MarcForrest.com

Category: Personal

  • 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 :)

  • 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.

  • Jamie Oliver’s TED Talk

    Many of us know Jamie Oliver for his awesome cooling skills, and TV programmes, as well as his great cookbooks, of which I am sure we all have a copy lying around somewhere.

    Jamie was invited to speak at the TED 2010 conference in California last week, and the topic he spoke about was “Teach every child about food”

    Being a father to 3 gorgeous children, the video is an eye opener about the food we eat and  feed our children. America has a huge problem with obesity, and to be honest, South Africa is not far behind. I’ll be the first to admit, that I’m overweight, and watching the video of his talk, really made me think about what we eat. Watching some of the American kids in that video was quite heart sore to say the least, where they weren’t even able to tell the difference between a tomato or a potato.

    Spare yourself 20 minutes, and sit down and watch the video of Jamie Olivers Ted talk. It really is an eye opener, and makes you think about the food we eat, and feed our children.