Very interesting infographic from the folks at GigaOM. You might want to glance at the figures for South Africa – as you can see, we are very much behind the rest of the world once it comes to broadband connectivity. Our mobile-only phone access looks impressive – but this is of course because of Telkom’s ridiculous pricing and poor service levels. Or that is my interpretation anyway.

Here’s hoping that EASSY and WACS will set things right.

You might have heard by now that Blackberry’s in the UAE will be banned soon if they do not open up their encryption of their BIS servers to the government – well that is the simple explanation, and there is rumours that a few other countries are also wanting to do the same.  They say this is for security reasons, but naturally there are some high profile people out there who do not want their communication to be opened up to governments.

But one should also understand the reason why these governments want – just like South Africa is currently implementing RICA in order to keep track of cellphone users, there are many security reasons for this. Police would like to be able to keep track of certain people or use electronic communication as evidence in court, and I am all for it.

It is for this very reason that I dont know whether RIM’s CEO, Mike Lazaridis, is brave or foolish. In a recent interview with Wallstreet Journal, he says these issues comes down to governments “not understanding the reality of the internet”. He mentions that “everything on the internet is encrypted, this not a Blackberry only issue”. This is of course very true, and I agree that many governments not understanding the internet. Hell, just look at SA.

And then finally he stated – “if they can’t deal with the internet, they should shut it off”. I dont know if he refers here to the internet or Blackberrys, but its a pretty brash statement.

I really hope Blackberry sorts this out, because I have a feeling that more governments will start asking similiar questions. This is a difficult situation for Blackberry – on the one hand they should open up their servers so that governments can access communication logs, and in that way the phones wont be banned, keeping Blackberry clients happy.

On the other hand, if they do open up their records, some Blackberry clients will suddenly feel that their communication is insecure – something that Blackberry has always emphasized in the past.

Lets see how this one plays out.

So you want to know where that son of a deposed Nigerian king is really emailling you from? Google made this handy little tool to track where the most Spam is sent from everyday. This is actually tracking in real time as well…

This Postini tool works by scanning identified malicious IPs accross the world - Postini is Google’s messaging encryption and security suite for Google Apps. It seems SA is very busy spamming as well – hey guys, we have too little bandwidth already, cut us some slack, OK?

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.

Related: If you want to be able download Apps, Music, Movies, TV Series etc from the US iTunes store, even if you live in SA, here is how to do it.

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