Written for South African satellite television subscribers.

My DIS'-SA-TV-A rant bemoaned the lack of a truly customized, pay-per-view service for South African television viewers. Now, here's a contrarian view as to why local satellite television subscribers who want to pay only for programming they are interested in (rather than subsidising the ridiculous lifestyles of the "Dim {Kardashians} and Dangerous {Snooki & Sitch}") should not 'hold their breath' for such a product offering from DSTV:

One of Umberto Ecco's most humorous articles 'Does the Audience have Bad Effects on Television?' (from Apocalypse Postponed) saw him confronting the belief amongst certain intellectuals that television is "bad for its audience" by showing that the inverse was true; television audiences had rejected many state-subsidised efforts aimed at promoting High Culture to them. This came to mind after a recent u-turn by Multichoice: I was pleasantly suprised and impressed that DSTV had ditched daily scheduling from their April subscriber magazine. However, it later became clear that I was in the minority. Multichoice did a subscriber poll in May and promised to return to the old format by August due to customers' negative feedback concerning this change.

This may reflect several truths about DSTV television subscribers:

1. They resist change;
2. They prefer to read their magazine to know exactly when shows will appear on their favourite channels (even though the reason DSTV initially gave for dropping scheduling from its magazine was their concern that it became outdated during the month);
3. They do not want to use their electronic TV guide to get more accurate information on programming;
4. They may find it easier to search the magazine for content they are interested in, rather than using the electronic TV guide (and, yes, IMHO its 'search for' function could definitely benefit from a Google-sque makeover);
5. They like to know for a month-in-advance what's on television, rather than the week-in- advance that their electronic TV guide shows them;
6. They may prefer to schedule their daily lives around television programming times rather than to set recordings and watch them later.

If these preferences apply to most of the one million viewers (a quarter of DSTV subscribers responded to the questionnaire), then this suggests to me that the bulk of their audience would not be desirous of changing to more customization, and the extra-efforts this would likely entail. The flipside of this is that DSTV can now readily cite potential audience disinterest as yet another reason for not offering a more customized pay-per-view service. That's in addition to the growth of its subscriber base and the absence of strong competition from satellite television providers in our local market:

• At around 300 000 subscribers as of November, 2011, TopTV offers no existential threat worth evolving for;
• If media visibility determines reality, MyTV would not to exist (the only reason I know about it is thanks to Wikipedia);
• And Free2view "South Africa's only free to air satelite TV platform" is dead, according to Teevee with Thinus, quite contrary to what its Wikipedia entry's PR rep seems to have wrote!

While DSTV's new BoxOffice and OnDemand may point in the direction of more user choice, there seems no sound business reason why Multichoice would ever combine these into a fully customized, pay-per-view satellite television service. So, if you want to spend less on your monthly television bill; your local video store, PushPlay, online video services, an iTunes US Account with AppleTV, GoogleTV, et al. is your best bet for the foreseeable future.

If you agree, or not, let us know in the comment box below. Ta.

Written for any new Apple iPhone owner who is keen to sell, freecycle or recycle one old iPhone... or more.

Before handing your old iPhone on, it is important to protect yourself from any privacy or related security threats that may result from the misuse of your phone's information. In the rush to freecycle my iPhone 1, I have seen first-hand how easy it is to overlook the removal of some important sensitive details (ranging from email and wireless account information to my routine calendar events and research voice recordings). Fortunately, I slowed myself down long enough to spot what I hope are almost all risks. So, the first action you should take is to accede to the old maxim "act in haste, repent at leisure" and set aside time in your schedule to prepare your iPhone for handover.

N.B. Before you begin the preparation, you should consider syncing your new iPhone via iTunes to ensure your SMS, network settings, et al. are transferred to the new phone, before deleting them off the old!

