Charl Norman scooped the launch announcement this morning, and Justin updated the Afrigator blog with a list of cool features the new version boasts.

Here is a summary of those improvements from the Afrigator blog:

1. The home page has a new layout. We have 4 new tabs which sort posts by Recent, Most Clicked and by Popular Bloggers. We also have a new tab called Custom which allows you to filter posts by category.

2. We’ve also added MyGator to the home page which will hopefully futher filter posts by your personal preferences.

3. To activate the custom tab you have to login to the system and click on the Customise Homepage link in your Dashboard. You can then select the countries or categories that you’re interested in.

4. Below each blog post on the site you can now click a small Stats icon which will show you where a particular blog is ranked in their respective country as well as in the rest of Africa.

5. We’ve add an Expand/Collapse button so you can easily see descriptions for all of the posts on a page.

6. On the News page you can now sort news articles by most recent or popular.

7. On all the pages we now have an Ajax pager that improves loading time and speed to users so you can view older content easier.

8. We’ve also improved the display of posts. You can now easily see the name of author and date of their posts which we dropped for Beta 1 which in hindsight was a bad idea.

9. There is an improved profile page for a user with link a to Mygator as well as some stats about the Author’s blog.

10. Our Blog Stats algorithm has received a MAJOR overhall. We now calculate a blog’s position based on the following four criteria:

a. Visits
b. Pageviews
c. Links from other Afrigator blogs
d. Links from other Afrigator blog posts

With these 4 criteria we then add these together and divide by 4 to get an average. You’ll notice in the sidebar we now have “Top Ranked Blogs” and this list as well as the blog stats page is ranked according to this average. We believe this is a far more accurate way of ranking blogs.

The blog stats page also allows you to view ranking of blogs by visits, page views, links and country.

We’ve really spent a lot of time on making this work.

11. On the Customise Homepage link in your Dashboard you can specify which country or countries’ content you want to see on Afrigator. Only blog posts, podcasts and new are filtered at this stage. (Not stats or videos)

12. You can now also override country filter in the sidebar. You can use this to see something from a specific country and override your settings as per your personal preferences setup in the Dashboard.

Our primary focus throughout the design and development process (all credit goes to Mark and Stii for the hard work) was making the site more appealing to it’s faithful users.  Truth be told, Afrigator has always been a good idea executed in a not so brilliant way (at least from a functional perspective).  These new features start to drive us in the right direction, I think.

The key is, what do you think?  Honestly…

Geraldine bought her son a second-hand Dell Latitude laptop (see Dell’s most recent Inspiron range here). One day, in the interest of security, the young man left his precious gadget in the oven of their apartment before going down to the beach for a bit of fun.

Now I understand the logic in terms of an oven being the last place anyone would look to steal a laptop from, but eish, you’re getting how this could have an unhappy ending…

Well, it did and it didn’t. The bad news is that someone turned on the oven and ‘baked’ the laptop. The amazingly good news is that once it had cooled down the thing carried on working, thanks to a little bit of silicone, a lot of TLC and some patience with a rather wavy screen.

So who’s prepared to bake their Mac to see if it still works?

Ok so I’m kidding but heck, what a phenomenal photo…

Hat tip to the Yellow Llama.

I haven’t written about Vernon on this blog yet simply because I haven’t the words to describe my admiration…

Hat tip to Rafiq.

Update:

LOL - this was, unbeknownst to me, the 666th post on my blog… bah!

And then yesterday they introduced chat. I knew it was coming, and that it had been in a closed Beta for some time, but it arrived as a pleasant surprise when I logged on. Facebook chat is simple, offering users the opportunity to chat with their Facebook friends who are online from within their browser. From my limited experience of it yesterday, it’s pretty quick, reliable and bottom line, has me using Facebook again.

Stiaan has written an insightful post highlighting that he doesn’t necessarily think that Facebook chat is trying to compete with GTalk / Skype so much as add a completely new dimension to it’s already potent social networking offering. I have to agree, but add that it is a significant new dimension. Significant enough to grab my attention all over again.

Stii also mentioned that Vincent Maher said to him on FB chat that “this changes everything” - I’d like to hear more from Vince about that.

What do you think of Facebook chat?

Gino is a huge asset to Cerebra as our account director. At a time when Cerebra was expanding at a rate of knots Gino came on board to help steady the ship and it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. He is a formidable strategic mind, a deep well of useful content and resources and a great relationship builder with our biggest clients.

I’d strongly recommend you download the Guide, share it with your colleagues at work and let Gino kow your comments and feedback!

Family friends of ours are currently spending their days and nights in ICU at the Glynnwood hospital next to the bed of their 20-year old son who is in a critical condition after being shot by Metro Police, for what seems like no reason whatsoever:

Man serious after being shot by Metro cops

18th April – Gloria Edwards

A top Badminton player from Benoni is in serious condition in a hospital after allegedly being shot in his genitals and shoulder by Ekurhuleni Metro Police.

Mr. James-Thomas Geldart (20), a badminton coach who also plays for Benoni Country Club’s first team, is in serious condition in the Glynnwood Hospital ICU after having been shot close to his parents’ home in Rynfield around 12:30.

According to his father, James, Geldart Jnr. was on his way home from Springs where he had played in a badminton league match when metro police members, apparently in two unmarked cars, began following him on the N12 freeway “and began shooting at him.”

Geldart Jnr. sped to his parents’ home and phoned a security company which – according to Geldart snr – “Could hear his son being shot at.”
Scarcely a block away from home Geldart jnr., apparently already wounded, lost control over his Golf car after which it ran into a wall. His mother, Amanda, woke up when she heard the shooting and activated the house alarm. “I had scarcely pressed the panic button when CMS (security) stopped at the house and asked where the hijacking was,” she said. Geldart snr. accompanied security personnel to the scene where paramedics were treating their son.

“He was covered in blood. He said: “Dad, I thought I was being hijacked because they were shooting at me.” The family was recently held up by armed robbers in their home, and Geldart. Jnr. was hijacked about a year ago.

Geldart jnr. also sustained an injury to his face. “The doctors aren’t sure whether it’s a gunshot wound or whether it’s as a result of the accident,” Mrs. Geldart said.

Geldart snr. said they were trying to make sense of the incident. “He’s only a child. He’s got a bright future ahead of him. He was head boy of Brandwag High School, as well as being among the top ten badminton players in the country. He is also in his third year at Unisa, studying for his B. Com financial management.

We don’t know why they were shooting at him, but we had heard that the metro police were conducting an ATM crime prevention project in Springs, so they may have mistaken him for a suspect. We don’t know,” he said.

According to Capt. Julia Claasen, police spokesperson, the metro police followed Geldart jnr. as he had allegedly skipped a red traffic light. “A case of attempted murder is being investigated,” she said.

Chief Superintendent Wilfred Kgasago, metro police spokesperson, confirmed that “there was a shooting incident in which metro police members were involved.”

As I’ve said before on this blog, I haven’t been the victim of violent crime. Nor have any of the members of my immediate family. So it’s conceivable, and justifiable, that you could regard my normally optimistic view of our country as delusional. I know I’d feel differently if something like this happened - completely different.

Do me a favour - if you pray, pray for these people. If you don’t pray, do whatever you do when you feel helpless. It hit home really hard this morning when I was invited to the Facebook group in support of James Jnr. - I still have some hope, but it’s waning fast.