Ten years ago I had the perfect bank. When I called its contact centre they would greet me by name and their internet banking solution was revolutionary at the time. That bank was 20twenty and its service gave you a real sense of the people that worked there. It was a breakthrough in the financial sector. Now the same minds that created 20twenty are back with another ambitious service and I have the opportunity of working with them – something I am super-excited about.

Starting in April I will be joining 22seven to head up its product strategy and design.

This doesn’t mean you’ll stop seeing my articles in Finweek, hearing my show on 5FM or the ZA Tech Show. I’ve always managed to deal in opinion from a media perspective while maintaining my own business interests and this doesn’t change. I do make sure that I fully disclose those interests, however, out of respect for my readers and listeners.

Everything I wrote or said about 22seven before this announcement was before my discussions with the company turned to business. When I originally blogged about 22seven it was way before I had any idea I would be joining the team.

I believe that Christo Davel, the founder of 22seven, and his formidable team are onto something big.

A fundamental shift is underway that centres on technology and its ability to transform industries when addressed from a anthropological perspective. We have seen this shift underpin revolutions in social networking, information management and mobile technology.

22seven is at the forefront of this movement in terms of personal finance and I am proud to be part of it.

Sitting back and reflecting over the past two years makes me realise how lucky we are to have enjoyed the support that we have from our families, friends and fans. The show owes its survival to the support of a group of the most awesome people I’ve met – but more about them later.

Since we intend to broadcast every one of our shows live from now on we are committed to starting on time at our usual 4pm (UTC+2) slot every Friday. This is not an ideal time, but is the only point at which we can get most of our regular panel together. We are looking at other potential broadcast slots and might announce a scheduling change soon.

On the technical side we had to work on a shoestring budget as the podcast is yet to make any profit. We’re planning to change that soon, and the intention was always to grow this slowly and make it scalable for when the economies of the local market align with our vision for broadcasting online in it.

That in mind, we chose to broadcast the audio-only version of the show using an Icecast server that runs out of the data centre of our bandwidth sponsors, Internet Solutions.

Icecast is an awesome piece of software and ideal for our needs, providing a standardised stream that is widely supported and enables us to cater for thousands of concurrent listeners while providing the audio on local (South African) bandwidth.

To get the audio from our “studio” to the Icecast server we use an excellent piece of software from Rogue Amoeba called Nicecast. I’m a big fan of Rogue Amoeba’s software in general, and we use Audio Hijack Pro to do complex recordings of the show that require Skype calls to be supported.

Using Nicecast in conjunction with Audio Hijack Pro also has the advantage of us being able to stream and record audio on the same computer. And by now you would probably have realised that we run Macs end-to-end in our makeshift studio, although we will likely use a PC to drive our video setup in the future and we are experimenting with software solutions for live video mixing since we can’t afford to get something like a Tricaster just yet.

The rest of our setup is standard stuff. We use Shure microphones and a simple 8-channel Behringer mixer. Our live video is streamed using Ustream and the built-in webcam on a Mabook Pro. This suffices given the limit on bandwidth that we face, both for our upstream and the average downstream of our viewers. The audio for the video stream is provided from our main mixer, allowing us to bring in Skype callers.

So video is on international bandwidth and audio on local, which we feel is a good enough solution for now.

The first broadcast went relatively well and raised some good ideas for how we could make it better in the future.

We also have some new office and studio space, thanks to the awesomeness of Don Packett and Richard Mulholland at Thunk! Perspective Lab, and we will be kitting this out over the next few weeks using clever tech to get around our tiny budget.

We made fun of that fact that we don’t have a studio at the moment by packing heaps of boxes around an old coffee table that we broadcast from last Friday, pretending that we were at Brett’s mom’s house, in her storeroom. Apparently some of live viewers took us seriously on that.

The ZA Tech Show started as a group of technology journalists drinking beer and talking about technology on a Friday afternoon and we plan to keep it that way, preserving the camaraderie and raw, honest discussion that has made the show as popular as it is.

We believe that the future holds big things for the show and we look forward to sharing that with our listeners, and now viewers, live =)

Brett Haggard, Ben Kelly, Duncan McLeod and Jon Tullett are the crazy f*#kers that started this thing with me and it was great to have them all back on the show for episode 100. Since then Toby Shapshak has become a regular on the show and deserves a special mention.

