Resources – Industry News
PayPal Coming To South Africa?
According to some very widespread, but still officially unofficial rumors, the global online e-commerce payment solution known as PayPal will finally be available in South Africa.
Cable Trouble Causes Internet Breakdown
For a long time, the Sat-3 fibre-optic link that runs up the west coast of Africa was the only way that South Africa could get their internet access. Before Seacom, the majority of our internet traffic travelled this line, and even since the installation of the new cable, a lot still does, especially traffic to Europe.
Except for this week.
5 Million Users Online In SA
According to a report by the research group World Wide Worx, the number of internet users in South Africa has, for the first time, exceeded the 5 million mark. The Internet Access In South Africa study sponsored by Cisco, revealed that the number of people with online access in South Africa grew by 15% last year, and is expected to double in the next 5 years.
Worldwide Web Addresses
Ever since their creation in the 1980's, domain names and their resultant website addresses have been limited to the Latin alphabet, from A – Z, used by English speaking nations. In a ground-breaking decision on Friday however, Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, (a non-profit body that oversees web addresses and domain names), approved the use of non-Latin alphabets for domain names.
Twitter In Search Engine Talks
According to a report by ChannelWeb, the hugely popular micro-blogging service Twitter may have finally found a way to monetize the countless messages, (known as tweets) that are sent daily by it's users.
Twitter Tests List Feature
Twitter announced yesterday that they have started testing a new feature for the popular micro-blogging service. The new “List” feature will allow users to organise their tweets by assigning them to various sub-categories.
Social Media Scams On The Rise
In a just released announcement by social media giant Facebook, the California-based company has warned its users to watch out for one of the old “419 scams” that has recently resurfaced on the social media network.
Google Launches Display Ads
Google announced on it's official blog at the end of last week that it was rolling out the end product of it's incorporation with DoubleClick, an acquisition that Google made 18 months ago.
Fast-Flip Testing By Google
Responding to an increasingly media rich online environment, Google has launched a new experimental service that they call Fast Flip.
Twitter To Go Commercial?
According to a blog post made late last week by Biz Stone, co-founder of the increasingly popular micro-blogging platform Twitter, which has around 45 million users, the company has has changed its terms of service in such a way that it now “leaves the door open” for advertisers.
Google Search Box Gets Bigger
In the past, search engine giant Google has been very careful about not tampering with the look of their clean, simple and functional search page. Last week though, in a move that had many rubbing their eyes and fiddling with the text size options on their browser, Google changed something.
Pigeon Data Race Meaningless
By now, I'm sure that everybody knows about the carrier pigeon Winston, who last week famously raced a Telkom ADSL line from Howick to Hillcrest, carrying 4 Gigs of data strapped to his leg. The pigeon won. In fact, it won by a huge margin. But I'm not sure that it really counts.
New South African Domains
A recent article in Business Day caused some interest in the online community, when it suggested that several new domains could be established in South Africa next year, including city-specific domains, such as Joburg.za.
New Privacy Laws Proposed For SA
According to a recent news report, new legislation has been approved by Cabinet that will prevent any institution from divulging personal information unless required by law to do so.
Yahoo To Overhaul Search
According to an announcement by Yahoo, the search engine company will continue to work on search innovations, despite their recent agreement with Microsoft to allow it to power their search.
Google Caffeine Comparison Tool
Following on from our last article, in which we discussed the new Google Caffeine algorithm that's in development, here's a handy little tool that lets you compare the results of the existing Google search infrastructure with results using the proposed new Google “caffeine” algorithm.
Testing Google Caffeine
Although not yet confirmed, it appears that the Caffeine index will provide a new search infrastructure, effectively replacing the existing methods that Google uses.
SEOQuake Celebrates Third Birthday
Today sees the third birthday of the popular search engine optimisation browser tool, SEOQuake, first launched and approved as a legitimate add-on to Mozilla Firefox in 2006.
New Boss For Google SA
Business Day reports that there's a new face at the head of Google South Africa, replacing Stafford Maisie, who stepped down in April, after 18 months at the helm of the South African division of the search engine giant.
Microsoft/Yahoo Announce 10 Year Partnership Deal
Ending years of negotiation and speculation, Microsoft and Yahoo have finally announced that they will join forces in a move that is largely seen as an attempt to reclaim some of the huge search engine market share currently held by Google.