Jeremy Daniel was the editor of www.memeburn.com, and a firm believer in the transformative power of mobile technology for emerging markets. Jeremy has written across various media platforms for the last 10 years, from television to advertising to print before making the permanent cultural leap into online journalism.
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Something special happened on the tech scene recently. A well-respected company publicly admitted that its flagship project was no longer working right and discontinued it. German task management startup 6Wunderkinder announced that it would no longer be pursuing the development of its project management app, Wunderkit, choosing instead to focus on its list management app Wunderlist which has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.
It’s not a particularly unusual story but the way that it was handled was both graceful and ...
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Thousands of great ideas flounder at the point where they need to become reality; when great thinkers and idea generators turn to the age-old problem of raising funds to kickstart their new ventures….too often they fail and give up. Getting investment is a whole different ball game to developing products and services.
So when the idea of crowdfunding first emerged, (crowdsourced fund-raising) it was embraced by entrepreneurs like sweet words of love from Juliet to her Romeo. Surely this was ...
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How often have you had a great idea that you were convinced could become a major hit, if only you had a team to help you realise it? Or perhaps you're a great developer waiting for just the right project to work on that will maximise your talents?
If either of these scenarios sound familiar to you, then you need to make sure you're at the Ideas & Builders event, hosted by Silicon Cape and the Google Umbono team.
The ...
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It was only a matter of time before a network was created for people who have no privacy issues and believe that all information should be available at anytime to anyone. It's a social network called Color for the "post-PC world" according to its founder Bill Nguyen, who was also one on the people behind music service Lala, which was bought by Apple in 2009 before it closed it down in April 2010.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, Nguyen said ...
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MIH Naspers, South Africa's internet powerhouse, launches a brand new online classifieds venture on Monday in a bid to become market-leader in a field that is currently dominated by eBay's Gumtree. Kalahariads.net is offering "a user-friendly, feature-rich portal that provides customers with access to the widest classified network in South Africa".
Naspers has accumulated extensive experience in the field with international properties such as OLX, Brazil's BuscaPe and Allegro, and plans to take all that it has learned and apply it ...
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There is no longer any doubt about the awesome impact that Twitter is having on the media landscape. Every day, the micro-blogging phenomenon cements its place at the center of news gathering, social networking and information dissemination. But while its basic functionality has been widely accepted, the delivery mechanisms employed are being challenged on various fronts, most notably by the Flipboard app on the iPad, and now by paper.li.
What paper.li does is organise links shared on Twitter by your ...
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PoweredbyVC is a venture capital fund based in Cape Town, initially established in 2010 by members of emerging market investment group Here Be Dragons (HBD) -- the company created by famous internet entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. PoweredbyVC now runs HBD's portfolio, and is always on the lookout for businesses to invest in.
Keet Van Zyl, executive director at PoweredbyVC spoke to Memeburn about what he looks out for in a startup, discusses the investment environment right now and delivers some sound ...
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The next evolution of social networks involves customisable, targeted communities that share specific interests, as opposed to the one-size-fits all mega-networks that exist today. And these new networks need to be flexible enough to take advantage of the massive growth spurt reported that is happening on the mobile web.
These two trends have played perfectly into the hands of South African internet veterans, Nic Haralamobous and Vincent Maher who have just created and launched a startup called Motribe, which is “a ...
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On paper, the argument for embracing M-Pesa, a mobile-phone based money transfer service, is a compelling one. But implementation needs to be perfect if it is to gain traction with wary South African consumers.
Cellular service provider Vodacom, in conjunction with banking giant Nedbank, have finally begun rolling out M-PESA to South African consumers, having seen the critical role it plays in the Kenyan economy, where it is reported that almost 20% of all transactions are done through M-PESA.
Days ...
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As I write this story, I’m tucking into my free lunch. Yep, that’s right, I said free lunch. Remember when you were told that “there’s no such thing as...”? Well, that’s because I’m eating it. Vida e caffè just gave me a croissant and a cappucino without a penny leaving my pocket and all because I signed up to AMMO Mobile, a trendy new mobile banking application developed locally that has come swaggering onto the mobile banking playing field with ...
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