Currently content creators are sitting with a bit of a dillemma – the internet is not a place that necessarily likes paying for content, or at least thats the opinion of users. Any business case looking into news media will confirm this – people do not want to not want to pay for something that they can get free. Just ask Rupert Murdoch who recently decided to start asking people subscription charges to access the Times website. Early indicators show that its not neccesarily a big success. But this not because people do not want to pay for content, they hate the fragmented paywall system.

Solutions like iTunes for multimedia proves that people are willing to pay for content, provided its easy to do, and universal in terms of scope. And this is where Cred comes in, created by South Africans Saul Kropman, Jason Kramer and Toby Kurien. Instead of having to register at every content site (for example like The Times), users will use the Cred micropayment system to purchase credits to buy access to the relevant article. Cred is not only applicable to text based content like news, but multimedia sources as well.

At present, one Cred is worth one South African Rand, and publishers can charge up to a maximum of 20 Creds. At present  different denominations are available, starting from around R50 up to R150. In future users will be able to define their own amount. At present the system uses your credit card to pay for these, but Paypal support is coming in future.

For more info, here is the official press release:
As the developed world moves towards spending more online than on traditional media such as television and print, you’d assume that monetization of the Internet would come from advertising. With advertising revenue come massive expenses as journalists, technology and marketing come into play.  Internationally, media mogul Rupert Murdoch runs around calling everyone on the Internet a kleptomaniac for stealing his content and is aiming to lock down his online portals and go so far as to remove them from Google.

The fact remains that even with a full advertising complement, revenue simply cannot outweigh costs.

This is essentially where Cred comes in, we allow content providers to monetize their websites by charging users for content with individual micropayments or subscriptions. We at Cred love content; we personally create and consume content on a constant basis and it was this passion for excellent quality that led to the idea for Cred. With online text, audio and video being free there is little ascribed value and if there’s no value, what pressure is there for excellent content to be produced? Cred aims to preserve quality content by putting a value; we believe that the cream of content will then rise to the top.

Currently in the final stages of testing, we’re accepting sign ups from content providers looking to prove their content is worth charging for. Initially we’re available for the WordPress platform and eventually will expand to other platforms such as Drupal, Joomla as well as provide documentation that will allow developers to hook into their own niche content management systems.

The revenue model affords content providers 80% of all revenue without having to worry about fraud, payment gateways and are linked to a ubiquitous payment system thus allowing for easier access to your content by users with a Cred account. Cred scales perfectly for larger organisations as they can white label the Cred offering if desired.

Whether a small, niche publisher, band, photographer, author or massive media conglomerate anyone can start charging for their content with Cred.

Go to www.yourcred.com to sign up and follow us on twitter: @yourcred

Greg's Cable Map

With the flurry of underwater fibre cables reaching the African shores, it can be tough keeping up with all of them. While not all of them are operational yet, it is pretty great to think how Africa will finally get out of the dark ages with regards to internet connectivity.

South African developer Greg Mahlknecht built an excellent free resource to quickly check out the current cable situation. Its pretty easy to use – if you want to know where a cable is, just click on “list of cables” on the right, and then click a cable. For example, Seacom. That cable will then appear in white.

Here is Greg’s description:

Greg’s Cable Map is an attempt to consolidate all the available information about the undersea communications infrastructure. The initial data was harvested from Wikipedia, and further information was gathere by simply googling and transcribing as much data as possible into a useful format, namely a rich geocoded format. I hope you find the resource useful and any constructive criticism is welcome.

All in all a very cool little tool.

If you want to check it out: http://www.cablemap.info/

SA Lotto, a combined project by tech blogger Marc Forrest and Cape Town-based developer Juliaan Evenwel, was approved by Apple’s app store last week.

Here’s a rundown of what you can do with the SA Lotto iPhone app:

• Get results for the Lotto, Lotto Plus and Powerball draws (result are updated 30 minutes after the live draw has taken place)
• See how much you have won based on your number selections
• Enter any set of numbers and see what you would have won had you played them
• Use the intelligent quick pick number generator to generate numbers for a draw

Visit the SA Lotto website, or download the SA Lotto app to your iPhone.

Source: Mashable

If you missed Net Prophet on 13 May, you can now see all the videos of the day’s sessions on the Net Prophet blog.

1. Vinny Lingham – Building a global business – lessons learnt
   
2. Stefan Magdalinski – Observations from building a technology business in Africa
   
3. Adriaan Pienaar – The WooThemes story
   
4. Stuart Ntlathi – The next generation
   
5. Richard Mulholland – The side-effects of social media
   
6. Patrick Kayton – Shaping the future of internet publishing by shrugging off the past
   
7. Arthur Goldstuck – The Sophisticat, the Elephant, and the Secret of the Digital Native
   

The 20th Cape Town GeekDinner will be taking place on Thursday 27 May at Da Capo (52 Shortmarket Street, Greenmarket Square).

