Author: Arné Klopper

If you are old as I am and was around when DOS 3 came out, and you used to format you hard drive with PCTOOLS, or were you around when Windows 95 was launched.

The most user friendly operating system launched with a wide variety of games, obviously all limited demos though.  One of the games I remember very clearly of all the CD packs they shipped with PC bundles was a demo of  You Don’t Know Jack.

So feeling a bit down and overworked, I started looking for this old  high ‘octane’ game and found that they’ve gone the online route.

Check it out.  If you are a trivia master, and love it with a dash of humar, you definitely must have a look at You Don’t Know Jack’s website, where they now have Flash games daily with new set of questions to grind your teeth on.   They also have their online shop where you can buy the full software games as well.

I would recommend just play one of the rounds, it is totally addictive after a while.

After last week when my shared web hosting started to reach the feared CPU limit, I took the advice from the staff at PulseHostings and started looking into using  WordPress Plugins to improve the performance of my blog, an dusing much more resources.

The first plugin I looked into and implemented is WP-SuperCache.

I’ve run with this plugin for almost and a week, and so far on average the CPU usage has reduced between 1 – 1.5% .  Very easy installation, and nothing weird to do. Something I don’t like so much, but probably just need to get the way to get past this, is that the pages keeps beigng caches when new comments are added, and only shows the comments if you delete the cached pages, or the cached pages expiry.

Also a new plugin I’m looking into, and read about today is the plugin suggestion by Entropy, called WP-Optimize.

Probably most of you have watched Chris Pirillo‘s videos and read his blog posts.

He’s a very entertaining guy, and also very knowledgeable is a wide range of areas.  He is the “Jack of all trades, master of some”-type of guy.

Anyway, on February 2nd, he was busy sharing his screen on his Live video, and showing the user avatars on the screen, when on of the users he was sharing his screen with changed their avatars to a exposed boob picture.  Chris totally cracks himself and tries to hide the image as soon as possible.

Good save Chris !

Another new offering launched by Google.

Google Latitude

Google Gmail Blog Post

With Google Latitude, a new feature on Google Maps for mobile and a gadget for iGoogle coming out today, we’re kind of turning that idea on its head, making the “where” matter again. Latitude allows you to see where your friends are located in real time on a map, anywhere in the world.

Use your Gmail account to join Latitude and you can specify which of your Gmail contacts can see your location. You can choose to automatically detect your best location, share city-level information only, set your location manually, or hide your location altogether.

Google Mobile Blog Post

Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you. You can use your Google account to sign in and easily invite friends to Latitude from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses. Google Talk is integrated with Latitude, so you and your friends can update your status messages and profile photos on the go and see what everyone is up to. You can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other within the app. Check out the video below to see Latitude in action

My first understanding was something really stupid : “A company with more than x(assuming 1000) number of employees an various offices nationally and internationally”

OR maybe enterprise is a name for a ….

HAHA, one can see that I’m originally Afrikaans .

The real definition goes more like this:

The entire organization, including all of its subsidiaries. It implies a large corporation or government agency, but it may also refer to a company of any size with many systems and users to manage. It depends on context. A corner candy store is “someone’s enterprise.” The terms “enterprise,” “company,” “corporation” and “organization” are used synonymously.

#FAIL to myself !

For the last week I’ve been listening the some Internet Radio whilst working.  First I tried local radio stations like Highveld, Jacaranda FM and 702 Talk Radio, but wasn’t in the mood for all the talking.

I then found Live365, which provides FREE music 24/7, from a wide variety of genres.

This is a FREE service, but after about a few hours of listening they require you to register though, BUT still FREE. They also have a premium payed service for better quality sound and a few other advanced features, but according to me the free service is already very high quality(for ‘radio’).

I tried to figure out how the guys from Live365 make money.  Seems like their business model is based around basically 4 main income streams:

• Adsense and other Ads
• When listening to the radio station it shows what the songs’ name is that is playing, and also has a ‘BUY’ button where you can then buy the track.
• Subscription fees of the premium service
• Ads on radio stations

My favourite station is the Chillout Beats and Remixed! stations.

