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.

(more…)

I am pretty sure the typical reader of this site will probably know about the upcoming movie “The Social Network” which follows the story of how the Facebook empire was started. It started showing on 1 October in the US, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. While many reviewers realize the movie is an overdramatized version of the real story of Facebook, they say it does make for some very good viewing. Currently the movie has a rating of 9.2/10 on Rotten Tomatoes…

Well here is the trailer in case you have not seen it yet:

Not a bad choice of music either, eh? Does anyone know when this will show in SA?

Following on from their Facebook and Twitter infographics, Website Monitoring have produced another stats sheet, this time for YouTube.

Here are a few key facts taken from the chart:

• The first video was uploaded to YouTube on 23 April 2005
• The most popular video on the site, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, has been played 185.39 million times
• 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute
• 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the USA
• The most popular channel on YouTube has 2,159,651 subscribers

See the full infographic on the Website Monitoring site.

YouTube South Africa, the first localised YouTube site on the African continent, has gone live. You can see it in action at www.youtube.co.za.

The new domain has a strong focus on content uploaded by South African users, and makes use of adjusted search algorithms to promote South African content on category pages and in the “featured videos” section.

YouTube has also signed partnership agreements with several South African media companies, including the SABC and e.tv, enabling these companies to establish a presence on the site and easily distribute their content. The SABC will be piloting a certain amount of old and current content on the channel, and if the pilot proves successful, this offering will be extended to include a range of SABC news, sport, soaps, dramas and comedies.

Perhaps more importantly, video download speeds are now significantly faster for South Africans. No more grabbing a quick cup of coffee while you wait for that hilarious cat video to load!

Of course, if the new site is still not fast enough for you, you have the option to watch videos with YouTube Feather. This beta offering is a stripped-down version of the standard video page, including only the most basic features. YouTube Feather can be accessed via the TestTube section of the site.

Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder, says, “We’re very excited to bring a local version of YouTube to South Africa and we look forward to continuing to improve the YouTube experience for our South African users.”

Internet users in South Africa, and MWEB uncapped adsl clients in particular, now have one more reason to be happy. At last South Africa has a Video-on-Demand (VOD) service, thanks to a partnership between MWEB and MultiChoice.

The service is being offered exclusively to DStv Premium subscribers, and they will be able to access it free of charge via both their PVR decoder and MWEB ADSL broadband.

1. The DStv On Demand HD PVR offering, accessible via PVR decoder, will provide 20 hours of the most popular TV series, sporting shows, magazine shows and movies, for up to 7 days after their broadcast on DStv Channels.

2. The DStv On Demand online offering, available exclusively to MWEB ADSL customers (both capped and uncapped), will provide 800 hours of premium content including blockbuster movies, award-winning series, all the best sporting action, kids’ shows and documentaries.

Programmes are chosen for the On Demand service based on monthly consumer surveys. Content will be continually updated after each show appears on DStv channels; international series will be available for 7 days, and local content and movies for 30 days. The pilot episode will always be included.

MultiChoice says of their partnership with MWEB, “DStv Online is committed to delivering the highest possible quality of service to our subscribers. As a result, we request certain guarantees from our ISP partners – the most important of which is uncapped broadband access. MWEB was the first ISP to offer an uncapped ADSL service in South Africa and to meet our quality of service and technical requirements. We are excited to partner with them to offer you unlimited viewing pleasure at no extra bandwidth costs.”

DStv plans to roll out this service to the rest of Africa shortly. They are also investigating the feasibility of launching a Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) service, which would allow subscribers to have access to the latest movies on a pay-per-view basis, before they are screened on DStv.

Find out more about the DStv On Demand online offering.

Adobe just released news that Creative Suite 5 will be available on April 12th, with shipping expected to start a month later.

As usual, CS5 will combine the very best features in graphics, video and web design for professionals, for an extortionate price.

That said, have a watch of this video of just one of the new Photoshop’s capabilities. You will be blown away. This makes light work of what previous would have taken hours, maybe even days of work. Graphic designers will rejoice everywhere.

Here’s a preview of Opera Mini on the iPhone, including a feature overview and a real world speed test. Apple seems likely to reject the Opera app, because they have previously blocked submissions that duplicate the capabilities of the iPhone’s built-in apps (in this case Safari). However, the Opera team said they are confident their new browser will be approved for the iPhone. We are not so sure.

One thing that’s sure though is the Opera Mini browser is lighting fast.

How I here you cry? Well, the Opera browser loads web pages rapidly by using a technology called server-side rendering, which compresses most aspects of a Web site on a server, sometimes reducing the load time of 90 percent of a Web page, before sending the data along to a phone’s browser. Check out the video after the jump -

(more…)

Sky News political editor David Speers talks to News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch about paywalls, politics, and more.