Tim Minchin – If I Didn’t Have You
“I think you’re special, but you fall within a bell curve…”
“As of today, new detailed maps of many South African cities and towns, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and East London, are accessible on Google Maps through any web browser or via Google Maps for Mobile on data enabled handsets. Although already available in South Africa, the map data has been improved dramatically and is now available with additional features. In addition to searching online Maps, Google Maps users will now be able to find businesses and check driving directions. Businesses will be able to add their own business listings for free via Google Maps Local Business Centre.
The map data includes a substantial amount of user generated content provided via Google Map Maker as well as thousands of business listings for South African cities.” Blah blah blah….
What the hell, let’s go check out the changes… maps.google.co.za.
Oh, and they have a “Google Maps stalker mode” too…
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- Google Street View coming to South Africa… (stustake.com)
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The Big Broadband Battle Begins
- Image via Wikipedia
I can hardly contain my excitement: R145 for 5GB! Kick ASS! Competition in the broadband market? Cheaper prices? I think I just peed my pants.
I’m just posting it straight here: (source)
Afrihost set to shake up ADSL market with R 29.00 per GB ADSL service
Local hosting company Afrihost has released the proverbial cat among the pigeons with its R 29.00 per GB ADSL offering. The company today announced that it has cut the price of its ADSL data bundles from R 57 per GB to R 29 per GB.
Afrihost’s 1 GB data bundle now costs R 29.00 per month while the company’s 2 GB, 3 GB and 5 GB ADSL data bundle pricing has been reduced to R 58, R 87 and R 145 respectively. Data top-ups have fallen to R29 per GB and their prepaid data lowered to R49 per GB.
The ADSL bandwidth is provisioned over the Internet Solutions backbone and all accounts come standard with email accounts and webmail access. The accounts are month-to-month contracts with no long term lock-ins.
“With our new offer we wanted to make as BIG a splash as possible and give the most value to our clients – so after much debating and calculating we decided to go as low as we can go,” explains Afrihost CEO Gian Visser.
Afrihost made it clear that it is a limited offer aimed at early adopters. “Remember we can’t guarantee that we will offer this R29.00 deal forever – but what we can guarantee you is that if you are quick enough and signup in time then your price of R29 per GB will be locked in for whatever package you bought,” Visser said.
Existing Afrihost ADSL clients may be happy to hear that their subscription price has also been changed to R 29.00 per GB.
Thank you Afrihost. Much love. Let us hope others follow where you have led the way.
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Google Maps Street View South Africa
South Africa prepare yourself for an invasion of a different type. The Google Maps Street View South Africa project launches today. That hideous monstrosity on the right is the Toyota Prius that over the next months will be peeking over your twelve foot walls to help criminals check on the location of your 46inch Bravia.
No doubt this development is due to that little World Cup 2010 thing that is happening next year, but damn the footage is gonna look terrible and be mostly useless considering the state of construction our country is in. Looking for Rosebank Gautrain station? That’s it – behind the pillars of concrete and the zinc walling. Nelspruit Stadium? It looks like an empty piece of land to me… Well, you get the idea.
Anyway, from the marketing schpiel:
Top 10 Street View tips for users
- Explore parts of the world you’ve always wanted to visit – see famous areas, tourist attractions; buildings and architecture. Or reminisce about places you’ve visited and give recommendations to friends about where to stay and how to get there.
- Preview your holiday accommodation. How close is it from transport and amenities, or the beach?
- Show your overseas or faraway friends and family where you live; where you work; where you had a picnic; where your local drycleaner is.
- Can’t remember the name of that amazing restaurant or clothes store you visited a few months ago? Walk the streets and find it. And then use the driving directions in Google Maps, with Street View images of intersections and landmarks, to get there.
- Use Street View to study the geography, vegetation and landscape of different parts of the world. Teachers can incorporate Street View, Google Maps and Google Earth into lesson plans or arrange a virtual fieldtrip.
- Plan your day virtually – show your party guests where the venue is, or teammates where the weekend sportsground is. Arrange meeting spots with friends. Plan bike trips and walking routes.
- If you’re looking to buy or rent a property, make a more informed decision by taking a virtual walk-through of the area and property you’re interested in. Save time by not going to home-opens that don’t meet your criteria.
- Moving to a new area? Look at nearby amenities such as parks, roads, bus stops, shopping areas and parking when planning your move.
- Helpers and carers can search for buildings which provide wheelchair access, or avoid steps by checking out what a building looks like.
- Does your child have to walk to or from school? Plan their journey, show them local landmarks and look over the walking route together. Or see where their school fieldtrip is taking place.
Well, when they put it like that, I guess it sounds pretty cool. More here.
Related articles:
- Did Kidnapper Tail a Google Street View Vehicle? (mashable.com)
- Did Google Street View capture rapist/kidnapper Garrido, driving his van from crime scene? (boingboing.net)
- Image via Wikipedia
Science and Technology minister Naledi Pandor is the latest victim of unreliable and aging German luxury automobiles, a condition known in car manufacturing circles as the “H1WAN12 (Have 1, Want A New 1 Too) Swine Fool Panic”. Recently she too was forced to order two Mercedes Benz ML350s to ferry her growing ass from meeting to meeting, following the apparent gearbox failure of the two previous cars designated for the Minister.
The cars were both running with the enormously high mileage of 141000km and 106 000km which explains their sudden calamitous failure. The new replacement cars include the latest in ministerial comforts aimed at improving leaders’ ability to make poor decisions in traffic – metallic paint, command navigation, media interface, DVD player, technical off-road package, heated front seats, Xenon active lights, sunroof, run flat tyres and private glass. A spokesperson for the manufacturer, Masipa Dense has expressed shock and horror that the minister did not take the heated rear-seat option. The new cars were purchased at a cost of 28 RDP houses.
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In a similar yet apparently unrelated incident, minister Nathi Mthethwa was also a victim of German engineering when the 2003 BMW X5 and 2006 Audi A8 he recently inherited turned out to be “mechanically unsound”. He replaced these with two “BMW ministerial-edition” X5s totalling the humble sum of R1.4 million, or 26 RDP houses. Audi has declined to comment, but industry insider Jeremy Clarkson has indicated that Audis are driven by cocks these days, a fact that goes a long way towards explaining Charles Nqakula – the minister who the vehicles were in fact inherited from.
Not to be outdone, Minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga dipped into the public treasury for a more sensible approach when considering the nature of the unreliable and trouble-plagued German vehicles. She chose instead to only take one R900 000 BMW 730D and rather replace her previous vehicle with a more reasonable and cheaper option manufactured by Indian mega-company Tata: Her Range Rover Sport TDV8 cost a rather sane R800 000. Reasons given for the choice state that the 4×4 ability of the vehicle will allow her to visit extreme rural areas to ensure the children in those remote regions are given their half-bowl of miele-pap every morning before walking barefoot to attend lessons with no equipment in the open veld beneath the trees.
Collins Spindokotela, minister for the evaluation of corruption, has defended the purchases as within the rules dictated in the ministerial handbook, and indicated he would rather see the frivolous spending being made on good Italian cars which are “…just as unreliable, but much prettier on the eye.”