I’ve been waiting for this feature for quite some time now, since they started exploring with Google Docs Online with Google Gears I knew this was due to happen.

Source : Office Gmail Blog Post

Today we’re starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you’re offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you’re used to.

Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server .

I’ve been blessed ! I have a beautiful son of 9 month.  One of the things I make a priority is to keep him happy, entertained and show him the goods things in life.

Twice-As-Nice 4 Kids Foundation is a charity organisation which does just that, keeps kids entertained.

Raising funds throughout the year this foundation hosts an annual fun music and theatre extravaganza for children living in  various children’s homes, orphanages and with foster families.  Also, from the funds raised, not only does it go to this once a year event, it also donates a percentage to other child welfare organisations, thus where the name comes from : “Twice-As-Nice” it benefits the children TWICE!

If you feel that you would like to make a donation to this charity of any other, you can do this by visiting The Trust Website, which offers EFT and credit card donations. .

Twice-As-Nice Vision

Every child benefits from and deserves extras like entertainment and fun outings where they are the centre of love and attention. 

What Twice-As-Nice Do

Since 2005 Twice-as-Nice organises an event that is growing from strength to strength. In 2005 we invited 750 children to our first party on Constitution Hill, in 2008 we were proud to host over 2,000 children on the Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown, Soweto. Currently preparations are under way for our extra special fifth anniversary event.

At the event the children are treated to a lunch, T-shirts and caps and a goodies bag. Exciting entertainment is provided by a host of renowned artists, over the years we’ve seen Gcina Mhlope, Tumisho Masha, Ed Jordan, Ronald McDonald and The Market Theatre on our stage. Street performers and African music and dance by Sibikwa create the lively party atmosphere in which the children are delighted to participate.

The event also provides a platform for corporate volunteering since we engage employees of our corporate sponsors as valuable helpers during the day. The interactions between volunteers and children are very special and create awareness and further involvement.

With a percentage of the funds raised Twice-as-Nice makes donations to selected partners in child welfare. With these partners we build close relationships which help us to identify sustainable projects that contribute to our vision of providing something extra to a disadvantaged child’s life. Over the years Twice-as-Nice has supported the Othandweni Family Centre to upgrade the cottages for the children and open a gift shop where arts and crafts made by street girls are sold. In addition Twice-as-Nice has supported arts organisations like Sibikwa to ensure that they could provide their worthwhile arts education to disadvantaged children.

This morning when I logged on I could not retrieve my mail and after some investigtion I  realized that my web hosting was suspended due to using too high CPU usage.

I’m currently hosting a couple of my domains on a shared hosting account with Pulse Hostings(reseller for Resellerspanel) which has a lot of bandwidth and disk space but you are limited to only 5% CPU usage.

I immediately logged into my control panel and contacted support, almost half and hour later my account was back online, ready for some action again.

The support staff actually came back with some very good advise and suggestions for me to optimise my robots.txt file and WordPress plugins by using WP Super Cache.

I’m still very impressed with the hosting, especially the fast response of support in this case, and would suggest it to anyone that is just starting off with blogging and building websites, you get a lot of bandwidth, disk space and databases, only limit is the 5% CPU limit though.

Here is a shot of my call with them this morning.

Do you live around Johannesburg, South Africa.

Then this coming weekend you have to get down to Swartkop Airfield in Pretoria. Why ?

The South African Air Force are celebrating their 89th birthday on Friday, 30 January 2009. Actually the Air Force was founded on the 1st of February, but this year it falls on Sunday, thus they’re making it on Friday.  I would like to know why they did not make it Saturday ?

This year they will have formal parades, fly pasts and capability demonstrations, and other activities to involve the public on a more sociable level.  The event is open for the public and will cost you nothing.  All you need to do is bring your own food, beverages, sun block,chairs etc.

More information can be found on the South African Air Foce Web Site.