Welcome and enjoy your stay

Attention new blog readers and site visitors

I’VE noticed a few new faces around here and wanted to welcome any new readers of Witness This, which has grown substantially in readership over the last couple of months. Thank you to all my regular readers (Eric) for your continued support, this wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for you

Publishing dates
For the newcomers: I try my best to publish new content three times a week.

• Mondays: I publish a techno-related column that I write for the Witness newspaper. These are usually the more meaty posts in which a lot of time and effort is spent. They are mostly archived under gadgets & tech and range from reviews, mobile technology and gaming to virtual reality.
• Wednesdays: Working in a newsroom I get free access to news wires and often to try to pull something new and interesting off them to publish mid-week. These posts are usually archived under news & media, and include promotion & events and opinion & analysis pieces.
• Fridays: Every Friday you can look forward to a Happy Friday piece. These are most often fun, entertaining or uplifting posts well-suited to a Friday afternoon and include a selection of feel-good videos.

The archive
Everything that I archive is carefully crafted to hold its value and relevance. So whether you read posts when they first appear or several months later, they should still offer something new, interesting or entertaining. Posts that expire (such as news pieces) are deleted once they are no longer relevant.

Categories have always been a contested issue on blogs (i.e. the value and use of them has been questioned). I’ve done my best to categorise each post into a single category alongside (to your right, and up a bit). However, I would recommend rather looking under the pages running along the top of this blog if you’re keen to read previous entries.

Coming up…
There is something special in the works for this Friday. It is certainly one of the funniest Happy Friday posts that I would have published. It was originally an e-mail sent to me from a friend living abroad, and is a good, tasteful poke of fun at life in South Africa. So be sure not to miss this on Witness This!

In the meantime
There are now 150 plus posts archived under my various pages. So if you are new here (welcome) I Have put together a post of some of my favourite pieces I’ve written to date, which is very easy to navigate and browse through. If interested check out Blogger’s Greatest Hits.

Future developments
Everything I know about blogging I have learnt through practice over the last couple of years. I never expected this blog to grow as much as it has and am now looking to take it to the next level. I have plans to get it hosted locally soon, which will allow me to add some new & exciting widgets and features.

The soppy bit: The best thing about blogging and networking for me personally is freely sharing ideas, expertise and experiences with others so that we may all learn and grow together. I always endeavour to share what I learn with others (check online tips & tricks) and encourage others to do the same. I guess what I’m trying to say it I … I love you guys

Feel free to drop a comment and introduce yourselves, and once again, a warm welcome to any newcomers and I hope you enjoy your stay.

Kind regards,
Galen Schultz

The future of social networking

AUGMENTED REALITY: Evolving into a highly transparent society

EARLIER this year I discussed the developments of SixthSense technology, which, in a nutshell, is the idea of wearing a gestural interface that augments the physical world with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

In other words, having a mirror, pocket projector, camera and a cellphone connected to web on your person, would allow the world around us to become like a computer displaying certain information and performing particular tasks on request. Making a viewing box using your fingers and thumbs, for example, would take a photograph in a SixthSense world.

Such developments have been in progress since the beginning of this year. However, these have also been met with serious debates over people’s personal privacy and raised more than a few concerns.

It’s difficult to say if and how (or perhaps more importantly, when) such technology will enter society and become a part of our daily lives (at least for the digital elite with large bank balances). Nevertheless, several concept ideas are emerging to give us an idea of what living with such technology may be like.

The following is a concept investigation courtesy of online media expert Matthew Buckland (www.matthewbuckland.com):

A concept investigation
Below are some concept designs that Matthew Buckland and ace designer Philip Langley put their heads together to create. It’s an investigation into how social networking may work in the future, focusing on mobile and augmented reality.

“Our investigations were inspired in particular by some brilliant (AR) concept drawings, which I often use in presentations I give,” said Buckland on his blog.

“After some brainstorming and quite a few mockups, we came up with the below. Admittedly, augmented reality (AR) is the new hype, but you can see how valuable (and scary) this could be when applied to a social networking paradigm. It assumes amazing resolutions, facial and object recognition, and more accurate GPS — none of these far off.” — Matthew Buckland.

Face recognition

Imagine holding up your phone or other digital device against a person you’ve just met or passed by. You’d instantly have information returned about that person within seconds, gleaned from an automa­tic web, public profile and social network search.

You’d discover common friends, talking points — and then have the ability to add him or her to your network. Using a semantic scan, you’d discover negative or positive comments on Google or elsewhere relating to this individual. It would be instant insight into the guy or girl standing right in front of you.

Databases and directories

Discover who lives where and how you are connected; then phone them, e-mail them, add them to your network right then and there. Get other news about the suburb and other socio-economic information. If they’re part of your network, what are they saying about their suburb or the best pizza joint in the area?

You’d be able to hold up your phone in a crowded room and work out who is connected to whom. You could instantly gauge your primary and secondary networks and instantly work out who you should chat to, what the conversation points are, and perhaps who you should avoid.

Where are the cliques? Who’s an outsider in the crowd? What’s the buzz? We’ll never forget a person’s name again, suggests Buckland.

Goodbye to privacy?

