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More info here.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Rival Industrial buys Bundublog
Niche market industrial publishing company Rival Industrial has purchased local blogging platform Bundublog effective 1 April 2009.
Bundublog is a South African focused free blogging community with around 130 active blogs with bloggers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently the site enjoys about 8000 unique visitors each month.
Rival Industrial owns stakes in niche market industrial titles including ManufacturingHub.co.za and Ferronews.com as well as remedial and special education website RemSpecED.
Marc Ashton speaking on behalf of Rival Industrial said: "The transaction serves two purposes for us - firstly it allows us to aggregate some of our niche content to a wider audience which helps us generate advertising revenue and secondly it ties in with our longer term strategy of developing an audience for syndicated internet radio content."
According to Ashton, more and more South Africans are taking to blogging.
He said: "Every day new blogs are being added to the aggregators, small businesses who can't afford a web presence are suddenly being given a free tool through which to market themselves and ordinary citizens on the ground in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are able to connect with the world and give us real-time feedback of events on the ground - it's seriously powerful if we can find ways to harness it correctly."
While the site will continue to focus on Africa, some changes are also planned to build the Bundublog experience including:
- Development of podcasts from bloggers
- Music platform for upstart South African bands to promote their talent
- A science and technology platform, in conjunction with ManufacturingHub.co.za aimed at skills development in this sector
Ashton concludes: "We're excited about the opportunity we've been presented by taking over Bundublog and we look forward to welcoming a whole host of new bloggers to the platform."
About the company
Rival Industrial is a Gauteng based corporate wellness, industrial research and publishing investment company.
The company holds stakes in ManufacturingHub.co.za - an online publication aimed at the South African food, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic manufacturing industries - as well as Ferronews.com which provides information on the ferrous metal industries in Africa.
Other investments include RemSpecED, a remedial and special education portal aimed at parents, teachers and therapists.
For further information
Tel: 082-561-1585
E-mail: webmaster@rival.co.za
www.rival.co.za
http://bundublog.com/
Bundublog is a South African focused free blogging community with around 130 active blogs with bloggers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. Currently the site enjoys about 8000 unique visitors each month.
Rival Industrial owns stakes in niche market industrial titles including ManufacturingHub.co.za and Ferronews.com as well as remedial and special education website RemSpecED.
Marc Ashton speaking on behalf of Rival Industrial said: "The transaction serves two purposes for us - firstly it allows us to aggregate some of our niche content to a wider audience which helps us generate advertising revenue and secondly it ties in with our longer term strategy of developing an audience for syndicated internet radio content."
According to Ashton, more and more South Africans are taking to blogging.
He said: "Every day new blogs are being added to the aggregators, small businesses who can't afford a web presence are suddenly being given a free tool through which to market themselves and ordinary citizens on the ground in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are able to connect with the world and give us real-time feedback of events on the ground - it's seriously powerful if we can find ways to harness it correctly."
While the site will continue to focus on Africa, some changes are also planned to build the Bundublog experience including:
- Development of podcasts from bloggers
- Music platform for upstart South African bands to promote their talent
- A science and technology platform, in conjunction with ManufacturingHub.co.za aimed at skills development in this sector
Ashton concludes: "We're excited about the opportunity we've been presented by taking over Bundublog and we look forward to welcoming a whole host of new bloggers to the platform."
About the company
Rival Industrial is a Gauteng based corporate wellness, industrial research and publishing investment company.
The company holds stakes in ManufacturingHub.co.za - an online publication aimed at the South African food, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic manufacturing industries - as well as Ferronews.com which provides information on the ferrous metal industries in Africa.
Other investments include RemSpecED, a remedial and special education portal aimed at parents, teachers and therapists.
For further information
Tel: 082-561-1585
E-mail: webmaster@rival.co.za
www.rival.co.za
http://bundublog.com/
Saturday, March 7, 2009
AI and Venture Cap
Is quality "Artificial Intelligence" the way that search engines - Google / Yahoo / a new player - are likely to monetise their offerings in coming years?
The Internet is likely to be home to a number of Artificial Intelligence based technologies in coming years - simply because it is so big and unwieldly at the moment.
You think about how much information there is out there, so many sources and opinions and different levels of credibility for the information you read. How do you rank it?
How do you say that the information coming from Source A is more valuable than the information coming from Source B?
Even in professional social networks, forums and message boards - how do you rank the contributions made by the various posters?
Google is on a mission to put every book ever published on the internet, add in blogs, dissertations, conference papers etc - and there is so much GOOD information on the web that a user has little chance of identifying the salient points of any debate and trying to work out what information they need to know without extensive digging.
As more and more niche market social networking offerings come online - I suspect users will be able to not only pick the brains of human industry experts - but also leverage off Artificial Intelligence to find the info they are looking for.
The idea is way to big for a simple person like me to get my head around, but I'm wondering if this isn't the "next generation" of earnings for a company like Google. Where we presently have a simple "SEARCH" function / toolbar which we can add to our sites to help us monetise our offerings, I'm wondering if Google won't look at:
1. Ask an expert a question or
2. "Super AI Search" functionality
Basically a user would be able to use the toolboxes but for a far larger fee be able to draw up high quality information off the web hitting up an army of Artificial Intelligence applications to find the information you require.
The functionality could be the same in terms of posting widgets into boxes but instead of using Google Ads or the Search boxes, these would be replaced by these smarter widgets? It would be a good way to leverage off these massive blogging platforms and networks that are growing rapidly and looking for ways to monetise their offerings.
Anybody got ideas on how much progess has been made in terms of AI in the search-engine space? Are there moves afoot to be able to develop these offerings?
Any South African companies making moves in this part of the AI industry space?
Source: www.aiblog.iblog.co.za
The Internet is likely to be home to a number of Artificial Intelligence based technologies in coming years - simply because it is so big and unwieldly at the moment.
You think about how much information there is out there, so many sources and opinions and different levels of credibility for the information you read. How do you rank it?
How do you say that the information coming from Source A is more valuable than the information coming from Source B?
Even in professional social networks, forums and message boards - how do you rank the contributions made by the various posters?
Google is on a mission to put every book ever published on the internet, add in blogs, dissertations, conference papers etc - and there is so much GOOD information on the web that a user has little chance of identifying the salient points of any debate and trying to work out what information they need to know without extensive digging.
As more and more niche market social networking offerings come online - I suspect users will be able to not only pick the brains of human industry experts - but also leverage off Artificial Intelligence to find the info they are looking for.
The idea is way to big for a simple person like me to get my head around, but I'm wondering if this isn't the "next generation" of earnings for a company like Google. Where we presently have a simple "SEARCH" function / toolbar which we can add to our sites to help us monetise our offerings, I'm wondering if Google won't look at:
1. Ask an expert a question or
2. "Super AI Search" functionality
Basically a user would be able to use the toolboxes but for a far larger fee be able to draw up high quality information off the web hitting up an army of Artificial Intelligence applications to find the information you require.
The functionality could be the same in terms of posting widgets into boxes but instead of using Google Ads or the Search boxes, these would be replaced by these smarter widgets? It would be a good way to leverage off these massive blogging platforms and networks that are growing rapidly and looking for ways to monetise their offerings.
Anybody got ideas on how much progess has been made in terms of AI in the search-engine space? Are there moves afoot to be able to develop these offerings?
Any South African companies making moves in this part of the AI industry space?
Source: www.aiblog.iblog.co.za
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