As always, talks will be finalised just before the dinner, but talks that have been offered at this stage include:

• The Open and Distributed social network wave, why it’s not an easy problem to solve (by Joe Botha)
• 5 Life Changing Moments (by Jonathan Endersby)

Anyone is welcome to offer a talk for GeekDinner, so if you have something you’d like to share, add it to the wiki. But do take note of the following pointers from the GeekDinner organisers:
“We want short, interactive talks – a quick overview of a cool idea, or an interesting way of looking at things. We prefer to stay away from the how, and the technical nitty-gritty, and get an idea of the what or maybe the why. We like to keep the talks short – about five minutes, plus questions. Bring your slides on a USB stick if you have any, we will provide a laptop and a projector.”

The main list is full at this stage, but if you’d like to attend, add your name to the waiting list and keep checking whether you’ve been bumped up – there are always cancellations, right up until the evening of the dinner itself.

You can also sign up to the announcement list or follow CTGeekDinner on Twitter to be notified about the next dinner as soon as the date and venue have been confirmed.

27Dinner will be taking place in Johannesburg on the 27th of May, and in Durban on the 28th.

Speakers at the Johannesburg event will include:

• Vinny Lingham, founder and CEO of Yola, who’ll be talking about lessons he’s learnt in the process of building a global business
• Eve Dmochowska, founder of Crowdfund and Geekspace, who’ll be talking about how these two initiatives will help the South African tech industry
• Mark Stacey, founder and owner of Aphelion, who’ll be talking about the impact of social media on decision-making in an enterprise environment

Speakers at the Durban dinner will include:

• Lungile Zondi, who will be discussing her initiative www.myshuttles.com
• Briget Ferguson of www.myr260car.co.za, who will be talking about her approach to this social media campaign

The Johannesburg dinner will be taking place at Metro Café & Bar, Benmore Gardens shopping centre, Sandton. The cost per person will be R100 (cash only), which includes a meal of your choice plus a welcome cocktail.

The Durban dinner will be taking place at La Bella Café, on the corner of St Thomas and Essenwood Roads in Musgrave. Attendees will be able to buy dinner off the menu, and there’ll be a cash bar.

You must add your name to the sign-up list if you’d like to attend. Spaces are filling up quickly, particularly for the Jo’burg dinner, so head over to the 27Dinner website right away to book your spot.

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.”

Local ISP RSAWEB today launched True Cloud Servers, a cloud hosting platform that allows users to deploy and provision fully operational servers in just minutes. The first of its kind in South Africa, RSAWEB’s True Cloud Servers offer benefits previously unavailable to businesses hosting locally.

The two main differences between True Cloud Servers and any similar products that are currently available are the speed at which servers can be deployed and provisioned, and the flexibility and scalability of the offering.

These are some of the key benefits of True Cloud Servers:

• The user has complete control, with full administrator access to their server, allowing them to select their choice of operating system, applications and configuration
• Resources can be controlled on a day-to-day basis, as the demands placed on the server change
• New server resources can be allocated on demand to cater for resource-hungry applications or sudden website traffic spikes
• Users pay for only the resources they need – in other words, the resources that are actually provisioned
• Servers can be set up and fully operational within minutes

Flexibility and control
The technology behind True Cloud Servers allows flexible control of server resources through the use of Cloud Nodes. Users can maintain optimal server conditions by adding resources from the Cloud Nodes whenever they lack CPU, memory or other resources. Mark Slingsby, Technical Director of RSAWEB, says, “With the dynamic provisioning of resources, RSAWEB True Cloud Server users never have to worry about scalability in the case of increased traffic demands or traffic spikes. Hosting with True Cloud Servers allows users to instantly react to high demands by adding required resources at the click of a mouse.”

Viability of local cloud hosting
Hosting locally allows users to avoid the data transfer latency that is inevitable when hosting with an internationally based ISP. The recent increase in available bandwidth, the sharp decrease in bandwidth costs and the introduction of affordable uncapped ADSL in particular make local cloud hosting an attractive option for South African businesses.

Available configurations
True Cloud Servers are available in the following configurations, all of which include free setup:
Server 256 (R256 per month, 256MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10GB Storage)
Server 512 (R395 per month, 512MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10GB Storage)
Server 1G (R695 per month, 1024MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20GB Storage)
Server 2G (R995 per month, 2048MB RAM, 2 vCPU, 50GB Storage)
Server 4G (R1495 per month, 4096MB RAM, 4 vCPU, 80GB Storage)

RSAWEB guarantees 99.99% uptime on True Cloud Servers, and will refund users for any downtime experienced.

Free trial
RSAWEB is offering a free trial to anyone who’d like to experiment with True Cloud Servers. This trial is available immediately, and will expire on 30 May 2010. To sign up for the free trial, visit RSAWEB’s website.

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.