The Scoble Show went inside Twitter HQ recently to chat to co-founder Biz Stone and his dev team about scaling issues, upcoming features and how the idea initiated. Some very interesting insight and super slick offices. Enjoy

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp. It asks the simple question, “what are you doing now” ?

Video after the jump (more…)

While a lot of internet minds were beginning to doubt Facebook’s ability to raise more venture capital after getting a huge $15 billion valuation following a $240 million investment from the blue monster, Microsoft, it seems the stakes are not too high for Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who dropped a $60 million investment in one of the most valuable Internet-only companies on the planet, according to sources close to Facebook.

Ka-shing is not making the investment in Facebook via the companies he controls, but through another investment entity. He also reserves the right to double his investment in Facebook with another $60 million round.

Ka-shing has plenty of zero’s in his bank account –he is considered the richest man in Asia and was named amongst the richest men in the world by Forbes last March with a personal fortune of $23 billion. Although, dispite his investment and that of Microsoft neither will acquire a seat on the Facebook board of directors.

Facebook has now raised just shy of $340 million in capital. That’s enough to keep them going as a private entity for years, if they choose to do so. It would be interesting to know Facebook’s capital burn rate per month to gage how long they can sit on their funding. It’s also interesting to note that this investment could possibly have strings attached with Li-Ka Shings company doing a joint venture with Facebook in Asia.

If you’ve been using Google Maps to get around town, you no doubt know how frustrating it is to punch in the cross street to begin your directions. Starting today, or in the last few days, those using select devices (Blackberrys, Motorolas, etc, but NOT the iPhone) will be able to find their location […]

I just picked up that MyVideo has made changes to their interface with a sexy looking new header (pictured below) and a new content channel area called ‘iViews‘. Their new channel features interviews with prominent South African personalities. Surfing through the MyVideo site I was impressed with the quality of videos on display. I also noticed the MyVideo flyer ads on Facebook promoting their Minkie video which seemed to do well as the video has over 20k views.

In their own words regarding ‘iView’

South Africans are a diverse bunch. Some are incredibly intelligent, some are breathtakingly beautiful, some are both. An unlucky handful are neither. Every week on iViews, MyVideo brings you a fresh new video interview with a well-known South African – we’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the above descriptions they match most closely! Politicians, sports stars, top models, TV personalities – if they’re hot right now – in whatever way – we’ll bring them to you on iViews!

The new header

I attended the 27 Geek Dinner last night at Melrose Arch and witnessed the unveiling of Afrigator beta by one of the founders, Justin Hartman. Afrigator launched earlier this year in Alpha and has now emerged with the ‘beta tag’ and a host of new functionality.

With the new release the Afrigator team has focused on really turning the startup into a social media aggregator instead of just aggregating blogs. This is one of the most notable changes on the new homepage layout which now features podcasts and videos together with the latest blog posts. Down the right hand side the country channels have been kicked further down and have made way for a nifty tabbed content box featuring the latest and most popular aggregated data. Also down the right is the new home for content tags which have been moved from the original loading view.

Venturing deeper into the site you will find a host of new areas - News, Podcasts and Videos. Afrigator has been integrated with the Youtube api so you can provide your Youtube account details and see your videos stream onto the site. They plan to integrate various api’s from the leading social platforms on the web likely Flickr as well which will be a part of a new images section launching in ‘3 weeks’ according to Justin/Stii. (more…)

Google will begin to offer a web based storage system in the coming months - no word on official release date just yet. Dubbed “My Stuff” - at least that’s the internal name - will be free and then cost the user a few green backs (no word on price) if they’d like additional […]

Nielsen//NetRatings, a global leader in Internet media and market research, has revealed the sectors and brands where South Africans are spending the most time online. Categories where online South Africans are spending most of their time online are as follows. News & Weather sites accounted for 23% of all time spent by South Africans online (1.1 million hours) followed by Media & Publishing sites – 16% (0.8 million hours). The ten most engaging categories account for 92% of all time spent by South Africans online.

Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, at Nielsen//NetRatings, comments,

“The online sectors where South Africans spend most of their time highlights the power of the Internet as an information resource. Almost one in every four minutes online is accounted for by a news and weather site.”

It’s also worth noting that the popularity of a sector isn’t necessarily aligned with how much total time it accounts for. Employment, for example, is the ninth most popular category but ranks as the sixth leading sector by total time.

Alex comments further

“The dominance of Media24 in the South African landscape is astonishing when one considers that just over one in every four minutes online is spent within their sites – and when comparing that to the most dominant brands in other countries.

MSN, for example, is the most dominant brand in the UK in terms of time, yet accounts for ‘just’ 12% of total time. Similarly in Australia it’s Nine/MSN which also accounts for 12% and, in the US, it’s AOL which accounts for ‘just’ 9% of total time.”

By categorie

By Brand

[Source Nielsen//NetRatings]

Good news!
Techlasers was kind enough to donate enough money for at least one OLPC computer! My Mom also donated some money, so we’re now at $275.
We’ve got just 4 days left to raise $124 more dollars. Only you can help.
Please send all donations, via Paypal, to info@gadgetreview.com
For more info about the cause checkout […]

T-Mobile Germany felt the squeeze and has finally given in. What happened you ask? Vodafone whined to the German courts that T-Mobile was dominating the iPhone market by selling a locked version of the iPhone. From Vodafone’s perspective this precluded consumers from choosing an alternative carrier. So to satisfy ‘the law; […]

Introducing our latest blogging editor to BandwidthBlog, uber Tech Geek, Johan du Toit 

Great developments in the ICT market this year (2007) opened up great new opportunities to save some hard earned cash. Vodacom dropped data rates, by as much as 61%, while also expanding 3G networks. MTN followed. Smartphones took off in a big way and clever developers seized the opportunity to get compatible software to market.

Fring is such an application. This great piece of software is easy to use, while also being feature rich. Registration and software installation is quick and easy. Just visit http://www.fring.com. It is compatible with most smartphones. It enables you to make calls to your Skype®, MSN® Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk™, SIP and Twitter contacts. The best part is that it is all free. You only pay for your data, but at 10MB per hour it is hardly worth mentioning. The only obstacle to all voice communication to become totally free is that everyone has not installed it yet. It will happen. The drive is huge from the likes of Skype, Google, Fring and Yeigo to become the dominant player in the mobile VoIP arena.

I thought a comparison between Fring and Telkom would be of great interest to us South Africans, since our call and data rates are amongst the highest in the world. If you drop your landline and use this information, you could save good money. You also get to go totally mobile for good.

Just the fact that you have read this far, must mean that you probably already subscribe to some data deal. In my research I used the most expensive rate at R2.00/MB, so you should save even more. To simplify matters, only peak minutes was considered. This makes the table below relevant for small businesses. A thumb suck total, of 300 minutes per month, was divided into different call types. Voipcheap (http://www.voipcheap.com) has the lowest VoIP rates in the world. All calls to the USA are free! All UK landline calls is also free. In this example the saving was 46%. I say it is well worth it. Go for it.