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Online Video: the experience is here

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) A powerful clue has emerged that South Africans are finally beginning to get affordable broadband: one of the three most popular international web sites in this country is YouTube – beaten only by Google and Facebook in amount of traffic from South Africa. YouTube also happens to be the third most visited site among Internet users globally.

That highlights another trend that is so significant, it is an information revolution in itself: video has become one of the most popular forms of accessing information online. The trend has enormous implications for education, health, business and even politics.

Real estate agents are using video to showcase properties, the tourism industry is using it to offer virtual tours of prospective accommodation establishments, schools and universities are using it to share the lectures and courses of some of the world’s great teachers, and business are using it for training and communications.

Creating clever commercials for people who hate ads

By Mandy de Waal (@mandyldewaal) I resent advertising. Like a reformed smoker I used to work in the industry and consult to technology and other brands about how to get more people to buy their stuff. I watched loads of television in those days but nowadays the pathetic appeal of DStv programming and the fact that Ira Glass lives on iTunes has changed things. Advertising’s a grudge experience for me, and on the days I do watch Gordon Ramsay, Californication or Dexter, it is great to be surprised by supremo advertising that’s better than the boring norm. For the most part local commercials are wall paper, but it’s a knock-out when someone comes along who just gets what advertising should be about.

Amy Allais of Ola Films is one of those people. She makes advertising that doesn’t make me want to jab a thumb in my eye. More than that – she makes advertising I actually enjoy. That I’ll watch again on YouTube, because it’s funny, smart, a visual feast, tells a story, captures the cultural zeitgeist or all of the above. Yes, I’ll come out and admit it. I’m an Allais fan girl. She had me at Vodacom’s “All The Single Ladies” and by the time “Daddy Cool” came around I was a convert.

Playboy SA ad gets 400 000 YouTube views in 10 days

Great new ad from Y&R for Playboy South Africa showing “how women’s hairstyles have influenced men over the years.” Yeah you need to see the spot to get the punchline. More than 400 000 others have in only 10 days it has been online.

Live from SA – the youth have their say

Live SA is a new youth publication published out of Cape Town. There’s the usual stuff on love, YouTube, being brave and following your heart, should you get that body piercing, music, freedom and fashion – and then maybe the less usual stuff, about falling out of the closet aged 16, what to do when your countrymen’s infamous xenophobia breaks down the lives of friends, of falling in love with gangster boys and having Miss Khayelitsha pose in front of the backend of a construction truck…

Creative director running (between meetings)

by Sammy-Jane Thom. Despite incredulous looks from colleagues, I’ve realised that there are, surprisingly, a lot of parallels between running and a day at the office.

A collaborative approach to architecture

The 1965 exhibition Architecture Without Architects, shown at the Museum of Modern Art, and the accompanying book Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture by Bernard Rudofsky, provided a unique view into what Rudofsky defined as “communal vernacular,” “anonymous,” “spontaneous,” “indigenous,” “rural,” “non-formal,” “non-classified,” or “non-pedigreed” architecture.

Does the Apple iPad still set the benchmark for tablets?

ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK considers whether the Apple iPad still sets the benchmark for the Gadget Ten Question Tablet Test.

Why Facebook Likes Google+

As Google+ rolls out enhancements to its social networking tools, industry leader Facebook refines its own offerings. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK considers whether the “newcomer” can take on an 800-million-strong network.

New gadgets don’t kill old media

South Africa cleaned up the awards at the Cannes advertising festival last month, but it failed miserably in the digital category. There are lessons to be learned, writes Arthur Goldstuck.

The ultimate social media strategy is not having one

by Dave Duarte. On Sunday 1st May 2011, Barack Obama announced that Osama Bin-Laden had been killed. The strike against his compound in Pakistan was not televised, but it was tweeted. The thing is, Al-Qaida was already looking irrelevant after the “Arab Spring” – the social-media enabled revolutions that occurred throughout the Middle-East in early 2011.