I came across a very very cool iPhone app the other day called Waze. What is Waze ? From their site this is a very accurate description:

Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road.
100% powered by users, the more you drive, the better it gets. Join the community of drivers in your area today!

So what this means is that while you driving, you “build” up the roads and maps, and then the Waze community provides live traffic information on the conditions on the roads. So for example, if there is a huge traffic jam, I will report it using Waze, which alert other Waze users in the area’s not to use that road, and provide alternative routing. This can also be extended to Roadblocks, traffic lights etc etc. Once the maps have been built up, you can use it to provide routing directions to a specified destination

To get an idea of what Waze is all about, check out this guided tour from their website:

I been using the app for the last couple of days, starting to create the maps around Durbs, and so far Waze has really impressed me. Once you have started tracking the roads you been driving, you can log into the Waze site, and update the roads with the correct names and features. I’m hoping that South African users start using it, and help it become an effective means of helping our traffic problems in our country.

The app that you use to run Waze is available for the iPhone, Android, and Symbian

If you haven’t heard about Die Antwoord yet, where have you been ? They were featured on BoingBoing a couple of days ago, and seem to be taking the interwebs by storm !
Check out YouTube for their videos or visit the http://www.dieantwoord.com

Here are the Lyrics to their featured song “Enter the Ninja” (from LyricWiki)

[Hook]
I, I, I
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need my samurai
I, I, I
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need your protection

I’m a ninja, yo
My life is like a videogame
I maintain when I’m in the zone
One player one life on the mic
I’m in the dark

Yo, ninja, go

No fuckin around I’m cutting down
Anyone in my path
Tryna fuck up my game with razor sharp
Lyrical throw stars
Killin’ my flow

Hos! Ska!

Wild, outta control

Ninja skop befokte rof taal
Rough rhymes, tough times
Met fokkol kos, skraal
Till I hit triple seven at the ATM
Straight famine or feast,
When you’re living on the razor edge
Stay sharp, sharp
Rolling with the $O$
High energy
Never seen zef so fresh
Uh, when we mic check
Hi-def flow’s best

Motherfucking the best
We not like the rest
My style is UFO
Totally unknown
You can’t fuck with my new Zef flow
I’m hard to miss
“You can’t do this, you can’t do that”
Yo, fuckin’ who said so?
I do what I like
Too hot to handle, too cold to hold
You can’t fuck with the chosen one
I-I-I want the knife
I’m a Ninja

Hook x2

Ninja is poes cool
But don’t fuck with my game
Boy or I’ll poes you
Life is tough
When I get stuck
When my time is up
I push through
Till I break-break-break
on through to the other side
Fantastically poor with faces like a stalker

Ninja is hardcore
Been cut so deep, feel no pain
Its not sore
Don’t ask for kak or
You’ll get what you ask for
I’m like a wild animal in the corner
Waiting for the break of dawn
Trying to get through the night
Just a man with the will to survive
My blade swing freely
Decapitate a hater with amazing ease
This is not a game, boy
Don’t play with me
I work my light sabre like a wild fucking savage
from the dark side danger
Yin to the yang
Totally Hi-Tek Ninjas
Motherfucking big in Japan
I seen the future, but I never got nothing in my hand
Except a microphone, big dreams and a plan
Fly-talking, sky-walking
Like a ninja

Hook x2

Fuck, this is like
The coolest song I ever heard in my whole life
Fuck all of you who said I wouldn’t make it
Who said I was a loser
Said I was a no-one
Said I was a fuckin’ psycho
But look at me now:
All up on the interweb
World-wide, 2009. futurista
Enter the ninja
Yolandi Visser
DJ Hi-Tek
Die fokken Antwoord

I, I, I (I’m a ninja)
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need my samurai
I, I, I (yo I’m a ninja)
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need your protection

I, I, I (I’m a ninja)
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need my samurai
I, I, I (a motherfuckin’ ninja)
I am your butterfly
I need your protection
Need your protection

The time has come for us to live and breath the excitment that is Pro20 cricket. The 2010 Pro20 season kicks off today (Wednesday) here in Durbs, and I’m sure this year is going to be a CRACKER of note. The finals are on Friday the 12th of March, so within a month, we will have the whole series wrapped. To check out the full list of fixtures, click here to download a PDF copy of the fixtures

Standard Bank have chose a Rockstar theme for this year, so I’m pretty sure we will see those luverly dancers back in action, as well as the cricket of course. Last year I blogged most of the games in Durbs, and I will be back in action this year, assisted by Justin McCall who will also be covering some of the Durbs games.

