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Would you drive a taxi in South Africa?

December 10, 2008 by evl


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So the gov ee ment wants to make a public transport system of some kind. I really have no idea and couldnt care less because I wont use it anyway.

My thoughts are just that these taxi drivers was all over the news since it has to do with the 2010 world cup.

Now if I was from another country I would in no way drive a South African taxi after seeing that news all over.

Imagine being used to the tubes in London and now you planning to come to South Africa and check this stuff out on the news. I'd be like - staying home for the 2010 world cup.

The danger of the Soccer world cup in South Africa

December 10, 2008 by evl

Just today we i read about how the taxi drivers are threatening to disrupt the soccer world cup

Iafrica reported

They quoted a protester, Surren Taxi Association's Ismail Baradon, as saying that if the transport ministry did not respond to their concerns there would be disruptions during the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

So imagine for a moment that the soccer world cup is here and thousands of tourists are here. How easy it would be for some group like the taxi drivers or some workers to use the Soccer world cup as a weapon and threaten it some way.

Another example would be what happened in Mumbai. The tourists was worse off. I know that's a total different criteria but i guess you get the point.

The soccer world cup could be used as a weapon or a point of negotiations with strikers or whoever wants something and that is dangerous.

Johannesburg in the 1970's

December 8, 2008 by evl

Found this video while browsing. Man was it a nice city. Imagine what it could of been if it werent for this failed ANC government

Imagine the reader

October 29, 2008 by evl

As a blog author I just cant seem to imagine the reader, that is why I stick with organic traffic most of the time. Going for the reader in mind you need to imagine how other people think and to me that is sometimes weird because everyone thinks different and having one reader in your mind will out focus for another reader.

Ibangle concept

October 22, 2008 by evl

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Designer Gopinath Prasana came up with this brilliant concept where devices comes as close as jewelry as this. The design is brilliant and imagine having a arm full of bangles but in the meantime its like carrying your own lab with your cellphone on one arm and your iphone and iphone type bangles on the other arm.

Via

Survival Tips: The Champ Swiss army knife - The scissors

October 20, 2008 by evl

These are just plain scissors on the swiss army knife. They have no other function than scissors except if you can use your imagination.

Laptops get a battery boost with toshiba

October 5, 2008 by evl

Toshiba unveiled their super charge Ion batter that recharges in a staggering 10 minutes. Well that is up to 90%. They dont say how long it takes to recharge fully but I guess you can just imagine. For now this is only a prototype and we can expect some great super charge laptop goodies from toshiba in the future.

Toshiba unveils a 10minute chargeable battery

October 5, 2008 by evl

Toshiba unveiled a battery that can charge in 10 minutes at this year's CEATEC in Japan. The Super Charge Ion Battery charges within 10 minutes up to 90%. I guess the other 10 percent is left to the imagination. This will really change the way laptops work. No more sitting between the cables for hours. Just simply plugin that laptop while making some coffee and when you came back you have a charged laptop.