Since starting the show we’ve also added Candice Jones, Samantha Perry and Aki Anastasiou to our list of occasional guests, along with Will Hahn who dials in from the USA every now and then and who has offered us amazing support.

Mark Shuttleworth, Stafford Masie, Mike Stopforth, Dwayne Bailey, Saul Kropman and other guests have appeared on the show over the last two years and added massive value for our listeners. And, away from the mic, we’ve been blown away by the awesomeness of the guys at Thunk! (mentioned above), Emerging Media Communications, Lenovo, Tribeca, Puruma, Text 100, Microsoft, Nokia and other companies that have come out in support of the podcast in various ways.

We also owe a serious debt of gratitude to the guys at Internet Solutions who have offered amazing support and who sponsor our local bandwidth. Jason Bronkhorst and Charl Malherbe at Infiltrate Media have also been legendary and designed both the ZA Tech Show and ZA Car Show logos.

I’d also like to thank our friends at the TWiT Network in Petaluma CA, especially Dane Golden and Leo Laporte who I consider mentors in the game of online broadcasting. Without knowing it they’ve provided inspiration and know-how for our show via their online knowledge-base and, more recently, they allowed us to broadcast over their wildly popular channel from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Finally, I must thank my business partner and friend Craig Rodney who glues this whole thing together from a business perspective.

It’s been a wild ride and it ain’t over yet. Here’s to the next 100!

I was recently in a debate with a dear uncle of mine who loves a robust argument just as much as I do. Given that we were both somewhat intoxicated on fine scotch at the time the argument was fairly heated. The topic – homeopathy. My uncle buys into the pseudo-science. I do not.

I often have these arguments with family members given to the likes of homeopathy and whenever I do, inevitably botch up the act of staying cool and articulating my inherent scepticism. I try to explain that I apply critical thinking to anything and everything presented to me, whether it’s a question of religion, the perceived dangers of fast food or whether or not to cancel a business trip due to a swine flu “pandemic”.

My own critical thinking received a boost in high school, in part as a reaction to a poor presentation of Newtonian physics administered by a science teacher, and as a reaction to my English teacher who would passionately argue his case against theism whenever his class raised the topic in a ploy to escape the content of our currciculum.

I owe both these teachers a debt of gratitude. One for sucking at physics and the other for challenging my convictions of the time.

Whenever arguments on the topics of religion, pop phenomenon or pseudo-science enter the lunch or dinner tables I share with my family it becomes impossible for me to remain calm, present a composed argument and justify my reliance on critical thinking. This is because I passionately want the people I love to accept and adopt my way of thinking and their resistance to what I am saying causes me to mess up the explanation of why I say it. My articulation fails which turns me to expletives and… well… you get the idea.

I see critical thinking as the single most important thing which should be taught at schools. Next would be history, open to the scrutiny of critical thought which has been instilled as a fundamental.

Scepticism has unlocked the world for me. It is a more beautiful place because I see it for what it is. This may sound arrogant, but is simply my experience. Richard Dawkins often refers to ‘raising your consciousness’. I honestly think that is the best description of the change critical thinking can bring. The phenomenon can also be summed up in Douglas Adams’ famous quote, “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too.”

There are no fairies. Or ghosts. Homeopathy is a pseudo-science that does not stand up to the scrutiny of modern science which, unlike practices based on “ancient wisdom” has given us breakthroughs such as flu vaccines and television satellites as opposed to a belief in a flat-earth on the back of a giant turtle.

Your parents might have told you otherwise. You might feel scared or even guilty because your perception of the world is rooted in something that was taught to you as the only truth and that if you didn’t believe it you would be in some sort of trouble. In the extreme you may even believe that you have seen a ghost or that a homeopath has cured you – a common error where correlation is confused with causation or where you have succumb to a placebo effect. Or are just lying. I know – I’ve been there.

But you can set yourself free of all this nonsense if you are willing to explore the bigger picture. To think beyond what you have been taught. To arm yourself with critical thinking and apply it to anything and everything you hear, or thought you knew.

