Updated 06 Aug 08
I’ve had a crazy working week and wanted to share it with you -
Sunday
Zoopedup breakfast run - photos here
Monday
Fly to Jozi, meetings - Absa, Daily Sun, Trigger, Heat Celebrity news and FHM
Public speaking event - 27 Dinner
Tuesday
Meetings - Cerebra and Brandsh, Nashua mobile, 24.com sales and GroupM
Fly back to Cape Town
Wednesday
Start testing Speakerbox - our new Blueworld project
Attend Heavy Chefs event with Yuppie Chef and Cyber Cellar
Thursday
Lecture at Dave Duarte’s mobile marketing course on Web 2.0 to mobile
Attend Geek Dinner event
Friday
Moving into my new place and I’m hosting a party in Green Point
This all amongst SEOing and blogging - I need a holiday!!
January 24, 2008 – 5:05 pm
I have started a cooking show with a few mates called Crazy Delicious. Episode one was published online earlier in the week to good reviews. Our aim is to make a few episodes and release them through social media applications such as Facebook, Blueworld and Youtube. Then later we aim to get the show onto the telly after some feedback from online viewers. So far we’ve received a ton of feedback and will be implementing some of the suggestions to improve the show. You can view episode one here on Facebook. I originally wrote about the cooking show venture last year and put up the trailer which you can still find here. Facebook group is here - invite your friends!
Some pics from filming episode one
December 14, 2007 – 5:16 pm
Myself and Adii have finally finished the theme redesign for my network of blogs. Car Blog was the first to receive the new look. We have designed a theme that will be implemented and customized for all my blogs.
I did the basic layout design then Adii finished off by adding his expert touch and then coding it for Wordpress. Here’s some of the elements I initially added into the design
- Two-2-three column design
- 125 x 125 px Block ads controlable from backend (Adii work)
- First four posts open and the rest closed - just the title and blurp - on homepage
- All my blogs linked at the top - network links
- Prominent rss and email subscription link
- SEO: On the single post page - the title of the page must be limited to just the post title and not include “at Car Blog.co.za .. etc”
- Notify you of follow up comments if you commented on a story
- “If you like this post you might want to subscribe to our rss feed” text at the bottom of a single post page
- Small glossy icons organising the content
- New adsense placement - I had click heat track my blogs and have placed ads accordingly
Foxinni did the new Car Blog logo and will be working with me on new logos for all the blogs in the network
Screen shot
November 14, 2007 – 12:03 pm
I broke my previous record for the biggest Google cheque received to date (R8792.40). Although, the cheque is from two months as I had a slow month in September so I haulted my earnings and combined October’s earnings as well - which was a good month.
My blog network’s traffic is growing nicely especially SA Rugby Blog after we won the crown. So I’m sure I will be posting a bigger cheque in the near future. I have also been experimenting with WidgetBucks which has brought in just over a $100 in one month - not a bad start!
If you want to find ways to monetize your blog check out my good friend Sohaib’s latest blog post.
November 12, 2007 – 11:44 pm
We launched Netbuzz today featuring the latest news from South Africa’s top news houses mixed with some of the leading blogging personalities in the coza namespace. The site aims to be a one stop destination for all the news buzz in South Africa. If you entertain a lot of feeds everyday in your reader Netbuzz will be a good stop in your morning news consumption to get a grip on the latest news headlines.
Discription from the site
Netbuzz aggregates the latest news and images from the top publishers in South Africa creating a one stop destination to get your buzz of internet news.
Screen shot
Visit
August 22, 2007 – 5:31 pm
Yup, moved to Rivonia rd, Sandton. We got some serious investment for Blueworld and the powers that be insisted that I move up to ‘011′ so they could monitor their investment closely. Funny enough I’m loving it! Maybe its to soon to say but I was born for the fast paced life of jozi. What makes it even better is I’ve been privileged enough to meet with the likes of Ronnie Apteker, Chriss Ross (Head of marketing and sales for Vodacom) and the guys from Teljoy namely Jason Joffe.. So I guess I’m off to a good start
Secondly, something I have been planning for years has finally seen the light. The new version of the first website I ever built, Zoopedup, is online. Point your browser here and let me know what you think.
