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Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

The Revolution Will Be Televised 2007-04-13 03:58:43 Toyama Koichi is a 36 year old street musician, who in his spare time heads the Kyushu Fascist Party. He has recently served 2 years in jail for sedition, and comes across, on a good day, as totally unhinged. So how did he garner 15 000 votes in the Tokyo gubernatorial election? Much of it can be put down to his rather controversial, albeit compelling political speech, aired on television, and rapidly uploaded to YouTube. Containing such riveting lines as “If I get elected, they will be terrified. I myself will be terrified.” It's no surprise that it took off the way it did. In a move that could only have helped his popularity, Tokyo’s election commission asked for the video to be removed from YouTube. He subsequently became something of a Japanese interweb phenomenon, 2nd in popularity only to anime character, “Haruhi Suzumiya.” In the ensuing fray, the video was co-opted, edited and remixed, spawning, amongst others, a Star Wars ver ...

7 Simple Rules For Improving The Conversation 2007-04-12 12:06:20 con·ver·sa·tion   [kon-ver-sey-shuh informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc., by spoken words; oral communication between persons; talk; colloquy. an instance of this. association or social intercourse; intimate acquaintance. With last week’s post about “The conversation,” I wanted to discuss this vital part of online relationship building. Inadvertently, I ended up demonstrating one aspect in particular – baiting. Also inadvertently, I showed how to not capitalise when your attractor bait does its job. Pretty ironic, when the fundamental point of my post was that once your bait gets the attention you’re after you need to make the most of that attention. This week, we bring you the follow-up: 7 Simple Rules For Improving Your Conversation 1. Make a connection Before there can be any conversation, there needs to be a connection. Be it a phonecall, be it an email, be it a chat with ...

Social Networking - it just gets better & better 2007-04-12 08:06:13 You’ve just gotta love online social networking! Ongoing development proves that there is no reason not to love social network sites! Now, there is one particular development that, once released, will change the face of this particular form of communication forever. For those of you who worship the phenomenon of social network sites, there has been a recent development that will only deepen your devotion to shared media and online communication. This prolific idea comes to us in the form of “The Coop”, which is a Mozilla Firefox extension that operates on a simple principle, and is easily integrated into existing online software. The idea behind this initiative is simple. Instead of always having to visit a social network site to see what your friends are up to, you will be able to put them in their own social network coop on your browser and see what they are doing in all media areas at the same time, as opposed to only being notified of an action and then having to ...

Free Lessig talk ? thanks ISOC! 2007-04-11 09:27:00 Professor Lawrence Lessig, renowned Internet law expert and founder of Creative Commons, will be giving a free talk next Wednesday, April 18, at the SABC auditorium in Sea Point. The talk will be hosted by the South African leg of the Internet Society (ISOC). Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, will be in the country to participate in Africa’s first Digital Freedom Exposition, which is set to take place from the 19th to the 20th of April at UWC. The Digital Freedom Exposition boasts an impressive group of speakers including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Ebrahim Rasool, Premier of the Western Cape (who recently started his own blog – good on you Mr Premier). Lessig’s talk on Wednesday will be entitled freeculture.co.za and he will be looking at the ways in which content is dispersed on the Internet as well as how the Creative Commons way of licensing empowers content creators and consumers alike. Initially not taken very seriously, the Creative Commons ...

Sxipping through web forms 2007-04-11 05:58:53 Ever since I watched Dick Hardt’s gripping OSCON 2005 keynote, Identity 2.0 or digital identity has intrigued me. If you have never heard of this stuff go and have a read, it’s really interesting and without doubt the way online identity management will go. It’s kinda where Microsoft tried to take its Passport service (and in South Africa, MWeb’s “single sign on”) except decentralised and therefore, in theory, free from corporate control. At first it was all talk, but when the big boys (Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL at least) started supporting OpenID which is a user centric protocol for exchanging identity data, I thought I’d better see what all the fuss is about so I headed over to Sxip.com (Dick’s company) to get myself an OpenID. But this isn’t a post about OpenID, or Identity2.0, those have been written (watching Dick’s presentation is a must). This is a post about a smashing not-so-little Firefox plugin which I foun ...

Should it stay, or should it go? 2007-04-11 03:47:43 Since we added the rich text editor to the comments section on GottaQuirk, there has been some what of a mixed response. A problem some people seem to be randomly experiencing is that it takes a while to load even on a fast connection (fast as in South Africa fast - 1Mbits/s). Others have mentioned that if you start typing in the comment box before it has loaded completely, that it clears your entered text as soon as it has finished loading (how annoying). Some people like it, some don't. So what is the right way to do it - do we carry on with the rich text editor giving you the ability to express your comments with more control over they way they appear, or should we go back to the old plain text (this time with automatic line breaks)? Please let us know what you'd prefer. Comment on "Should it stay, or should it go?" ...

Is this the tipping point? 2007-04-11 00:28:08 I just got a Facebook invite... from my mother! Comment on "Is this the tipping point?" ...

Life after Dial-up 2007-04-10 09:46:50 I have been sitting with a Dial-up Internet connection at home for more than 10 years. It all started with the MWEB big black box I scored at a Camps Beach promotion (I don't wear the shirt anymore) and then switched to Xsinet a while later. With the so-called "price wars"  happening at the moment I decided that the time for a faster Internet connection had arrived.  I wanted something affordable (I was on Dial-up for so long for a reason!) and would be using the connection for general surfing and email (so no big downloads). Well it took some digging but basically it came down to a Telkom ADSL connection or a Vodacom wireless connection. I found it pretty difficult to get an overall cost from the Telkom website. There seems to be hidden costs (like the ISP monthly fee that is not included in their price) so I decided on the Vodacom wireless connection for R250 per month (500mb cap). They throw in everything you need so they are no additional costs. I can use it ...

