Many South Africans have been in that sucky situation where your power goes out late at night, and you have to somehow find a way to buy prepaid electricity. This usually necessitates a trip to the nearest shop or garage which requires you to pay cash…. Blah, blah blah, you know the drill.

I have recently been using an app called Powertime which installs on your iPhone (Blackberry is also available) and enables you to buy electricity at any time of day, and for any electricity meter you have registered with them. When you go to the Powertime website, you register your electricity meter (you can register more than one as well), with some of your details. You also register your credit card, and then you fax them a copy of your credit card and your ID book. And that is the only “work” from your end (this is still less work than the numerous trips to the shop and back…).

While these types of solutions have existed on the web for quite some time in SA, this is the first mobile implementation that I have come across that is so polished and easy to use. Where every other site is exercise in frustration, Powertime is quick and easy to use. Proof that there are some great iPhone developers in South Africa…The developers have recently added a few cool new features – like a tool that predicts your usage, and then also pushes a notification to your phone to remind you that your electricity is about to run out (every time I buy electricity I also just enter my current readout, and over time it builds its predictions). For example, my Powertime lets me know once my meter reaches 50 units. And its surprisingly accurate. I also appreciate the statistics that it gives me regarding my electricity usage:

They also added the ability to buy airtime from Vodacom, MTN and Cell C, which is easier than using WIG menus from banks, or having to go to internet banking websites…

This is one of those tools that I appreciate – while I can purchase electricity online quite easily, I really appreciate the convenience of Powertime on my phone.

PS: Powertime App was acclaimed on September 29th at the international Mobile Web in Africa conference in Johannesburg, receiving the top award at the App Factor competition.

The iOS Appstore has been one of the greatest success stories in software distribution, and it revolutionized the way we used our mobile phones. It was universally “borrowed” for other platforms as well, some with greater success than others. The advantages to using an Appstore are plenty – users can instantly see the most popular applications available for a platform, and a central location to download apps from is great. Instant installs and easy payment methods just improve it even further.

Apple will now be bringing this functionality to Macs as well, and first to those running OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The idea is simple – instead of going to the edge of the internet to find apps, you will find a curated store which can easily be searched to find the software you want. Software will be licensed per user, and if you have multiple Macs, the software can be put on all your machines with a single purchase, as long as the machines are linked to a user account (I suspect there will be a limit to this though).

Your account will be connected to your Apple ID, which is in turn connected to your credit card. So you do not have to go type in your payment details into some site you do not trust. One aspect of the Appstore I find exciting as well – centralized updates. Just like on iPhone, you can click one button to instantly update all the apps at once. No more checking for updates within every app or using obscure utilities to the job.

Apple is currently opening the Mac Appstore to developers, and a lot of the same rules as the iOS Appstore exists here. Developers will get 70% of their asking price, but then Apple would host the app for them, and charge no additional fees. For certain software houses 70% might be too little (do you think Adobe would give away 30% of the asking price of CS5?), whereas for smaller developers this might be a great deal (think some small company making a utility who does not want to spend extra on hosting fees). Once again Apple would curate all apps, so if the app is of limited use, or does not function as advertised, it will not arrive on the Appstore. Some people do not like this, but the quality of apps inside the appstore would hopefully then be of a higher quality…

Despite the authorization process by Apple, the potential advantages for new computer users will be great. Its clear to see that iOS and Mac are moving closer and closer together…

If you ever needed convincing that the future of the internet is mobile, you HAVE to look at this excellent video by the guys at MobileFuture. We are shifting very quickly towards a ubiquitous internet society…

Some mindblowing statistics: (dont just read these, do yourself a favour and watch the video)

• FIVE BILLION apps downloaded — up from 300 million in 2009

Whopping expansion of location-based services

• FIVE MILLION Foursquare users — up from 200,000 users in 2009

Surge in mobile social media platforms

• 347 PERCENT growth in Twitter mobile usage
• 200 MILLION mobile Facebook Users
• 100 MILLION YouTube videos played on mobile devices everyday

Ongoing explosion in data traffic

• 3,000 PERCENT growth in one carrier’s data traffic since 2008
• 3,339: average number of texts sent per month by US teens.

