South Africa News, Travel and fun Blog

President George W Bush signed a law on Tuesday which allows for the creation of an online database for tracking government spending - within certain parameters.

The idea behind the new legislation is to create greater transparency and accountability between government and taxpayers.

Bush explained: “Information on earmarks will no longer be hidden deep in the pages of a federal budget bill, but just a few clicks away. This legislation will give the American people a new tool to hold their government accountable for spending decisions. When those decisions are made in broad daylight, they will be wiser and they will be more restrained.”

The signing ceremony was held in the Old Executive Office Building alongside the White House in Washington DC. Also present were lawmakers and Internet bloggers who had taken part on the process of getting the new law through Congress. There was some delay caused by certain Senate members but with the assistance of and pressure from the bloggers the bill was finally advanced.

The Web site will go live by 1 January 2008, and will list federal grants and contracts for over $25,000. Around $1 trillion in government spending will be tracked on the database. Restrictions will be placed on those classified for national security reasons.

The site is specifically targeted at the man and woman in the street who would like to know how their tax is being spent but are not familiar with the budget processes.

As Bush elaborated, “The Web site will allow our citizens to go online, type in the name of any company, association, or state or locality and find out exactly what grants and contracts they’ve been awarded. By allowing Americans to Google their tax dollars, this new law will help taxpayers demand greater fiscal discipline.”

The beautiful Mother City of Cape Town has been honoured at the 13th World Travel Awards, held this year in Turks and Caicos Islands, off Miami, on Thursday night.

The popular coastal South African city was awarded trophies for the following prestigious awards.

‘Africa’s Leading Destination’

‘Africa’s Leading Hotel’ – for the Mount Nelson Hotel

‘Africa’s Leading Airport’ – for Cape Town International Airport

Cape Town was not the only South African nominee to receive kudos at the gala ceremony, known as the ‘Oscars of the Travel World’.

The Shamwari Game Reserve, the Durban International Convention Centre, Sun City Resort and South African Airways all received awards for excellence.

The W.T.A’s are nominated annually by 160 000 professionals in the travel industry, drawn from 120 countries around the globe.

Among the sectors up for nomination are conference centres, travel destinations, airlines, hotels and companies all around the world.
The awards encourage healthy competition across the board. World Travel Awards president Graham Cooke confirms this, saying: “Since the inception of the awards in 1993, we have seen a growing sophistication in the travel and tourism trade, and increased competition.

“Voted for independently by travel professionals worldwide, our award winners are having a major impact and influence on the world’s travel and tourism industry.

“They are true innovators and benchmarks for our trade, especially in the areas of customer service, technology, operational efficiency, product offering and style.”

Love bingo? Then you’ll love this watch!

This funky and eye catching design displays the time in bingo style.

 The unusual EleeNo concept was designed as part of the Handless Timewear project.

The watch face is inspired by a bingo card, with a striking black face making it stand out even more.

While it may be tricky to read initially, once you have the concept it all becomes clear.

The dots in the outer area display the hours from 1 - 12 while the inner dots show the minutes. Then a small red marker on the inner dots shows minutes in a more traditional manner.

Despite it’s novel and cutting edge looks however, the watch has only the time telling function so don’t expect it to be able to do any fancier tricks!

Just in from Bigmouthmedia comes a report that Google Sitemaps, recently re-branded as Google Webmaster Central,  has implemented a fantastic new feature, letting you decide just how often Google crawls your site!

5 Values are available, ranging from Fastest to Slowest. It needs to be kept in mind that the faster values use the most bandwidth so don’t miscalculate when choosing.

However this innovation is still in the trial stages still, so don’t be surprised if you can’t locate it on your Google Sitemaps account just yet.

Spokesperson for Google Sitemaps explains:

“We are testing an alpha version of our new tool with a small percentage of webmasters who use Sitemaps. You should leave this control at the Normal setting unless you are having trouble with the speed at which Googlebot is crawling your server.

Simply select the rate at which you would like the Googlebot to crawl your server and click save. During this stage of testing, we will evaluate requests to determine the best way of using this data and providing this tool to everyone.”

The purpose behind Google Sitemaps is to provide a control panel for webmasters, offering statistics on searches, revealing crawling errors and allowing the submission of sitemaps which enable Google to locate their pages faster.

Cape Town surfers took up the challenge and entered the Guinness World Record’s books with their ‘Most Surfers on a Single Wave’ attempt.

And 73 surfers did the city proud as they surfed into the record books last Sunday afternoon (17 September) at Surfer’s Corner, Muizenberg.

The local community beat the previous record of 44 surfers set by Lahinch Surf Club, Ireland, in May of this year.

They also thrashed the unconfirmed claim of 53 surfers to a wave submitted by Bali.

Dene Botha of the organizing body, Kahuna Surfing Academy, was over the moon at the result. She says 349 surfers had registered for the event. Botha adds, “We made six attempts in an hour and also registered 69, 68 and 64 on the three other waves.”

The event was organized with another goal in mind. The local surfing and swimming community in the False Bay region has been plagued by shark attacks in recent years, and the problem seems to be escalating. The record attempt was initiated as a fun event to bring this problem to the fore while raising funds to support the non-profit Shark Spotters – a group of volunteers who keep a close eye on the waters from the surrounding mountains and alert the authorities on the beach when sharks are spotted in the water.

This organization is working with the City to try protect the natural eco-systems and the rights of the sharks while ensuring the safety of bathers and surfers alike.

As far as the record attempt goes, video evidence has been submitted to the Guinness World Record organization in London for official registration.

