Month: September 2006

School for Scoundrels – Nice Guys Graduate Last

Posted on By thomas

Just spotted a new movie which looks like Wedding Crashers meets Hitch and from the director of Old School, responsible for a number of Frat Pack movies. There does seem to be a trend for Hollywood to make more aggresively guy friendly movies in recent years. This one in particular looks really good and hopefully wakes up a lot of guys from them “nice guy syndrome.

School for Scoundrels starring Jon Heder Billy Bob Thornton

In SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS, Jon Heder plays Roger, a beleaguered New York City meter maid who is plagued by anxiety and low self-esteem. In order to overcome his feelings of inadequacy, Roger enrolls in a top-secret confidence-building class taught by the suavely underhanded Dr. P (Billy Bob Thornton). Aided by his assistant, Lesher (Michael Clarke Duncan), Dr. P uses unorthodox, often dangerous methods, but he guarantees results: Employ his techniques and you will unleash your inner lion. Surrounded by a band of misfit classmates — Walsh (Matt Walsh), who’s dying to move out of mother’s basement; Diego (Horatio Sanz), a punching bag for his hen-pecker of a wife; and Eli (Todd Louiso), a shy guy just looking for female companionship — Roger’s confidence grows and he makes his way to the

head of the class, even finding the courage to ask out his longtime crush, Amanda (Jacinda Barrett). But Roger quickly discovers that star students have a way of catapulting Dr. P’s competitive side into high gear. Soon enough, the teacher sets out to infiltrate and destroy Roger’s personal and professional life. Nothing is off limits for Dr. P, not even the object of Roger’s affection. In order to show Amanda Dr. P’s true colors, Roger must rally his new friends and find a way to beat the master at his own game.

 

Cell C, SA's third mobile operator forced to end Wimax trials

Posted on By thomas

Saw a story on ITWeb about Cell C being forced to shut down its WiMax trials here. Now this is the kind of bullshit that ICASA gets up to when nobody is looking. Well everybody is actually looking at them these days. And they are abusing their power which in effect slows down the rate of Internet access adoption in South Africa. We should do away with this regulator and open the market up completely. Let evolution take its course and survival of the fittest will show you who’s the best.

 

Dating Coach responds to critics in Sunday Times

Posted on By thomas

This is a response I wrote to the Editor of the Metro section of the Sunday Times, in response to readers feedback published here.

Being a dating coach is a part-time interest and my primary occupation is online research. My online dating research project has been widely covered since 2004 in various media ranging from Business Day to True Love, television shows like Carte Blanche, 3Talk as well as the controversial show “SEX, etc” on M-NET last year, with sexologist, Dr Elna McIntosh, where I was interviewed on how the Internet is changing the sexual behaviour of people today. Therefore there is no doubt about my level of professionalism and credibility in this regard.

In general most guys wear lots of bland colours and this results in them all looking very similar. By creating contrast with bright colours a man stands out from the pack and thus uses what is called “peacocking” in evolutionary biology terms. Charles Darwin’s theories on sexual selection explains this phenomenon in great detail and more recently in Matt Ridley’s book, The Red Queen (see chapter 5: The Peacock’s Tale).

Women can buy their own drinks and are not going to bars or clubs for men to do so. Instead they seek stimulation conversations and when a man buys her a drink BEFORE getting to know her it can be considered supplication.

Again giving a woman a compliment before she has an opportunity to demonstrate what is compelling about her, puts the man in the same boat as all the other men who have given her a similar compliment. A woman will value a compliment about something unique or different from the generic, overused, “you’re beautiful” type of compliments that most men give women.

Lastly most men know they should be using condoms. And those who don’t are ignorant of the risks of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Based on my research the general difference between how men and women view sex is best described by this analogy: when a man sees an attractive woman he first thinks “what would sex be like with her”, while a women seeing an attractive man may think, “what would a relationship be like with him.” You only have to ask yourself why men, over the centuries continue to pay for sex with prostitutes. And you will realise they are in most cases not looking for a relationship with the prostitute, rather they want sexual gratification. So a man who wants to establish a sexual relationship with a woman can avoid falling into the “just friends” category by having a rule that says, if by the third date he has not had sex with her, he should move on because his chances of forming a sexual relationship with her diminishes drastically and she may in fact not be attracted to him for all good reason e.g. lack of confidence.

