototyping (with sketches, storyboards and wireframes). They highlighted that usability can lead to a business advantage and discussed where they think UX is heading. Overall a great presentation as it refreshed my memory as to how important User Experience design is with any type of product.

I think for most of the attendees, including me, Herman Chinery-Hesse’s talk about Innovation and Technology in Africa was the most captivating and inspirational. He spoke about how he started out in the industry, throwing in quite a number of jokes along the way, and continued to tell the audience about the uniquely African obstacles he had to overcome by using limited technology in often ingenious ways. The scope of this post is a bit limited to communicate the power of his presentation. However, I urge to try and find a recording of his presentation at Tech4Africa. You won’t be sorry you did.

Another presentation I found very inspirational was “Africa’s quest to climb the tech Pyramid” by Ndubuisi Ekekwe. His presentation was unlike any other and I was immediately intrigued. He focused on how Africans needed to be innovators in order to be creators, and not only consumers of western technology. Ndubuisi emphasised that intellectual property rights in combination with technology, would lead to an expansion in GDP. Some other fascinating philosophical concepts he touched on was how humans could one day become immortal by means of nano technology. A truly unexpected and remarkable presentation.

The last presentation I would like to mention was a talk by Mozilla Technical Evangelist, Robert Nyman. Because of my technical background I found his talk on HTML5 very interesting, inciting a desire in me to start developing applications using the rich features of HTML5. As one would expect form an evangelist, he showed off some impressive features of HTML5 and discussed a number of useful javascript libraries. Most of all, his continuous references to Star Wars in his slides appealed to my inner nerd

This post cannot possibly cover all the inspiring presentations at Tech4Africa 2011. I strongly urge you to try and get hold of the recordings, as well as your tickets for 2012! Become part of the emerging ‘Proudly African Technology’ movement!

There are two main reasons why independent game development has become so popular in recent years:

The first is the distribution medium. Indie games are generally distributed by digital means which was not available only a few years ago (the bandwidth limitations of the internet also created a barrier). Examples include Steam for Mac and Windows, the Playstation Network for the PS3, the App Store (iOS) and the Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox360. These distribution platforms make it easy for an independent developer to expose his/her game to a large audience with a minimal financial burden.

The second is that there are far more developer tools available than there were in the earlier years of gaming. Adobe Flash or Microsoft’s XNA game studio make it far easier to create games than it used to be. XNA makes it possible to directly create an executable of your game for use on an Xbox for example.

Because an indie game developer does not have any limitations imposed by a publisher, indie games tend to be innovative and push established gameplay mechanics and game art in radically new directions.

There are quite a number of independent games that have achieved widespread commercial and financial success. Examples include Braid, Castle Crashers, Limbo, World of Goo and Minecraft. Indie gaming has been around for a couple of years but it is not too late to hop on the proverbial bandwagon. The wagon is still going at full speed.

The New York Fashion Week kicks off this month and all the designers and the press are going online to reach viral audiences and they are planning to reach a larger amount of people than those present at the show. Most of the brands will make use of their Facebook pages to unveil their Spring/Summer 2012 collections and videos will also be uploaded onto Youtube. They plan to take snapshots live from the show and post that on their social platforms. Not missing out on the biggest Brand’s Spring/Summer 2012 collection ever, is becoming easier by the minute, and the strategy behind it is of great value to everyone planning their own events strategies.

So let’s have a look at some tips and hints on planning an online event. It is important to focus on your audience. Firstly, you need to capture and keep their attention. Your audience has the power to log-off, get side-tracked, lose interest, or evens get up and walk away. There must be a strong reason for them to stay connected. For this reason, a virtual event will be much shorter than a live event.

Secondly,, you need to look at a technical supplier. They need to help you with hosting and your presentation. They would also need to ensure that your website is running fast and that your presentation is seamless when you present it online. Lastly, make use of your social portals to communicate with your audience in advance. Tell them about your online event, do a build up to the day, link all your social portals, keep them interested, excited and informed; and then, make a video of the event and post it on Youtube when your event is over – giving them the opportunity to experience the event with you.

Virtual events are growing fast, try to make it part of your strategy.

No generation is more at ease with online and new technologies than the young people today. They have grown up immersed in a computing and technology enriched environment. Where a notebook and pen used to be the required tools of the former generation, students today go to classes armed with laptops, smart phones and iPods. This era of technology has significant implications for higher education. Online classrooms have started gaining a firm foot fold in universities around the world.

One of the greatest benefits of online classrooms especially in Africa is that one teacher can reach thousands of students and what’s more is that geographical location is not an obstacle. Imagine the benefits to the poor, under resourced schools and the students. Online classrooms can bridge the gap that exists between privileged and under privileged students, where poor students can still receive quality education.

A study was recently conducted at random universities and the teacher stated that students who were usually shy in the classroom became more actively involved in online discussions. Teachers also responded by saying that they received answers and questions that were far more detailed than when in an actual classroom.

Here are some responses from the survey conducted.

There has been whispers that new technologies will allow universities to collaborate with corporates in order to bridge the gap from university to the workplace. That kind of communication will enable universities to better equip their students to compete in the global marketplace. I mean how many of you have come out of university, degree fresh in hand only to discover upon employment that the corporate jungle is a different world entirely, by allowing collaboration between corporates and universities I believe that students will be able to have confidence and the right know how when starting their first jobs. The advantage for corporate businesses is that the graduate students they employ have a better understanding and are able to integrate easier into the working environment.

There are however some hurdles and obstacles to online education, such as the cost of implementation and maintenance, the reluctance of educators to move out of their comfort zone, the possibility if plagiarism and cheating.

A survey was recently conducted on the possible risks and challenges of Online Education, have a look at some of the results below.

Personally I feel that the overall benefits that our academic institutions, corporate businesses and ultimately students gain far outweigh the challenges and obstacles. Technology is changing the way you do business and socialize as well, why not implement or integrate it in the way to learn too. We should embrace technology and utilise it to provide our youth with a wider array of data and information so that they can flourish in a world that is becoming more and more technologically inclined.

Mp3 players have become a big part of our lives and even if you don’t own one, your mobile phone most probably is capable of storing and playing music. Now with most of us owning some sort of device that we can play music on anywhere, we need the music to carry around. One way of putting music on a portable device like an Mp3 player is by converting the music on the CD to a digital format. I did this for a very long time, but has become such a hassle, why not buy your music in digital format from the beginning? The nice thing about buying music online in digital format is you can buy just one song if you wanted one, even if you cant find the CD in the stores, there will always be stock online.

I only recently started using the iTunes store and it is so much more convenient I cant find any reason to go out and buy a CD ever again, I store all the music I have on my PC anyway. There are also a lot of other sites online where you can buy music. You can also make use of sites where you can just stream the music and set up playlists like Spotify and soundcloud, these sites enable you to listen to music while at your computer but you would need to pay when you want to save the files on you pc.

Most other music devices like home theatre systems and car radio’s come out these days with some sort of support for your portable music player, like an iPod docking station or connection to plug your iPod into your car radio. You no longer need to carry around all your CD’s, you can just convert them to a digital format and take all of it with you on you mobile phone or other portable music player.

This is by far a much more convenient way of using and listening to music. So I wonder how long it will be before there is no need for CD’s anymore.