Brian Dunning is an activist for critical thinking. Through his website Skeptoid, his podcast by the same name, books and videos he is doing a great job of spreading critical thought and challenging people to question the things that they are presented with as fact. He actively combats myths that are progressed through pop culture and tours around speaking at schools and universities. All he he asks for in return is that people help him to spread the message. And so I am.

Instead of trying to further explain critical thinking and my take on it I would instead advocate watching Brian’s video Here Be Dragons as he does a much better job of it than I could. In fact you can consider this entire post as a justification for watching this video. It will cost you nothing and potentially change your life. Unlike some miracle cure or new fad in spirituality, critical thinking stands up to that claim.

Brian’s video is not advocating some weird movement or pyramid scheme. It will not use faulty logic or irresponsible argument to try and trick you into believing something. It merely presents critical thinking and how to apply it.

You can either watch the video here, on Youtube or on Brian Dunning’s Here Be Dragons website. The production quality isn’t great but the content is. It’s simple, informative and honest. From now on I will end arguments with family by directing them to it.

From April 15 until August 15, 2009, we’ll accept text, photos, and videos documenting projects from young people around the world who want to contribute to the growing free and open technology community.

But the Digital Open is more than an online competition. By submitting a project, you’ll become a valuable member of a community of creative young innovators working in the exciting world of free and open technology.

Collaboration is encouraged. In addition to a variety of prizes and achievements you can earn through community participation, the top project in each category will earn a fantastic prize pack and be featured on Boing Boing Video.

The future is yours to make! Get started at http://digitalopen.org. I personally can’t wait to see the submissions.

This week’s issue of Finweek features my first ever cover story, which I am suitably excited about. The article looks at trends in Web2.0, social networking, mobility and communications, attempting to distill the value they hold for business and explore the dynamics of integrating these in the workplace.

I get the feeling that these technologies are reaching a tipping point in South Africa as I notice an increasing amount of people exploring the world outside of Facebook and move into services like Twitter, using them not only for the social side of their lives, but also for business.

Pick up a copy of this week’s Finweek and let me know what you think.

• Applying unnecessary intricacy to simple processes. Which is silly.
• Having the worst hand-writing this side of the TUKS medical campus.

The first point is moot as far as I’m concerned. As for the second… well I have trouble reading my own notes. But I’ll let you be the judge:

Thank you to all who have sent through their congratulations – we are blessed to have the most amazing friends and family who have all been awesomely supportive and spoiled us with gifts, calls, smses et al.

[I've removed the pictures from this post - if you would like to see pics of Cian and you are on my friend-list on Facebook you can view pictures there.]

I always thought that Facebook was like Myspace and that assumption kept me away from it, as I can not stand Myspace. Myspace is the ugliest thing on the Internet and I can’t be arsed to spend my time on dodgy pages with flashing text where some kid has listed their favourite bands.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a more rational service that just works. It has some really cool and useful functionality and you can get up and running with it rapidly.

I recommend it. As social networking services go, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything better online.

If you have a Facebook account, click here and add me as a friend.

At first my 60 gigabyte iPod photo gave the ‘sad iPod’ icon when I tried to start it up:

According to the Apple support site for iPods, you should try to force the iPod into disk mode if that happens. From the Apple site:

Once you have done that you can use iTunes to reset the iPod. It took me many attempts before I finally forced my iPod into disk mode. I then connected it to my Powerbook and reset the pod. Halfway through syncing it with my library again, however, I got an error indicating that copying to the iPod had failed.

I guess the disk is moer-toe (fried). *sigh*

I shall have to take it to Apple and hope that it can be repaired without much cost. Given the prices of iPods I probably won’t be replacing it. The huge tag just doesn’t seem to justify the purchase of something which breaks so easily. Besides, I have nappies to buy and houses to pay off.

I am going to have to find an alternative method for listening to podcasts in my car for the time being, which sucks. It’s amazing how something so small and simple becomes an integral part of your life. I can’t really survive without a media player of some sort – and I sure as hell am not going to be listening to music radio in South Africa.

It’s surprising to see how much crap you can collect in three years. It’s a nice surprise to find some old and dear artefact that has been lost to the abyss of your study for the same three years or to realise you don’t care for things so much when you’re forced to throw them out while packing. It’s especially surprising to stare a giant African huntsman spider in the face on your first week in your new house.

