Last week I was perplexed by the apparent lack of innovation in South Africa and I challenged all of you to help me find it. I am pleased to say that with the help of Rafiq, Nic, Sjefke and Karen we’ve managed to pull quite an extensive list of innovations coming right out of South Africa.
I’ll now look to do some more in depth reporting on these innovations but for now I thought it might be interesting to highlight some key innovation facts taken from the first official South African Innovation Survey.
The survey, modeled on the innovation survey conducted in European Union countries, was conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council on behalf of the Department of Science and Technology and found that South Africa compares favourably with countries like Sweden (where 50% of enterprises are innovative), the United Kingdom (43%) and Portugal (41%).
According to Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom South African businesses’ “are not being complacent and are responding to changes in their environment by producing new or significantly changed goods, services and processes.
“Our rate of innovation is well above that of the European average of 42% for 2004.”
SA companies spent in the region of R27.8-billion on innovative activities in 2004, representing about 2.4% of the total turnover of all business covered in the industrial and service sectors.
What is most pleasing to see is the support of public funding for innovation. According to the survey 10% of successful innovators had received public funding for activities.
Fellow SA Rocktonian Max Kaizen wrote a piece this week about innovation in South Africa and it certainly spurred some heated debate amongst readers of this blog. I have to admit it also got me thinking because web-based innovators in South Africa are often called copy-cats for their apparent lack of originality.
So I decided that I’d do some searching to find some innovation and I registered as an attendee at the Futurex expo at the Sandton Convention Center. I figured that I’d go there and find lots of unique and innovative ideas that I could then report-back on and write about in my Technology Thursday post and I headed off yesterday morning to the most comprehensive showcase of products, services and solutions for big, small and home business.
My mandate was simple – find innovative products developed and/or manufactured in South Africa. I really wanted to find any technology that would promote the theme of SA Rocks and prove the critics wrong.
After spending three hours going through two large conference halls filled with hundreds of exhibitors I ended up with finding a grand total of zero innovative products made by us fellow South Africans.
What I did find was the large corporate giants showcasing their various software and broadband offerings and a whole bunch of smaller players showcasing products that were developed all over the world except South Africa.
It’s the first time also that I’ve seen Futurex promoting investment opportunities for countries like China and India and both countries had entire sections at Futurex that they could use to showcase their products to our market. This is fantastic to a point but not what I was looking for.
Futurex last year combined the expo with Linuxworld which I felt really helped promote the idea of Open Source and Linux to companies in South Africa. So much innovation is happening on the Linux front and for me the link between the two was very important and helped promote this innovation to big business.
After a disappointing expo my challenge now is to prove to the critics that South Africa is innovative and I’d like you to help me with this.
I need a list of home grown innovation so that we can shut the critics up so if you know of any innovative products, websites or services developed by South Africans that could be included in this list then please post a link to that website in the comments below.
Depending on the feedback received we might even be able to start a web directory on this site to help promote these home grown innovations so let’s get this thing going.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was setup to provide children, in the developing world, with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves by creating a laptop with features created specifically for children.
This unique laptop, dubbed the XO, costs a mere $175 and is built from free and open-source software. The laptop sports a green casing, a liquid-proof keyboard and the Sugar operating system which is based on the popular Linux distro Fedora Core 6.
The OLPC project was founded by Nicholas Negroponte and globally the OLPC project is running a number of pilot projects, including in Africa. There are no official plans to bring the XO to South Africa yet however Antoine van Gelder, a South African developer contributing to the OLPC project, said that he hoped that a community of like-minded developers and educators would become involved in the project to get it adopted for use in South African schools.
In April the XO laptop made a very rare appearance at the Digital Freedom Expo in Cape Town and thanks to Tectonic and Twac I have included a demo video taken at the event so you can get a better feel for what all the hype is about.
For more information on the South African OLPC efforts visit the website at http://www.laptop.org.za/
In February of this year Dell Computers launched a website called IdeaStorm as a forum for customers to contribute ideas for future Dell product offerings. The IdeaStorm concept is a brilliant one in that for the first time a major computer manufacturer has allowed normal end-users to contribute to the production of the latest Dell hardware.
