Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

“Don’t you just hate it when there’s too much hype to wade through when investigating modern Web 2.0 companies? It seems like a new company is introduced every few minutes. How can anyone keep up with what’s really useful? With BuzzShout, you can. Our aim is to garner quality reviews that have been shouted by users. These reviews cut through the cruff to give us something we all need: the truth about the buzz.”

I really like this site’s idea. Web 2.0 companies are popping up left, right, and centre, more than often offering exactly the same as Harry nextdoor, making the decision of who to go with ever so hard!

If this site works it could save a lot of people a lot of time (and a lot of trouble) in making decisions on who’s services to use.

One thing that is quite interesting is that you cannot review the Web 2.0 company Buzzshout themselves!

There have been huge advancements in the past few months with online video sharing services. Youtube is dominating online video and seeing huge traffic growths. Flickr, the online photo space, is falling behind, and still hasn’t released a video product.

“… new tools are coming out to make sharing videos online even easier. Both Video Egg and Grouper (TechCrunch posts here and here) have downloadable clients that allow encoding to flash on the desktop (saving users from uploading very large files to the service) and some very basic editing features”

Motionbox, the newest competitor only days from release, offers even more. It doesn’t have a client uploader, like the above mentioned, which means you must upload the full video file to the service. This, especially in South Africa, with limited and expensive bandwidth, is a problem, but Motionbox’s reasons for doing this are very noticeable. Editing and mash ups are a breeze. When editing Motionbox breaks down your video clips into individual frames, making tagging and extensive editing easy. Read more about this product at TechCrunch.

No sooner did I write this article, another competitor popped into the market. Jumpcut. As TechCrunch writes, “they are breeding like rabbits“. Making it very clear to everyone that cyberspace is evolving very quickly.

I recently signed up with SA Top Sites hoping to gain some publicity and South African traffic to my site. So far all it has done is reveal the amount of visitors frequenting my site to anyone who wants the details, an untrue reflection as well.

I am completely behind any proudly South African company trying to unite its people, and I think their concept is great. I do get a little tense though when they specify, “SA Top Sites is open to SOUTH AFRICAN websites only. Your content must have some relevance to South Africa or else your application will be rejected.” and then some random Malaysian dude’s technology site is their in the rankings. I think his website title is a bit of a give away: IT-SIDEWAYS: TECH BLOG MALAYSIA. Come on Top Sites, surely there is basic validation preventing this?

I think I have just given this Malaysian fella more traffic than I have received in total from SA Top Sites. Currently, I have had 5 unique visitors come from SA Top Sites. Explain to me its benefits again, besides giving it loads of backlinks, and building its page rank?

If you have a little SA Top Sites badge, let me know how its working for you.

SA Top Sites please don’t ban me now, I’m just trying to help you better your product. Cos I’m a nice guy :)

We have been using iBurst as our business internet connection for the last year or so, we have also resold a few packages. Generally we have been quite happy with the connection, so I’m not going to bash their service. However, iBurst does have its fair share of issues.

Now don’t get me wrong iBurst is a great alternative to Telkom Broadband at home. Its great for personal use, downloading the mail, and surfing the net. Its got no affiliation with Hellkom, I mean Telkom, so no waiting for an ADSL installation, it’s cheap, and its got the freedom of wireless. So you can surf whilst on the toilet, nice! As a business solution I’m not convinced though.

Seeing we are based in the centre of Cape Town we get good signal strength. Surrounded by big buildings does not seem to affect the signal. The signal often drops though, on average once a day. Why? I have no idea, but iBurst always have some excuse. We are constantly resetting the modem, not sure if this is firmware related (we have the latest firmware installed), or signal related. Quite irritating when a deadline looms and I can’t FTP or send big emails. Skype telephone calls are always a problem with iBurst. The only time I seem to be able to have a clear, semi-uninterrupted telephone chat is after business hours. Even then the connection is often lost, and a few attempts at redialing a contact is required.

The administration at iBurst is something else. We have been invoiced once in the last year, an email with about 15 invoices attachments, with a not-so-friendly message requesting immediate payment or our service will be suspended. How can we pay if we haven’t been invoiced?

My tether has been torn, if there is such a saying, and iBurst is no more. Uncapped ADSL is our new, faster, uniterrupted internet supply.

I’m a much happier camper. Let me know your feelings on the wireless giant, iBurst. Are you happy with your connection?