If you are a sports fan or you want to become a sports commenter how about starting on YouCastr. This is a new service similar to Ustream, but very well targeted to sports only, where anyone can stream live broadcasts of game commentary or cut random rants in archived podcasts.

The system is great and knowing that blogging on sports is a big niche I think these guys started on the right foot. Many of these bloggers will probably turn to YouCastr for their podcasts and this is what will make the traffic skyrocket. It’s well know that sports are always easier from the bench or in front of the TV, so I want to see how the members are going to perform.

I am signing up now and will probably use it for CarBlog.co.za. If you are already a member, how about giving some feedback?

Popularity: 6% [?]

We decided that we should start a series of Firefox Extentions articles on BandwidthBlog and will start today. The first one to be reviewed is Search Status by Quirk.

The best thing about the Firefox Search Status add-on is that it won’t interfere with the pages you load, won’t eat memory or slow down your connection. It stays in your browser bar and shows you the PageRank, Alexa Rank and Compete Rank of the website you’re visiting. It also features a keyword density analyzer, highlights no-follow links, makes link report, meta-tags, whois for the domain, shows you the robots.txt file, shows indexed pages and backward links. You can view all of these by a simple right mouse button click.

For a search engine marketer these are incredible powerful tools, and if you plan to do SEO on your own it’s a must. It looks like this:

So far I haven’t heard any complaints about Search Status by Quirk. Let us know if you used it, if it was useful or if you had trouble with it. Download it from their website.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Last week the big buzz on the Internet was Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo for $44.6B but no formal response was received. However, Yahoo rejected the takeover bid and considered it inadequate. The fun thing is not the fact that it was rejected but the fact that they could sell if the offer was higher.

Another interesting point is that Microsoft was interested to buy Yahoo from 2007 when they made a $40 per share (only $29.87 today) offer that was rejected, too. So I wonder, will they accept forty-per-share now when we know the odds where not on their side last year profit-wise.

Microsoft could go directly to the shareholders if the board is not happy with a new bid, and they may get a better response.

From what I’ve seen/heard so far Yahoo customers wouldn’t be that happy to know they’re actually Microsoft customers and may decide to go. I am not sure if Microsoft is doing the right thing, but time will tell.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Lifecasting startup Ustream.tv the company that owns companies like Justin.tv, Blogtv.com or Mogulus is having advanced talks with Microsoft to sell for more than $50 million. Now that Yahoo managed to make a fiasco of their beta launch of Yahoo Live the next in row are companies like Ustream.tv, and there aren’t many.

Microsoft is not the only company interested. Ustream is engaged right now in a large initial round of VC financing so I guess Microsoft would like to get it in while it’s cheap. Rumors, say that they want it to promote Silverlight, a competitor for Adobe Flash Player

Ustream is riding the wave pretty well right now and my honest opinion is that whoever buys them is doing a great job.

Source

Popularity: 7% [?]

We’ve published quite a few scoops over the last few months namely the release of Laaik and Play from 24, the Nudjit launch and now leaked screen shots of the much anticipated and documented M&G redesign.

OK, so maybe the screens weren’t leaked but actually graciously sent to me by the head strategist of M&G and Amatomu co-founder Vincent Maher. I caught up with him on Skype and he gave me the low down on their latest project -

The screen shots below is straight after their first internal review attended by Vince Maher, Matthew Buckland, Riaan (M&G editor) and Matthew (the news editor). The goal was to bed down the style and the grid of the homepage which is about 50% done. The way they setup their homepage mock up is exactly what it would look like online with real content, the exact type size, face and line height. The next step was to print and review as a team (team mentioned above). Then they navigated the same mock up in a browser to check the vertical units have their own visual logic in the loading view.

Vincent Maher: Ideally we want people to stop scrolling at logical points and what they see is something that makes sense on its own. Or, if they don’t, there must be enough visual markers to understand that they have stopped between blocks..

Some of the other notable changes are -

• Horizontal navigation
• Wide format 96opx wide, centered
• Essentially four columns decreasing in width towards the right
• Colour - we’re dropping the red and black links because its hard to read
• Blurbs shortened from 5o to about 17 words

Tomorrow is the second round of meetings and then Vince and his team start work on the sections and story pages. Screen shots below -

Pics of the M&G brains trust working on the design

Remember you saw it here first!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Bandwidth Blog’s first office photos post was pics from leading internet companies offices and ended up being a huge hit with our audience. Today we are featuring local internet power house 24.com’s offices which is the digital arm of Media24.

Now you might think - “Media24, aren’t they old school corporates?” - Think again - They have made serious in roads with aligning themselves with the latest internet trends and the vision behind their office reflects this - staff party room with stocked bar and xbox360, staff library, boardrooms themed with geeky virus names like “Trojan” and “Dark Avenger” and a huge open floor office with plasmas hanging above the offices streaming the latest news24 headlines - 24.com certainly has a great environment to work in.

Here are some photos of the 24.com offices -

Cubicle area

Top view of office platform

The “Trojan” boardroom

Staff party room/bar

Library

Library

Flashy lighting

Thanks goes out to Elan Lohman (Head of social media) and Karen (Marketing) from 24 who sent me the pics.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Afrigator just announced that they moved to the next level with an improved version of their mobile site (Afrigator.mobi) so that you can access Blogs, Podcasts, News and Videos on your mobile phone, without even remembering the URLs.

I tried it on my Nokia E50 and I have to tell you that it’s looking great. The service really does what I expected, easy and fast navigation. This is Afrigator v2, which is a tweaked version of their first mobile platform and the guys promised to bring more features to it, soon.

“Afrigator has really stepped up their game and become what they always aimed to be - a social media aggregator” is what Charl concluded when Afrigator Beta launched in November and believe me I couldn’t have said it better now that I’m looking at an improved product.

By the way, if you have ideas for them to improve it, why don’t you contact them and tell them what else you need. For me, it’s enough. I need to accommodate first. What about you?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Nudjit is the brain child of Nic Haralambous who approached Justin Hartman and Gregor Rohrig to collaborate on a locally flavoured gadget blog. All three founders are devoted gadget geeks (check out the ‘gadgets we use‘ page) and hence Nudjit was born.

If you look at global trends some of the most popular websites around the world are gadget and tech blogs and this clearly proves there is a market for a blog that covers gadget reviews in South Africa. Coupled with the fact that South African consumers don’t have a single independent resource to get objective reviews from which opened a market they could tap into.

South Africans love gadgets but not every gadget in the world will work in South Africa. Nudjit reviews, often harshly, how these cool new toys relate to our local market and try to give consumers information that they can’t find elsewhere. Will Nudjit be a success? They’re certainly on the right track with all the crucial blogging startup elements in place - good writers, better design and a proven topic.

Some of the topics Nudjit covers is audio and visual, computing, photography, tech videos and Apple software. The blog uses the popular open source blogging platform - Wordpress - which is put so good use with an awesome design.

Finally, the latest tech news from Afrigator also streams onto the Nudjit homepage.

Thanks must go out to Justin for sending me the scoop on Nudjit.

Popularity: 9% [?]