Your handover preparation should initially involve a full exploration of your phone's settings, its applications and their content and settings to identify information that could be sensitive. This will enable you to have a better understanding of the amount of work you may be required to do and whether you even have time to do it! In my case, I did a not-so-leisurely review in which I spotted over ten types of sensitive information that should be erased:

1. Financial and banking transactions listed under SMS notifications;
2. Private SMS correspondence;
3. Account and other information saved under personal and professional contacts;
4. Confidential professional and personal emails;
5. Private photo albums and un-downloaded pictures;
6. Webpage viewing history, web cookies and bookmarks;
7. iTunes store login details and user history;
8. Information stored by applications; 
9. Private notes under Notes;
10. Calendar events (particularly those show one's personal routine); 
11. Personal map locations (PINs that might show confidential locations);
12. Email account settings;
13. and wireless account settings.

My next actions were to go through each application at a time and delete their information. Since my jailbroken iPhone runs an old version of Cydia and OS 1, I was limited in the options I could follow to erase data: for example, I could not use iTunes' backup functionality to delete SMSs en-masse, nor Cydia's apps (like "Delete All SMS"). This means that the steps I took below are likely to be more lengthly than someone using OS 2, or greater, or Cydia's current version.

SMS
This was probably the most frustrating aspect, as Apple does not allow bulk deletion of SMSs. As Charlie Brown would say when faced with deleting four years worth of SMSs,  "AAUUUGGGGHHHH!" The best I could do was to (1) delete conversations, (2) delete individual messages and (3) ignore non-sensitive SMSs.

Photos
Even after deselecting the photo syncing option and running a sync, my photos were still on the iPhone. As a work-around, I selected the option "sync select albums", but did not choose any photo album. After running the sync, iPhone's iPhoto app then opened up with a pleasing "no photos" message.

Contacts
Similar to erasing my photos, I had to do a special type of sync to erase almost all contact details. After creating a group, I selected the "syncing to a group" option. After syncing, this cleared the many contacts that were not in that group.

Calendar events

Email
This was simple; once I deleted my email accounts, the emails linked to them were cleared.

Notes
After checking that I had indeed emailed all notes to myself, I deleted all notes.

Browser cookies, bookmarks and browsing history
I used preferences to clear my iPhone Safari browser's cookies and cache history. I then used the bookmarks organiser to delete all my potentially sensitive ones (for example, banking and investment sites and those used for social networking and self-publication).

Written for South African iTunes US Store users and online music buyers.

I recently enjoyed reading Thyon Design's blogpost on Apple's failure to offer games, music, books, movies and television shows to South African consumers. Interestingly enough, Apple calls its local offering an "App Store" to clearly differentiate its local offer from an iTunes Store. Further, a search for 'itunes store' on www.apple.com/za shows no results. Apple is certainly consistent in its online message that there is no iTunes Store for South Africans (if only local resellers would modify the international marketing material they use to reflect this truth, too!).

Given Apple's opaqueness (at best) around its future plans for launching an iTunes ZA Store, I agree with Thyon Design that the best course of action is to organize an iTunes (US) Store account. Once done, It's simple to buy online from iTunes voucher sellers including; wildtwig.com, mediawob.co.za, mp3sa.co.za, Maximus Cards, Evo Points and cardscodes.com. 

As I use my iTunes US account to buy music only, it is interesting to compare pricing there for popular music albums and singles versus local online retailers prices for similar pop products:

Cost per voucher.
Let's say one pays a premium of $3 on a $25 a voucher, which one purchases on a South African credit card via PayPal. This translates into paying 10% extra on every online purchase versus a US consumer.

Cost per song.
So, a $0.99 cents song actually costs $1.09. Multiply that by today's exchange rate ($ 1 = R 8.232) and one pays R 8.97 per song. By comparison, Look and Listen charge between R 9.99 and R 10.99 per song on their most downloaded mp3s list, while OMusic charges either R 9.99 or R 11.99.
Cost per album.
For pop music albums (predominately by international artists) you pay either R 69.99 or R 99 on Look and Listen for any of its top ten and R 99.99 to R 129.99 for pop albums featured on OMusic's banner ads. In the iTunes store the cost ranges from $ 9.99 to $ 14.00. At today's exchange rate, that is between R 82,24 and R 115,25 per album (this excludes the voucher surcharge).

