Recent ideas

Lekker Spots

jaredfranc — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:12:46 +0200

Lekker Spots: Localizing lekker

This site will be for all South Africans: The main objective of this site is to see what places are lekker to go to and what places are not lekker to go to – with a lekker twist.

So if I’m new to a place in Cape Town that I haven't been to like a restaurant near table mountain, I would want to check what a good place and if any local people have commented and said it's awesome of not and awesome place.

It's always nice to have local people commenting about places they've been to and sharing their experiences. read more »

HSPA Internet

Kerushen Reddy — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:44:09 +0200

Is IS (Mobility) going to invest in HSPA which is said to offer up to 21 Mbps in perfect conditions.
If so would IS consider peering with Cell C, or would it rather wait for the likes of Vodacom and MTN?

XMPP Jabber Jingle server

paulscott56 — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:54:36 +0200

Deploy a cheap VoIP network using the Jabber (XMPP) Jingle protocol. This can be built in a standards compliant way on at least 2 extremely well known and well used Jabber servers (ejabberd and Openfire).

Aggregating and giving context to wine commentary on Twitter

Andy Hadfield — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:13:41 +0200

IDEA SUMMARY: Display wine reviews from Twitter and aggregate postive / negative language and scores to produce a recommendation engine. If successful, look to build community features of the back of the data stream.

POSITIONING: Wine information for the man in the street. For the guy or gal that can't describe bouquet, but knows what they enjoy. And doesn't mind commentating on it publicly.

THE PREMISE: It is highly unlikely that any major new social players will arrive in the next couple of years. Because

a) information overflow read more »

Local TED Mirror

charlvn — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:40:00 +0200

One of the most fantastic collections of educational and inspirational videos in the world is located at TED.com. The videos are Creative Commons licensed which means they can be freely copied and distributed. There is also an RSS feed on the site containing direct links to the various videos which means they can be downloaded and mirrored easily. read more »

Locally Hosted Dynamic DNS Provider

charlvn — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:54:40 +0200

A lot of power users use local-only ADSL due to the cheaper data rates and a lot of them also tend to use Dynamic DNS (DDNS) to gain remote VPN/SSH access to their home (or work) machines or even run the usual internet services (Web, FTP, XMPP, IRC, etc) across their ADSL connection.

The problem with using these two together though is that the DDNS providers are generally hosted overseas so pushing DNS updates while on local can be a problem. read more »

Investors Network Top Ten Blogs for 2009

ben1st — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:01:37 +0200

The launch of the Investors Network Blog halfway through 2009 has proved to be a good move and many articles are continuing to attract a large number of readers from both enterprise investors and entrepreneurs alike. Here are top ten articles for 2009:

Let us know if there is anything specific that you would like to see articles on? read more »

More Government support for business investors

ben1st — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:29:55 +0200

The South African government is increasingly being asked to do more in support of small businesses when it comes to business investment and start-up capital. Although the government is already investing substantially into the small business sector more still need to be done.The benefits to the government are obvious and difficult to ignore. Small firms provide job opportunities, much needed competition in the key areas as well as of course tax revenue for the government. read more »

SA Investors Network answers call of entrepreneurs

ben1st — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:18:18 +0200

SA Investors network a recently launched community of angel investors and entrepreneurs where business ideas get funded, who is still currently in BETA is already setting the SA small business finance environment alight. The business launched by the experienced team of entrepreneurs and investors at SA Start-up systems is a timely and very welcome solution when it comes to business finance for business owners in South Africa. read more »

Host a freenode IRC server

dwayne — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:08:05 +0200

Host a freenode IRC server in South Africa to help reduce latency and bandwidth issues for IRC traffic.

Freenode hosting info:
http://freenode.net/hosting_ircd.shtml

Mirror SourceForge project repository for easy download

dwayne — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:23:32 +0200

If IS could mirror the sourceforge repository that would mean speed and bandwidth saving. I'm not sure how much that's your department. But there are a lot of software applications that are hosted there that have some quite widespread use.

