Do you remember Quirk? They are the famous people who developed Search Status last year, the much needed Firefox extension. In March we got word that they’re going to release BrandsEye, the online reputation monitoring tool, but this time it’s something different, and Charl warned us.

Before the rest of us, he managed to get his eyes on the Quirk eMarketing book and said that it has “so much juicy info and a lot of recent case studies”. But what you know, the book is available for download and the best part, it’s for free.

The Essential Guide to Online Marketing was released and licensed under the Creative Commons so that students, educators and practitioners in the corporate sector can use it and benefit from it.You can download the free full text book (12.6 MB pdf link) or buy it online or from one of the many book stores that are stocking it.

Just get to read it as fast as you can because it’s full of wisdom and great case studies. Let us know what you liked in it, and what you can add yourself.

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It’s usually hard to explain to others that you’re working online and that it really pays off. They never understand what exactly you can do online other than IM, Hi5 and such. For most regular people, the internet is comprised of Google where they search for stuff, email and some entertainment websites.

The idea of making money on the Internet is a joke for them.

A bunch of people from South Africa including Pam Sykes, Jo Duxbury and Walter Pike decided to take action. They facilitated an event by soloists, for soloists, to spread the knowledge around.

Flying Solo SA is going to be a UnConference for freelancers and other soloists that will begin on Saturday July 26 at the Wild Fig in Cape Town and one week later on Saturday August 2 in Johannesburg, at a venue to be confirmed.

Some of the discussion topics are

• Marketing on a shoestring: What’s most effective? And how do we turn the recession to our advantage?
• What we can learn from the suits: Managing clients, managing money, managing contracts.
• Getting overseas clients and offshore income streams.
• Support networks and collaborations that work.
• Killing the WAB monster – what really works to stop procrastination?
• Systems, accounts, tax and other scary housekeeping stuff.
• Making money: Setting rates, how to charge, dealing with banks.
• What makes a happy client?

Just seeing the topics and I know it’s going to be a great place to attend, so if you are from Cape Town or Johannesburg you may not want to miss it. Check out the Flying Solo website and get your name on the list to make sure you’ll have a chair at the UnConference.

If you want to sponsor the whole thing, don’t be shy, the guys are waiting for your ideas.

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Google announced browser-based Google Talk for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch today. Although it’s not in the form of an iPhone application, using the iPhone scripting libraries Google created a similiar environment on your iPhone than what you used to on your desktop.  In your iPhone browser, just go to www.google.com/talk, sign in and start chatting. Typing on your iPhone screen is quite tedious hopefully the screen keyboard is better with the iPhone 3G.

Since this is a web app, Google Talk for the iPhone only works when it is the active window in Mobile Safari. Close the web broswer, or switch to a different window and you’ll show up as unavailable in Google Talk.

With such a basic service why did it take Google Labs so long to release a iPhone enabled GTalk, perhaps they are saving the best for their own Android?

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Breaking news: Zoopy has just reported on their company blog that South African cellular giant Vodacom has acquired a 40% stake in the local video sharing service (they have blogging and photo sharing as well). Vodacom will likely provide the finance and infrastructure Zoopy needs to innovate and grow their community. The synergies between their social platform and Vodacom’s mobile ambitions is another interesting match.

Earlier this year local social networking technology company, BWCOM, was acquired by Naspers. BWCOM owns social networks Blueworld, Zoopedup and GayPeers. Is this the attention the local web startup industry needs to gain more confidence from venture capitalists so entrepreneurs don’t have to sell off large portions of their equity to take their business to the next level?

Congrats to Jason Elk and his team

Here is Voda’s press release

Vodacom, South Africa’s Leading Cellular Network, today announced that it has secured a stake in Zoopy.com, a South African-based social media community website.

Launched in March 2007, Zoopy.com allows its users to upload and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs. In just over a year, Zoopy.com have established themselves as a significant player in the user-generated content space in Africa, with Nokia selecting them as their regional imaging partner for South and West Africa. More recently, Zoopy.com was also chosen as Mail & Guardian’s Online video delivery partner.
This deal will give Vodacom a 40% stake in the South African startup and affirms its change in direction by entering the multimedia market. According to Tlhabeli C Ralebitso, Managing Director, Vodacom Ventures, the investment is an important move at just the right time for both parties. “Zoopy.com has established itself as a key role-player in the online social media arena and has a growing community that will now be able to grow bigger, better and faster.
“Vodacom puts great value in what has been achieved online thus far, and we look forward to combining mobile and internet strengths to create an even more valuable destination for all Zoopy.com users.”

CEO of Zoopy.com, Jason Elk, is pleased at having found the “perfect partner”. “At the beginning of this year we realised that we needed investment to roll out our strategy to its full potential. But from the start we were quite specific about the partner we were looking for.

“Funding was important, of course, but we wanted our investor to add value to the overall Zoopy.com user experience too. With Vodacom at our side, we’ll be able to bring many new features and opportunities to both their users and ours. This is exactly what we were looking for and we can’t wait to make it happen.”

[Disclaimer - Charl Norman is the author of this post, owner of Bandwidth Blog and share holder in BWCOM]

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BandwidthBlog posted the scoop a few months ago about the new M&G site layout and I’m sure you remember it. Vincent Maher head strategist for M&G and Amatomu co-founder, showed it to Charl months and months ago, but today ladies and gents the wait is over. We have the final version which should be ready […]

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I had a thought on Twitter a few days ago: Could a Google acquisition of Twitter help the service scale? Or is it not an infrastructure issue but more a platform issue? Twitter has suffered from serious downtime over the last few weeks, trying to keep their service live during peak usage periods. They managed […]

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mobimii.com, the mobile social utility, has launched its new beta version which officially opens MXit, MSN, Yahoo, GaduGadu, QQ and other IM transports as well as in-application browsing and content sharing for the first time in South Africa and globally!
No longer are MXit users bound to the MXit service, they can now chat one-on-one and […]

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It’s been a week since I first heard off Plurk, and my first though was “not another Twitter”. I’m sure you know all the complaints users have on Twitter and looks like some smart guys wanted to prove that with a little bit more skills something great can be created.
I’m not going to call myself […]

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Feedalizr is a Adobe Air desktop client that allows users to aggregate their Friend Feed account in a neat interface on their desktop. Launched earlier this year by SWAT (Strategic Worldwide Applications & Technologies) a division of Nasper’s MIH Internet, Feedalizr is one of the first quality Adobe Air applications to come out of South […]

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You probably remember the scandal last year with the Belgian French-language newspapers that requested Google to remove their content from Google.be and Google News. They didn’t want money at the time and a court agreed that Google has to remove any headlines and links to their stories. Ironically, now they do.
For any sane webmaster, being […]

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