RSAWEB is proud to be sponsoring an exciting new initiative called Net Prophet. The conference aims to educate, inspire creativity and promote the flow of ideas amongst South Africans operating within or investigating the Internet business/technology space.

Net Prophet essentially provides a platform to introduce South Africa’s true ‘Net Prophets’, a host of industry experts who will help delegates get a handle on where the industry is headed, the technologies and companies investors are interested in, hot new trends to follow and practical ways to extract maximum business value from the Internet.

Net Prophets speaking at the event include Herman Heunis, CEO of Mixit, Arthur Goldstuck, owner of World Wide Worx, social media specialist, Mike Stopforth, Hannes van Rensburg, founding member of Fundamo, Dave Duarte of Huddleminds and Peter Flynn, MD of White Wall Web to name but a few.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Why the Digital Going is Good in Bad Times
• Harnessing the Social Web for Brands
• Successfully Integrating Web and Mobile into Your Media Mix
• Software as a Service
• The Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Vulture Capital
• The Art of Making the Transition to Transacting Online
• Opportunities for Entrepreneurs Looking to the Mobile Web

The conference is hosted by the non-profit RAMP Foundation and is FREE to attend (delegates must register at www.netprophet.org.za in order to attend).

To find out more, or register for this event, visit www.netprophet.org.za.

RSAWEB is proud to be the hosting partner behind a handy little Free-To-Use web application that affords South African tax payers the convenience of logging their travel related expenses online.

The application, Travellogger, was developed by White Wall Web in response to recent stipulation enforced by SARS, which states that effective 1 March 2009, South African tax payers will be required to properly track their travel and related expenses in order to qualify for rebates.

Travellogger enables users to track their mileage online throughout the year and easily export the data to a CSV file for use in Excel, when it becomes time to submit their annual returns. This application is also compatible with most cellphone browsers, making it ideal for “on the road” logging.

All  data is stored on one of our web servers in the Cape Town Data Centre environment, greatly reducing the risk of data-loss normally associated with paper based alternatives. Ruby on Rails is the web language of choice used to build the application and its developers worked in conjunction with RSAWEB engineers to setup and migrate the application onto our web servers.

Visit www.travellogger.co.za to check it out.

Just about every business relies on data in order to function. From the basic Spreadsheet to the more complex Payrolls, all depend on the accumulation and manipulation of data on a daily basis. It’s crucial for the smooth running of almost every project, account, customer and query. Businesses have become so dependent on data that they cannot function without it.

Disasters
Fires, floods and other disasters always can catch us unaware at the best of times. Your average business will have their physical assets covered by insurance – smart businesses will have their data covered with a backup solution.

Theft
Laptops, servers & other storage devices are rarely recovered in the event of theft. A good backup solution provides a highly secure environment for data storage hardware.

Accidental deletion
Statistically, this constitutes the highest percentage of data loss causes. Human error should always be factored into the equation where business-critical data is concerned.

Hardware failures
It’s no secret that PC & laptop hard-drives crash on a regular basis. Daily automated backups help to effectively minimize the data loss resulting from hardware failure.

We cannot foresee what obstacles might get thrown our way, but we can control how we recover from them. With RSAWEB’s online backup service you can be rest assured that your precious data is given the five star treatment it deserves.

RSAWEB provide a strictly confidential vault for your data’s safe-keeping and only you determine who has access to the information. With the Desktop License Package, you can backup up to 2GB of data for only R75 per desktop per month and with the Server License, you get access to backup 5GB of data for only R245 per server per month.

Still not convinced? RSAWEB is offering a 30 day trial version that you can download from the website for an instant 1GB data backup, it’s quick and easy and definitely worthwhile, cause let’s be honest…. There’re just some things money can’t buy back.

For more info visit our online backup website.

Seth Godin writes about how simple your approach to online advertising should be in his post:

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. …

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don’t know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

We do a lot of online advertising through various providers and it is amazing how scientific you can get in order to gain real value from the medium. Online ads have totally changed the marketing landscape and we no longer rely on made up stats like “readership” and “circulation” that off line print media rely on the help justify their advertising costs.  I’m not saying don’t use “off line” media, as not all of your target audience are necessarily online, but it sure does help to focus your marketing efforts with stats such as cost per click and revenue per click.

The one thing about online advertising is that you need to actively track them.  Gone are the days of sending off an advert to your favorite magazine and then waiting for the phone to ring. Today, you can see exactly how your online ads are performing, who is viewing them and if they are delivering real business results. All in real time. Its amazing how the Internet is revolutionising marketing and the way we reach customers.

Google has set about to digitize the worlds books through a complicated scanning and indexing system. This never really excited me as the books they chose to index first were all old library classics and journals. This has now changed with the inclusion of magazines. Today Google launched magazines as part of their Book Search tool which is still officially in beta, but can be accessed here. My favorites are all included, take a look at the full catalog scanned in for your viewing pleasure (the Popular Mechanics from the early 1900′s are classic). Here are some of the magazines already scanned, expect more to be added soon:

• Popular Mechanics
• Popular Science
• Maximum PC
• Mac Life
• Mens Health
• Mens Health Best Life
• CIO