PubSubPubHub peering XMPP servers

paulscott56 — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:20:25 +0200

Set up an eJabberd instance to peer to major Jabber/XMPP providers to support PubSub and/or PubHub for SA locally. This would simply require server infrastructure (dependent on traffic of course), bandwidth and physical placement in a datacentre.

Using this type of technology, web developers could implement "push" updates to other web apps, users and other services. This means a general reduction in bandwidth usage overall as it scales as there will be way less polling for RSS feeds, updates etc. read more »

Network Africa

mmusamba — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:09:03 +0200

Network Africa, is a proposed internet cafe chain. We plan to launch in South Africa and grow into the top 10 internet consuming countries of the African continent. Our stores will be leased, fitted and operated on the principle of ‘economies of scale’. Most stores will open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, each with about 35 PC’s. We hope to open our first store in the first quarter of 2010 in Johannesburg. We recognise that Network Africa’s product offering has certain characteristics which are critical to consider at this stage that we seek to raise seed capital. read more »

API from Telkom and Neotel

Nyasha — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:13:06 +0200

First IS ideas.....
I would like to see Telkom and Neotel offer API's for their business users telephone numbers database. Many a-time I find myself looking through an online directory or Google for a service provider and asking myself is this business actually in existence? How do I trust them? If they offered an API, business directories could do cross checks on the numbers, to ensure that the business says it is who it is. Well actually we could go a little further and have SARS offer an API that just provides a business name and whether their up to date on their taxes. read more »

Non internet ADSL access

salvo — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:14:01 +0200

It would be really cool for enterprises if you could get an ADSL account, make use of the boradband speeds, but not have access to the internet, and only to an internal VPN service on the same IP network.

Cisco LABs in South Africa

oldenp — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:54:31 +0200

I have launched my Cisco LABs with 2 racks in South Africa today.
These labs are aimed at CCNA and CCNP level engineers.
These are the first private Cisco LABs ( in country ) as far as I know !

Contact me to give it a shot.
The labs are "on demand" so if you book it, then I will switch it on!

Pricing is extremely affordable and this is to help you to get more bang out of your buck.

The hands on is easiest the best way to learn. You HAVE to practise the stuff to be REAL in the real world.
If you KNOW you can do the "stuff" then it boosts your confidence immensely. read more »

All Inclusive Internet Advertising

Selonica — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:40:10 +0200

There is so many "classifieds" sites - Junkmail, Gum Tree, etc..

I would like to have a site where all companies can advertise the following way;

When the site is opened you get asked the following;
1. See All Categories
2. Choose Category

If you choose the "Choose Category" all the different catergories will pop up where you can choose one, for example:

Groceries (Here you have Pick 'n Pay, Checkers, Woolworths, etc..)
Clothes (Here you have Edgars, Pep, Ackermans, Woolworths, etc..)
Holiday Accomodation (You then get asked: Where? - and then the places will be given) read more »

Measure traffic on RSS feeds

derek — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:21:22 +0200

There are enough packages that track web content and linking, but only some that generically track RSS feeds.
Take for example a SA news website, where content and ads are strictly measured, yet RSS is provided ad hoc. While some users consume the RSS, even more intranets and company networks pull the RSS and feed it to employees behind the firewall. read more »

Internet-enabled bus transport

ian — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:41:51 +0200

I'd be curious to know whether anybody sees value in the following service:

An internet-enabled bus service that would allow commuters enough space & connectivity to work on their laptops during their commute to work. Coffee could no doubt be provided as well :)

Personally I'd be willing to pay what I currently pay on petrol monthly (plus a bit more) to be driven to work every day. I'd love to be able to use that time - currently dead time - to better effect; reading email/documents, doing project admin, planning the day etc. read more »

IS Hotspot Wifi Authentication via 802.1x

gregdechasteauneuf — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:25:46 +0200

It would be cool if IS hotspots would allow me to stay authenticated without having to go to the landing page each time. Great for mobile phone access. Also IS should allow me to authenticate with my ADSL login and deplete my CAP when I am in a hotspot.

