There is going to be a new FriendFeed design and now that Bret Taylor posted it on the company’s blog, we know it’s going to be official.

The new look has a lot of new features most of them focusing on data organization, which will be integrated as FriendFeed get feedback from the userbase. The new design stays in Beta, until then.

Upload photos with new posts. That’s pretty neat and a lot of users asked for that feature. It allows you to select and upload multiple files to the system at once and without any other downloads.

Define friends lists. It actually means that you can organize your friends into groups. It may be the best feature of the new FriendFeed (and long awaited) because it eases up the “work” to find out what your friends have been doing lately.

Other people’s home feeds. If you’re looking to more activity on FriendFeed then you definitely need to search for more people, so that the home feeds are there to help you out by offering the latest friends’ postings.

Most of these have been long waited on FriendFeed and I believe they’ll be received quite well. What do you think? Do you like the new add-ons?

Mike Stopforth is one of the leading social media consultants in South Africa and his company, Cerebra, has made huge strides in bringing corporate South Africa into the social media realm. During one of my Jozi business trips I managed to sit down with the dudes at Cerebra (and Brandsh which is in the same building) to discuss Blueworld and naturally I snapped some pics to give you a sneak peek into the brand new Cerebra offices. I’m missing a few pics of their foozball table and slick boardroom - so the pics below don’t do the offices justice.

I’ve just heard of it, so I though you’d be interested to know a bit more about ArtRevision, a service that has the World Wide Creative dudes, behind.

Everything started with Yolande Roed - the main person responsible for great painting skills and amazing results - as a hobby but soon developed into a way for making some extra cash. It became a business.

Their services are clear. You either give them a picture and they turn it into an exceptional oil painting, or you prefer the classics, search their gallery and they’ll hand-paint you a replica of a masterpiece. They’re not going to make you a Picasso replica because of copyright issues, but you can expect to get a great painting from the ‘public domain’, as they call it.

Other than being able to pay with a credit card or via EFT, the guys will take a photograph of the painting and mail it to you for “approval”. That’s what serving a customer is all about. And did I mention they ship FREE worldwide?

For those that see it as an opportunity to making money, then you should know that ArtRevision has a reseller program that will pay 15-percent commission on every sale you make.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure my girlfriend would like to turn some of our vacation pictures into oil paintings and put them in the bedroom. What do you thin, will you give them a try?

Bandwidth Blog has pioneered office photos blog posts in South Africa and today we add another addition to our stable of office pics coverage. MIH Swat is the stealth startup from Naspers who builds technology for divisions within the group on a local and international level. They are also behind the Adobe air application Feedalizer which has received acknowledgement at the highest level (Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb). MIH Swat has been in the spotlight recently with local social entrepreneur Rafiq Phillips joining their ranks from Quirk. John Kotsaftis (CIO MIH) who heads up the SWAT team together with Rafiq was kind enough to send us some office pics and video.

John Kotsaftis desk - Apple tricked out

There’s a video after the jump of Michael Yolland (COO of SWAT) and another exec playing Wii Sport tennis (more…)

I popped by the AtPlay offices yesterday for a meeting with Allan Kent who heads up Saatchi & Saatchi’s interactive unit. Bandwidth blog has long had a fetish for snapping office photos and today we bring you a inside look at the open plan industrail look offices of AtPlay where some of South Africa’s top multimedia engineers work. Next up a inside look at MIH Internet’s offices.. keep checking back.

The Wii room

Allan checking out Speakerbox before it went live

In the long series of Digg-failed-acquisitions, there’s a new one at the horizon. Last week, rumors said that the Mountain View giant, Google, was interested in buying, and negotiations (close to $200M) seemed to be in full swing.

But what you know, though they were in the due diligence stage of the deal, viewing the technology and the financial statements, Google called everything off and walked away from the deal. That’s pretty sudden, don’t you think?

Sources close to the companies, said that the deal is off mostly because the top management (Digg really has something like that? Apparently!) team may not be a great fit with Google’s needs. Could there be a personality issue? They didn’t like Kevin Rose? Do you have any better idea, because to be honest as long as the servers stay on and users don’t flee, the technology is great!

No matter what the reasons were, the deal is off and is going to stay off. However, Digg is taking steps and is looking for a new round of financing. Allen & Co. the investment bank that represented them with Google, also has a good reputation for being able to bring massive amounts of financing.

