Springleap

I’m not sure about you, but to be honest I really like a well designed t-shirt. Though I like how Versace or Armani build clothes believe me that when I see one with a simple but damn funny print I’m buying even if it’s a no name. I do it for fun and there are lots of you that like printed t-shirts. They are also a great resource for a birthday when you can make fun of someone.

But getting back to the South African community, the reason I started this article talking about t-shirts is because I’ve just found out about SpringLeap. What about them? They allow you to submit (for free) a t-shirt design or probably more and the members vote on who’s the best. Each month a winner is announced and 19 runners up that will get their t-shirts printed. But wait that’s not all, because the winner is getting R2 royalty for every printed t-shirt while runners-up get R1 royalty.

The project was started by Eric Edelstein and Eran Eyal, co-owners of eSquared Fashion and try to take on ThreadLess.

“Having your art showcased in a public domain and getting paid for it to boot, is what is so exciting about this venture.”, Eric said.

The t-shirts are going to cost R160 and that doesn’t include VAT or shipping fees.

I am not sure if they will be able to beat ThreadLess but at least they have the goals set. I wish them all the best. Will you submit a design to SpringLeap?

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Update - Springleap has started their first t-shirt submission contest were the community votes on the best submission. You can enter your designs and win cash! Check out their website for competition details

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I just picked up that MyVideo has made changes to their interface with a sexy looking new header (pictured below) and a new content channel area called ‘iViews‘. Their new channel features interviews with prominent South African personalities. Surfing through the MyVideo site I was impressed with the quality of videos on display. I also noticed the MyVideo flyer ads on Facebook promoting their Minkie video which seemed to do well as the video has over 20k views.

In their own words regarding ‘iView’

South Africans are a diverse bunch. Some are incredibly intelligent, some are breathtakingly beautiful, some are both. An unlucky handful are neither. Every week on iViews, MyVideo brings you a fresh new video interview with a well-known South African – we’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the above descriptions they match most closely! Politicians, sports stars, top models, TV personalities – if they’re hot right now – in whatever way – we’ll bring them to you on iViews!

The new header

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eBay today announced that Niklas Zennstrom (co-founder of Skype, Kazaa and Joost) has stepped down as CEO of Skype. Zennstrom, who co-founded Skype in 2003, will become non-executive chairman of the Skype Board of Directors. Michael van Swaaij, eBay’s Chief Strategy Officer, will become acting CEO until a permanent successor is found.

eBay also announced that it has paid $530 million to settle all of its future obligations under the earn-out agreement signed with certain Skype shareholders when eBay acquired Skype in 2005. The earn-out agreement provided for payments of up to approximately $1,700 based upon specific active user, revenue and gross profit targets that were to be achieved in 2008 and the first half of 2009.

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Bill Gates ranked tops (surprise!) in Forbes’ newest list of the top 400 richest Americans with a commanding $59 billion. Half of the ten wealthiest earned their billions from the tech industry.Among those that made the $1.3 billion cutoff were five Googlers (GOOG), including employee #12 Omid Kordestani and early investor Ram Shriram. Three of Silicon Valley’s most influential VCs made the super rich list:  Kleiner Perkins” L. John Doerr and Vinod Khosla and Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz. The Valley’s most revered entrepreneur, Steve Jobs (APPL), made the No. 56 slot with $5.7 billion.
But striking it rich through tech is still a small and elite business. Just 10 percent of those on the list make their billions that way. Compare that to nearly 5 percent who make money by inheriting it. Here’s a look at the ten richest tech titans and their staggering net worth.

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This is just plain funny. The last line is the best - “Coming up next, One man’s heroic struggle to pick up the pieces, and rebuild his flickr album.”

OMG! All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash!!!

Youtube link

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It�s not often these days that you see a piece of technology that makes your draw drop, yet Microsoft have done that to me with Microsoft Surface. If there�s a better piece of gadget eye candy I�d like to see it

Microsoft Surface is a touchscreen computer that allows you to interact with pieces of digital content as if they were physical objects on the table - to move, expand and even transfer content between physical devices, to create a music play list through drag and drop using your fingers. It even recognizes physical objects on the table and allows you to interact with them, from a wifi camera to a beer glass (so you can order another).

Take a look at this video over on TechCrunch that shows how easy it can be to transfer a picture straight off of a digital camera to the table, then from the table to a smart phone, without using any wires, just regular wireless network technology.