Get exactly the information you want from collated RSS feeds

Martin B — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:24:40 +0200

One of our organization's projects has been to develop a community (FREE) website that makes collating (grouping) RSS feeds and being able to filter them for information that is specifically wanted. Each individual subscriber has the opportunity to choose existing, or new, RSS feeds and collate them under a specific group of their choice (eg. Sports News, JSE market information, Travel, or whatever). Key words can then be used to filter these Groups for the exact information (eg. the "Sports News" Group could be filtered for "Proteas Cricket, Liverpool"). read more »

Viable eCommerce Solutions for the online Retailer

jonathan.ment — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:36:25 +0200

How about approaching the likes of Ebay and PayPal to promote their service offerings in good ol South Africa. As it is right now the South African consumer / retailer is forced to either self code his eCommerce infrastructure or partner with some of the local providers at great cost and development time to be able to either online purchase or better yet online sell. read more »

Exclude IS local traffic from hosting

jayson — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:21:13 +0200

in order to try get more people to host locally, it would be great to exclude IS local traffic from the traffic stats used for billing, this idea is an overlap on the topics "Split Routing", "Flat Rate Local Hosting", "Low Cost Local Only Hosting". What would happen is that any traffic leaving the host to an ip in the is address space within the IS network would not be counted, I say IS network as anything to a non IS dsl or 3G account would have to cross an interconnect or peering point to another tier 1 ISP. read more »

An Index of all Local-Only Websites and FTP Servers

Local List — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:55:05 +0200

A Very Good Summary from the website (locallist.co.za) read more »

View important websites after being capped.

andrewc — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:47:41 +0200

The idea would be to allow users that are capped access to important sites such as their online banking websites, absa, fnb etc. If your capped and need to make payment what do you do?

Could be very profitable to let these websites foot the bandwidth bill. After all websites always pay by advertising for new visitors to their website.

More Local Jabber Servers

charlvn — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:19:37 +0200

At the moment there are very few locally hosted public Jabber / XMPP servers around. Using overseas servers to chat to other locals unnecessarily wastes international bandwidth resources that could be used better and it is also much slower in terms of latency as well as being less reliable obviously.

It's really simple to set one up on Ubuntu, for example, as there are packages for many of the popular Jabber daemons available but somebody will obviously have to provide some server space and good local bandwidth. read more »

Local webspace?

Wogan — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:18:55 +0200

This is sort of a question-slash-idea, so if I'm horribly off the mark, feel free to burn me publicly, lol.

Local bandwidth is cheaper, meg for meg, than international bandwidth. Yet, local hosting is incredibly expensive in comparison to international hosting.

Why is this? Are there not enough servers hosted within SA borders? Licensing, technical, political, what? read more »

Gravatars for IS Labs

Wogan — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:02:36 +0200

Pictures are pretty :) Implementing Gravatar support is probably not going to change the world, but at least it'll make the discussions that much more colorful (in the RGB sense).

http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/url

Wifi Landing Page as Tourist Information Portal

vincenthofmann — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:30:38 +0200

The idea is to utilize pre-existing IS Wifi landing pages as portals connecting tourists to services in their immediate surrounds. Utilizing the wifi hotspot to define the location of the individual and providing information related to that particular area.

Owing to the sudden popularity of locative social media applications branding a free wifi locative tourist community site would ultimately provide IS with an excellent opportunity to raise awareness for the possibilities of using its services. read more »

Local Paid News Server

Bobb — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:18:48 +0200

If IS could offer a local paid newsserver ala giganews, with a decent sized cache (3 or 4 terabytes should suffice) there will definately be a market for it in South Africa. I know a lot of people that currently download via international newsservers, would much rather utilise local bandwidth. Given that these are already paid newsserver solutions, it would not cost us out of pocket (assuming the service costs are in line with international norm... say R250/month). read more »

Locally hosted web conferencing

BigSky — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:46:49 +0200

Current web conference options (such as webex, gotomeeting etc) are all hosted outside South Africa.

