MarcForrest.com

Category: On The Marc

  • Santam Backtracks iPhone app – WHY ?

    Santam Backtracks iPhone app – WHY ?

    If you follow this blog regularly  you will notice I am a huge fan of South African developed iPhone apps for South African brands, and often feature them after finding out about them.

    But this one baffles me, and I honestly can’t figure out, why ? Why would, Santam, who are an insurance company (who indecently looks after my personal insurance) create an app that has absolutely nothing to do with insurance ?

    I only found out about the app after listening to a rather cheezy radio ad on my way to a meeting, and decided to look at the app and what it offers. I thought that maybe the ad was a front for their corporate app, but nope, it seems my insurance company has developed an app that allows you to add backtracks to your videos and just allows you to play a noise, which will “help you out of an awkward situation”

    Awkward…

    There are 2 buttons in the app, 1 which tells you that Santam is in fact a insurance provider, and the other to let you request a quote from them, just in case you didn’t really believe they were an insurance company…

    All I can think is that what happened with this app, is the top brass said (a common occurrence these days) “We NEED an APP !!” and the marketing team thought it would be a great idea to make a really great and fun-filled app !

    Seriously Santam, you might want to re-think this one ? Rather give me an app where I can view my policy, lodge a claim, view claim progresses, and get in touch with your team. That’s 4 buttons you can replace with the 4 you already have at the bottom of your app ?

    Unless I am seriously missing something ???

     

  • Londolozi Launches 4 stunning iBooks

    Londolozi Launches 4 stunning iBooks

    A while back the guys from Londolozi Game Reserve got in touch with me asking about creating & launching their own iBooks for the Apple iBook Store. I pointed them in the right direction, and they came back to me last week letting me know they had finally completed the project and the books had been approved for sale.

    Today they are officially launching these 4 books, and I have to admit, they are awesome. They have captured the beauty of an amazing and world renowned Tsalala Lion Pride in the Lions of Londolozi. For me the highlight was the story behind the Londolozi Leopards, which Londolozi co-founder John Varty developed a relationship with the Mother Leopard in 1979 and has some amazing stories since. A MUST read !

    South Africa has some of the best game parks in the world, and just browsing through the Londolozi site, looks absolutely amazing ! One day :)

    The 4 books they have launched are:

    The Londolozi Journey – $9.99 – A story about how Londolozi became what it is today and some of the behind the scenes stuff we never hear about

    The Leopards of Londolozi – $9.99 – The story of the amazing Leopards and the history of this amazing “love affair” since 1979

    The Lions of Londolozi – $19.99 – How the world renowned Tsala Pride has captured the hearts (and cameras) of Londolozi visitors

    The Londolozi Cookbook – $16.99 – Londolozi is not only famous for the wildlife, but also some of their amazing food.  Executive Chef, Anna Ridgewell, and Londolozi Sous Chefs, Eric and Connie take you into their kitchen in this behind the scenes look of how the food is prepared and how to do it all yourself.

    I have had a peek through some of these books, and I can tell you they are stunning. The team from Londolozi have also offered a couple of promo codes for each book, which we will be giving away right here !

    All you need to do to enter is leave a comment or tweet about this post using the RaffleCopter form below and you will be entered into the draw. Competition ends Monday 17 December 2012 @ 5pm. A US iTunes account is needed to redeem the code

    a Rafflecopter giveaway

  • iTunes Music Store Now available in South Africa

    It was bound to happen, and finally the iTunes Music store has launched in South Africa. With the announcement yesterday that the iPhone 5 will be released in South Africa on the 14th Of Dec, the timing couldn’t be more apt !

    At a quick first glance, individual songs will cost around R8.99 and full albums around R89.99. It looks like the store will just be offering Music to start with and no movie category.

    South African Idols winner starts off at the top of the album charts with his album “For You” at the number 1 spot, and the popular Gangnam Style as the number 1 song (obviously) . Other than that, the music collection doesn’t look that comprehensive, with only some of the categories being represented, and doesn’t seem as may artists as the US store, but I’m sure with time that will change.

    Another exciting addition is the popular service iTunes Match which stores your entire music library in the cloud allowing you to access it from any device anywhere. The service costs a fairly priced R199.99 in South Africa.

    Finally. It’s about time :)

  • Meeting the legendary magician Dynamo

    Last week Thursday I was given an awesome opportunity to attend a meet & greet session with the legendary magician Dynamo. If you haven’t heard of him, where have you been ?

    Over the last couple of years British born Steven Frayne, aka Dynamo, has been making waves in the entertainment world with his street magic that he performs around the world. And South Africa gets a chance as he is here to promote his new series “Dynamo: Magician Impossible Season 2” which starts this week Wednesday on the Discovery channel on DSTV. The night before the meet & greet he also announced he would be extending his stay in SA to film a few episodes for the upcoming season 3.

