SA Rocks

One of my favourite websites on the Internet has to be Boston.com’s Big Picture.

Thanks to twitter I discovered that Boston.com features Soccer in South Africa as the focus of their pictures this week.

Here are two photos but for more you’ll need to visit The Big Picture – Soccer in South Africa.

Helen Daws commented: “BC Big Picture – Soccer in SA http://tinyurl.com/lkxdsk pity its so biased tho, not really the full picture”

To which I responded that I felt that it is a fairly unbiased view of football in SA as many, many South Africans experience football in the way depicted in the photographs.

What are your thoughts? What do you think of these photographs?

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I actually watched almost all of the Bafana Bafana vs New Zealand Confederations Cup match last night.

I was impressed (which is why I watched most of the game) with the skill of the players on our team. I was impressed that we could score goals. Scoring goals has been a major issue of ours over the past few years. It seems we have found the net, eventually.

I was incredibly impressed with our defensive line. Booth, the man is massive and a towering figure (who occasionally needs to get in to the box and head the ball a bit more often) who holds up the defense brilliantly. Our midfield came to the party and fed brilliant ball to the striker and star of the evening, Bernard Parker, who put away two great goals and should’ve had more.

Personally I felt that Steven Pienaar was the man of the match (and also a member of my team, Everton, in the English Premier League). He played out of his boots, was aggressive and practical when feeding and holding on to the ball.

All in all a great performance rewarded with a 2-0 victory. Sadly the All Whites were yet again beaten and will probably be knocked out of the Confederations cup. Oh well.

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It is official; the 2010 World Cup will be in South Africa is a few days less than 1 year. The biggest sporting event in the world is on its way to SA and President Zuma helped kick off the countdown.

Greenpoint Stadium in Cape Town was the venue and all the relevant dignitries were in attendance:

This is a great Zille-Zuma moment after a very aggressive election campaign from both parties. Nice to see the two top politicians in SA doing their professional bit in front of the press.

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I managed to secure 4 tickets to a Round 16 game at Ellis Park. Not too shabby I don’t think. To be honest, I just wanted to attend. This could be a once in a lifetime chance to go to the biggest sporting event in the world and not have to mortgage my house for the tickets!

Let me know what games you managed to get tickets for or if you were left empty-handed. A friend of a friend received 4 tickets to the final. I know it’s meant to be completely random allocation but I can’t help feel as if I’ve been hard done by. I want opening ceremony or finals. Come on!

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Well, the statue of Madiba at Nelson Mandela Square is all dressed up for the 2010 World Cup. As you can see below he is wearing a lovely yellow football jersey!

It might be something “small” in terms of marketing and promotion but I think it’s a fantastic idea considering the amount of people in general and tourists in specific who take their picture with the massive and interestingly proportioned Madiba Statue.

Good work I think. Very nice.

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It appears that the new Bafana Bafana football jersey has been unveiled.

The photo’s appeared on Flickr today.

And here they are:

It appears that credit for the photos go to Shine2010

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I absolutely love Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame. He’s a laugh, he’s witty, he says what’s on his mind and he gets at everybody.

I subscribe to his column in the Times Online and read it every week. The man is brilliant.

This week his target is good old Johannesburg. And boy does Clarkson have it in for us.

The article is titled: “I dare you to visit Johannesburg, the city for softies“. I was a bit concerned about the article and Joburg receiving even more bad press. I was almost right. But it’s not Joburg receiving the bad press, it’s us, the people living here. Clarkson believes that we’re all sissies who need to get over ourselves and start positively promoting our incredible city.

His closing lines:

Johannesburgians are telling the world they live in a shit-hole to save their lions. That’s the sort of people they are. And so, if you are thinking about going to the World Cup next year, don’t hesitate.

The exchange rate’s good, the food is superb, the weather’s lovely and, thanks to some serious economic self-sacrifice, Kruger is still full of animals. The word, then, I’d choose to describe Jo’burg is “tranquil”.

I await the backlash for his article and my posting of it. I am sure it is to follow.

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A very short post to let you know that tickets for the Football World Cup 2010 will go on sale on 2 Feb 2009. Yes, that is correct, less than a year away so you better start saving.

Apparently the tickets will be affordable to the SA public and Fifa expects that SA citizens will be the majority holders or interested parties in the tickets for the 2010 world cup.

Fifa has not yet decided on ticket prices, but Will stressed that the cheapest seats will be affordable to ordinary South African supporters.

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Finally South Africa has been added to the list of cities with their own layer on Google Earth!

The pitch on the website is fairly simple, now you can explore SA and plan trips around the country flying through the air on Google Earth.

The site says that there are 3 steps you need to complete, but there really is only one; download Google Earth.

Other things being punted involved a step by step on planning your trip across the country or to a specific destination.

The entire concept seems to be very tourism based which I think is a fantastic idea considering how important tourism is to our economy.

The site looks great and feels simple enough to use.

I’ve downloaded Google Earth and given the SA layer a test run.

Here are my thoughts on the old features:

Typing in “Johannesburg, South Africa” will take you directly to the JHB CBD. Smack bang in the middle of town. My previous experiences of Google Earth have been fantastic, everywhere but in SA. You could look at Manhatten in NY or any other major city. Finally JHB is being taken seriously.

There is a massive social aspect to the SA layer on Google Earth. Little turquoise dots will allow you to see things like a panorama view of JHB CBD, you can then comment on that photo or upload your own to that venue or area. Brilliant stuff.

Moving on to Oxford street you see a very up-to-date image of the Hyatt in Rosebank and to the left of that the Gautrain construction site (just to prove that things are fresh!).

I found the Carlton Centre in the CBD and clicked on the little dot and bam, up popped a Wikipedia entry about the Carlton Centre. Fantastic. This is learning by experience in a pseudo-experiential sort of way. I even managed to get a view from the top of the centre. Incredible stuff.

Moving to Cape Town will allow you to activate the 3D buildings option on the right hand side of the key grid. Typing in and flying to Cape Town will take you straight to the city centre and right to the Absa building amongst others that have been mapped in 3D.

You can also activate the Roads and maps option to “drive” yourself around the area you are in.

The new layer:

Now everything above that I’ve just mentioned is what you can do WITHOUT visiting the Google Earth SA website and DOWNLOADING the SA layer map from the site.

The file is immediately opened by Google Earth and this is what you see:

The map is VERY 2010 centric and seems to be a marketing tool for the Soccer World Cup. If you ask me, it’s a brilliant move that will spark MAJOR interest in our country. It looks magnificent and there is so much to see that I could honestly blog all day about this. But I wont.

I will ask that you go and download Google Earth and the SA app file and get searching for places of interest. You will be astounded. There is so much to see, so much to do and so much to feel positive about by just looking at a map.

By the way, I was given a heads up for this post by the one, the only, the scott. It’s always great to get a lead or a scoop so if, like Scott you have a lead for me, send it through!

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It has finally been chosen. I blogged about the poster competition a while back. The winner has been chosen and I am pretty happy with the result. Below were the three choices and I called it. The middle option won. Great stuff:

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