Archives » May 2011

26 May 2011

Furore over Bitcoin

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MIT’s Technology Review recently published an article stating that speculation has driven the value of a Bitcoin (a digital currency) to jump 4 times, over a period of just three weeks. I attribute this in part to an increase in awareness around the virtual currency over the last 4 weeks (mostly due to the increase in Bitcoin features in online publications). This post therefore looks to examine the hype around this cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is an alternative currency concept which proposes a system for tradeable monetary-like transactions in a peer-to-peer network. Its usability is much like virtual currencies used in online games where users trade virtual currency for goods or fiat currencies (currency that a government has declared legal tender).

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24 May 2011

Embracing Web 2.0: Introduction of Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD’s)

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At present, domain addresses are defined by 21 generic top level domains (gTLDs) i.e. .com and .net and approximately 250 country code Top Level Domain (ccTLDs) such as co.za, .de and .jp. Domains since the advent of the web and e-commerce have always been contested items, with huge sums paid to secure relevant domain titles.

As from mid-2011, this is set to become more competitive and contested as ICANN, the Internet body entrusted with overseeing the naming aspects of the web, opens registration for new generic level domains (gTLD’s). This will enable individuals and organisations to propose and apply for gTLDs associated with particular interests or sectors. The intention behind registering a generic domain name is to assist organisations enhance branding, revenue, security and top level domain user interaction.

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20 May 2011

Net Prophet 2011

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Last week the third annual Net Prophet conference took place in Cape Town, South Africa. What exactly is Net Prophet?

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17 May 2011

Google Technology User Group event of 04 May 2011

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A few weeks ago the members of SWAT’s mobile development team received invites to attend the upcoming Google Technology User Group (GTUG) event in Johannesburg on 04 May 2011. Upon accepting the invitation it became apparent that there was a similar event scheduled in Cape Town (where the South-African office of MIH SWAT is located) but that registration had already closed.

Being firm believers in the Android platform and in what possibilities it holds we registered and excitedly awaited for the time to attend.

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12 May 2011

Book Review: Poke the Box By Seth Godin

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Poke The Box Cover

This was my first attempt at a book of this kind. I must admit that while it was inspiring, there were no earth shattering revelations and one could probably summarize the content of book in a couple of pages. The tone of the book also reminds me of being in an audience with one of those ‘yes..yes..yes’ motivational speakers on stage. I am also having difficulty in understanding the hype and I don’t see why I would need a Poke The Box Handbook to help me implement the lessons in the book.

In all fairness, however, it did succeed in helping me to remember things that have started to fade from memory. Things that are critical to the survival of businesses in the ever changing environments that we find ourselves in. New competitors spring up all around us and technology is advancing at such a tremendous rate. How do we keep our competitive advantage?

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04 May 2011

Getting started with Cloud Foundry using a Node.js and MongoDB application

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Cloud Foundry is industry’s first open source Platform as a Service (PaaS). The goal of Cloud Foundry is to remove the obstacles developers face in building, deploying, running and scaling applications and to do it in an open way so that there is no lock-in to frameworks, application services or clouds. Cloud Foundry offers developers –

  • Choice of developer frameworks. Developers can use Spring for Java, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby and Node.js for Javascript. It also supports other JVM based frameworks like Grails. The design of cloudfoundry is such that it will be easy to support other frameworks in the future.
  • Choice of applications infrastructure services. This refers to the data, messaging and web services that are the building blocks of the applications. Currently cloudfoundry supports MySQL, MongoDB and Redis.
  • Choice of clouds to which to deploy applications. Customers need the flexibility in cloud deployment both for the flexibility reasons as well as for financial reasons. Cloud Foundry can be deployed on top of other infrastructure clouds. It can be deployed on top of AWS, Eucalyptus or OpenStack. It can be deployed on different clouds simply by using different command line options.

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