Unprecedented competition and choice

• 96 PERCENT of mobile users can choose from 3 or more providers
• 92 PERCENT of mobile users are satisfied with their provider
• 4 CENTS: average voice rate per minute in the US
• 77 MILLION: number of smartphones shipped in the fall of 2010.

My favourite part: “The Digital Camera died in 2010: Your Mobile Phone is looking very guilty…”

Twitter just released their top trends for this year, and it gives a very good idea of what happened in 2010. 25 Billion tweets were sent in 2010, and Twitter is nice enough to give us the categories on their #Hindsight2010 page. Looking at these, its pretty obvious that Twitter is becoming an excellent form of up to the minute news aggregation.

The World Cup was also a big deal on Twitter – with “Vuvuzela” featuring in the top trends. Sorry, no #Jujufriday!

Overall Top Trends

1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

So now that we realize the ‘Cyber War’ was really just hype, let’s take a more civil approach and instead celebrate sites that promote Wikileaks, rather than ddosing businesses that would rather not have any affiliation.

The sites listed here are great resources for journalists, bloggers and anyone in general who is interested in Wikileaks.

1.) LeakSearch – Wikileaks will be publishing hundreds of thousands of documents in the next few months, and has already published more than a million collectively, so it is very near impossible to keep track. Thank goodness for search engines. This site is a simple adaptation of google, but serves as an invaluable tool when looking for info on leaks.

2.) Twitter –  There is a lot of noise about Twitter censoring Wikileaks, I cannot say for sure that it is being censored or not but what I can say is that Twitter is my primary resource for breaking news about cables. Simply follow the Wikileaks profile or have a wikileaks search running for Wikileaks, and you’re up to date.

3.) The Guardian – The Guardian’s coverage of the Wikileaks US cables has been amazing, they have direct access to the database so tend to post new cables first, they update it constantly and they have some very cool graphs and maps on how the information in the cables break down.

4.) Facebook –  With 1.2 million likes on Facebook it’s really cool to see how Social networks have made it possible for causes to gain traction online. Facebook represents the single largest direct audience Wikileaks has at 1,2 million users subscribed to news updates, with Twitter coming in second at 500k. Facebook has stated before that it refuses to censor Wikileaks and this makes them absolute heroes in the Wikileaks story.

5.) Flattr – With Mastercard, Paypal, Visa and Swedish banks ‘conspiring’ against Wikileaks and dropping it from it’s services one of the last ways to get money to Wikileaks is through Flattr. Flattr is an innovative tool that allows people to donate small amounts of money to content producers. It works very much like Digg, except at the end of the day Wikileaks gets a check from the guys at Flattr.

You might have read the guest post by Jason Adriaan over the Anon’s “childish” cybercrimes against major websites which they believe are against the freedom of information. I just thought I would give my opinion as well. Here is the statement from Anonomous:

“While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same: we want transparency (in our case in copyright) and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and not  express how we feel. We can not let this happen, that is why we will find out who is attacking WikiLeaks and with that find out who tries to  control our world. What we are going to do when we found them? Except for the usual DDoSing, word will be spread that whoever tries to silence or discourage WikiLeaks, favors world domination rather than freedom and democracy.”

I reckon they are pretty upfront about their reasons. Clearly these Denial of Service attacks are about making a statement – and not about giving “wedgies” to sites. We should not forget that Wikileaks itself was attacked using DDoS methods before finally being taken down by Amazon and EveryDNS. The initial wikileaks hacker (called “th3j35t3r”) explained his attacks on Wikileaks by stating that they are “attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ & foreign relations”.

The main targets of the attacks: Mastercard, Visa and Paypal are essentially the backbone of  electronic payments, and anything that can take them down is clearly not a force to be taken lightly. Same goes for PostFinance, who shut down Julian Assange’s defense fund, which have also been taken down. Yes, they are sites that will probably be up and running soon enough as if nothing happened, but remember these are sites that drum up a lot of business from their public facing sites which account to millions, but most off all, their reputation is their biggest asset.

So while Mastercard and VISA transactions might be ongoing, public perception is key. The typical person who sees this might ask “Can I trust my money with some company that can be attacked by some hackers?” (excuse the ignorance in that statement, but this is the way uninformed people might interpret this). Never mind the legality of DDoS, this is a modern form of strike or boycotting. Even though the common man cannot take down Mastercard / VISA transactions, at least we can make them (and their customers) take note, and potentially hamper their business.

