The vuvuzela has certainly been one of the biggest talking points of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, and has since crossed beyond our borders into other countries. Even celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio have been spotted with their lips around this plastic phenomenon. Google Zeitgeist – which provides insight into global, national, past and present search trends – has revealed that the United Kingdom is the number one country searching for places to buy the vuvuzela, followed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Top 10 countries interested in buying vuvuzelas:

Meanwhile, Uruguayans have been the most interested in Zakumi (the Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Mascot™), with the majority of searches taking place just before Bafana Bafana’s 3-0 clash against Uruguay. Besides South Africa, it seems that Peru, Argentina and Venezuela have also taken quite a liking to this cuddly, green haired leopard, who celebrated his 16^th birthday during the World Cup.

When French coach, Raymond Domenech, snubbed a handshake from South African coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, searches combining their names rose; particularly in France on the day of the momentous match in Bloemfontein. Luis Suarez’s infamous hand ball against Ghana during the quarter finals also sparked a series of searches, with the United States being the most eager to research the controversial play that inevitably dashed Africa’s hopes in the tournament.

Interestingly, Bangladesh leads the pack in trying to find out more about ‘Waka Waka’ (the official 2010 FIFA World Cup™ anthem), with Paraguay and Mauritius coming in second and third respectively. K’naan’s ‘Wavin’ Flag’, although slightly less popular, appears to have resonated with citizens in Hungry, Argentina and India.

Highest regional interest for Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ song in the last 30 days:

Anyone can use Insights for search to come up with their own rankings by visiting http://google.com/insights/search/ and Trends http://www.google.com/trends

Zeitgeist Explained

Google reveals the internet “Zeitgeist” (German for “the spirit of the times”) through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive each year. We also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time. These tools are available year-round for you to play with, explore, and learn from.  You can create your own lists and rankings on www.google.com/zeitgeist

- Mobile apps are cheap, or free. More than half of apps are below $2. So developers who charge high prices, remember, the large group of users out there should make you worry less about profit per sale.

- The iPad’s current application seems to cost a bit more than the iPhone. This can be attributed to increased development costs, but I have to commend developers who write universal apps. Universal apps you purchase once, and they run on both the iPhone and the iPad. Dont make me pay twice for two devices.

- The Android market is made up of more than 57% free apps. Why? Is it because Android users are less likely to buy apps than on other platforms? Or is it because the free apps are good enough?

- Games are still by far the most popular apps. Out of the top 10 paid for apps on the iPhone, 8 was games.

- Amazon’s Kindle app seems to be under fire. Apple’s iBooks app is the number one app on the Appstore. But its still great that Amazon is making their platform available to other platforms as well. After using the iPad, I have to say my Kindle has become neglected. And with good reason.

What is interesting is seeing how the appstore ecosystem is changing. iPhone still seems to be the one that has the monetary edge, but that might change soon enough. With the number of Android handsets being released, there is plenty of oppurtunities for developers. The number of free apps on Android might sound great, but this does not take into account the quality of these apps. Whereas the iPhone Appstore is verified by Apple on a app for app basis, Google’s marketplace has no such process.

The disadvatange to this is of course that low-quality or poorly designed apps get in there as well. While people criticize Apple’s quality control, there are just as many postive aspects as well.I really reckon Google can do with a similiar process – not to replace the current marketplace, but a “Google Verified” section for apps that Google does approve of. That way you have the best of both worlds.

That way you cater for both developers who want to quickly and easily want to get into the marketplace, but end users who want high quality apps can find them as well. Tools like AppBrain does address this somewhat, but what I am talking about is a official source of apps. Maybe Google should have a chat with AppBrain?

You can download the full Distimo report here.

And it works great! I tested this on my iPhone – easy enough to do. Go to an area where StreetView has taken pictures – in this example, Greenpoint. Click on one of the pins that drop on the screen, and you will see a small orange icon on the left of the description, and there you go. As you can see here I am looking at Main Road, and there on the right is the stadium.

In similiar fashion to overseas, all cars registrations and people are blurred out.

Thanks to Google!

The new service, announced last year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, will be called Google Editions, and will be entirely web-based – in other words, users will be able to download and read books using only their web browser. No details have been provided yet on how this interface will compare to other available e-readers.

Users will be able to buy books in two ways:
1.    Through Google’s book search service
2.    Directly from the websites of book retailers

According to The Wall Street Journal, no decision has yet been reached on whether publishers will set the retail price for digital books or whether prices will be determined by Google.

Well this is interesting – Google bought the guys responsible for BumpTop, the very slick 3 dimensional desktop application. I have always been a fan of the idea of Bumptop, but I hated running another layer over my background. The few times that I did test it I was always impressed, and it ran well, especially its recent Mac OSX version. It was however limited in its free form, and hopefully Google fixes this. Just like Picasa was little known before Google bought it, maybe they will set Bumptop free for all OS’s, with quick links to all Google services. I can imagine that being very handy.

Please Google, dont keep Bumptop only for your upcoming ChromeOS (or Android).

Set it free.

It’s no secret that the tourism sector will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the tournament, with international visitors to South Africa indulging in the country’s natural beauty and appreciating its historical sites.  Last year the South African public voted on the country’s most popular tourist sites for Google’s Street View Trikes campaign that ran in conjunction with SA Tourism – as reported on our Africa Blog.

