Category: On The Marc

  • Revolutionary House – Julias Malema Song

    You may have heard the new parody song on 5FM called Revolutionary House. The song is a remix by David Law, and mixes in some of the out of line phrases Julias Malema used at a recent press conference.

    It really is a catchy tune, and is gaining loads of attention.Her is the video of the song from Youtube, and you can also download it here

    Check out the News24 article and the post of Zane Dickens website for more info

  • Coast 2 Coast 4 Cancer gets underway

    Today 5 KZN chaps will climb on their jet skis in Ponta Do Oura in Mozambique to make their way around the coast of Africa, to the West coast of Namibia. These courageous guys, Barry Lewin, Jason Ribbink ex-Protea cricketer Lance Klusener, Mark Addison and former Dolphins cricketer Russel Symcox (ScottburghCoast will be doing this all for for an intitivate called Coast 2 Coast 4 Cancer for the CANSA foundation to raise awareness & funds for them.


    I have been following a couple of the guys on Twitter of the last couple of months, and they have put in loads of hours of training for this epic journey.Below is a press release for the journey.

    In mid-April this year, five intrepid adventurers on jet ski’s will travel over 2800km’s of coastline in 3 Southern African countries in order to increase awareness and raise funds for the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) as part of the Coast 2 Coast 4 CANSA (C2C4C) campaign supported by SPAR and Acer.

    The expedition, which is expected to last for up to four weeks, requires the pilots to be in peak physical and mental condition as they will be encountering extreme ocean conditions on almost every step of their epic journey.

    The pilots, SA surfski paddler Barry Lewin (Umhlanga), SA surfer Jason Ribbink (Durban North), ex-Protea cricketer Lance Klusener (Mount Edgecombe), marine conservationist Mark Addison (Widenham) and former Dolphins cricketer Russel Symcox (Scottburgh), will begin their journey on their Yamaha WaveRunners on the Mozambique border on the 20 April in 2010. Over the next four weeks, man and machine will travel up to 300km each day, with the aim of creating awareness, educating and raising funds for CANSA.

    “CANSA plays an important ‘watchdog’ role for South Africans by acting proactively and educating the public on protecting themselves against cancer and this inaugural event will help to spread the word about making informed choices, such as safety in the sun, not using any tobacco products and encouraging South Africans to eat five fresh fruits and vegetables every day. Up to 40% of cancers can be prevented by living a healthy, balanced lifestyle. We are very excited to be joining the expedition in the fight against cancer”, says Sue Janse van Rensburg, CANSA’s CEO.

    The journey, which will begin on the East Coast border of Mozambique and end at the West Coast border of Namibia, is “inherently dangerous, physically gruelling and challenging on every level” said expedition leader and event organiser Russel Symcox. However, according to Symcox, a mission of this magnitude is justifiable as “it will attract the necessary media attention which in turn will provide a platform to raise funds and create awareness for cancer, its prevention, early detection and treatment as well as encouraging all South Africans to pursue a healthy balanced lifestyle”.

    The approximately 1511 nautical mile journey involves more than just the five-strong “core” jet ski crew, as they will be accompanied by four support vehicles manned by support crew members, medical and safety personnel, media liaisons and logistics co-ordinators.

    During the treacherous journey, the crew will stop over in the major South African cities of Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, and make use of the opportunity to promote cancer awareness. On these particular stop over days, media interviews with local radio stations and regional or community newspapers will be facilitated through the media liaisons and, with the assistance of CANSA, educational visits to schools, hospitals, clinics and special care facilities will also be organised, all designed to promote awareness about cancer and draw attention to the objectives of the C2C4C campaign.

    For more information, to donate or simply just to track the progress of the crew both in the build-up and throughout the C2C4C campaign, log on to the official website at www.coast2coast4cansa.co.za or on the CANSA website www.cansa.org.za to get the latest updates, news, pictures and videos.

    As part of their fundraising drive, a SMS line has been opened, and by SMSing C2C4C or DONATE to the number 38501, you can make a donation of R10 to the Coast 2 Coast 4 CANSA campaign.

    Once the mission has begun, the SMS donation line will also have a unique tracking application whereby people will be able to SMS “TRACK” to 38501, and a map and co-ordinates will be sent to the user which will show where exactly the jet ski crew are.

    Expedition Leader Symcox was also very excited that “the C2C4C Facebook group and Twitter pages are getting good support, and we’d like to urge everyone to assist us in growing the group and broadening the reach to many more.”

    Coast 2 Coast 4 CANSA would not be possible without SPAR and IT partner Acer. Yamaha has provided the FX Waverunners with RMR providing trailers and Thekwini Toyota sponsoring a Quantum bus and Hilux vehicles for the back-up crew.

    Lowrance has provided safety and navigation equipment and RE/MAX as well as Rainbow Chickens have contributed financially to assist with the expedition expenses. Riders will be wearing Billabong wetsuits, Oakley eyewear, Oakley H2O goggles, Dakine and Xcel lifejackets and hard goods. The entire expedition will be documented via Sanyo digital video camera’s supplied by Hirsch.