Here’s the blurp from the site
Zoopedup is a automotive social network that allows you to create an online garage for your car featuring blogging, video and picture sharing, discussion forums, ride battles and event galleries from around the globe.
Finally, I’m going out to get well tipsy tonight as my biggest monthly Adsense earnings cheque (R6970.19) has just arrived!! Thank you big G! This comes just in the nick of time as I spent a small fortune kitting our my new pad. Yay!
Incase your to lazy to head over to Zoopedup here’s a screen of the index and my profile
Some other profiles you should check out - Sexy Clio, Barrys-WP
Here’s a project that has been gathering dust on my shelves for quite some time until Paul Smart, who helped build the platform, informed me off all the pending blog link additions. Blog Buzz is a static blog directory where you can add all your blogs links with discriptions to be rated or reviewed by other Blog Buzz members. Nothing fancy just a classic static directory. So get yourself a quality back link as the page rank will take effect as soon as I start SEO’ing the domain. As mentioned earlier I had a ton of links to approve for the directory so it seems Blog Buzz is promoting itself! www.blogbuzz.co.za
Finally, we have completed development and launched the video sharing area on Blueworld. We now have four areas on the site controlled by the user’s generated content.
videos.blueworld.co.za - Video sharing, mms videos, tag videos, rate and comment on videos
photos.blueworld.co.za - Photos uploaded by our users from their user galleries on their profiles
blogs.blueworld.co.za - Our micro publishing platform featuring all the users blogs and comments
genderbash.blueworld.co.za - Gender debating area, ask questions to the opposite sex and learn a thing or two
Being able to mms videos or photos from your cellphone straight to your Blueworld profile and the areas mentioned above is a piece of code we are very proud of - here’s the ‘how to” text from the MMS page
The BlueWorld mms software has been created to help you share your experiences with your friends and families from anywhere in the world.
Its quiet simple!
Make or find a video clip stored on your cell phone. Open the file you want to send, click send and select multimedia message. Instead of typing in your buddy’s cell phone number you simply send the message to videos@blueworldmedia.co.za and in the subject line you fill in your BlueWorld username comma your password. See below for an example:
To: videos@blueworldmedia.co.za
Subject: Sally22, p@ssw0rd
The cellphone icon below the video thum indicates the video was mms’d to the site as where the LCD icon indicates the user uploaded the video from the Blueworld website.
Full screen shot of the video area
We have added two new areas on Blueworld aggregating some of our user’s data.
Blogs.blueworld.co.za is a summary of all the user’s blogs - Visit
Photos.blueworld.co.za is a summary of all the user’s uploaded photos - This is the biggest area on BW with 100+ photos being uploaded each day firmly cementing us as one of the top photo sharing sites in SA - Visit
Both areas are updated dynamically whenever users update their blogs and photos. Next up on our dev schedule is to do the same with videos.blueworld.co.za and chuck bluetube.co.za - Which is now a stand alone site. This should be done by tomorrow as our video sharing code was completed for the KFC campaign last week.
Here’s some screen shots - Blueworld Blogs - blogs.blueworld.co.za
Blueworld Photos - photos.blueworld.co.za
Two of my blogs, DailyGlamour and SA Rugby Blog, is now sporting a fresh new look ‘n feel. The blogs redesign was long overdue so I teamed up with Foxinni to tweak the header’s design and then commissioned WordPress guru Adii to implement the designs.
Daily Glamour
SA Rugby Blog
I’m really chuffed with how the blogs turned out. I also have two reliable bloggers working on these blogs now updating the properties daily.
Charl Norman is a web entrepreneur behind local social networks 
Photos from my trip to Silicon Valley for the MIH Tech conference.
I appeared on channel MK TV's new hip hop and car show WOELAG. They interviewed me on our automotive social network Zoopedup.
I have been nominated for ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa 2008. Now to even be nominated is a great honour for me seeing as last years winner of the award is internationally renowned Vinny Lingham.
