Single emergency number by 2009 – Plans to introduce a single emergency number which South Africans can use to call for help from anywhere in the country are at an advanced stage, the Department of Communications says.
South Africa-based Translate.org.za is a localisation organisation working to translate free software into all South African languages. As part of its work the organisation produces a range of tools to aid in language translation and it is two of these that have been selected as part of the Summer of Code.
In case anyone noticed this evening I tried desperately to upgrade to WordPress v2.3. I was not successful and in fact I was pretty damn useless.
Thankfully Justin came to the rescue and helped me out with database backups and the like. Unfortunately I am a chop and neglected to backup up some very specific files that I have now lost. This includes some plugin code that I have now lost.
Plugins are quite a mission to get done and dusted with the new WP. You need to ensure that you DEACTIVATE ALL PLUGINS before installation of v2.3 as many plugins are not compatible. I was going to make use of Ultimate Tag Warrior but WP v2.3 has a built in tag generator. Again, unfortunately, I am being some what ridiculous and am struggling to get those to display.
I have almost replaced or upgraded all of my plugins as well as 98% of the code that i didn’t backup. Let me know what your take on the upgrade has been.
So now the installation has been completed, plugins done but I seem to be having issues with the theme for SA Rocks. Most of the people I have asked have given me the same answer to my problem. The problem: The SA Rocks theme doesn’t work particularly well in Internet Explorer. The answer from those I’ve asked for help: We use Mac, we don’t have Internet Explorer.
This is my problem too. I didn’t notice that the SA Rocks theme was screwy because at home and at work I run FireFox. I have been struggling desperately to sort out my IE problems but I think I have failed. If you are using IE and can see the problem (I can’t right now, no IE) then please let me know if you have a solution to my problem.
I hope I will get the problem sorted out as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.
I haven’t blogged about a great SA website in a while. Sorry about that, but here is one for the archives!
I can’t really recall how I found Loadtheshow.com but it seems to be a very interesting website indeed. At first glance it looks like any old music download website. After registering and a bit of investigative research I discovered a neat trick to the site. They offer a certain amount of free downloads per day.
From the website:
All downloads on loadtheshow are free!
Our sponsors pay to advertise on the site. We use the money to give you cutting-edge music for free and pay our contributing artists.
Unfortunately, when the day’s free downloads are used up, there are no more free downloads available until the following day.
When you register with the site you automatically receive a profile page. I don’t particularly think this is very necessary but it adds a nice web 2.0 feel to the site and i suppose helps them – and you – to track what you are downloading, listening to and viewing.
Each artist registered with the site also gets a profile page. There are a fair number of artists listen, not many some big names that I can see in the list – I found The Dirty Skirts, Hog Hoggidy Hog and the Diesel Whores – but I guess I’m no authority. It seems like a great place to discover new music. I even found a band I know personally, the awesomely entertaining and interesting Undone!
Downloading a song is easy enough but a bit different to other sites I have used in the past. Instead of immediately and directly downloading the song of your choice from the site, you are emailed a download link from “Marvin”. This is apparently done for security reasons which makes sense. The email tells you to save it as proof that you have legally downloaded the track from loadtheshow, which is cool. I reckon it’s a small price to pay for free music. I am going to become very good friends with Marvin very shortly.
Then there is a nifty little section called “Charts” on the site. This is a list of the top downloaded songs of the day as far as I can tell. Nice idea.
In general I think this is a fantastic site with phenomenal potential in SA as bandwidth prices decrease and users increase (whenever this all happens). Follow them closely and even maybe read their blog.
I finally got around to almost completing the SA Rocks customisation. The login page is now SA Rocks compliant (whatever that means). So have a look when you get a chance and register.
Why should you register I hear you ask? Well previously it was just to be a part of a shifting mentality. But now you get a weekly newsletter. The newsletter is not functional yet but is currently being designed and customised to suit the SA Rocks vibe.
The newsletter will feature the posts from the previous week and some commentary when I get around to it. So when you receive the newsletter you can either enjoy the content or tick a little box and opt out because you read every post, every day on the actual site!
I am not sure how reliable this information is as I have only read about it on one blog. But I read a post on Sunday that tells of Nelson Mandela’s book, No Easy Walk To Freedom is going to be made available online at Proquest.