This month’s Google Zeitgeist shows the countries that are demonstrating the most interest in visiting these South African sites, and then reveals that three of the top five coincide with those countries buying the most tickets for the World Cup.

We’ve included these rankings below, which show the country’s top tourist sites, source markets and top ticket buying countries:

Most globally popular (or searched for?) tourist sites in South Africa in 2010

1. Kruger National Park
2. The Garden Route
3. Wild Coast
4. Robben Island
5. Cape Peninsula
6. Blyde River Canyon
7. Cape Winelands
8. Durban Beachfront
9. Mandela House
10. Apartheid Museum

Top countries searching for ‘South Africa tourism’ in the past year

1. India
2. United Kingdom
3. United States
4. Germany
5. Zimbabwe

Now compare that Top World Cup™ ticket buying countries (according to the Local Organising Committee)

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. Australia
5. Brazil

Google Street View trikes arrived in South Africa in November last year, when they started collecting imagery of historic landmarks, heritage sites, scenic panoramas and sports venues around the country. South African Tourism compiled a list of 20 special locations on which the public voted. As a result, Google’s Street View team has been visiting the places that the South African public really wanted them to cover, everywhere from Soweto to Kruger National Park, and from Blyde River Canyon to the Kirstenbosch Gardens.

The Google trikers have been met with excitement from those they’ve crossed paths with along the way, including tourists who’ve said how useful they’ve found Street View for planning their holidays elsewhere. Street View is not always the first thing that comes to mind when seeing the Trikes though…in fact, in Kirstenbosch Gardens, a group of schoolchildren were convinced that the Trikers were actually ice-cream men!

More Google maps news

Google Docs lets people create, edit and collaboratively share personal and business-related content online. Users can access files uploaded to Google Docs from any browser, anywhere in the world. Combined with shared folders and multiple file import and export, it is easy to use Google Docs to collaborate and share files with coworkers, teammates, and friends. Now, instead of emailing attachments to oneself or colleagues for “back-up”, Google Docs users can upload content to a shared folder and access content from any computer.

Users can utilise 1GB of storage for free, with additional paid storage available. Files up to 250 MB each can be uploaded in their native formats (uncheck the “convert” option while uploading). Although only Google Docs formats can be edited in the cloud, most common filetypes are viewable with the Google Docs viewer, and all can be shared and accessed from any connection and at any time.

In South Africa, the credit for the development of the certain new services on the mobile platform goes to ordinary people in the lower income brackets who have led the way by adopting, even instigating new ideas to turn the cellphone into a powerful transacting tool.

Compared to a low eight percent fixed internet penetration, South Africa has cellular penetration of a 114 percent. It is clear from the statistics that South Africans have leapfrogged fixed-line telephony and internet in favor of mobile telephony and have called for an increasing array of data services to be delivered to this platform.

This is patently true when it comes to banking and transacting using the mobile phone. To the surprise of the airtime providers, the African continent has witnessed the use of multinational pre-loaded airtime (most notably MTN airtime vouchers) as a type of cross-border grassroots currency, swapped and bartered via sms, and a way to send “money” quickly back to family in other African countries. The informal airtime-economy is an excellent example of the organic development of technology by ordinary people to meet their transactional needs in contexts where credit cards and banking facilities are lacking.

Meet MiMoney

mimoney works essentially like preloaded airtime, or, in other words, converts cash into an electronic currency that can be used to make purchases in a secure and controllable manner. The currency is free to buy, free to get and free to keep, so a R100 note converts into exactly R100 mimoney to be used online, with no leakage or transaction fees incurred.

Standard Bank’s mimoney developers, noted the popularity of the airtime bartering model in rural African contexts, and has developed the model into a more formalized, virtual cash mechanism, while removing the hefty taxes included in airtime. Instead of swapping airtime, users of mimoney can now swap vouchers that are loaded and sent in a similar way to airtime.

mimoney is a world-first, proudly South African innovation that gives credit card-less individuals the ability to make purchases online. While this could translate into a significant boost for the local internet economy, it also affects the economy at large, as payment becomes easier, faster and safer, and more people are equipped with electronic payment options and electronic ways of getting paid.

The power to transact online

In this context, mimoney is set to launch the youth and credit-cardless South Africans into the online economy with a simple way to convert hard cash into virtual cash to be stored on their cellphones. This can be used to make purchases online, over the phone or on the mobile web.

The youth market has the disposable income (estimated at R80 billion rand last year) to be influential online consumers, but they have been restricted by a lack of access to credit cards and other online payment mechanisms.

The developers of mimoney took into account the need for a secure and simple electronic payment mechanism that would empower the youth and South Africa’s vast informal cash economy with the ability to transact online. The challenge was not just to serve the needs of the wealthy, but also to make a solution that works for the average South African.

Small online business gets paid

mimoney also plans to shortly equip micro-businesses and entrepreneurs with the ability to receive electronic payment from customers via mimoney. The application process for mimoney merchants is far simpler and less stringent than qualifying for a credit card merchant account, empowering smaller initiatives and online businesses with the convenience and efficiency of getting paid remotely.

What sets mimoney apart is that it is not simply a wallet, like PayPal, but rather a genuine electronic currency that can be utilised to make purchases at an increasing number of online and even offline retailers.