December 9, 2009 – 3:31 pm
20Fourlabs and BWCOM decided to enter the Nokia ‘Calling all Innovators’ Africa application competition a few weeks ago - more on that here. We received great news two days ago that we won 1st prize and $85 000 in cash! Mega congrats to everyone in Labs and BWCOM!!
Here is my business partner Bradley accepting the cheque with Werner (developer/designer from Blueworld who conceptualized the original idea) and Ronald (mobile expert from 20FourLabs). Pic by Gaby
The cheque landed on my desk yesterday
About Afridoctor
“Afridoctor is Africa’s first personal mobile health clinic, turning your device into a powerful first aid information kit, a doctor-location service, and an emergency distress notifier. Its revolutionary “SnapDiagnosis” system allows users to submit photos of their ailments and remotely receive advice from a panel of professionals. Afridoctor’s mapping feature enables users to find doctors, clinics and all health industry related services within their proximity. The emergency feature notifies next of kin of their distress and location. Features include symptom checkers, first-aid information, health calculators and quizzes. Afridoctor helps make healthcare affordable and accessible to the people of Africa.”
You can download it from the Nokia OVI app store here and follow Afridoctor on Twitter.
Runner ups in the competition -
The runners-up are: Roach Game - South Africa by Breakdesign (in second place), Sasol e.Birds by Coolideas (3), MrSNAKE by Simon Botes (4) and Thumbtribe widget by Thumbtribe (5), LiveMobile by LiveMobile (6), Countdown 2010 by Christian Reeve (7), Surfing Safari by Aqua Online (8), Turn Left at the Barrel by Turn Left at the Giraffe (9) and Mall-Buddy by Paul Hinrichsen (10).
A new innovation unit has launched within 24.com called 20FourLabs. My company Blueworld Communities will be working together with Matt Buckland (lab master) and his team to build audiences and technologies for 24.com.
20FourLabs is a start-up research and development division within 24.com focusing efforts on rapid, agile web development and innovation.
Our aim is to hire people who think big and think fast and to give them the resources with which to create innovative products within the mobile and social media spheres.
We are looking for rockstar php/.net coders to join Labs - if you feel like moving to a high profile division within the biggest media company in Africa - Naspers - or if you know of anyone please get in touch with us.
September 10, 2008 – 12:54 pm
Elan Lohmann is part of the Blueworld team and has spent the last week in Palo Alto rubbing shoulders with some of the Silicon Valley’s tech elite - he even managed to squeeze in a visit to Facebook! Read more on his blog and some photos below -
Really enjoying Friend Feed and the services they allow you to aggregate - subscribe to my friend feed
I’m aggregating my shared items on google reader, my tweets, delicious bookmarks, youtube favourites, diggs and a few others.
Bandwidth Blog posted breaking news today about the Afrigator beta 2 launch. CEO Justin Hartman was kind enough to give us the scoop. Congrats once again to the entire team - Mark, Stii, Justin and Mike. Read it here
February 5, 2008 – 9:02 pm
Before someone (Nic) calls me out on this - 4 Bandwidth Blog posts at the top of Muti.
It was not planned - thanks to Rafiq (chilling at my pad as I type) and Justin for submitting the posts.
January 30, 2008 – 11:10 pm
Why did it take so long? I get hundreds of application, event and group invites daily. It’s the downside of whoring using Facebook.
Ignore all requests -
Suggesting friends to newly accepted friends -
Also found this on Delicious yesterday - The shy Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook
My Facebook profile, add me!
December 17, 2007 – 9:08 pm
The referal traffic to Bandwidth Blog after my successfull Digg post (500 Diggs) has continued to rise. All the Digg traffic came and went after a few days but the referal ripple effects are still being felt. Many bloggers have picked up on the post and linked to it. Traffic from other social media aggregators have also been good e.g. Del.icio.us (47 saves), Techmeme and Twitter.
Some blogs that blogged my post over the last two days
Betshopboy.net, Peek Inside Offices of Leading Internet Companies, The offices of today’s leading internet companies, JohnChow, A peak into the offices of web 2.0 companies, Matt Cutts, Internet Companies, Entrepreneurs and Search, Offices of leading internet companies - DesignersTalk,
The Alexa traffic chart for Bandwidth Blog - spikey!
My Google analytics chart - indicating good growth after Digg effect
December 10, 2007 – 8:24 pm
Update 2 - BandwidthBlog suffered at the hands of Digg and was down for 2 hours. I finally got it back up around 3am. Exciting hitting the front page - the digg count flies - 55, 59, 67, 87, 110, 150 .. in a matter of secondsÂ
UPDATE - My article made it to the front page of Digg - it smashed my server to pieces - trying to get it back up now - 01:55am. Did all the prepping I could, just not enough. Lesson learnt!
I just published a post on Bandwidth Blog about office photos from hot internet companies. The post was my shot at creating a link bait list to submit to delicious, digg and muti. Please Digg the post here if you think it’s worthy.
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.
