Today we launched a sister podcast to ZA Tech Show in the form of ZA Car Show. It’s a weekly motoring podcast in the same format as ZA Tech Show. The podcast is hosted by Christo van Gemert and Trevor van de Ven – the two magnificent bastards that came up with the concept, who are joined by Patrick Gearing and Trevor Tuck along with a range of industry guests.

I’m hoping this will be the first of many more podcasts to be added to our growing content network. We have a strategy for eventually transforming these podcasts into something more and I will reveal details about this at a later stage.

Please check out ZA Car Show. And I’d love to hear what you think of the podcast. It aims to be edgy, call it like it is and offer petrol heads and motoring enthusiasts something outside of bland old motoring media. It is also being served from a local (South African) server that resides in IS’ data centre. IS is our bandwidth sponsor for the ZA Network and has been fantastic in coming to the party, more than covering our needs and helping us get the server up and running. Special thanks goes to Charles Leaver at IS who has been beyond legendary in helping me get our server configured and secured. Without him the move to local bandwidth would simply not have been possible.

And, of course, ZA Tech Show continues as always. Six months in and we now have a new look for the show, thanks to the design rock stars at Infiltrate Media who developed the logos for both ZA Tech and ZA Car.

I’ve had a ball developing the sites for both podcasts, wrangling CSS and knocking our server into shape, while strategising with my business partners in Split Infinitive – the company that has been formed to bring the ZA Network to life. This new organisation encapsulates a vision I had when I first formed Deathcard Media in 2004; and I intend to keep Deathcard Media going as my own, personal creative space where I plan to develop a web comic, god blog and some other ideas I’ve had, including resurrecting Seedcast.

The South African market is entering the next phase in terms of new media in much the same way that the American market matured two to three years ago. This will escalate as bandwidth becomes more abundant and affordable in South Africa. The ZA Network is working to provide quality, gratis content to the local market, allowing content creators to focus on what they do best, while we take care of business on their behalf. I can’t wait to get going on our next project…