    We got to ask Dynamo a couple of questions and he even did 1 or 2 spontaneous tricks as well ! Really interesting guy !

    But for me, the biggest take-away from the event was, we were each given a copy of his book, “Nothing is Impossible“, which I finished reading in 1 day. It was seriously THAT good. The book takes you into Dynamo’s life, how he got into magic, and how, suffering with a serious disease called Crohn’s disease, managed to overcome so many obstacles, and just persevere with getting recognised. For a chap who isn’t even 30 yet, and has made such an impact in his life, is utterly amazing. Seriously, if you enjoy reading biographies, I highly suggest reading his book !

     

  • Microsoft Tech Days Durban 2012

    A guest post from Matt over at Rogue Code. Rogue Code are top notch Windows Phone Developers ! Matt attended Microsoft Tech Days in Durban, and gives a very cool insight to what the day was all about. Thanks Matt !

    Friday the 12th of October, I found myself headed to the International Conference Centre in Durban. The sun was shining bright and the temperature was on the rise, much like it always is in Durban. I was headed to this year’s Microsoft Tech Days. Tech Days is a yearly event hosted by Microsoft aimed at reaching out to the community to bring them up to speed with their latest innovations in hardware and software and what they expect from developers and the like.

    Upon entering the main hall of the event I was met by a barrage of various sponsors and Microsoft orientated displays. The hall was packed with event goers who found themselves caught in the customary act of networking, as one would expect from an event such as this. Overall the event had a rather excited vibe in the air, and received a rather good response from the relatively small techy community in Durban.

    Once it was apparent that all registration had been completed, we all shuffled into one of the secondary halls, this is where the Keynote session took place. The keynote session was focused on giving a general overview of the topics of the day, to help attendees decide on which sessions they might want to attend. The event hall also had bowls of mints strewn across the tables, which was a major plus – I love mints. The keynotes session had come to a close and I found myself shuffling back into the main hall where we were served a rather tasty breakfast of waffles with syrup and cream. After breakfast we all decided which track we should attend. The topics were:

     

    Session 1

    • Track 1 Windows 8 Part 1: Introduction

    • Track 2 Migrating an existing LOB application to Windows Azure

    • Track 3 Managing your Core Infrastructure

    • Track 4 The New Office: The Insider’s Guide to What’s Coming for IT Pros and Developers

     

    Session 2

    • Track 1 Win 8 Part 2 – Application Development with HTML / JS

    • Track 2 Using Windows Azure Service Bus to integrate LOB applications and Office 365

    • Track 3 Server Virtualization • Track 4 Call Me If You Can: Lync 2013 Voice Architecture and Management

     

    Session 3

    • Track 1 Windows 8 – End to End Application with C# & Xaml

    • Track 2 End to End Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 – Part

    • Track 3 VDI and Access

    • Track 4 Exchange Online in Office 365: Administration Deep Dive

     

    Session 4

    • Track 1 UI Design

    • Track 2 End to End Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 – Part 2

    • Track 3 Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform – using Azure Cloud Services • Track 4 SharePoint 2013: Return of the Technical Jedi!

    • Track 4 SharePoint 2013: Return of the Technical Jedi!

    With Windows 8 being released to the public on the 26th of this month (October), there was quite a substantial amount of focus paid to the Windows 8 tracks. A large part of the event goers were quite enthralled by the Windows 8 topics, and rightfully so. Windows 8 is bringing a whole new style to the Operating System, they now focus on “content before chrome”, meaning that apps should use all the space they can without wasting it on chrome. Another saying that was tossed around repeatedly in context to Windows 8 apps was “fast and fluid”. All in all it seems that the release of Windows 8 opens up a lot of opportunities to a lot of people, the ability for developers to monetize apps has never been easier than in Windows 8, and the potential market share is absolutely massive.

    There was also quite a bit of chatter about the new Office 2013, which looks to be the next major update after the “ribbon” interface. There are a lot of nifty changes in Office making it more user friendly, but what stuck out to me was the new animations and the fluidity of it all. The incorporation with SkyDrive (Microsoft’s cloud storage platform) also means that the users’ files now travel with them across any computer, phone, or web browser.

    Throughout the day I found myself attending all the Windows 8 tracks, however I managed to speak to some people that had attended the other ones, and they all seem to have been as equally as enlightening. Overall the sessions for the day were rather effective and I believe they not only helped me quite a lot, but a large portion of the Durban techy community. Durban really needs more events like this to, you know…get us all out in the sun for a bit.