What does this mean for the South African consumer?
While it is at least 10% cheaper to buy singles using the iTunes US Store, South Africans will find it cheaper to buy select albums locally. This is interesting as I mistakenly assumed before writing this post that both songs and albums would inevitably be cheaper given the relatively huge US market. Despite the smaller South African market, our exchange rate and much lower level of competition, it seems that local online retailers believe our market is not willing to pay album prices at US prices. I'll definitely keep this in mind for future online album shops :) !

Written for thrifty, value-minded, South African PhD students and HUMA, UCT.

To do a PhD full-time often involves financial sacrifice, especially if moving from a full-time job. Below are eleven ideas to help South African PhDs get the most value from their tuition and student status:

1. Regular supervisor access and feedback.
Since regular contact and advice from your supervisor is key to progressing on the right track and finishing your PhD, it's important to gauge his or her interest and availability. At best, your contact and feedback expectations should be documented in a PhD memorandum of understanding. This will assist in three years of tuition fees not turning into four or more...

Forgive me for occasionally using my research blog as a blue-sky thinking space, whilst venting the frustrations of a South African wanting a better consumer experience; whether it's about television, buying music or the Apple third-world product experiences at first world prices (see iTunes Store, my exhibit "F"). Not only is writing these concerns a bit better than keeping such thoughts in my head to stress on, but I really do not have a better alternative; do forums exist in which customers can criticize companies for services they "should be" (not "are") delivering? Thought not! So, I feel justified in roping my research blog in as a stand-in soapbox...

My current concern is justifying the choice of the .co.za domain name for one's research blog in the absence of better, local alternatives for South African consumers. I have recently assisted Associate Professor Laura Czerniewicz (@Czernie) with hosting and publishing her Wordpress blog; the site is hosted by the environmentally- friendly GetGreen (who were very helpful with facilitating a speedy domain purchase, hosting and linkage).

The choices they could offer for a personal domain are shown on this screen grab:


Like all local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) I have used (or use), this list's options offer no second and first level domain combination appropriate for an individual researcher stressing the local context of her research:

.co.za = commercial, but local.
.com = commercial, american or international.
.net = commercial, international, generally used as an alternative to .com.
.org = non-profit organization, international.
.biz = commercial, international.
.info = informative internet resources, international.
.mobi = used for mobile devices, international.
.co = international, country code top level domain used by Columbia.
.co.uk = commercial, United Kingdom businesses.
.de = international, country code top level domain used by the Federal Republic of Germany.
.es = international, country code top level domain used by Spain.
.us = international, country code top level domain used by the United States of America.
.ca = international, country code top level domain used by Canada
.com.au = international, commercial domain used by Australia
.net.au = international, commercial domain used by Australia 
.eu = international, country code top level domain used by the European Union
.in = international, country code top level domain used by India
.asia = international, domain sponsored by the DotAsia Organization 
.me = country level domain used by Montenegro, with a few exceptions

As you can see, Laura chose the "lesser of two weevils" by selecting a co.za address to show local context, whilst also unavoidably signifying her blog as a "co.mmercial" (as I have also done, but via Gridhost). 

This is a systemic problem that is not the ISPs' fault; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.za shows that there are simply no domain addresses available for individuals to buy: for example, the academic second level domains (ac.za and school.za) are strictly for organizations (universities and schools, respectively), rather than individual staff...

It is frustrating that South African customers do not have any second domain choice (i.e. like name.za {an extension of .name domain}) to reflect their non-commercial, local context. Frankly, in a Web2.0 context where it has become very easy to publish online, this seems like a bad hangover from the predominately corporate publishing in the World Wide Web preceeding it :( ...

If you are also concerned about this omission, kindly add your comment below. This will help me to raise awareness of this problem online (and off). "Thank you", "Nkosi", "Baie Dankie".