The African huntsman spider is more commonly known as the rain spider. This is because they like coming into houses just before it rains. Apparently they have a thing about getting wet. Kind of like how I feel about pop music, although I don’t intrude on other people’s privacy to get away from it.

When I noticed one of these eyeing me from the corner of our bedroom ceiling the other night I immediately started acting all macho about it in front of my wife.

“Never fear milady,” said I. “For this is but a humble rain spider. Harmless is he and more afraid of you than you of him. Watch as I courageously ignore his presence and continue about my evening.”

My wife was not convinced however, and forced me to fetch the laptop so we could look him up on Wikipedia. Turns out they’re very common where we live and there are probably a thousand of his cousins in the bush outside my window. They like dry places and if they get trapped in-doors are known to build nests from shredded tissues.

While the lights are on they don’t move around too much and instead cling to the wall devouring any hapless insect that happens to meander their way.

But once the lights are out they proceed to explore the house, crawling over things with much fascination. They can also ninja down from the ceiling using their webs and if provoked will raise their front legs and run towards you, causing you to soil your pants.

Luckily they are non-venomous and if bitten you will experience a pin-prick sensation that may be followed by slight swelling – but it’s not bad at all, unless you happen to be allergic to their venom.

For some reason I duck whenever I walk under the doorway where Eddie is perched. Oh, that’s the name my wife gave our new resident, by the way. It’s almost like spiders have some huge astral presence that touches our being on another plain and reduces us to trembling pansies at the sight of its miniscule physical manifestation which, while hairy, poses no logical threat. Be that as it may, I’m man enough to admit that I’m shit-scared of Eddie.

He’s obviously a little bit daft as rain spiders go, because he was in our house for three days without any rain. His lack of intellect offers me little reassurance though.

I was finally forced to remove him from our new house last night by my wife who was tired of having nightmares about him crawling on her face. We had been dousing ourselves with citronella-essence (apparently these spiders, like most gogos, do not like the miff scent of citronella) until then, but enough, said my wife, was enough and it was time for me to step up.

I begged. I pleaded. But she would hear none of it. My fate was to confront Eddie armed with a Tupperware box and sheet of paper – and remove him from the house. By force. If needs be.

Look, you don’t want to kill the oke – he eats mossies and other kak insects like Parktown prawns and roaches, which is rad of him. It’s seriously bad karma to go around just killing things because you don’t like how they look or make you feel.

So here’s the theory part: you calmly and slowly approach said spider with container in hand. You then place the container over the spider and hold it firmly in place. Next, you slide the paper between container and wall, trapping the spider inside. Then you calmly proceed to the garden and place the container on the grass where the spider is left to exit at his or her own leisure.

Your wife will then love you endlessly.

In practise this works differently. I held the Tupperware in my pale hand and stared at Eddie, mortified and immobilised by his very presence. I did a few practise-rounds on the wall and then tried some more begging and pleading with the wife.

Then I practised some more. Took some deep breaths, found a thicker piece of paper, did some more practising – and then finally confronted Eddie again.

Then I tried begging and pleading again. And then I practised again. And then I returned to Eddie’s corner.

Clutching the Tupperware box as though my mortal life depended on it, I gingerly approached the wall and rapidly snapped the tupperware over Eddie. He riggled into it and then rammed the side. At this point I almost fainted.

Taking a few seconds to compose myself, I brought up the paper in my other hand and slid it under the Tupperware. Then I made extra sure the paper was secure with my hand under it and moved the Tupperware away from the wall and proceeded to the front door as slowly and carefully as possible.

Apologising to Eddie, I threw the Tupperware and paper into the garden and quickly retreated back into the house. I moved so quickly that it felt like I teleported back inside.

I returned soon after with a broom so I could poke the Tupperware around and make sure that Eddie had left. I then scooped my weapons closer and retrieved them.

My wife was mildly impressed.

I suspect I will have to do this again in the near future and I hope it gets easier as time goes by. I suppose it’s a small price to pay for the awesome house I now live in, in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

NOTE: It is now two days after I began writing this post and it’s raining outside. Apparently Eddie has superpowers, and I apologise for calling him daft. Profusely.