On the 12th of February over 175 countries will be hosting events to raise money and awareness for charity: water. The name of the occasion is ‘Twestival’ – an ambitious project that relies on Twitter for communications, coordination, attracting support and raising funds.

Twesitval is a magnificent example of Twitter’s effectiveness in spreading a message. Within days of volunteers spreading the message globally hundreds of blog posts, thousands of re-tweets and a whole lot of organising has been achieved.

In most countries that will be hosting events for Twestival locations have been nailed down, plans made and guest lists grown. But the best part of it all is that a pile of money has already been raised for charity:water – an NGO that focuses on providing clean water to parts of the world that need it most. Think Zimbabwe.

There will be two Twestival events held in South Africa – one in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town. For more information on these check out the Johannesburg and Cape Town Twestival websites.

I will most likely be at the Johannesburg event being held at Cappello in Sandton City – see you there!

2009 has kicked off with me joining the team at Finweek magazine and Fin24.com covering the technology beat for both the publication and the website.

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.

If you’re anything like me you are probably subscribed to multiple social networking services. I personally have Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo Pulse, Pownce, Last.fm, Youtube and LinkedIn accounts that I am active on. For some time I’ve been looking for an application or service that would allow me to somehow interface with all of these, allowing me to post status updates to all, while seeing updates from all of them in one place.

A few weeks ago I posted about Flock – a browser based on the Mozille engine (like Firefox) that mashes up your social networks. Flock does a decent job but still needs lots of work and I found that it was pretty bad with keeping Twitter updated. This, of course, could have more to do with Twitter’s recent server overloads than Flock as such. Nevertheless, while Flock came close, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I also tried Mugshot from Red Hat – but Mugshot is better at showing other people what you’re up to on all your social networks, not the other way around.

I still need something that allows me to mash-up my friend’s feeds from the various networks, so that I can view them all in one place. I’m hoping that a future release of Flock will answer that requirement.

But for posting to all of my networks what I need is a way to ‘carpet bomb’ them all with my updates.

Enter Ping.fm. This new service collects your credentials for each social network you subscribe to and then allows you to use a range of web applications or your instant messenger to jet out messages to all of them.

Ping.fm is currently in beta testing, but if you write to the developers they will send you a promo code to get you started. I have a code that I will send you if you drop me a mail. If you’re a social networking whore like me then it’s probably worth checking out.

If you, like me, increasingly get the feeling that your world is moving onto the web with Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and other online applications taking over your media, communications and productivity, then you’ll appreciate Flock – a browser designed for the cloud computing generation.

Flock is based on the Mozilla engine (like Firefox) and has added functionality that is compatible with web applications such as Flickr, Blogger and the other services I mentioned above. It then incorporates these into its interface with a dynamic sidebar that allows you to communicate with friends, blog, post to Twitter, share media and conduct a myriad other activities from the browser panel. It also has a ‘My World’ sidebar display that offers you updates from all of your social networks and applications in one, unified space.

While Flock is still a little buggy at time of writing, it is definitely stable enough for daily use. This browser is my killer app at the moment. Simply awesome. And the best part of it is I don’t need to waste time using third party applications that interface with my favorite online applications – I have everything I need, right in my browser.