All the furore these days seems to revolve around the state of the economy and the low level of national employment. A related issue has to do with how South Africa can continue to be an attractive destination for direct foreign investments.

To get a sense of bearing over these linked issues, I was impelled to look up some facts on how we stack up in these regards as a country. In particular, I was interested to know how we might in the eyes of a potential investor compare as a…

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As a result of the dedicated, joint efforts of our committee member Lianne DuToit and www.brokenkeyboards.com, The Silicon Cape Initiative is now able to offer a free service for locating points of free WiFi access on a map of your area via this resource.

Thanks to the dedication and joint efforts of our committee member Lianne DuToit and www.brokenkeyboards.com, we are now able to offer a free service for locating points of free WiFi access on a map of your area via this resource.

We often get asked by some about who could provide them web hosting services.

In response to those inquiries, I have compiled a table of South African web hosts.

This list includes suppliers who are able to accommodate needs for web hosting, which range from those of the small home-based users to those of the big corporations.

Our community will be able to refer back in future to…

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A report which just came from "Newvem" claims that an alarmingly high number of Amazon's Cloud users follow shocking implementation practices.
The mistakes which are mostly caused by confusion when making changes and scaling up AWS, leaves those users' data and systems highly vulnerable to compromise.
For more details of  their 5 biggest mistakes, read this report.

Those of you who do not subscribe to the Google Africa Blog may have missed a post in it which reports on the results of a study, that shows among other conclusions that the Internet sector contributes up to 2% (or $7.1 billion/R59-billion) of the South Afica’s GDP and is predicted to grow dramatically.

Because of that article's pertinence and likely interest to our community, I reproduce it below here in full with thankful acknowledgement to Google Africa…

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A contrarian view held by Andrew Marder of the "Motley Fool" is that now is a good time to buy stock in Facebook and getting in on the ground floor of  a highly exciting opportunity. (For those of you who learn here for the first time about the "Motley Fool", this started out as an investment newsletter in 1994 and gained renown for its early recommendations of stocks, such as America Online (AOL) and Amazon.com. It has earned regard for its shrewd insight into stocks and for taking…

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The long awaited initial public offering of Groupon earlier this week was a resounding success, with its price at the close of its first day on the NASDAQ exceeding by 30% its opening price of $20.

If this buyers' enthusiasm for its shares is any indication of what we should expect in the next few months,…

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Yes, you read correctly; that is no mistake, ONE dollar a year salary.

That is the annual salary Meg Whittman, former CEO of EBay will be earning to lead Hewlett-Packard.

As the report cited here attests, this is not all that rare in Silicon Valley. Others who have accepted such a deal include luminaries…

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Unless you subscribe to the Google Africa Blog, you may not have heard yet about the results of Google's challenge to Android developers in Sub-Saharan Africa.



Three finalists (one from Nigeria and two from Kenya) have been chosen, one each in the categories of Entertainment/Games, Social/Communication and Productivity.



Read the full story… Continue

Hearing last week of a recent investment by a British V.C. in one of our local start-ups was welcome news and raises the hope that this might become a trend-setting precedent.



The investor is early-stage investor Permjot Valia, who some of us may remember meeting earlier this year when he spoke here in Cape Town at the Net Prophet conference.



He invested in local start-up… Continue

At an event yesterday in New York city, Steve Balmer of Microsoft hosted the global launch of Office 365.

Analysts have noted that in recent years Microsoft has been making big bets on the cloud with products like Azure, but Office 365 is by far the company’s biggest push into cloud software.

With this bundling of its Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync…

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An alternative to obtaining quick financing that is often overlooked by struggling small businesses is the factoring of invoices.



If you are a start-up which is already generating some revenue but still experiencing a cash crunch, this may be a viable option for a quick form of cash or short-term working capital.



Accounts receivable or invoice factoring will not require a business plan or tax statements. It's  also often used by businesses  who have a pressing need for money… Continue

The race is on to provide electronic financial services using cellphones in emerging markets, as shown by last week’s purchase of Cape Town-based mobile payments company Fundamo by Visa in a R750m all-cash deal, which has ensured a big payday for Fundamo’s backers in return for their early risk-taking.

The big picture here is how mobile phones are promising to take electronic transactions to the world’s estimated 3bn people who do not have access to formal financial services — bringing…

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Its a hot market at the moment for start-ups and their IPOs in America, with potentially great rewards for early investors;

"LinkedIn Corp.'s smash debut on May 19 whetted investors' appetites for IPOs to a degree unseen since the 1990s—and encouraged others to follow suit. Online-coupon outfit Groupon Inc. and telecommunications company Avaya Inc. have…

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Great article by Don Dodge, Developer Advocate at Google. Well-worth reading by aspiring entrepreneurs.

 

Excerpt:

"Almost every developer has an idea and might want to start a company. Where do you start? Entrepreneurs Paul Buchheit, Joe Kraus, and Seth Priebatsch explained how to go from hacking on the nights and weekends to building an investor funded startup. They also discussed how to find co-founders, attract investors, and focus on the key…

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Words of wisdom and sound advice for entrepreneurs from Wendy Tan-White, who is the successful founder and CMO of Moonfruit, a design-focused DIY website-building tool that allows users to set up their business or project. She is also a mentor at 500Startups and the Astia entrepreneurs’ network.

 

http://mashable.com/2011/04/06/startup-momentum/