First users of the $10,000 device are retail outlets, restaurants and bars, and casinos. The device will be available later this year, and as manufacturing ramps up, it will most likely drop in price to a point where it could be a realistic addition to your living room. Imagine controlling your TV/Home Theatre through the table touch interface, rather than looking for a remote control.

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Feedburner, one of the most useful and valuable free Web services in my experience, is now part of the big Goog, where, one can only hope they dedicate at least as much energy to the service side of this product as they naturally would to innovating it.

Feedburner launched in Chicago in 2004 and quickly became the premier RSS feed-burner for blogs and even newspaper Web sites. I�ve published dozens of feeds for a variety of projects using their tool and have also used Feedburner to publish media-rich RSS podcast feeds.

This deal is all-but officially announced, and is rumored to be an all-cash acquisition.

Google may be able to boost Feedburner�s struggling publisher�s ad network, but my main concern again here is Google�s imperfect track record in keeping acquired startups alive (of course, Dodgeball wasn�t nearly as established as Feedburner is when it was purchased).

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Yahoo is rumoured to be working on an attempted takeover of Bebo, Britain’s most popular social networking site, which could turn its British-born founder into the next internet billionaire.

Yahoo, one of the first big online portals, is thought to be willing to pay as much as $1bn for the site, according to Silicon Valley gossip.

NewsCorp paid $580m for MySpace in 2005, in a deal that first drew the market’s attention to the phenomenon. Google paid $1.76bn for YouTube, the internet home video site, last November.

Bebo has around 25m users worldwide, compared with MySpace’s 100m or so registered users. Birch is rumoured to have turned down an offer from BT worth about �300m last summer. Viacom, the US media giant which was outbid for MySpace, is also believed to have made an offer last year. Bebo is backed by Benchmark Capital, the private equity firm.

Yahoo made a $1bn bid for Facebook, another fast-growing social networking site, last year. The offer was rejected by the site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, turned down an all-share offer from Google in 2003, which would have been worth about $1bn to its founders today. It has since drifted out of favour with internet consumers, with the monthly traffic on its site dwarfed by newer sites - such as Bebo. (Ouch!!)

Reported last week that Microsoft was in talks to buy Yahoo for a rumored $50 Billion, if this deal goes through Microsoft would significantly increase its online advertising market share which is now dominated by Google. The Redmond giant would own two of the biggest social networking properties on the web, Bebo and their very own Live Spaces.

Although, the Telegraph (who broke the news) isn�t exactly known for breaking tech M&A stories, and the rumor has an exceptionally weak source - �according to silicon valley gossip� the article says. That sounds like something the Telegraph�s correspondent overheard after ten or twelve cocktails last night at a party. And while I don�t doubt that Yahoo is sniffing around Bebo, $1 billion seems a tad high for the service.

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A few weeks back we reported that “Photobucket was out of space” which was a play on the fact that Myspace had blocked the photosharing/widget site. Ironically, this led to acquisition talks and now its been confirmed Myspace has bought Photobucket for $250 million in cash with another $50 mil in the pipeline.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Microsoft to acquire Yahoo in the biggest acquisition in IT history! Full story over at Mashable

This deal will be huge if it goes ahead: Microsoft has reacted to Google�s purchase of DoubleClick by stepping up talks with Yahoo about a possible acquisition/merger. Estimated pricetag for Yahoo? $50 billion. Microsoft and Yahoo have spoken in the past, but Google has piled on the pressure with the DoubleClick deal and now Microsoft has asked Yahoo to re-enter talks about the acquisition, says the NYPost. The price estimate, meanwhile, comes from Wall Street analysts.

Apparently the Yahoo stock is rising because of the buy out talk.

Shares of Yahoo Inc. surged more than 17% on Friday after reports that Microsoft may try to buy the Internet-search firm after being beaten to other deals by Google Inc. A Yahoo-Microsoft combo would make for a stronger foil to Google, the Internet search engine and advertising giant. Shares of Yahoo (YHOO) rallied sharply in early Friday action after the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft may want to buy the firm in what could be a $50 billion deal. Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) slipped more than 1%.

Yahoo teaming up with the Redmond giant would surely lead to a world class contextual advertising system to rival Adsense. International publishers have been at the mercy of Google’s Adsense as the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and MS Adcentre is still in US beta.

[Update] Forbes also has the story, good read.

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