Limited international bandwidth, no local pricing/modifications (e.g. local languages) make the usage of webconferencing a rarity in SA, at a time it should be on the increase (see recent petrol price increases :)

A locally hosted web conferencing solution will provide a simple-to-use site with the performance expected from this type of solution while users can benefit from local bandwidth usage cost. read more »

Twitter network/service notifications

prieurdp — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:24:36 +0200

Network notifications published via Twitter. This won't really change the ZA internet as such but it would be pretty handy for people using IS products daily. For instance;

IS_Network : Critical degradation of service at Rosebank PoP, Telkom investigating http://link/incident
IS_Network : All services restored
UserNameA : @IS_Network Hooray!

This would also allow for interaction between IS support and users via direct messages and @replies.

Would off course only work if you still have an internet connection...

Sensor Network for Municipalities

abel.rajoo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:00:01 +0200

As discussed in a previous idea once a wireless mesh network is in place a sensor network can be deployed to monitor various metrics such as windspeed, smoke detection, volume of traffic, water levels of dams and rivers, air pollution, water and noise pollution etc. In this way city management can have real time information to act on as well as insitute legal action against offenders and respond to emergencies automatically.

Last Mile service for Municipal fiber.

abel.rajoo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:23:29 +0200

With copper telco local loops a far way from being unbundled, the natural selection for last mile services is Wireless Mesh. The possibilities from A Public Sector point well as a private sector are endless. What if IS deployed a wireless mesh network in Durban to take advantage of the Etekweni fiber? Power to the people (and some money for us!!)

Endless possibilities with Municipal coverage

abel.rajoo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:12:28 +0200

With Etekweni municipality taking the lead in municipal fibre, it won't be too long before other municipalities start active services on their fibre links. What if we could provide interconnectivity between the various municipalities (NNI's between municipalities!!) Imagine connecting our customers end to end across the country without Telkom or Neotel.

True convergence on communication systems

abel.rajoo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:02:21 +0200

When we speak of convergence we generally refer to data and voice convergence.However within the indvidual displines we have disparate systems that do not converge with each other, for example 2-way radio systems are still separated from telephony be it traditional analog/digital or VOIP. True convergence would include the integration of radio voice systems into main stream voice comms. Imagine from a single command center a disaster management agent can broadcast to standard analog/digital phones, VOIP phones, and Radio phones. read more »

Local Rack Rentals

wiggwire — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:43:05 +0200

It could be a good business idea for IS to market/host a Online Rack Rental environment, similar to the overseas online labs, but locally available to the public, since NONE available.

This will encourage more South-Africans to get hands-on CCNP/CCIP/CCIE exposure. Broaden the skill set of clients, and possibly new staff.

IS has the Infrastructure and access to most the equipment to setup rack rentals quick and easy. Using our gifted coders to develop a nice web page interface based on your booked and paid timeslot, access will be both fast and reliable.

Drag uniforum registration process into this century

d0dja — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:00:58 +0200

Uniforum have, in general, done a very competent job of administering the co.za namespace since 1995, but really, isn't it time they made their registration system a little less...1995?

I can go to a US registrar and have my domain registered and paid for with a few clicks. Uniforum's system is archaic, clumsy, inefficient and hostile to non-techies. read more »

Personal Safety and Security System

Stuart — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:17:59 +0200

I was recently featured in ITWeb Brainstorm magazine for an idea that I concieved about a Personal Safety System that utilizes wearable biosensor and mobile technology to alert relevant third parties in the event of an emergency. I summarize the concept below, for the full presentation please visit my website at www.stutay.com

The system relies on four categories of data, which, when examined together, can help give a clear account of an individual's immediate medical and safety status. read more »

Static IP for capped ADSL

Colin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:28:37 +0200

It would be very helpful for VPN's and mail servers if (for people who do not require the bandwidth) there was an option for static IP addresses on capped ADSL.