Blogging Essentials

September 30, 2008 by evl

The other day I had a post on HOW TO START BLOGGING and i thought it would be great to ad this post to that one. Today I would like to show you some blogging essentials. Blogging is fun but at the same time blogging can teach you a lot of great stuff. One of those things is management. A blog has to be managed, almost like a business. If you dont do certain things a blog will just go dry. And soon the blog that is left to survive on its own will just become more search engine clutter with no real humans behind the box. The Blogging essentials that I am writing about today are not all needed but they are great tools to have. And if you dont know about them all you might find a treasure between all these things. If you know of everything that is listed here, feel free to add something I have missed. Rank Rank is important both for advertisers and for your blog to grow. While you or I dont really care much about rank, it still is a factor when trying to get your blog to the point where you can make a living from blogging. As some of you might of notice, its not a as you imagined before you started blogging. Blogging is tough. At least that is what I think. Ranking also enables you to make more money. For instance: People with a Pagerank of 6 could easily ask a nice price for advertisers whereas blogs that have a pr1 or 2 would not make that much money. Ranks reflect your blog's community and traffic. Most of the time. One thing about blogging is that the better your rank the more traffic you get and the more traffic you get the better you will rank. Here are some places to check your rank or status: Alexa Old, belongs to Amazon if I am correct. Alexa is not as accurate as some would claim, nevertheless people still use it and if you rate very high (low) on Alexa you can get more money for advertising space. Some companies use Alexa ranks to choose if they want to buy or sell domains. Alexa rank is important for your blog even with it's inaccuracy. Pagerank Pagerank used to be the biggest way people would rank a site. But in recent months no one really cares about Pagerank, or at least know one I know including me. That is because they have changed the old realiable way it worked. I am guess it was a good thing since they are improving their search, but for me, watching my PR go up and down every month is just to annoying. Technorati Technorati is also a great ranking tool. Technorati is also well known, they trace a few million blogs all over the internet. If you make it to the top 100, you've basically made it as a blogger. I would'nt mind. But recently technorati removed all Wordpress 2.3.3 blog. Maybe not removed but they stopped indexing them because of the vulnerability in Wordpress 2.3.3. I think I lost my technorati rank as well. But they did it so people's blogs wont get hacked. Amatomu The reason I am putting in Amatomu is because I am a South African. Amatomu matters for South African bloggers because it shows you where and how you rate between South African bloggers. Compete Another ranking system. Wordpress Adman Adman is a great plugin for Wordpress. Adman enables you to insert Google Adsense or other code generated by PPC or affiliates into your blog posts and on the frontpage. Adman has three options, paste it in on the top of your posts in the middle and below. There is also a setting that enables you to have a ad in the first post of your blog on the front page as well. Adman works great with Wordpress 2.5 Related Posts The related Posts plugin is great to enable your readers to explore your blog more. Using it underneath your post or below the comments where they can see it will also increase your pageviews because they might just read more posts. Related Posts works great in Wordpress 2.5 Popularity Contest Many Wordpress themes need this plugin to display the popular posts on the right hand side of the blog. It enables your readers to see which posts are nice and those that other people have liked. Money Adsense Adsense is well known. You can make a lot of money using Adsense if you use it correctly. Adsense was started a few years ago by another guy and got bought by Google. That is why we now know it as Google Adsense. Just a bit of info. The most famous adsense format is the 300x250, it is said that is the adsense format people make the most money with. I have to agree. Although many bloggers do not like seeing Adsense on other blogs, it is still widely used. Some people might disagree. Chitika Chtiika is one of my favourite ways to make money online. They offer a lot of formats and things that you can use to make money. I think the most famous one is the linx code. Linx code is the one I like the most. They also have a referral program where you can refer people and friends to them. You get paid for everyone you refer to them. Smorty Smorty offers a lot of different affiliate banners to choose from. Smorty is another way of blogging and posting payed blog posts. A nice way to make some more money. Linkworth Linkworth has many, many options and ad formats to choose from. you can also do payed posts for Linkworth to earn extra cash from your blog. Seo Headspace2 Traffic Entrecard Entrecard is a great way to get people to come to your site. You will just have to use more methods of attraction than the Entrecard widget itself. Entrecard is great for sites that first start out. But one thing you have to keep in mind if you are using entrecard is Adsense. Adsense and Entrecard does not work well together. That is because a lot of people come to your site just to click, but that brings your revenue from Adsense down. Feedburner The reason this is under traffic is because I first wrote it. I guess feedburner can go under tools or community. Feedburner is a way to keep track of your feed statisctics and helps you optimize your content. You can also make money with your feed by embedding Adsense in your feed through Feedburner. Community Blogcatalog Blogcataglog is the bussiest blog community site I have found so far. On Blogcatalog you can get a widget to embed in your blog. You can also get a lot of traffic from Blogcatalog if used correctly. Mybloglog Mybloglog is also a blogging community site. Theme Getting a unique theme or making your own theme unique is very important for branding purposes. A great theme will help you make more money while giving your viewers some eye candy. This is obvious. Your blog has to stand out from the crowd and be unique. It should reflect the blogger's taste. Firefox Scribefire or Deepest Sender Stragedy Having a blogging stragedy (plan or whatever its called) will enable you to work towards a certain goal. Here are some stragedies in blogging: Linking and networking with other bloggers This is really important. Since most people reading blogs are bloggers themselves. We as bloggers need to network and help each other. Networking is the most important thing that will keep your blog going. After all, remember when you did your first blog, it felt so stupid because it felt like you were speaking to yourself. That's how I felt. Not networking would mean you basically blog on your own. Commenting Commenting to show others that you actually read their blogs and participate is actually part of networking. Commenting is participating in the blogging community. Commenting should be done with caution. You can delete a crap post but you cant delete a crap comment. Comment on as many blogs as you can BUT do it sincere and not just to get people over to your blog. Competition Running competitions on your blog is a great idea to get your blog out there. Read more here Learn Wikipedia You can learn a lot of blogging terms at wikipedia. Although you cant trust everything you read its still worth something. Problogger.net I guess everyone knows problogger but I have learned a few things on his site and its worth including. So there it is. A few things that could help you start with blogging or further your blogging career / hobby. If you liked this post please consider bookmarking this on Sphinn / Stumbleupon / Digg or any other site you use.