London OpenCoffee Meetup 2007-04-10 03:12:23 I attended the London OpenCoffee Meetup last week, and found it to be a great event. Started by Saul Klein, entrepreneur, former Marketing VP at Skype, and author of the localglo.be blog, the Meetup was held at Starbucks on Regent Street. This meant that there was no chance that anyone one was going to suffer from low caffeine levels.   The great thing about this event is that there is absolutely no structure beyond who is coming and where it’s going to be held. It is a pure and simple networking event; people go there to make business connections, not to listen to speakers. It is probably the purist networking event I have been to in the sense that there was no agenda coming from the organisers, and no sponsors. The relaxed environment of a coffee shop is exceptionally conducive to meeting new people. While it may have been laid back, the discussions were very much business focused and I left having made a number of contacts that I will definitely be interacting w ...

We all drink Coca-Cola, and we all love social network sites 2007-04-09 08:54:01 It has long been a general perception that the phenomenon that is social networking is rapidly depleting levels of human-to-human interaction, and that sitting behind a screen alone cannot possibly lead to any kind of healthy relationship-forming. There is increasing concern about the levels of social interaction between people, especially the future generations, and what communication means to them. The thought of a person sitting behind a screen alone does not initially conjure up images of someone who is being socially interactive, but in fact, it could well be that he is being more sociable than the rest of us. Social network sites, such as MySpace and Facebook actually make it so much easier to maintain relationships and keep in contact with friends and loved ones. Social network sites have made it easier to communicate, not only enhancing communication levels, but enhancing communication quality as a result. A simple example that would illustrate this point would be, if two peopl ...

Bunny with an identity crisis 2007-04-08 08:41:47 Sigh – none of the virals that I wanted to post have enough of the “Easter spirit” for Sarah M's approval. That being said they do have insanely attractive women, wicked soundtracks, and gratuitous grinding of bodies. But this was this enough? No – Eastery was the command. Happy smiling babies. Chocolate. So I dumped the awesome clips that I had and went in search of something more Eastery. Eventually I had to do a time warp back in order to find this 1988 commercial.     I feel like my teeth are going to rot. Comment on "Bunny with an identity crisis" ...

The code of the braai 2007-04-07 08:47:46 Following on from Werner's last post we decided to keep the theme of braais going for this one. Guys, this is law. Learn it. Love it. Honour the code of the braai. And never challenge the hierarchy – it's just not done. One day you too may hold the fabled tongs in your hands. Be warned though, not everyone can do so with the style of these boys. They're trained professionals and artists and some of their stunts should not be tried at home.   Comment on "The code of the braai" ...

Every man's worst nightmare 2007-04-07 07:15:54 Do you know what a cougar is? Apart from being the North American synonym for the puma or mountain lion, it is also a North American synonym for another well-documented predator. According to the Urban Dictionary a cougar is: A 35+ year old female who is on the "hunt" for a much younger, energetic, willing-to-do-anything male. The cougar can frequently be seen in a padded bra, cleavage exposed, propped up against a swanky bar in San Francisco (or other cities) waiting, watching, calculating; gearing up to sink her claws into an innocent young and strapping buck who happens to cross her path. "Man is cougar's number one prey" I learned the definition just days ago from my boyfriend's 25-year old brother who recently returned from a 3-month snowboarding holiday in Colorado. Seems he learnt some new vocabulary while he was there.... So, when I cam across this cougar viral in my Adrants email a while ago, I just had to have a watch. It preys on every man's worst nigh ...

Telkom rewards Telkom-probing journalist 2007-04-06 08:26:14 With Easter upon us there are chocolate eggs aplenty all over the place. Here at Quirk we had our own Easter egg hunt which brought reminiscent smiles to our faces. Talking about eggs and faces, Telkom must surely be getting tired of wiping egg off its face… On Wednesday evening the main prize winner at the Telkom Journalist of the Year Awards was Bronwyn Nielsen. Ironically, she won the award for her Carte Blanche piece which investigated the high price of Internet connectivity in the country – a situation for which Telkom is almost exclusively to blame. Essentially, Telkom has handsomely rewarded a journalist for incisively calling their business practices into question - quite a distinctly odd move, that’s for sure, especially since Telkom refused to even participate in the piece. Nielsen won R40 000 and a fully-paid trip to an international telecommunications conference for her piece which detailed the extent of Telkom’s greed – showing that Internet ...

Jumping for Joost 2007-04-06 08:16:15 I first heard about Joost a few months ago while I was still in South Africa. I quickly headed over to the site, signed up for a beta invitation, and began excitedly waiting for it to arrive in my inbox. Of course early adopter Scott beat me to the punch and received his invitation way before I did. However being the nice ginger that he is, as soon as he received invitations to pass on to his friends, he whipped one out to me. So about 3 weeks ago I signed up and started playing. Given that I was in Cape Town at the time (and thanks to Telkom, South Africa’s bandwidth generally sucks), my use of it was hampered as the videos took ages to download and the viewing experience was by no means pleasant. Nevertheless it seemed like a pretty cool concept. On Tuesday I received an email from Joost announcing their latest 0.9 release and now that I’m in London I thought I’d hop on in and check it out again. To say I was blown away would be a vast understatement. Joost is ...