    360X provided the branding for the skis and vehicles; Corporate Junction has sponsored the C2C4C branding. The team is grateful to Racetech Yamaha for servicing the skis and assisting with modifications. The entire expedition will be insured by Curnow Garrun Insurance Brokers and Alexander’s Incorporated will be taking care of all legal matters.

    Med-Evac and their associated partners will be providing emergency medical rescue if necessary and Power Balance is supplying lifestyle armbands and Vitamin Water is the beverage sponsor. All website and design work has been created by Apula Advertising. Southern Sun is the accommodation partner and Suncoast Casino and Entertainment World has sponsored the launch function and closing function. Cellfind have supplied the sms lines with Nivea providing sunscreen protection for the riders for the duration of the trip.

    The C2C4C team are proud to be associated with the South African Rugby Legends Association (SARLA) who will be staging sports clinics on the beach at various stop-overs.

    I will try and do a couple more posts about the journey, and wish the guys the best of luck.

    [Images courtesy of Kevin Trautman]

  • Thirst4Work Launches in KZN

    I’m a big fan of startups in South African, and even a bigger fan when the startups are from KZN, and EVEN more stoked when they from my home town Ballito, up on the North Coast of KZN.

    Enter Brad Dowden. Brad is also a local Ballito boy, and has recently launched a very very cool recruitment site, called Thirst4Work. This is not your average recruitment site where you upload a CV and hope for a phone call. Thirst for work is a whole lot more fun. Once you register on the site, you can upload your CV to the site, and allow you to search for specific jobs in your field. The guys have also added a really cool feature whereby you can follow a specific twitter stream for the industry you looking for a position in. So, for example, if you looking for an IT job, you can follow the dedicated @t4wIT twitter stream which will show you all the jobs the new jobs they have in the IT field, in your Twitter stream, as they are added. There are a whole bunch for the different industries. Very cool !

    Here is a bit more info about Thirst4Work:


    Thirst4work.com, a job portal with a difference!  We want to get South Africa to work and open up as many opportunities as possible for all those job seekers out there.  How do we do this?  We utilise the power of Social Media networks to spread the word about available jobs, whilst giving job seekers the opportunity to manage all their job applications in one place. We’ve created a powerful tool called CV Pilot which helps job seekers create a professional online CV which they can use to apply for jobs from leading employers.

    All to often in the past, companies have used newspapers to advertise.  With the shortage of talent in South Africa, their job ads are only reaching a small audience, many of which do not have the required skills.  By using Thirst4work.com, their job ad is placed online, is spread through the social media network and is exposed to potential candidates both local and abroad…all this for a fraction of the cost.  We are educating companies on new ways to recruit and attract talent whilst helping South Africans to gain employment.  This service is not only for the large corporates but also for the smaller businesses looking for talent.

    Even if you not in the job market, I would highly suggest you check out Thirst4Work, you might never know what pops up :)

  • Don’t touch me on my studio

    You seen the hiliraious encounter that took place on the set of E-Tv’s news studios last week, when Andre Visage became a household name overnight, and soon everybody was talking about “Don’t Touch ME on MY studio“. The payoff line has sorta become a joke amongst friends and loads of spoof video’s and songs have been put together to rip off the presenter who was clearly touched on his studio.

    So, myself and my mate Patrick, came up with the idea to put up a site where we could show off all these videos, pictures & songs that have been flying around.

    So head on over to http://www.donttouchmeonmystudio.co.za, and have a laugh at some of the cool videos that we have found. If you know of any other video’s or have a song or picture you would like to submit, please do so :)

  • Read my article on MemeBurn

    I’m sure by now you must have heard about the new South African website called MemeBurn. The site is the brainchild of Matthew Buckland and the guys from Creative Spark.

    The site focuses on South Africa and the emerging markets and is a mashup between the Techcrunch’s and Mashables of the world. So far I am very very impressed with the site, and have added it to my “Must Read” folder on Google Reader.

    A few weeks ago, I got a mail from the Matt, asking me if I would like to contribute to the site, so I put a couple of words down about my favorite subject, The SA iPhone app Market. The article went live this  morning, and you can read it here -> http://memeburn.com/2010/04/sa-iphone-app-market-poised-to-boom/

    Here is a short extract about what its all about…

    According to AdMob, the world’s largest Mobile Advertising Network, South Africans are slowly catching on to the worldwide iPhone phenomenon. Stats show that the penetration of the iPhone into the South Africa market has slowly increased over the last couple of months, as users of the device start seeing the potential benefits, both from a business as well as a personal perspective.

    South African iPhone developers have been growing quickly over the past couple of months, with corporates now also seeing the benefits of having an iPhone application included in their media portfolio.

    Read more…

    This is one of my first articles I have submitted to another site, and would love feedback, so please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments on the article :)