Local entrepreneur, Joe Botha’s TrustFabric has received an investment from World of Avatar. WOA recently made headlines with their acquisition of MXit, and this seems to be one of their last investments for a while.

TrustFabric, which was founded in 2010, will integrate closely with WOA companies, including MXit to provide anti spam measures and child protection services. The child protection service, which is a new addition to TrustFabric, lets parents associate a date of birth with the mobile phone number and email address of their child. This helps protect children from inappropriate content such as adult SMS services, alcohol marketing, tobacco, gambling etc. brands and with MXit in mind, it can prevent adults interacting with minors for the wrong reasons.

MXit’s active South African user base enables TrustFarbic to profile a big portion of internet users in South Africa and then eventually provide that data to third parties via an API. These third parties can then check if they are allowed to send marketing content to specific numbers.

We reached out to Joe Botha for comment and he had the following to say:

TrustFabric is based in Stellenbosch from today. We’re happy to be a part of
the World of Avatar group and it made sense to be close to all the
action in the next few months.

We’re going to be integrating our TrustFabric Connect service and Child
Protect service with MXit, and we have a nice roadmap of related services.

The deal made a lot of sense for us: big user numbers in MXit, solid people
to work with and for me personally – an opportunity to move back to
Stellenbosch and get on a mountain bike more often.

TrustFabric is Joe’s 8th startup. He’s been a co-founder of Frogfoot Networks, Amobia Communications and South Africa’s first vendor neutral data centre provider: Teraco Data Environments.

With MXit’s past with inapproriate content being sent to underage individuals, TrustFabric is a great idea to prevent this in future. Another smart move by World of Avatar and Alan Knott Craig – look out for our video interview with Alan later in the week.

Co-founders Synergize, University of Cape Technology & ROI Media are proud to present the very first SEO gathering in Cape Town. This will be the launch of South Africa’s first gathering of SEO like minded people, digital agencies and businesses.

Space is limited so book your seat now. There is no cost for the opening event.

View the details of the event below:

When: 30th November 2011

Time: 5:30 – 7:30pm

Where: Think Tank, Metropolitan, 2 Oceans Aquarium

Visit the White Hatters website here.

Fuelled by growing interest in tech, innovation and startups in Africa from all over the world, and an increasing realisation of major opportunities online, Africans are establishing new ground in the online, mobile and digital fields.

Here are two new web startups recently launched from South Africa.

• Guzzle.co.za

Guzzle’s aim is to connect the online and offline worlds by searching for special deals found in newspapers and retail catalogues and posting them online, giving them exposure and allowing people to find them more easily online. Guzzle also provides specials based on location so users can find those nearest to them. The site also provides customisable email alerts to monitor specific products over time and specials available from different suppliers. Guzzle is a free service for both prospective customers and retailers.

• Virtusa.co.za

Virtusa is a social news and aggregation website where users based in South Africa can can share and discover popular stories on the web covering a range of topics such as celebrity, business, sports and political news. Users can submit interesting news pieces, articles and stories as well as vote for, and rate other submissions. Virtusa also gives users the opportunity to to connect with other like-minded people, create and join groups of interest, and make new friends.

source: Affrinovator

As of this morning, Webafrica have launched their ‘Home Uncapped’ ADSL product. With this new service Webafrica are committed to providing timely and consistent access to the delivery of promised internet services so viewers can watch their favourite clips whenever they want.

Webafrica aims to speak to all home consumers in a language that they can understand, are comfortable with and help them get the very best internet experience.

Webafrica have chosen  ZANews Tata and Tutu characters to endorse this new campaign and will therefore be representing themselves in a satirical “political party” (The WA Party) view whereby they will stand by 5 main manifesto points in order to provide a better online experience for all South Africans. These manifesto points are: service delivery, freedom, transparency, value and reliability.

With this campaign, Webafrica’s product differs from any other on the market in that it is one of the fastest on the market, will provide great value at competitive prices and will ensure excellent quality is maintained at all times. In addition, the service provider intends to be very transparent about its usage policy, allowing users to monitor and graphically see how close they are to what’s considered unacceptable.

Here are some of the benenfits offerd by the new service:

• The WA undertakes to effectively deliver and maintain a high quality service and excellent customer support.
• The WA provides a stable network and the fastest internet in South Africa
• Switchover and sign-up processes are super simple and all handled in house by our friendly WA councillors.
• The online and telephonic support is famous throughout the nation.

For more information on Webafrica’s new uncapped home internet service click here.

Disclaimer: Webafrica is a BandwidthBlog partner.

In order to enhance the MXit user experience in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, the largest mobile social platform in Africa has made the move of teaming up with Opera Software in a partnership agreement last week Tuesday. The aim of the deal is to offer Opera users in African countries one-click access to MXit services with MXit users being introduced to the Opera Mini browser through the popular chat client.

Christen Krogh, Chief development officer at Opera explains that the Opera Mini will appear under the MXit applications menu and MXit will appear on the Opera Mini browser’s start page. Both will be accessible via almost any data-capable handset.

The Opera Mini browser offers compression technology which allows for a fast Web experience at a lower price by compressing the size of pages before they are sent out to the consumer while still retaining functionality.

MXit’s CEO Alan Knott Craig says that “MXit empowers African people by helping them build community and make money via their mobile phones. We believe the alliance with Opera will bring us a step closer to fulfilling that vision.”

MXit, bought by World of Avatar back in September, has a global registered user base of 44 million, with the majority of these users residing in Africa.

source: moneyweb

Last night, the winners of the 2011 Bookmarks Awards, run by the Digital Media and Marketing Association,  were announced in Cape Town where the campaigns and players in the digital and online marketing industry were honoured for their respective products and achievements.

“The success of this evening’s event and the calibre of the 2011 entries and winners is a clear indication that the digital industry is growing from strength to strength,” said Nikki Cockcroft, Chairperson of the DMMA and Bookmarks Chair, last night.

Bandwidthblog is proud to have walked away with a Silver award in the Best Specialist Publisher category.

Congratulations to all the winners!

View the full list of winners after the jump.

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Here at BandwidthBlog we love hearing about promising new startups and Google Umbono seems to agree with us as SampleBoard.com, a design-focused website, has been selected as one of four start-ups in the first ever Google Umbono programme, for online entrepreneurs.

SampleBoard, that launched in 2010, offers a cloud-based image editor for creative professionals to quickly and easily output inspiring designs and digital mood boards which are an essential element of the creative process and ensures that client briefs and concepts are on track throughout a project. Where before, fabric samples, photographs, tape and cardboard were used, SampleBoard provides an eco-friendly, time efficient web-based alternative. The website allows users to upload images, use any of the 30 000+ images available in its library and export and share the finished product.

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Google’s online street view is allowing small businesses such as restaurants, gyms and retail shops to provide viewers with what lies inside their shops, beyond the shop fronts that are shown on the map service. Small businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States have been able to invite Street View photographers into their spaces to capture images that will appear online.

A test programme that was launched in April 2010 was showing success as a result of an increase in panoramic images taken inside businesses that volunteered to be part of the project.

Google spokesperson Deanna Yick said “We’ve been seeing renewed interest in the past few days because, as promised, we’re getting more imagery online.”

The availability of imagery gives viewers an extensive view of the shops to decide if they want to visit the store and what they might find on offer. The images are reportedly in such detail that one can see what’s on the shelves and even take a virtual tour with the 360 degree navigation tool. As usual, Google is continuing to blur the faces of bystanders captured in the pictures to ensure individual privacy.

image source: dailymail