A quick visit to the IdeaStorm site shows that of the top 15 voted on ideas 8 of them are ideas relating to Linux and Open Source Software proving that Linux and OSS are starting to compete with the proprietary software giants in a very serious way.
The most discussed idea and feedback that customers gave was the need for Linux on desktops and notebooks and amazingly Dell listened. So much so that on 1 May Dell announced a partnership with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to offer the latest Ubuntu 7.04 release on select consumer desktop and notebook products.
These Ubuntu systems will be available in the coming weeks to customers in the United States with no clear date on when it will be available to South African consumers however this is seriously a move in the right direction and I may even consider buying a Dell for myself when they ship them here.
Thanks to Dell I am able to include the following video in which Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth talks about why he started Ubuntu, Linux adoption rate trends, how previous barriers to Linux adoption for mainstream users are improving, and more.
On Friday Telkom Media, a completely separate entity from Telkom Limited, demonstrated its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) platform which is a service that the company plans to introduce during 2008.
IPTV has become a common denominator for systems where television and/or video signals are distributed to subscribers or viewers using a broadband connection over Internet Protocol. Often this is in parallel with the subscriber’s Internet connection, supplied by a broadband operator using the same infrastructure but over a dedicated bandwidth allocation.
IPTV is one of the services that will be made available on the next-generation network that Telkom is rolling out by upgrading their current ADSL exchanges to ADSL 2+. Telkom’s current ADSL offering allows for a maximum download speed of 1 Mbps however ADSL 2+ allows for download speeds in excess of 20 Mbps which will make IPTV a reality in South Africa.
Telkom Media has applied for a pay-TV cable and satellite broadcast licence via a consortium that includes Telkom (66%), Anant Singh’s Videovision Entertainment (15%), Given Mkhari’s MSG Africa Media, WDB Investment Holdings (5%), a staff incentive trust (4%) and a broad based black economic empowerment shareholder (5%) which are investing R7 billion in setting up a subscription TV service aimed at the mass market, as well as several multi-platform technologies such as IPTV and video on-demand. Continue Reading
Internet access is always a contentious issue in South Africa. We have a total population of nearly 50 million people however only 10.3% of our population have access to the Internet*. For so long South Africa as a whole has been limited, largely because we don’t have the infrastructure and it simply costs too much, but this is all starting to change.
Government’s stance and approach on broadband at the moment is going to change the information age in this country and there are a couple of projects which are really starting to take shape.
There has been a lot of coverage lately about the City of Johannesburg’s broadband network project. This R500 million project aims to provide broadband Internet access to the entire Johannesburg population, catering for more than R3 million people.
Over 180 private sector delegates met at an industry briefing recently with an aim to get clarity on the project scope. The contract will eventually be awarded to one service provider who will in turn provide the following services to anyone in Johannesburg:
WWW Internet browsing,
VoIP telephony,
Television and radio over IP,
Video-on-demand,
e-government services,
Free Internet zones and
Virtual private networks.
There is no clear idea yet what technology will be used but talks of WiFi, WiMAX and fibre optics are all on the cards. The only major requirement is that connectivity speeds of the 1,644 square kilometre network should be no less than 2Mbps, providing a true broadband solution to the people.
In Durban, the Ethekwini municipality is offering free wireless Internet at 85 libraries. Members can make use of either the library computers or bring their own wireless laptops and get free Internet access. Membership to a library is free and your personal membership number is used to join the wireless network which really makes the whole system secure and easy to use.
Government can eradicate the accessibility and affordability issues we face with major projects like these and as this happens it will shape a new era in Internet usage by providing an invaluable tool to the people that previously hadn’t even heard about it.
There’s a system that’s been around in this country since 2002 called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) yet up until now it has remained largely behind the scenes due to setting the AFIS system up.
The R120-million system is supplied by France with the financial support of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) but in order for it to become operational 4,5 million fingerprint cards had to be configured on the computer system.
At present, fingerprints are matched by manually searching through the 4,5 million recorded prints but AFIS will be able to match fingerprints within 48 hours as opposed to the approximate 40 working days it takes to do so manually.
One of the added advantages of AFIS is the ID Tool machine which is manufactured locally by a company called Face Technologies.
The ID Tool machine is a small mobile device which plugs directly into the AFIS database and is being used by the SAPS to identify wanted suspects and criminals. By placing a suspect’s finger on the tiny touch pad, police can find out if they are wanted for any crime in a matter of seconds.