The aim is not to have sex with every woman you meet but to understand how to form a sexual relationship with a woman that you desire to have one with.

 

Internet in Zimbabwe go Farming!

Posted on By webmaster

The Zimbabwean government owned TelOne the owner of the main Satellite firm is reported to have cut its own international bandwidth due lack of finances. With the country ‘s economic future at a state of collapse, doing Internet Business in Zimbabwe like farming is a mere mess. In reaction to the mess TelOne Spokesperson confirmed that, the financial crisis have been reported to the Zimbabwean Researve Bank. These latest Internet crisis have caused stear remarks from the Zimbabwean Internet Service Providers’ Association.TelOne expressed the views that, TelOne had meanwhile ventured into farming by contracting tobacco and cotton farmers to produce crops for export, in a bid to generate foreign currency. Chingwaru said TelOne would get $12 million from the recent tobacco selling season-Reuters

For full story click here.

For more about the Zimbabwean Internet Service Providers Association click here

 

Sunday Times readers respond to my feature in the Metro

Posted on By thomas

As you may or may not know I was featured in the Sunday Times Metro section (Gauteng only) on 10 September 2008. This interview was done on the previous Thursday and there was a quick photo shoot in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

Well I just came back from a week in Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown where I attended a the first ever blogging conference at Rhodes University. During one of the speed speaking session there was a woman who had read the same article on her flight from Johannesburg, and she asked me how I could give this kind of advice.

This was the advice: If you are a guy and you have not had sex with a woman by the 3rd date, move on! The simple reasoning here is that most guys are not trying to find love, they just want to get laid. And if you have not had sex by 3rd date you are very likely to end up in the friends zone.

This is just one of many tenets from Leykis 101. Yes, I understand South Africa has a high HIV infection rate and I, likeTom Leykis, recommend you always, always wear a condom. Even you married guys, or guys in long term relationships. If you are having risky sexual encounters or anonymous sex with lots of women without any condom you are taking a huge health risk. So be prepared because next to a possible sexually transmitted disease you can also get the woman pregnant and you will have to deal with that consequence as well.

 

Day2 Speed Speaking & Blogging Workshops

Posted on By thomas

Today I didn’t participate in the speed speaking sessions. And I sat through Mike Stopforth’s quick demo of the software he uses to make his blogging experience more integrated and easier to manage and publicise. Myself and Emeke Okafor conducted the monetizing blog workshop. I gave and overview of the specifics of Google Adsene, how it works, how to register and showed them my latest account balance.

Emeka spoke mostly at a higher level and tried to manage the expectations of the people there. As he says it takes a long time to get results from investment in a blog or website. The income also does not always come directly from affiliate programs and could come from business referrals some time afterwards. There was an excellent workshop on photo blogging by Andrew Heavens, a photo journalist living in Ethiopia.

 

Day2 Blogging Conference Business and Marketing panel

Posted on By thomas

Alec Hogg & Ramon ThomasThe business and marketing panel was where I was got my chance to do a presentation on blog marketing. Well before we get into the details I want tell you about Alec Hogg. The Moneyweb founder had some very potent things to say to the audience. And it was about time. The activism and the political diatribe as well as the media and journalism speak is important but its not doing to much to change the situation in the right direction. Alec Hogg claimed Moneyweb is making about R65,000 per month from Google Adsense alone! My last cheque was for US$500 😉 With a compliment of 15 full time journalist he will be supplying them with laptop’s and 3G cards from October so they can work from wherever they are. And this is a very good example of how an information business can succeed in a country with less then 4 million Internet users. People need to stop complaining and follow the examples already set by people like Alec Hogg who started Moneyweb from the top of his garage in 1997! Now I was up next and you can download my presentation on using blogs as part of your online marketing here.

Emeka OkaforEmeka Okafor, blogging at the Timbuktu Chronicles gave a general overview of his blog and the reasons behind it. Identifying unusual entrepreneurial businesses in Africa and highlighting them because they are not covered in the mainstream business media like Fortune, Forbes, Motley Fool, etc. All in all I wish this panel had more time to get into the specifics. Alec Hogg took most of the questions and answered them with the same gusto as his talk.

