MarcForrest.com

Month: March 2010

  • Matthew Hayden’s Mongoose bat

    If you been following the IPL Pro20 series that is currently underway in India, you may have noticed Australian  and Chennai Super Kings Batsmen Matthew Hayden coming out to the middle with a rather odd-looking bat.

    The bat, called “The Mongoose“, has been specifically been designed for Pro20 cricket. The blade of the bat is 33% shorter than a standard cricket bat, while the handle is 43% longer. The bat apparently also provides about 20% more power to the batsmen using it.

    It’s great to see innovation been made in Cricket, and especially in Pro20. This bat definitely looks like it could be a game changer. For more info on the Mongoose bat, check out the informative information on the Wikipedia Page

  • Queen Mary 2 in Durban

    This morning I woke up bright and early to get down to the Durban harbour to see my latest purchase the worlds largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2, make it’s way into South Africa for the first time ever.

    I had read up quite a bit on the ship, and was absolutely blown away to see it arriving this morning. She leaves Durban this evening, and docks in Cape Town on Thursday, before carrying on with her rest of the round the world journey.

    The boat has 17 decks, and is 72m high and 345m long. Queen Mary 2‘s facilities include fifteen restaurants and bars, five swimming pools, a casino, a ballroom, a theatre, and the first planetarium at sea. They even have kennels on board if you fancy taking your pooch along for a sea cruise !!! To get a better idea of the size of this monster, check out this image below, that compares it to a couple of everyday objects. To read up a bit more about the Queen Mary 2, check out the Wikipedia article

    I took a couple of shots, which I have posted to a Flickr set.

  • Big Big Brandplus for eBucks

    Disclaimer: I was in no way asked to write this post, or compensated in any way

    I have always loved eBucks. The fact that I am getting rewarded for spending money makes a huge difference to me. Every year I used to accumulate my eBucks till December then “splash out” on a Woolworths Gift card which we would use to help buy kids presents and things around Christmas time.
    When the opportunity came up to attend the South African PayPal launch next week, I really wanted to make an effort of getting to the event. I wanted to be part of this ground breaking event, so I went through all the options of getting up to Jozi for the day. At first there was a slight possibility I would have had a sponsored flight, but on Tuesday morning I had a brainwave.
    I know Kulula has partnered with eBucks so you can use your eBucks to buy plane tickets. So I went onto the eBucks site, and searched for flights to and from Jozi for the day. As I was searching for flights I saw Kulula had a special on flights from Durbs to Lanseria for R299 each way, which would work out to R600 return. I contemplated hauling out the credit card, but then checked my eBucks balance. I had a balance of about R560 in my eBucks. Just short. So I went through the process of purchasing the tickets,with the intention of part paying,  and to my surprise I found that I qualified for a 20% discount. Bingo !!
    So I used my eBucks to buy the ticket to Jozi, which worked out 100%, and in essence cost me “nothing”.

    Then yesterday afternoon I tweeted about my score:

    Seriously, about 10 minutes later I got the following tweet reply from @eBucksRewards:

    How awesome is that. Coming from small town like Ballito, where I only have to deal with 3 car traffic congestion, I was rather (petrified) worried about having to deal with Jozi traffic. So now. I have a Avis Point to Point transfer picking me up at the airport, dropping me off at the PayPal event, and then dropping me off in Centurion where I will spend the night.

    Now that’s a BrandPlus in my books. Well done to eBucks for listening and using twitter to engage with their clients. This is how social media should be used, and I think they doing just the right job :) Thanks eBucks.

  • PayPal in South Africa

    I have just finished paying for my plane ticket up to Jozi to attend the launch next week Thursday, of the PayPal & FNB partnership in South Africa. The function takes place in Jozi, and I will be putting all the info I have about the partnership on my blog as soon as I have it.

    What does this mean for us, South Africans ? Well now we will finally be able to accept money through PayPal into an FNB account. This is huge for South African’s as it now allows us to do online business with the rest of the world, without incurring high bank costs for Credit card transactions, as as has been in the norm in the past. This means that anybody will be able to see anything online, and receive money without any hassles.

    It looks like both FNB & PayPal have started adjusting their systems to allow for this, and I’m sure we will soon start seeing the benefits of this partnership. Like I said above, as soon as I have any further info, you can get it here first ;)

  • Airship iPhone app

    The team from Appfactory have released their latest iPhone app, called Airship (iTunes link), and costs $2.99

    The app is an awesome little app that allows you to store files on your iPhone, using a web-based uploader over your WiFi connection. So you can store documents, presentations, video’s, music and pretty much anything else, and then view them on your iPhone.

    Once the app has been opened you connect to a web page using your web browser on your computer. From there, you can upload and manage your files, which are then uploaded to your iPhone. I tested it out today, and the setup was simple, literally 1 click, and the app really simple to use.

    The app supports the following file types:

    • Images (.jpg, .tiff, .gif, .png)
    • Excel (.xls)
    • Keynote (.key.zip)
    • Numbers (.numbers.zip)
    • Pages (.pages.zip)
    • PDF (.pdf)
    • Powerpoint (.ppt)
    • Word (.doc)
    • Rich Text Format (.rtf)
    • Rich Text Format Directory (.rtfd.zip)
    • Keynote ’09 (.key)
    • Numbers ’09 (.numbers)
    • Pages ’09 (.pages)
    • Audio Types:
      AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), HE-AAC, MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV.
    • Video Types:
      H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

    Here is a quick intro on how the app works.

    Open the app, and it will give you an IP address to connect to in your web browser.

    This will open a page which will allow you to upload files, which will be uploaded to your iPhone:

    From here, your files will appear on your iPhone in the app. You can also search for files from within the app:

    Overall this is a fantastic app, and I would love to see formats like .avi being included in future upgrades. great to see South African iPhone app developers coming o the party with exciting new apps.