News about news

An attempt at creating a news website that actually looks like one:
http://journ.ru.ac.za/2k4students/hilton/news/

Just come to Cape Town

A new online magazine about Cape Town, come2capetown.com, which was quietly launched last year, has experienced fast growth over the past few months. Co-founders of the magazine, Manc Zandhuis and Guus Bierens, decided to create the magazine site after the realisation that South Africa’s perception abroad was negative. Zandhuis also says that most people (including Capetonians) don’t even know what’s going on in the city. Until June 2004, the site focussed on getting users to subscribe to a monthly e-mail newsletter, but this has changed. “We’ve moved away from that and the newsletters have become a small part of four linked sites – essentially the same site in four different languages (English, German, Dutch and Flemish) for four different markets. The local site is based at Cape Town’s Bandwidth Barn. The Bandwidth Barn is a always-on, high-speed, networked building in Strand Street which provides small IT start-ups with the infrastructure they need. “We’re here because of this unique initiative,” says Zandhuis, “The Internet is our business and with such resources available, we can plan huge things for the future”.

Also on my site.

Their dot com dream lives on

SafariNow.com currently represents over 2000 suppliers in Africa via almost 100 websites. The site is based in Cape Town and launched in early 1999. It started off as a small travel site that took bookings for guesthouses. Partners Matthew Swart and Brad Shrimpton then decided to take the site to a new level, with the creation of SafariNow.com. Their growth was fuelled by partnerships with other travel service websites like SAA, World Online (now Tiscali), iafrica.com and M-Web. This meant that they could take their content to a large amount of users, says Shrimpton. They work as a “sort of plug-in” on other sites, which sees both sides win. Both partners see the Web as integral to their future: they wouldn’t be where they are without it. SafariNow is busy developing new ways in which their content can be syndicated and believe with the right technology may hit onto something really big.

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Networking the V&A Waterfront

A unique travel service which was launched over 2 years ago, is proving to be very popular with guests at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront Clock Tower Precinct. The precinct offers a state-of-the-art Tourism Centre which links both visitors and tenants to multi-million Rand technology. The entire building is networked, says Noer Asmodien, Network Manager of the V&A Waterfront. The Waterfront management company sees IT as a strategic business unit rather than just a service. This visionary outlook means that the company wanted to use IT to create facilities that would give it an revenue stream and make it money, rather than costing it money. Asmoedien believes that Internet is at the centre of this approach, “this is one of the ways that we’ve been able to afford this world-class infrastructure”. He says that everyone - all his tenants and all their visitors – want to be connected. With faster and faster connections becoming available, they feel that they’re going to be offering the best service in the Foreshore area.

Also on my site.

Web services make business easy

Analysts believe that web services are fast becoming the main way in which business processes are exposed and accessed in the enterprise. Web services refer to a family of technologies that aim to universally standardise the way applications (and parts of businesses) talk to one another: connecting systems, business partners, and customers cost-effectively, via the Web. These services include technology like Extensible Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) protocol. XML and SOAP are two of the technologies gathering widespread support and use in industry. XML’s primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured text and information (including documents) across the Internet. Its chief strength is that it is compatible with web and internet protocols. SOAP is based on XML and can also run on top of all Internet protocols. It is mainly used for exchanging messages between computer software.

Metropolis* showed how its not meant to be done

While 2000 saw a lot of activity on the South African business-to-business (B2B) market, the three years since then have been relatively calm. Former B2B heavyweight Metropolis* provided most of the activity in 2000 when it closed all of its B2B portals in October of that year, and then delisted from the JSE (after losing R79-million). Metropolis* were running seven vertical B2B portals (sites which provide a “subWeb” of information, product listings, and other features) including techafrica.com, commsafrica.com and sheafrica.com. Metropolis* and their holding company Primedia admitted that they burnt their fingers in the B2B market where revenue was hard to come by. The official line from Metropolis* was that revenue from their vertical B2B marketplaces turned out to be slower than anticipated and the cost of building the infrastructure was higher than they had anticipated. Internet strategist, Arthur Goldstuck says that it was market sentiment rather than a market reality that led to companies turning from B2C commerce to B2B commerce in the first place. These exchanges all focused on signing up customers, they forgot to bring in the suppliers who would flog the stuff to the customers.