I am really looking forward to it, and will post a couple of the pictures of the games I attend this season.

Well tonight was the big night all the geeky geeks were waiting for. Uncle Steve promised us a new little something, and spent almost 2 hours telling us about Apple’s latest creation, the iPad

To be honest, I’m not blown away. From what it sounds like, it sounds like an awesome device, but all I can see in it is a big iPod touch. Starting at $499, we can look at about R5000 in South Africa for the entry level 16GB WiFi only device. There is a 3G version available, but won’t be available for another 30 days after launch and for $130 extra

Where I could see this device being used is if you travel alot. You can work on all your documents in the revamped iWork. One thing that is missing is a camera, preferably a front facing camera, which would have been perfect for Skype conversations. The addition of a book reader seems quite cool, and Apple will be launching an iBook store.

I guess, once I get my hands on one, I may change my mind, we can only wait.

To check out more pictures and get more info on the phone, check out Engadget..com

Check out the official Apple Page and watch the video to see more of the iPad – http://www.apple.com/ipad/

The boys in Durbs are at it again. This time, we have (what I think is the first) chrome extensions out of South Africa, and this time they straight out of Durbs :)

Firstly my izimvo buddy, Shaun Trennery, whipped up a fantastic Google Chrome extension called ZA Weather. The extension shows you the weekly forecast, automagically based on your IP address. Shaun has used some clever YQL to get the info, and the extension is amazing. This is what our weather will look like this week in Durbs.

The extension also has a couple of other cool features, like rain map, and 1 or 2 more in the pipeline

Download the ZA Weather chrome extension

The 2nd extension, released this morning, is from wunderkind Kishyr, from immedia. immedia are better known for their fantastic iPhone apps they have developed, and they have now just added to one of their most popular iPhone apps, ZATV Guide, and have launched the ZATV chrome extension. Basically, you can see what is showing RIGHT NOW on all the DSTV channels, as well as what is coming up in the next day or so. Added to this, you get full info on the shows that are coming up and showing at the moment. There is also awesome search functionality built into the extension, that allows you to search for a show or movie coming up.

Download the ZATV Guide Chrome extension

All in all both these extensions are awesome, and combined with a couple of others that I have been playing with, I could maybe (maybe) leave the fox behind :)

As you may have noticed, I am a bit of sucker for addictive games on the iPhone. First DoodleJump, then Wordcrasher, and now NuoNuo (iTunes Link).

NuoNuo is a game similar to Doodle Jump, but instead of the platforms being there for you already, you need to create them. This is done by simply tapping the screen where you want your NuoNuo to land. The lower down the screen the higher he jumps. It sounds pretty simple, but in reality it is a lot more tricky.

I have been playing NuoNuo for a while now, and I can only get up to about 3000. The NuoNuo also eats acorns and magic mushrooms as he goes up, which gives you a couple of extra points. All in all  a well rounded game, and at a measly $0.99, it should keep you occupied for a couple of hours/days/weeks :)

I have had my X-Drive unit from Mix Telematics for almost a month now, and so far am loving it. I was on leave for the last 2 weeks of the year, so I didn’t get to use it as much as I would have liked to, but now driving to work everyday, it is in full swing.

The unit hasn’t given me any hassles at all so far, the only issue that I have had seems to be the GSM signal interference on the unit’s speaker. I tried moving it a bit further away from the actual unit, but still getting it. I suspect this could  be an 1D10t error on my part, and may just need to move it further away. One day :)

Other than that, it all seems to be running smoothly. I was generously given 5000 credits from the guys at Mix Telematics, and they looks like they will last for a quiet a while. I do an average of about 64km to work and back everyday, and I still have about 4600 credits left after about 1.5 weeks of work. I have also been driving around a bit on the weekends, so I also need to take that into consideration.