I really wonder if that’s what the shareholders want or if it’s just a safe way of keeping the business live?

The case with Google buying Digg is in the media once again. Apparently the Mountain View company is in ‘final negotiations‘ with the social-news site for an amount that shouldn’t be less than $200 million.

The TechCrunch article that stirred things up, is not unveiling their sources, so knowing that it didn’t happen the first time they reported (in March)  and the fact that this whole deal won’t happen for a few weeks, I’m really cautious this time. I’m sure Google is interested in buying a solution for Yahoo’s Buzz and wants to get their hands on the advertising deal Digg has with MSN, but there’s a long way to selling.

But what if the whole deal turns out to be true? What will happen to the Digg community if there will be a new owner and new staff to take care of the submissions and the front pages. Would you be disturbed? Would there be any changes on the site?

If a survey were to be made, Digg users would definitely choose Google over MSN to be the new owners, but what if the Digg technology would be integrated in google news and digg itself will end up as a side show to voting algorithms in search and news. Isn’t that what the Digg/Reddit revolution was all about when these sites released?

I honestly think that Google won’t do anything hars to make the users go away; they need the pageviews so they’ll please everyone. If it’s someone to make wrong turns it’s the Digg crew as we know it right now.

What do you guys think?

Do you remember Quirk? They are the famous people who developed Search Status last year, the much needed Firefox extension. In March we got word that they’re going to release BrandsEye, the online reputation monitoring tool, but this time it’s something different, and Charl warned us.

Before the rest of us, he managed to get his eyes on the Quirk eMarketing book and said that it has “so much juicy info and a lot of recent case studies”. But what you know, the book is available for download and the best part, it’s for free.

The Essential Guide to Online Marketing was released and licensed under the Creative Commons so that students, educators and practitioners in the corporate sector can use it and benefit from it.You can download the free full text book (12.6 MB pdf link) or buy it online or from one of the many book stores that are stocking it.

Just get to read it as fast as you can because it’s full of wisdom and great case studies. Let us know what you liked in it, and what you can add yourself.

It’s usually hard to explain to others that you’re working online and that it really pays off. They never understand what exactly you can do online other than IM, Hi5 and such. For most regular people, the internet is comprised of Google where they search for stuff, email and some entertainment websites.

The idea of making money on the Internet is a joke for them.

A bunch of people from South Africa including Pam Sykes, Jo Duxbury and Walter Pike decided to take action. They facilitated an event by soloists, for soloists, to spread the knowledge around.

Flying Solo SA is going to be a UnConference for freelancers and other soloists that will begin on Saturday July 26 at the Wild Fig in Cape Town and one week later on Saturday August 2 in Johannesburg, at a venue to be confirmed.

Some of the discussion topics are

• Marketing on a shoestring: What’s most effective? And how do we turn the recession to our advantage?
• What we can learn from the suits: Managing clients, managing money, managing contracts.
• Getting overseas clients and offshore income streams.
• Support networks and collaborations that work.
• Killing the WAB monster – what really works to stop procrastination?
• Systems, accounts, tax and other scary housekeeping stuff.
• Making money: Setting rates, how to charge, dealing with banks.
• What makes a happy client?

Just seeing the topics and I know it’s going to be a great place to attend, so if you are from Cape Town or Johannesburg you may not want to miss it. Check out the Flying Solo website and get your name on the list to make sure you’ll have a chair at the UnConference.

If you want to sponsor the whole thing, don’t be shy, the guys are waiting for your ideas.

Google announced browser-based Google Talk for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch today. Although it’s not in the form of an iPhone application, using the iPhone scripting libraries Google created a similiar environment on your iPhone than what you used to on your desktop.  In your iPhone browser, just go to www.google.com/talk, sign in and start chatting. Typing on your iPhone screen is quite tedious hopefully the screen keyboard is better with the iPhone 3G.

Since this is a web app, Google Talk for the iPhone only works when it is the active window in Mobile Safari. Close the web broswer, or switch to a different window and you’ll show up as unavailable in Google Talk.

With such a basic service why did it take Google Labs so long to release a iPhone enabled GTalk, perhaps they are saving the best for their own Android?