Also, I just thought I would also just tell you how DDoS are orchestrated, and why the apparently low number of “600 people” is irrelevant. These attackers sign up to Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) which are installed on their machines. All of these machines form a hivemind which coordinates TCP, UDP packets and HTTP requests. The Hive Mind is controlled by an IRC channel operator, forming a voluntary botnet. So while 600 people might not sound a lot, LOIC was designed to stress test (and potentially kill) networks and services from a single client using hundreds of pings every minute. Now if LOIC is used in group, and is orchestrated properly, it is indeed a very powerful form of attack. Oh and by the way, that number has now increased to more than a 1000, growing continually…

At present, Anon is attacking the following sites:

Mastercard, VISA, Postfinance, Paypal blog and Paypal main site, http://aklagare.se (Swedish prosecutors), EveryDNS, Senator Lieberman’s site (the first government site targeted by Operation Avenge Assange), Sarah Palin’s site (she said Assange should be hunted like a terrorist), PandaLabs (ran a DDoS report page),

These attacks are orchestrated through the anonops.net website, which is also being targeted by anti-wikileaks supporters.

While I am not choosing sides in this whole Wikileaks story, I really think these DDoS attacks are not simply fooling around. If the internet is becoming the modern playfield for actvism, we have something very dangerous on our hands. Dont underestimate these “teenage guys”. This is not kiddie stuff – they are holding a lot of power.

Guest post by Jason Adriaan.

Last night an Internet group that goes by “Anonymous” reaped revenge against services that cut ties with Wikileaks and aggressors against Wikileaks. They took down thepaypalblog.com for 8 hours, aklagare.se (Swedish Prodecutors) for 5 hours, postfinance.ch (Swedish Bank) for 12 hours, lieberman.senate.gov and everyDNS.com. This might sound really impressive, but to be honest… it’s not.

Related:

Operation: Avenge Assange is about more than “Childish Cybercrimes”.

Great WikiLeaks resources online.

They did these attacks through the power of DDoS (Distibuted Denail of Service), which is the online equivalent of hundreds of thousands of screaming teenage girls stampeding to see Justin Bieber at your local grocery store. In layman terms how this works is a few hundred geeky (mostly teenage) guys get together and repeatedly refresh the site they are targeting, forcing the computer (server) the site is hosted on to run out of system resources. Now this sounds complicated but the truth is there is an app called the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) which does all this for you. The app hands over the power of your computer to one or two guys that coordinate the attacks or you can use the app yourself.

These DDoS attacks are illegal in most countries and have been going on for almost two weeks now between anonymous Pro- and Anti-Wikileak groups and has reached the point of just being plain childish. DDoS is as juvenile as a wedgie, it renders you temporarily discomforted but soon its over and it’s as if nothing happened.

The “Anonymous” group vowed to take down Twitter, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal in this way soon, but this will not happen. The truth is “Anonymous” is a small group of about 600 folks and attacking sites built to handle traffic that stretches into the billion page impressions is impossible no matter what type of magic software you use. This is why DDoS’ers all choose easy small websites which are not able to handle big traffic spikes as targets. This way they create alot of hype and feel all fuzzy inside for doing something teh_awesome, when in fact they are really just swimming in the kiddies pool of cyber crimes.

[Update] Ed note – Mastercard.com is now completely down due to the attacks.

(Update: Minnaar Pieters wrote his follow up article to this. He does not concur.)

(Update 2: 5 Great WikiLeaks resources online.)

Welcome to the first in a series of video interviews taking you inside the offices of SA’s leading internet startups. We had the pleasure of visiting local internet entrepreneurs (and newly found Capetonians) Vincent Maher and Nic Harry of Motribe.

The experienced duo launched Motribe just over two months ago to great fan fair. We explore their thinking on using the Amazon cloud to build Motribe, how they reached millions of pageviews within two months (we also get into their latest figures), how they raised capital and why they settled with 4Di Capital for their first round of funding. We also look at their competitors in the mobile social networking space, how they acquired such an awesome top level domain and their thoughts on competing with the well funded startups of Silicon Valley.

Want answers to these questions? Click Play after the jump.

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