Shuttleworth boosts Open Source

A project funded by IT billionaire, Mark Shuttleworth, promoting the use of Open Source Software (OSS) was launched in May this year. To date, those involved with the ‘Go Open Source’ campaign have been satisfied with its impact in South Africa.
In the first two months of Go Open Source, over 3000 users have requested a copy of “The Open CD’ (contained OSS) promoted by the campaign. Thousands more copies of the CD, however, have also been distributed to schools, government offices and to the public at shopping centres and exhibitions. The CD contains the Open Office suite (including a word processor, spreadsheet programme, e-mail client, and browser), graphic editing programmes, utilities and some games. Thomas Black, Open Source Program Manager at The Shuttleworth Foundation, says that Go Open Source’s aim is to help South Africans to understand why the early adoption of open source software gives them an advantage in the global economy. Mark Shuttleworth is optimistic and believes that Open Source is the future of the software industry. “In just a few years OSS will become the standard for computers around the world.”

Gaming narratives in everyday media?

Computer games are inherently separate from traditional forms of media, but are still played on technology that forms some building blocks of media (televisions and computers). The central difference between computer games and traditional media is the level of interactivity: computer games respond directly to input from their audience (the player). The easiest form of media to compare computer games with would be the Internet (which includes online journalism). The Internet, by its definition, allows interactivity from a user (or reader) point of view. While the technology is available for this level of interactivity, it doesn’t necessarily mean that content on the web is this interactive. Journalism created for publishing on the web could therefore, theoretically, be built around the concept of computer gaming narratives. Some sites are already creating stories around a framework where choices made by the reader influence how the reader reads or experiences the story (think of some of the work being done by Colors).
Interestingly, an aspect of computer game narratives that has received very little attention up till recently is the introductory video in games. This sequence sets the scene for the game which follows. In terms of genre, they perform a similar function to movie trailers; but in story-telling they already exist within journalism. In various forms of journalism, intro sequences set the tone and provide background information for stories that are about to be told (documentaries, tv news, radio... even in writing).

Play soccer like a pro

Sport:
We’ve all seen sports games like NHL, NBA, Championship Golf, Cricket, Rugby and Soccer. These games follow a definite formula and mimic real-world leagues and championships. EA Sports seems to dominate this genre of computer games with new sports being added all the time (boxing, baseball, etc). FIFA 2004 is an example of just how detailed these sports games have become. The game allows you to choose a team (either a club or country) and play in different leagues. The graphics have become so realistic that if you play as one of the top sides in the world, you don’t even have to look on the name on the player’s jersey to know who it is – it’s that detailed. The biggest problem with sports games is creating a control interface that makes moving players and playing the game easy. FIFA 2004 didn’t quite get it right, but with the amazing frequency that these games are released, there’s always next year!
Official game site

Also at: http://journ.ru.ac.za/2k4students/hilton/game

Street racing taken to the extreme

Racing:
One of the most well-known and most-played types of computer game are racing games. While some are based on real life championships (think World Rally and F1), Need for Speed Underground is set in the world of street racing. Whereas you still need the win races in this game (like in other racing games), the added aim of Need for Speed Underground is to upgrade your car throughout the races. Obviously, certain improvements on your car will make it faster and handle better thereby increasing you chances of winning races. Added to the basic game are two different ways to play: the drift and drag mode. In the drift mode you get to power slide around a small circuit, and in the drag mode you race along a drag strip (where the challenge is to time your gear changes perfectly). Need for Speed Underground blends arcade racing with the ability to modify your car throughout perfectly and is a brilliant example of what a racing game should be.
Official game site

Also at: http://journ.ru.ac.za/2k4students/hilton/game

Build the city, break the city

Strategy:
Strategy games are getting more and more realistic. In the new instalment of Sim City from Maxis, for example, there are a number of improvements on previous versions, the most striking of which is the amount of detail in the game. What Sim City basically allows you to do is be the city mayor and build, plan and manage an entire city (by zoning industrial, residential and commercial areas, working out a monthly budget, building infrastructure, etc). As far as landscapes go, you can now create beaches and canyons and even add wildlife to your map. Everything in Sim City 4 is simply more realistic and accurate. The graphics engine handles 3D graphics, although at a high resolution game play does suffer (unless you’re running a decent gaming PC). The artificial intelligence has been improved to such a level that, unlike other games in the genre, even when you’re making money, you can’t simply increase the speed to compound a cash stockpile. Things can and do go wrong.
Official game site

Also at: http://journ.ru.ac.za/2k4students/hilton/game