The awesome thing about the X-Drive unit is that it is all pre-paid. So you can choose when you want to top up your credits. You can also choose how often you want your device to update once you have topped up your account. You can choose between 15seconds(or evry 1km)/30seconds (or every 5km) or 45 seconds(or every 10km) of updating. The credits work out reasonably cheap from R9 for 90 credits to R500 for 6350 credits. I worked it out, and if I had to buy a R500 credit that would last me about 3 or 4 months, which really isn’t too bad.

The other cool thing I have used on the website is the alerts. I set up the max speeding to be 120km/h, and the other night coming home from work, I was a little heavy on the pedal, and the next thing my phone popped up with an SMS to tell me that I had exceeded the speed limit. Needless to say, I have increased the limit ;)

Something else that caught me off guard was that you can set a “restriction” to alert you when the car is being used between a specific time. So I set mine up between 23:00 and 06:00. The other morning, at about 5:30am, my phone starts beeping again, to tell me that my car was in use between the restricted times. After my heart doing a small skip & jump, I remembered that my wife decided to go for a walk at 5:30 on the beach :)

All in all the system has been great so far. I will be doing a couple of posts going into details on the website and the iPhone app. If you would like to get a feel of how the whole thing works, log into the demo account on the X-Drive website(http://www.X-Drive.co.za). You can log in with the username “guestuser” and “password” as the password. From there you will be able to see the functionality of the site and the different preferences you can choose. You can also follow a test vehicle and run the different reports that are available.

If you have a X-Drive unit, leave a comment below, and let me know what you like or dislike about the unit. I am keen to hear what everyone else thinks about it.

As you may know, one of my side projects, along with Shaun Trennery, is izimvo. I have spoken a bit about izimvo here before, and we have been going from strength to strength.

We have a couple  of awesome things lined up this year, and the first of those, is a video interview, with Rich Laburn, who is a wildlife filmmaker based in the Londolozi Game reserve.

Rich went full-out in the video, and shared some of his secrets with us in the video. Check it out below, or click on the direct link

News broke on Twitter today by a Fishhoek resident,Gregg Coppen, who goes by the Twitter handle of Skabenga, who allegedly saw something “colourful” getting dragged down into the water from the house above the bay.

Image taken by Gregg Coppen (via Twitter)

After breaking the news on twitter, with the tweet below, Ambulances were apparently converging on the scene at the beach.

By the sounds of things, the Shark was of monster size, and didn’t look like your average shark.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s a Great White shark, who went by the name of “Submarine“, was synonymous with Cape Town beach goers. The story was started as hoax by journalists, which then grew into an urban legend. By the sounds of things today, Submarine could well be back.

It has since been confirmed, by the NSRI,  that a person was attacked by a Great White Shark off Fish Hoek beach earlier today. It is really sad that this had to happen, but the NSRI had issued Shark warnings just this morning. We need to remember the sea is powerful, and so are some of the animals that live in the sea. Would you walk around the Kruger Park without a guide ?

The other day Mike sent out a tweet about an awesome new game that was being launched on the 11th. Curious I checked out the website Wordcrasher.com to get a better idea of what it was all about

The game called, Wordcrasher (Opens iTunes Link),  is an awesome new word game. Think Tetris meets Scrabble meets Bejeweled. Ok, not that complicated, but something along those lines.

Basically the game drops in various letters through different stages, and you need to complete words from the letters. To get a better idea of what I mean check out this video:

I downloaded the game yesterday, and haven’t been able to put it down. So far I managed to get to level 5, and struggling along. There is also a flood mode, which drops the letters in, but you need to create the words before the water level reaches the top of the screen. You are also able to see global leader boards, and share scores on Twitter & Facebook, using OpenFeint.

Snap QR code to download

The game is on special for this week for $0.99 and then it goes up to $1.99. If words are your friend, I highly recommend this game :)