IPv6

Symmetria — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:47:10 +0200

Just been sitting thinking about the net as we see it today, and I'm quite suprised that nothing has been posted regarding IPv6 yet, so I figured I'd throw in 2c about this. read more »

secure connect

karmlin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:08:19 +0200

why dont we punt secure connect to the banking sector?, specifically targeted to the internet banking customers.

Anti Spam for the SMME

paulleroy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:03:18 +0200

If you add ATRN services to your anti-spam servers you could provide anti-spam services to all smaller enterprises and dynamic ADSL services in a secure way. Dynamic DNS services are not ideal for this type of environment although a lot of people are currently using it. Also the main reason a static IP ADSL solution is required is for mail. Additional revenue could be generated from the provision of anti-spam services to these prevously untapped clients as well as moving client side hosting services (websites) off-site into managed hosting environments. read more »

Virtual Call Agents

winfreight — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:16:14 +0200

One of my projects which I presented briefly to the JCSE Pre-Incubator board was taking my Credit Card CRM system (developed and tested at African bank) , currently running a secure distribution vault and call centre and porting it to a virtual server, the banks have major FICA problems with their clients and need the data cleaned and documents retrieved! read more »

High Speed Application investigation

Symmetria — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:45:00 +0200

This is a little bit of an obscure idea, but its something I would really like to see. A platform to investigate high bandwidth utilization applications. Basically, as we move forward networks are getting bigger, bandwidths are growing, and with the Seacom cable and other international cables starting to emerge, and the potential granting of ECNS licenses to various players, the bandwidth situation could (hopefully drastically) change. Now, at the moment we sit in a situation where we are looking to reduce bandwidth usage, and we spend much of our time investigating bringing down bandwidth usage. How about starting to look at the future of possible high speed links, and looking for applications for these services that would be profitable, useable and could actually take use of high speed infrastructure. read more »

Bandwagon

tv — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:51:22 +0200

A 'switch' on the IS site to 'free' bandwidth while on the Net. The user does not pay any bandwidth costs as this usage is covered by advertisers or sponsors showing their ads to the user in return for free bandwidth. So yes you get a certain rates of ad per minute of usage but what the heck if you don't pay bandwidth costs who cares. The advertiser/sponsor scores knowing their ad has been viewed by specific number of users and they can even extrapolate info such as age, location etc.

Web2.0 disruptive advertising platform

simonB — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:42:35 +0200

Given the high rate of pay per click fraud world wide, it's time to introduce a reliable, cheap and safe web2.O advertising platform. Pay per click, pay per view and pay per call should be integrated into one product. This typo of service must be plugged into VoIP applications using the open API's giving advertisers access to hundreds of million of potential clients. The idea is to keep advertising costs as low as possible, while at the same time rewarding customers who use the pay per call service. This will bring out the true value of mobile devices.

Local support initiative for local app development, targetted at locals

alan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:24:26 +0200

There are quite a couple of interesting web apps being developed locally, for locals. I'm not talking about websites here: web apps, that actually do something on the good old internet. Apps that make the internet a better place for those who use them. Apps aimed at South Africa, and Africa, and then the rest of the world. read more »

CyberCafes for South Africa

jp — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:08:01 +0200

Most of us here are complaining about our 'internet experience' but the irony is that majority of SA population don't have access to basic internet. Cybercafes have played big role in development of internet community in Countries like China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore etc.

Personally, I feel, big companies like IS should setup cybercafes
across SA, esp in 'poor' areas. This will surely help improve internet
experience of our people. These cybercafes should provide very
affordable services. Students should get discounted rates etc. read more »

P2P mobile payment system

simonB — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:11:24 +0200

Hey guys read more »