 

Day2 Blogging Conference Online Activism Panel

Posted on By thomas

Ethen Zuckerman Alaa Abd El Fattah Ory OkollohThe activism session started on an okay foot with Ethan Zuckerman, hosting the panel discussion. Next to him was two leading online political activists: Alaa Abd El Fattah, the Egyptian blogger who has been jailed for his activism and Ory Okolloh from the Kenyan Pundit blog. Ory’s session was to the point and highlights the power of the Internet and exposing and opening up what’s the reality of the political wheeling and dealing in African countries. South Africa is fortunate because our government does have a substantial web presence. Sadly less then 10% of the population are online. The 2nd talk by Alla was exciting to start with and almost like a Michael Moore documentary 😉 Well it dragged out and eventually I lost interest. Enough about the activism and lets teach people how to make money! That way they’ll take responsibility for their own destinies.

 

Day2 We The Media Panel

Posted on By thomas

Matthew Buckland publisher Mail & Guardian onlineThe 2nd day of the Blogging Indaba opened with a cracker session, We The Media, featuring some heavy hitters like Matt Buckland, publisher of the Mail & Guardian online; Tom Johnson, professor emeritus of journalism at San Francisco State University and co-founder of the Institute for Analytic Journalism; and Peter Verweij, senior lecturer at the School for Journalism at Utrecht the Netherlands. Matthew Buckland is a veteran in the online arena, previously acting as editor of the M&G online, the first online newspaper in South Africa, since 1994. He spoke very directly and straightforwardly about the M&G’s blogging service, blogmark. It’s a system locally developed and M&G is still trying to get the right mix of freedom, and regulation to prevent law suits.

Peter Verwij Tom JohnstonPeter Verweij was also very entertaining in his talk because he didn’t use any Powerpoint and he faced the audience directly. He seems like one of the old school academic journalists and made some good points on how to bridge the gap between journalists and bloggers, who are contributing to news stories i.e. bloggers who are breaking news stories or normal, every day people who took the photos from the Tsunami. Tom Johnson’s presentation was the best of the morning because he advocated complete freedom and open approach to the Internet.

Download my 2nd podcast interview with Tom Johnson.

 

South Africa's first Blogging Conference

Posted on By thomas

Ramon Thomas @ Africa's 1st Blogging ConferenceThe conference has been a long time coming. And being a blogger myself I just had to attend. Because it is such an excellent niche topic “blogging” this conference will grow in popularity in the coming years. I applaud the people from New Media Lab @ Rhodes University’s School of Journalist & Media Studies who is responsible for this initiative. There is a need to take this to the masses of entrepreneurs and business people elsewhere in South Africa. And therefor I’m launching the first ever blog marketing training workshop in October.

14 September 2006: Day 1
I missed the welcome and opening by organiser Colin Daniels and Prof Guy Berger, head of Journalism @ Rhodes University. Anyway Ethan Zuckerman opened the conference with a great overview of the state of blogging with particular reference to journalists, the threats and the opportunities. The Editors Panel was slightly enlighting. Chris Roper & Bryan Porter discussed the Naspers/24.com blogging strategy. The worst presentation of the day for me has to go to Ray Hartley, Sunday Times. This guy should read Seth Godin’s Really Bad Powerpoint. The Web 2.0 panel with Mike Stopforth leading the charge went directly into all the latest technology and briefly discussed the application of it. The problem with Web 2.0 is that its a limiting buzzword that will die out in a few years time as the Internet continues to revolutionise how we do what we do, every single day. Ian Gilfillan spoke very philosophically about technology and it reminded me of the Tao of Programming after he quoted a Zen koan.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dci/243026809/

After participating in the “speed speaking” session after lunch I skipped the Civil Society panel in the afternoon because I was running out of time to prepare for my present ion the next day. The evening we had a cocktail party in Grahamstown and I was kicking myself for having to leave early and drive back to Uitenhage, where I was staying with my mom.

Download my podcast with Ian Gilfillian from Greenman blog.