This week the ID Tool Machine was in the news largely all thanks to the efforts of John Robbie of Radio 702. On Tuesday, John asked businesses to phone in and sponsor an ID Tool machine at a cost of R22 500 each.
Radio 702 wanted to try and get South African businesses to sponsor 20 machines in total but by the end of the show a total of 78 machines had been sponsored which in turn saved the SAPS a total of R1,775,000.
In a country where crime is a huge concern it’s a great to see technology, the SAPS and businesses taking the right steps in trying to make this a better country for all.
Last week I took a look at the sudden expanding video sharing market to hit South African shores and as a further extension to this a lot of money is being pumped into the promotion of user generated content locally by means of podcasting.
If you don’t know what a podcast is, it’s simply a digital media file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds and is then played back on digital music players and PCs. It is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading syndication feed formats such as RSS.
Apple, Coca-Cola, 5fm and Mini have collectively joined forces to promote the idea of Podcasting by running a competition which starts on Monday 19 March and they’re offering prizes totalling R250,000. There are two ways to win – either upload your own podcast or cast votes for your favourite ones at www.getpodcasting.co.za.
Not only are these big companies promoting the idea of podcasting but they’re helping people in creating the content as well. Every day, Apple retail locations will be running free podcasting sessions at 12:30pm and 5:30pm for an hour from Monday to Saturday. You can use Apple’s equipment, Internet connection and their expertise totally free of charge!
If you were ever in doubt before that user generated content is the way of the future this just shows how committed big businesses are in getting the country moving forward on the technology front by facilitating and promoting content created by real-world human beings.
In agreeing to do a Technology Thursday article for SA Rocks I promised myself that I would not write anything about current projects that I am personally involved in however so much is happening in the Video Sharing (a.k.a. YouTube) market in South Africa at the moment that it really is impossible not to say more.
In yesterday’s Beeld newspaper the first video sharing website to hit SA shores, MyVideo graced the inside pages of the local newspaper and they gave them a pretty good review. Only a day earlier and Zoopy, the newest contender to the market, went into live Beta stages and are making serious noise as they go along. Then there is the little project I’m involved in called Twac which also went into Beta stages only last Wednesday.
From going nowhere slowly, South Africa has been hit hard with YouTube-type websites in the last few weeks and initial appearances would imply that this is exactly what people have been wanting for some time now.
YouTube is the original global video sharing website to make it big in the world wide web and there are mixed reports that between 40 and 100 million videos are viewed daily on the website. Technology giant Google were so impressed they decided to acquire YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion which is a very big price to pay for a website that loses between $600,000 and $1 million a month.
The question now though is how do the three local contenders compare with each other and the global giant? Trying not to be biased here I have to admit that I think all three websites offer some fantastic, unique qualities that differentiate them from each other. Continue Reading
Introducing Technology Thursdays. SA Tech talk by Justin Hartman every Thursday.
Linux. It’s that magical geek word that when uttered sheds absolute fear among 90% of the world’s computer-literate population. For the layman Linux is simply a program in a computer operating system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run.
GNU on the other hand is really the operating system and it uses Linux to power the system yet through a peculiar turn of events GNU has been incorrectly dubbed “Linux” and many users are not aware that there is in fact a difference. Most people in fact have never heard of GNU. Even most of the people who use the GNU system have never heard of GNU but many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day without realising it.
Ignorance and a lack of understanding are the biggest problems everyday users face in attempting to utilise GNU/Linux however this paradigm is starting to shift all thanks to South African technology purist, Mark Shuttleworth.
In 2004 Mark Shuttleworth founded the Ubuntu project to distribute a free desktop operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux that would compete with Microsoft Windows. The whole aim and focus of Ubuntu is to shift the perception that GNU/Linux is a geek-only technology to a more feature-rich operating system that is made for everyday human beings.
Ubuntu is without doubt one of the fastest growing Linux-based operating systems to hit modern times and if you believe Shuttleworth’s statistics there are at least 8 million users running Ubuntu after only two short years. Continue Reading
One of the added advantages of AFIS is the ID Tool machine which is manufactured locally by a company called 