The Googleplex Offices are renowned for the whiteboards that line the office walls. This is where the Google employees get to express themselves and write up ideas and thoughts – a kind of creative thinking outlet for the whole office!

One of the ideas which came up on the boards recently was the screening of Google advertisements on cinema movie screens, sponsoring the film costs thus enabling the public to view movies for free.

The idea sounds interesting, but is it practical?

A key component in marketing is targeting the ad to the right market. With Google covering such a broad spectrum of information used by consumers from all walks of life, so this aspect may be do-able.

Keeping track of the effectiveness of advertisements screened during movies is a lot more difficult than tracking online ads. This is why only certain sectors utilise big screen ads, which are also harder to track than billboards, radio and television when it comes to effectiveness. This hesitance to break into big screen advertising could carry through into movie-screened Google ads.

Bearing in mind that in many countries product and service advertising already make up a good 30 minutes of pre-main feature ads, along with trailers, it doesn’t seem as if Google has anything different to offer in this field.

I feel that Google are right in wanting to branch out and not keep all their ‘eggs in one basket’ when it comes to advertising.
However big-screen advertising is not a new or fresh idea and already has certain limitations over and above the ones discussed in this article.

I don’t feel that what is being suggested meets the requirements of a new line of advertising.

Back to the whiteboard, guys!

The latest research to come out from Intermedia.NET confirms what many have suspected for some time.

IT ‘nerds’ has cultivated an image, which is almost as instantly recognizable as dreadlocks on a Rasta or bling on a hiphop star.

Do you know anyone in the office who may be seen wearing any of the following discriminating items of apparel?

Heavy metal T-shirts? (IT’s are twice as likely to be seen sporting one of these)
Ponytail (34% more likely)
Black jeans  (we’re talking a whopping 63%)

Techies are also keen on carrying Maglites and Leatherman’s, and are often seen wearing dated eye-glasses  - unfortunately true to the  ‘nerd’ image they try so hard to eschew.

Oh, and get this.  These guys are 32% less likely to wear clean clothes daily.

On a more positive note, the research indicates that IT staff will opt for an expensive suit over a cheaper one.

The biggest question is, will the suit be clean?

Statistics tend to say no….

Following a tip-off from Dutch authorities, the Australian Communications and Media Authority are investigating a man who maybe responsible for sending 2 billion spam emails.

The man, whose identity may not be revealed, pending the outcome of the investigations, allegedly sent the unsolicited and illegal spam emails to Internet users around the world.

The subject of most of the emails was the renowned anti-impotence drug, Viagra.

Australia carries heavy penalties for illegal spamming. If found guilty, the alleged spammer could be paying a fine of up to A$1.1 million (US$823,826) per day - the maximum penalty for repeat offenders.

The man is said to have set up his spamming system by renting 35 servers from an independent Internet service provider based in the Netherlands. This was at a cost of US$10,493 per month each, which indicates that the illegal business was clearly making a sizable profit. He is said to have been sending the spam on a daily basis for at least a year, which would bring the total number sent well into the billions.

Danyel Molenaar of the Dutch Independent Regulator of Post and Telecommunications has confirmed his rental of the servers.

Although this seems a large volume, experts say it is comparatively ‘small potatoes’ when viewed alongside the numbers of spam sent globally every year. This indicates that the man was probably working privately and not as part of a large syndicate.

Spamming is rife worldwide. The phenomenon, responsible for affecting most Internet users at some point, is notoriously difficult to stop. The basic idea behind spamming is sending unsolicited emails in the hope that some of the receivers will be tempted to respond - and it is clear that many do, or the trend would have died out.

Lyn Maddock, the Australian authority’s chairwoman, reported that the man was thought to have sent over 2 billion e-mails. The man’s home has been combed for evidence. No further details of the case are at present available.

More sophisticated spammers can reportedly send out about half a million spam e-mails an hour – that’s over a billion e-mails a day.

This amazing astronaut photograph (ISS006-E-22939) shows a unique view of the metropolis of London, Britain’s capital city. Revealed by the image is the sprawling city’s electrical lighting, which offers insight into the urban density and infrastructure. 

It is fair to assume that the most brightly lit areas have the largest population, and one can see that the density lessens as the light intensity dwindles outward from the core towards the London Orbital. This is the circular motorway that encircles the city. 

Scattered in the darker area around are bright spots which are indicative of towns and smaller cities, as far as Hastings on the coast. 

The two major International airports of Heathrow and Gatwick are indicated, visible as more intensely lit-up areas. Images such as this one are useful for observation and updating information on the urban regions of the world, through the correct interpretation. 

Of course, weather and precipitation patterns can also be viewed. For instance the heat from the city has burned off or not allowed the development of low cloud or fog which is visible as smudges over some of the smaller, cooler populated places on the outskirts. 

The image was captured on digital camera by the crew of the International Space Station on the evening of 4 February 2003, at 19h22 local London time. It was released by the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory at the Johnson Space Centre.

View similar images of other areas at the NASA-JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

A British scientist’s recent announcement that he had found a way to develop a drug that mimics the happy effects of alcohol–sociability and relaxation–without producing next day headaches.

David Nutt said he had also developed a way to instantly sober up from the fake drug, by using a drug now used to treat tranquilizer overdoses. 

It’s very unlikely, however, that the drugs would ever be available over the counter or be sold at bars. The new wonder drug would be regulated under drug laws not like alcohol which is regulated under the food and drink law. 

“Alcohol has a very preferential status because it is sold as a foodstuff,” Nutt said. “If we could change the law, 10 years or so down the road we would have an alternative to alcohol that at least some people would prefer.”