Apparently:
The agreement has been made between Mandela and Proquest, a leader in collection, organization, and publishing of information. Initially published in 1965, the digital version is expected to be out by December this year.
And incase you were curious about exactly who had the rights to digitally distribute the work of Nelson Mandela, this is from the Proquest website:
ProQuest provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world’s scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts, literature, and social science to science, technology, and medicine.
The new SA Rocks design in all its glory. Please let me know what you think. I am going to be making more tweaks to the theme throughout the week.
Some information about the theme:
The sidebar was bulky and overbearing so I have trimmed it down using some nifty wordpress plugins. The SUPPORTERS LIST has been moved to its own page. Don’t stress, your links are still there and will still show up on your Technorati rankings (I hope). I have kept the badge, weeklies and the MyBlogLog visitors. We have tried to keep it clean and easy to manage and navigate. The header will take you home and the posts and images are well spaced to make it pleasing to the eye.
Thanks go out to Vincent Maher who helped me with the theme…alot. I bugged him an incredible amount and he came through with flying colours in my opinion. Shot dude, your a good man!
As you can see there is also the Virgin Money logo in the header. That is about the most influence that VM will have on this site! There will also soon be a bit of advertising accompanying the site soon. The sponsor has been great and are very keen in promoting the blog, the concept and South Africa. Thanks Virgin.
That is all for now, please feel free to leave comments and suggestions regarding the theme attached to this post. I hope you all like it.
There is some coverage around and about the blogosphere regarding Online Trek’s post about the top 50 webgsites in SA.
From their site:
Time.com recently released their “50 Best Websites of 2007″. I thought it would be fun to generate our own list of 50 Best South African Websites of 2007.
I invite you to leave your suggestions in the comments of this post. I will collate the responses at the end of this month and post the results in August.
Rules :
1) The site must be based in South Africa
2) The site must be a current site – regularly updated
There are some awesome South African sites out there – lets honour them by giving them our vote!
There is also a Facebook group so join if you want to get involved.
I am personally sceptical of this sort of initiative however well intentioned it is. There has already been attempts to shamelessly advertise some sites. I think that this is a great idea that I would hope goes far but will need some sort of formalisation in the long run.
For now, pop over to the original blog post and vote for your top SA Site!
I am surprised that there hasn’t been more noise on the blogosphere regarding this site. I am happy to say that signup was a breeze and searching for my fines was even simpler. I don’t have any fines at the moment so I cannot confirm the simplicity of paying with your credit card, but let’s be honest, anything is easier than standing in line.
The only issue that I have about the site is that I don’t know who runs it and you have to enter your ID number to register.
Payfine supports the following areas at the moment:
Virgin Money has graciously and very wisely come on board with SA Rocks! They are the official and main sponsor of the SA Rocks blog. This move will have absolutely no effect on editorial content whatsoever. If it does, tell me!
There will be some slight, ever so slight changes in design which I will get on to later. For now I can say that there will be a sponsorship feature in the masthead and a single advert on the site somewhere.
Number 2:
Redesign time. SA Rocks has done brilliantly well over the past four or five months. It is time for a change in look and feel. The blog is cluttered, the main issue being the sidebars “Supporters List” Taking up so much useful space. This issue and others will be addressed with the redesign. Vincent Maher has graciously offered to help me with the redesign process. This will all take place over the weekend and hopefully by Monday there will be a new template and a rebranded blog for all to see.
One of the main reasons for the redesign is the lack of brand focus. Since the blog has done so well I feel that it needs a single, focused brand that people can grow to recognise and associate with all things great, wondrous and South African.
If you have any ideas, hints, tips, crits or concepts you think SA Rocks could do with, let me know and get involved.
For now, until the redesign I bid you goodbye and have a rocking weekend!
Project 2010 seems to be a very valuable source of information. With many different types of relevant information appearing on the site, it is a great resource for anyone looking for stuff that would be helpful regarding the 2010 soccer world cup.
On that point, what are we calling this thing? The Soccer World Cup or the Football World Cup? It’s a tricky one because as South Africans we don’t refer to the game much as football, but the rest of the world does.
Back to the website. The design is fun but navigation is lacking somewhat. I think the idea is awesome so give it a look when you have a spare second.
We all hate standing in the queues to pay traffic fines. This is a predominant issue in SA when it comes to anything related to government.
