by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Telkom Mobile plans to roll out 4 000 Wi-Fi hotspots across South Africa – with free access to customers. The move may well ignite a Wi-Fi war. Telkom Mobile announced yesterday that it will offer free Wi-Fi access to all South Africans at more than 1 500 Wi-Fi hotspots for the …
Category archives: Tech
[Digital Grandad] ‘Word of Mouth’ replaced with ‘Word by Click’
by @DigitalGrandad1. Just as in our real life where a customer walks away from your company with an opinion they’re likely to share with friends and family, the increasing digitisation of South Africa now means that they’re also likely to share that opinion on their digital platform like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and more.
Media Future: LG is back
LG has long lagged behind Samsung in the smartphone market, but the new G Pro marks a convincing return, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)
Do you remember LG? If you do, it’s possibly because you have a TV set, washing machine or air conditioning unit carrying that brand. And then you’d know that it goes hand in hand with the slogan, “Life’s good”.
That’s not really what LG stands for, of course; it began life as a merger of the Lucky and GoldStar brands, and the Life’s Good handle is what’s known as a backronym.
Now LG wants to go back to the future it had envisaged for itself before its Korean compatriot at Samsung became the behemoth of cellphones.
[Digital Grandad] 5 steps to better user experience design
Dear Digital Grandad – what the hell is UX all about?
We have appointed an agency to re-build out website and the costs include what the Account Director has line itemed as UX which is quite high. Regardless I haven’t got the foggiest what it is for and what it entails to build a website? Please help Grandad. I am getting all grumpy.
Regards
Mrs Gruppy
Dear Mrs Gruppy
WOW so you are in charge of rebuilding your website which is fantastic news (assuming the old is old) and you haven’t got a glue what UX is all about. Well little Missy here’s my thoughts in less than 140 characters
“Would you build a house without appointing an architect? Well the same goes with building a best in class website”
Media Future: cellphones still at very early stage of their evolution
Measure cellphone evolution in automobile years, and you realise we still have a long way to go, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
We all know about dog years (7 for every human year) and Internet years (the time it takes for online technology to evolve as much as other technology evolves in a year – typically a few months).
Cellphones and their rapid evolution supposedly obey the calendar of Internet time.
But what if we all have it wrong? What if cellphones are in fact still at a very early stage of their evolution? That sounds counter-intuitive, because they inspire such fear and bafflement.
That, however, is exactly how we can see we are still at an early stage in cellular history. See what happens when we look at the cellphone according to automobile years.
[Digital Grandad] Demystifying your huge data Syndrome
Dear Grandpa – does size matter?
I was hoping you could help me demystify the topic around ‘Data and Big Data’. We are a high street retail brand and run a loyalty program and have over 520,000 records in our database that run monthly campaigns with little conversion – but my CEO attended a few conference recently and feels we are not doing enough, don’t have enormous amounts of data and we should be thinking big data. In truth I am not sure what it all means and quite frankly feeling quite insecure. I need to report back next week and advise on what is Big Data. Help.
Regards
Mr Insecure
Dear Insecure
“Big data is huge, its enormous, it’s gigantic, in-fact it so bloody big, its scaring the living daylights out of marketers, sending shivers down CTO’s & CMO’s backs, making some break out in a cold sweat and leaving them feeling very inadequate umm”
But, please don’t be insecure – your not alone! You must have heard the saying “size matters”, but let me tell you son, size doesn’t matter! It’s what you do with it that counts! So lets equip you with the intelligence to verify what you have is good and that you are taking the right steps in what you are doing with your data – let alone if it is big or small data and in doing so, demystifying your huge data Syndrome.
Local agency focuses SA as digital outsourcing destination
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Bluegrass Digital is positioned as a digital production agency for ad agencies. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the agency isn’t trying to break into a through-the-line positioning. Instead, it focuses on what it believes it does best – implementation.
Born in the late 90’s as a hardware and networking company it evolved into a digital production agency and by 1999 had an office in London to take advantage of an outsourcing model that saw work done in South Africa, where labour was less expensive than in the UK, and a client facing team operating in London.
Nick Durrant, MD at Bluegrass Digital had joined his brother James, the founding partner of the business, to run the UK operation after four years in the world of banking. His focus was targeting agencies with skill, capacity or even budget constraints and convincing them that South Africa could produce and implement digital solutions in a cost effective and efficient way.
Media Future: DStv Explora
The new DStv Explora decoder is about to deliver on the unmet promise of previous versions, but leaves the have-nots even further behind, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
The dithering of successive administrations at the Department of Communications has deferred the digital dreams of South Africa’s TV viewing public. The migration to digital terrestrial TV (DTTV), originally set for 2011, still has no due date. The Department has yet to issue tenders for set-top boxes needed by 5-million households to convert digital signals into an analogue feed for their old TV sets.
It was something of an irony, then, that a major announcement was made last week of a new set-top box. Sadly for the 5-million, the box had nothing to do with DTTV. For them, the dream remains deferred.
Media Future: How to fix SA’s fast tanking Internet connection speeds
South Africa has slumped to a dismal ranking in global connectivity speeds. But we know what is needed to fix our broken Internet, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
The news this week that South Africa was ranked 80th in the world in average Internet connection speeds didn’t come as a surprise, but it did shock many. The same report, from global network services company Akamai, showed this country was ranked an even more dismal 126thin average peak connection speed.
While that does not measure the number of people or devices using the Internet, it is worth noting that, in 1996, South Africa ranked 14th in the world in number of computers connected to the Internet. From ranked to tanked, one could say.
The key question now being asked is, what can be done about it?
Quite coincidentally, this month also saw the appointment of a new Minister of Communications, Yunus Carrim, who has declared himself open to listening to the needs of telecommunications users.
In this context, as was noted in the Internet Matters report produced by World Wide Worx and Google in mid-2012, Government does indeed have a central role to play in ensuring universal access to Internet services. Moreover, it must create an enabling environment for infrastructure development and competition, and a policy framework that allows for the lowering of costs, the promotion of digital literacy and innovation.
Practically, what does this mean? The excuse often given is that the problems are obvious, but the solutions complex.
Dear Digital Grandad: LIKE-it or not – Facebook Page success can not just be attributed to LIKES
Dear DigitalGrandad…
How do I get 10 000 likes on our brand’s Facebook page? My MD told me it’s embarrassing when his kids ask him why only 98 people like our product. I manage an FMCG brand and we fired the PR agency that set it all up for us a while ago.
Brand Manager FMCG
Dear Un-popular
My grand-daughter got more likes on her 6th birthday party Facebook page in 1 day. So yes the MD’s kiddo has asked a valid question and just put the nail in your social media coffin! So you should be “embarrassed” or wake up and take this thing seriously like any other marketing activity.
So to be serious for a second, 98 fans depending on who you are as a business may not be that bad as a starting point. If you’re a small business selling cuddly toys from home – great start I would say!
But as you mentioned you are a FMCG brand, then it sounds like you have a problem and not thought this through!