“Privacy is already an issue of concern, now and for our digital future, says Buckland. We’re still working out the ethical and moral framework around this. We may even see a backlash from society angry at this intrusion. It may, however, end up being okay because you will (mostly) be in control — you could refuse access to SNs, don’t tweet, assume personas etc.”

“But there will be information about you that you won’t be able to control too. There’ll be inevitable abuse and misuse of the information, which [will hopefully] be manageable.”

“However, more importantly — from a privacy perspective — almost everyone will be in the same boat more or less. We may evolve into a society that’s highly transparent and accountable. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry …”

IMAGES: Matthew Buckland and Philip Langley
Read the original post here

Cape Town and slavery

CAPE TOWN: How slavery has influenced Cape cuisine, architecture, language and Cape Town traditions

by Niki Moore

IT would be irresponsible to ignore our most significant event in decades even in a travel column, so this week’s effort is about the universal franchise – or rather, the lack of it.

One group of South Africans never had a vote, never had any freedom at all, and yet their contribution to our society has been priceless. These are the slaves of the 17th century Cape Colony.

The Western Cape has its unique character because of slaves. There are still reminders of slavery around Cape Town: the Slave Lodge in Adderley Street (now a museum), the Slave Stone where slaves were displayed prior to being sold, the Slave Tree where they waited their turn to go on the block. But their influence goes much deeper than physical relics.

A brief history lesson
The very first consignment of slaves arrived at the Cape on the ship Amersfoort on March 28, 1658. They had been captured by the Dutch from a Portuguese slaver that was on its way to Brazil, filled with captives from Angola. This was the first of only three shiploads of slaves from Africa. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) controlled the Cape and had extensive holdings in the East Indies, so it made sense for slaves to come from Indonesia and Malaya. And they did – thousands of them. Within 50 years of the establishment of a victualling station at the Cape, slaves outnumbered free men.

For 176 years (until slavery was abolished) the economy of the Cape depended on slaves. They worked in homes, on the farms, in shops and factories, on building sites. Officially, almost 7 000 slaves were brought to the new colony on VOC-sponsored slave ships, but many more arrived with Dutch East India officials returning home from Batavia. Because the Netherlands outlawed slavery, the officials sold their slaves in the Cape before embarking on the last leg of their return voyage home.

The life of a Cape slave
A slave’s lot was not a happy one. If they survived the journey (an ‘acceptable’ casualty rate for slaves was 15%), they died of overwork and malnutrion, torture and mistreatment. Many committed suicide. The hardy ones existed entirely at the whim of their masters – punished harshly, executed, married off or sold willy-nilly.

It is hard to think that anything good can come out of such sustained human misery, but amazingly, the Cape has some reminders of slavery that are testaments to the resilience of the human spirit.

Cape cuisine
Slaves were cooks and kitchen staff, and they had a huge influence on Cape menus. Our national dishes such as bredie, koeksisters, bobotie, sosaties and tameletjie (toffee) all have Malay influence. C. Louis Leipoldt – a writer and keen cook – was the first Afrikaner to recognise and formalise Cape cuisine, a mixture of East and West.

Cape architecture
Initially slaves only did menial work, but as slave populations stabilised they were trained in skilled occupations. Slaves were taught to build houses in the Dutch style, but they introduced many little Eastern flourishes in the ornate stone pediments and ornamental gardens. The Castle, Groot Constantia, Vergelegen and Simonsig were all built by slaves.

Cape slang
It is believed that Afrikaans developed as a ‘kitchen-language’ – a simplified form of Dutch that slaves learned in order to communicate with their Dutch-speaking masters. Proof of this, perhaps, is the fact that the first Afrikaans was written in Arabic script, and the language is enriched by many Arabic words such as piesang (banana), bredie (stew), baklei (fight), soebat (to plead).

Slave names
There are a surprising number of people who – whether they are aware of it or not – are descended from slaves. A dead give-away is the name: slaves were always given names by their owners, and unimaginative people would choose an easy name such as the month in which the slave was bought (Februarie, September), names of Roman heroes such as Cupido or Hannibal, biblical names such as Moses and Solomon, or whimsical names describing some attribute such as Fortuijn (if the slave was expensive), Witbooi (if they were light-skinned), or from their region of origin such as Basson, Claassen, or Snyman.

Slaves were Muslim and introduced their religion into the daily life of the Cape. The Cape Peninsula is ringed by 20 kramats, or holy sepulchres, that have fulfilled a 250-year-old prophecy that a ‘circle of Islam’ will be formed around Cape Town.

Cape slave traditions
Some current traditions in Cape Town date back to the days of slavery. On the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday women cut up orange leaves in the mosques. This slave tradition, known as ‘rampie-sny’, is unique to Cape Muslims.

The most enduring relic today is the Kaapse Klopse, or Tweede Nuwe Jaar. The slaves got this one day a year off, perhaps because their masters were too busy recovering from hangovers to need their services. Annually, on January 2, the descendants of slaves take to the city streets with bands and dances. The bright street parades and music are a joyous celebration of life over adversity, and a custom as unique to Cape Town as the noon gun and the flower-sellers on Adderley Street.

Now wasn’t that Quite Interesting ?

- Niki Moore is a freelance feature writer and
reporter currently living in St Lucia.