Posted on 08 March 2007 by Justin Hartman
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
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted on 01 March 2007 by Justin Hartman
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
Popularity: 2% [?]
