oneafrikan.com

_ ClearSkies
Clear Skies, funded by DTI and managed by BRE, aims to give householders and communities a chance to realise the benefits of renewable energy by providing grants and access to sources of advice.

Householders can obtain grants between £400 to £5000 whilst not-for-profit community organisations can receive up to £100,000 (£50,000 from April 2005) for grants.

Grants are given to the following renewable energy installations:

* Solar thermal
* Wind turbines
* Micro/small scale hydro turbines
* Ground source heat pumps
* Room heaters/stoves with automated wood pellet feed
* Wood fuelled boiler systems

_ Yahoo! News - Yahoo To Combine Blogs, Social Networking
Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) on Wednesday said it would launch in beta at the end of the month a service that combines web logs with social networking.

_ Yahoo! News - Yahoo Readies Blogging Tool
Yahoo is developing a free service designed to let users stay in touch with acquaintances such as friends, family, and co-workers via new and existing Yahoo services. The service will include the Sunnyvale, California company’s first blogging tool, according to a company executive.

_ Yahoo! News - Surveys Say Bloggers Not Yet Big Factor For Mainstream
“Two new surveys cast doubt on the level of influence wielded by bloggers.”

I think that the blogosphere is more of a discussion / conversation, that validates traditional media. I don’t think that anyone can argue that blogs offer breaking news for the mainstream that CNN doesn’t, but where CNN pushes news to it’s audience, the blogosphere pushes and pulls news, but more importantly allows people to voice their opinion on that news.

It’s kinda the difference between “this is the news”, and “this is what the news means to me, and how it affects me”.

However, when it comes to technology or innovation, (and/or) where there is an active blogging community, I think that bloggers do push breaking news to each other, and thus potentially to other media.

Tip of the iceberg - yes.
Mainstream now - no.
Going to be mainstream - yes.

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A brief aside:
I’ve just been having lunch and while eating I was thinking about how this whole blogging thing can be mapped using the Crossing the Chasm analogy. I was gonna make another post, but decided to lump it here ‘cos it’s relevant.
Looking at the technology adoption life cycle that is talked about in Crossing the Chasm (Amazon), I’m inclined to say that we’re on the cusp of the pragmatist adoption phase, or perhaps a late visionary phase.

Most of the major design portals (K10K, Newstoday, Pixelsurgeon, ThreeOh, Linkdup) were publishing some form of a blog (most called it a news feed) in the early days, and I’m sure that other “communities” were doing the same thing. Kottke is also an example of someone who would fit the profile of an early adopter (and has now embraced the whole shamoogle full time), so is Youngpup, although he’s gainfully employed by a company that doesn’t like syndication.
Google for David Sifry, Robert Scoble, Doc Searle for more early adopters.

Looking to the visionaries, you just have to look at the heads of the major tech businesses in Silicon Valley to see how they have embraced blogging as a low cost, high impact way to communicate with their communities / clients / employees. Other folk from other industries are starting to follow suit as well, which a) points to their visionary nature and b) points to the value as a medium.
Off the top of my head, Google for Adam Bosworth, Jonathan Schwartz, Paul Allen, Joel Spolsky, Alan Meckler, Michael Hyatt, David Allen.

Similarly, various tools are cropping up for us to get our grubby paws on information as and when it happens - enter PubSub , Technorati, Feedster; for us to publish with - enter Wordpress and MoveableType; and for us to tell everyone with - enter Ping-O-Matic.

Then we get to the pragmatists, the people who do something because everyone is doing it, and it doesn’t cost much to do it.
I don’t think we’re there yet - but certainly most of the major players are setting up to provide for when we are there - Google for Yahoo 360, MSN Spaces, Orkut - as well as some of the smaller players - Six Apart and Blogger spring to mind.

So what’s the tipping point?
For me, it’s when the big industry boys start to blog; when politicians start a conversation with voters; when celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver start to talk about stuff they’re passionate about on the web; when people who have a voice start to use that voice through a public medium, engaging their readers every day; and when the companies that do the work that get’s written about start to blog as well. When Joe Public starts to realise that this thing called blogging is out there, and then when companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft start making the tools cheap and really easy to use, I think you’re gonna see a whole lot of people joining the proverbial blogosphere, and that’s when it will become mainstream. Just like Hotmail, Yahoo groups, MSN Messenger, Google did.

What do you think?

_ Offshore Outsourcing World Blog - News & Events About Offshore Outsourcing World :: Main Page

Pretty neat - check it out.

_ Jaffe Juice: Tiger did it a.k.a. the next Nike Commercial - go watch it, it’s awesome!
In true new marketing spirit, I’ve created what should be the next Nike commercial. It’s a tribute to Tiger. It’s a tribute to Creativity. It’s the embodiment of everything the Nike brand stands for.

Dunno if you watched the golf last night, but that chip will always be remembered. That is the difference between quality, and class…

Carson Workshops has just released the date for the next workshop, which focusses on CSS/XHTML.

Taught by the industry leading expert, Eric Meyer
A one-day practical workshop that will teach you everything you need to know to build quality CSS XHTML websites. We will also teach the important things you need to know about Accessibility.
This is a unique oportunity to learn from the undisputed leader in CSS, XHTML and Accessibility - Eric Meyer. If you have always wanted to build accessible websites using CSS and XHTML, this is the workshop for you. Seasoned pros will also learn a ton of practical tips and tricks.

I went to the first PHP/MySQL workshop in Feb and thoroughly enjoyed it. Chris and Mike were excellent speakers, the venue (Oyster Partners in London) was great, the food was great, and the survival pack was packed full of goodies

If you’re reticent, check out some stuff on the first workshop via this Google search. Andy Budd also has some comments.

Go!

_ Selling South Africa successfully: marketing as foreign policy

A bit dated, but nonetheless a good article on exporting South African goodness.

_ Jamie Oliver: Jamie’s Diary
Hi Guys,

Just thought I’d better put something up here because there’s a mad rumour
going around that I’m going to run for M.P. in Tony Blair’s constituency
in the General Election. I’m not. Absolutely 100% NOT!

Hat tip: CherryFlava