I am wasting time googling and hunting for it every month, because I have been naive enough to think that you would want to make it easy for people to pay their bill.

For everybody else at a loss as to why the South African internet and telecommunications are monopolised by a collective intelligence comparable to a gorilla with a head full of rohypnol, here’s the link: https://ebpp.telkom.co.za/bxce/ibpp/ibpp.jsp

Be careful not to pay your bill twice, as I’ve noticed the site is not smart enough to mark your bill as paid once you’ve done the deed.

Dope soundtrack, sounds like a Modeselektor remix

The site development has been through the following phases and encompasses several smaller wordpress-based sites which will go live shortly with their own Wild Wings Safaris wordpress theme.

• Search engine marketing and strategy consulting
• Wireframing and Information Architecture
• Logo redesign
• User Interface Design
• Expression Engine Development
• Custom PHP/MySQL development
• Front End Development and Browser Testing

At the back end there is also a rates management application (running on ExpressionEngine stand alone entry forms) where Wild Wings Safaris administrative staff can manage pricing for tours and accommodations. This is complimented on the front end by an ajax currency converter which stores the user’s currency preferences in a cookie for future visits.

My ExpressionEngine weblog setup is based around a location hierarchy with accompanying geodata which all my other content such as accommodations, tours, client feedback and more is related to. This gives us a solid geodata driven base from which we can grow the site and hopefully theWild Wings Safari online business.

Here’s the finished product: Wild Wings Safaris

I hadn’t worked with the CMS before but have really been wanting to get to grips with it for quite a while now. I think I’ve learned a lot and I have another EE site of considerable complexity in the works at the moment. It’s a great platform that is going to really blow up when EE 2 comes around and merges with the CodeIgniter PHP framework.

I will post a full breakdown of how I approached the job soon, from strategy to art direction to development and promotion, but for the mean time I just wanted to announce that it is finally up. It’s featured on quite a few CSS galleries and everyone I’ve spoken to (especially my client) has quite liked the design. Definitely a break from the norm in terms of your average travel site.

To co-incide with the launch and drum up some buzz around this new brand, we’re running a little competition with a choice between two travel prizes, each valued at R15,000. The winner gets to choose between an overland trip or a luxury safari destination.

The competition is pretty simple.

• You need to write either a blog post, flickr photo description or publish a youtube video that says something about travelling Africa.
• The copy must be a minimum of 100 words and be all your own work – no plagiarism or copyright violations please.
• You need to link to www.southernafricatravel.com somewhere on the page.
• The post we like the best and that gets the most genuine comments and positive response wins the prize.
• When you’re done crafting your entry, head over to our contact page and let us know where to find it.
• At 12h00 on Tues 21 April 2009 entries will close. Obviously the sooner you get something published, the longer you have to get the comments thread pumping.

For further info check out our home page and particularly the enquiry page . Good luck!

Travel industry neologisms like this drive me batty. Whether or not you find the word itself an annoying addition to the travel industry’s vocabulary, the item itself is generally pretty cool. Its basically any trip that entails working in local communities whilst you travel. Voluntours are growing in popularity with socially conscious gap-year students, particularly of the European variety.

I guess what I like about the voluntourism concept is that its a two-way cultural exchange, as opposed to your typical voyeuristic tourist experience. A voluntour can take place in the context of teaching self-reliance or linguistic skills to remote villages, or as a contribution to disaster management where necessary – there’s a diverse array of scenarios.

Where I’ve become aware of voluntours is when I’ve seen them crop up as packages on the travel sites I’ve dealt with. Being a stickler for calling a spade a spade, I’ve been tending towards rewriting this as a “volunteer tour” or “volunteer tourism”. I guess that we’ll have to wait and see whether the contracted form of the word gains any traction with the tourists themselves before voluntour can be despatched to the trash heap of rejected neologisms.

Lets start it with a positive jam

I can’t think of a better place to jump in than track no.1 on The Hold Steady’s first album.

The Hold Steady: Positive Jam

The Dancefloor Section

LCD Soundsystem: North American Scum
Marlena Shaw: California Soul (Diplo Remix)
Gorillaz: Feel Good Inc
MGMT: Electric Feel

Stone Cold Funk

Bobby Byrd: I Know You Got Soul
Eric B and Rakim: Follow the Leader
Public Enemy: Fight the Power
Ratatat: Despot Freestyle

Gratuitous Live Foreverism

The Stone Roses: Breaking Into Heaven
Scott Walker: 30th Century Man
Badly Drawn Boy: The Time of Times
Ride: Leave Them All Behind
Radical Face: Welcome Home Son
Modest Mouse: The World At Large
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood
The Dodo’s: Paint The Rust

Righteous Indignationalism

The White Stripes: Truth Doesn’t Make A Noise
Two Gallants: Fail Hard to Regain
Red Hot Chili Peppers: The Power of Equality
The Deftones: Change in The House of Flies
John Lennon: Working Class Hero

The Digital Connection

Modeselektor: Godspeed
Mark Franklin: Release To The System
Booka Shade: Hallelujah USA

Local Heroism

Elmore James: Hawaiian Boogie
Iron and Wine: Freedom Hangs Like Heaven

Parting Words

The Shins: The Past and Pending
The White Stripes: Truth Doesn’t Make A Noise
The Hold Steady: Stay Positive

Bring on the funky president.

That said, knowing Lance’s incredible and unbreakable resolve to prove his critics wrong, and how its worked for him in the past, I don’t think he will pass on the opportunities to

a) Win another tour against all odds and
b) Capitalise on the massive media attention this will generate around his mission to fight Cancer through Livestrong and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

What is interesting to me right now is his pre-race event schedule. How will Armstrong prepare for a return to cycling competition at the highest possible level after a three year hiatus? And how will he fare in the events that lead up to the tour. I think that this, more than anything, will determine whether we see him on the start line in Monaco on July 4.

Here is my breakdown of Lance Armstrong’s pre-Tour event schedule running up to the 2009 Tour de France. I will try to keep this up to date as changes occur.

Result: Won it by over a minute overall and by 3 minutes in his age group with 33:14.

Via Twitter:
“ Finished with the Tour de Greune TTT. College and I smoked ‘em. Won by 3 mins. Felt better today.”

Along with the Tour de France and the UCI World Championships (which Armstrong won in 1993), the Giro is a component of the Triple Crown of Cycling.

Map of Tour de France 2009 Route

Incidentally, Lance Armstrong recently signed up to Twitter, you can follow him here.