Not using Ubuntu yet? Well I bet you cant do this.

September 30, 2008 by evl

Since dumping Windows I have learned a lot about Linux and Linux productivity. Ubuntu to be specific. You should really try it if you are still using Windows. There must be 100's of apps I might be missing here which is great. i just wanted to point out these that I really like and did not have in windows as standard or as updates. Except the updates of course which in Windows make you shut down your pc while they waste your time. Now I am in no way saying other linux distributions cant do this. I am using Ubuntu and that is what I am blogging about. Window managers Windows comes with windows. I know that sounds stupid but Ubuntu comes with Gnome and Kde and with the click of a few buttons you can have almost any window manager that suits you. From Kde's windows look to Gnome's contrast look. Sure with Windows you can install some stuff that contain the usual spyware, adware and viruses but in Ubuntu you can have all the above window managers each with 100's of themes. And guess what, this is all free and just takes a click of a few buttons. Anybody can install it if they can read. Updates ref18.png Unlike Windows you can update your version of Ubuntu while working on your computer, No upgrades to buy nothing like that. No just a few clicks and you have the brand new version. Server Can you install Windows or Mac and within 1/2 run your own server with Wordpress installed? Maybe you can download Xampp but its just not the same as Ubuntu where you can just click a few buttons and all is running. System tray ref19.png I bet you cant shut up your Windows system tray, and all those apps that just start when they want to. Its ridiculous. When I first installed Ubuntu and Pclinuxos I was amazed at it. The computer would just start and then its ready. No closing hundreds of questions, kill the antivirus that i dont want anyway, start all the firewalls. No Ubuntu just starts. That's it. The only time when I have noticed anything bug me in the system tray was when there was updates which I dont mind installing since there is no 100 questions about how legal my OS is. I can just click and go on with my browsing. Kget ref20.png I dont know about Windows Vista since I am quite satisfied with my Os at the moment but I know when I used to work with Windows Xp I had constant issues of finding that download program that I was satsified with. And what do you know? When I installed Ubuntu I found Kget. Sound and Video Can you say choice? There are so many good video players in Ubuntu and especially in the repositories. You can pick and choose for days. If you dont prefer to go through them you can always use Mplayer and Amarok which by the way Xp is far from. Amarok is the music player everyone should use. I wont even start to explain, maybe I will do a post on Amarok later. Terminal ref21.png Just one thing. I was a windows user and this is just so great. Maybe all the serious linux users wont think much of this because it might be all old news and stuff but imagine how easy things would of been if you could just load dos and type firefox. That's it. No c:////windows/crap Just type firefox and it opens. Well that is what terminal is. Just type the name of the program and it opens. No hassle. No need for 100 icons on your desk either. Just a quick launch, type and go. Etherape ref23.png window size was small that's why the text is crossing. I had to take a screenshot that fits. Etherape is a network checker or whatever you call it. It shows you where your computer is connected to. Sometimes it shows you even where people on your network connection is connected. Dont ask me about the technical stuff I just know I can see where my computer is connected to and it rocks. Especially when uploading something to cpanel, one can see when it gets stuck. I have a really slow connection so having a look can tell me what is biting the speed. Elinks ref22.png As I said I have a relatively slow connection and sometimes I just want to read something and I want to do it fast. Elinks is a text browser but you can see your desktop background which gives it a different feeling than the usual notepad look and feel. Snapshot ref17.png Yes yes, I know you get screenshot apps in windows as well but they are not installed with one or two clicks and neither are they as cool as snapshot. Snapshot is by far my favourite screenshot app. Thank you for reading please leave some comments. Tell what's your favorite apps Ubuntu or linux.