BRICS a boost to Brand South Africa
Miller Matola, CEO of Brand South Africa,at the BRICS roundtable with the FT.“One way or another this will help usachieve our country’s developmentobjectives,” he said.(Image: Nosimilo Ramela)MEDIA CONTACTS• Brand South Africa+27 11 483 0122info@brandsouthafrica.comNosimilo RamelaSouth Africa’s ascendance to the BRICS group of major emerging economies is a boost to the country’s brand, Miller Matola, CEO of Brand South Africa (BSA), said at a BSA roundtable discussion with London’s Financial Times on Tuesday.“One way or another this will help us achieve our country’s development objectives,” Matola said. He added that membership of BRICS – the economic alliance that includes Brazil, Russia, India and China – puts South Africa on the centre stage of global change, rather than on the sideline, he said.“This helps us as a brand. What it says to the world is, consider us a serious economic player.”The roundtable event, held at Summer Place in Johannesburg, brought together South Africa’s top business executives and politicians to examine South Africa’s role in BRICS and the opportunities membership presented to the country and the rest of the African continent.It included a panel discussion among top CEOs, some of the best brains in South African business: Maria Ramos of the Absa banking group, Jerry Vilakazi of Business Unity South Africa, Frontier Advisory’s Martyn Davies, and Benjamin Mophatlane of Business Connexion. The discussion was facilitated by Financial Times bureau chief Andrew England.Most speakers made the point that, in addition to South Africa’s strong economy and developed infrastructure, the country’s position as the gateway to the rest of Africa gave it a valuable role in BRICS.Davies made the point that the ‘S’ in BRICS should actually stand for SADC, and not South Africa, referring to the Southern African Development Community of 15 African states, including Botswana, the DRC, Angola and Tanzania. “This partnership will not only benefit South Africa, but also the continent, as it will open up trade in Africa,” he said.Speaking before the discussion, deputy minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ebrahim Ebrahim said that while South Africa does not officially represent the continent in BRICS, its membership would give Africa a stronger voice, not only within BRICS, but also across all international platforms in which the BRICS countries are individually represented.He added that South Africa’s accession to BRICS is a natural fit. “Our positive attributes that put us in a different category include our role as a major economic player in Africa, our mineral and industrial output, our electricity generation capacity, our road, rail, ports, communication infrastructure, our sophisticated financial markets and service industries, our manufacturing capacity, our membership in the G20, and our level of industrialisation,” he said. “All these, and many more, profile us in a very positive way.”The membership was the result of two years of in-depth planning and joint efforts by the public and private sector, Ebrahim said, adding that South Africa should not underestimate its status as a deserving member of BRICS.“We agree that we do not have a major world population size in comparison to other BRICS member states, including the high-digit growth rates enjoyed by its BRICS partners,” he said.“We move from the premise that, there are attributes that fellow BRICS member-states see in us, that we choose to overlook or undermine. We also argue that, if we consistently profile ourselves as that small country on the southern tip of Africa, we will go nowhere.”
25 September 2013 SRI LANKA TOUR SCHEDULE The Momentum Proteas Women’s next series is against Sri Lanka from 24 October. Proteas’ coach Hilton Moreeng stated afterwards that he had been impressed by the performances of his players and said the two series victories would be a good confidence boost ahead of a busy season. The Bangladeshis were eventually all out for 177, losing the last eight wickets for 65 runs. October “There were a number of milestones this series: Marizanne [Kapp] got a hat- trick, Mignon [Du Preez] scored her maiden ODI century and Sunette [Loubser] played in her 50th ODI, this is a great start for us going into the season.” Batting collapseBangladesh were once against let down by a batting collapse following a strong start by the top order after being sent in to bat. Ayasha Rahman (70) and Rumana Ahmed (43) put together 93 for the second wicket to lift the visitors to 100 for one, but the rest of the line-up was unable to contribute towards a bigger total. On Tuesday, Trisha Chetty and Marizanne Kapp put together an unbeaten 108- run partnership for the third-wicket in pursuit of a victory target of 178, which was reached in the 38th over. Chetty was the rock of the run-chase scoring 76 off 111 balls, in comparison to Kapp’s quick-fire innings of 59 off 67 balls. ‘A fantastic effort’“It’s been a fantastic effort by the players,” Moreeng said. “I’m particularly pleased by the way the senior players have stepped up and come forward with match-winning performances. Young, debutant opener Lizelle Lee finished as the leading run-scorer of the series with 166 runs including two scores in the seventies. Leg-spinner Sunette Loubser was the leading wicket-taker with seven wickets at an average of 11. Marcia Letsoalo ripped through the tail to finish with three for 35 and was assisted by contributions from Dane van Niekerk (2/26) and Marizanne Kapp (2/26). It was yet another sterling job by the bowlers, who throughout the series managed to restrict the visitors to totals below 200. South Africa’s women’s cricket team beat Bangladesh by eight wickets in the third one-day international at SuperSport Park in Centurion on Tuesday to seal a series whitewash. ‘Encouraging performances’“This series has also been a great opportunity for the youngsters to learn their trade at international level,” Moreeng commented. “We saw some encouraging performances from our youngsters like Lizelle (Lee) and Elriesa (Theunissen), so that bodes well for the next generation of South African women’s cricketers.” Fri, 18: Arrival in South AfricaTue, 22: One-day warm-up vs SA EmergingThu, 24: Day, 1st ODISat, 26: Day, 2nd ODIMon, 28: Day, 3rd ODIThu, 31: Day, 1st T20 November In addition, the Momentum Proteas had earlier clinched the T20 series 3-0. Sat, 02: Day, 2nd T20Sun, 03: Day, 3rd T20Mon, 04: Depart from South Africa SAinfo reporter
Students at UCLA don’t have to rely on torrent sites to get their fix of online TV anymore – or at least that’s the message the school wants to send. UCLA just announced a partnership with Clicker, a programming guide for online TV content. Thanks to this partnership, students at UCLA will soon be able to use a co-branded version of Clicker that will give them convenient access to student-generated content, university-generated content and regular online TV content and music videos from services like Hulu.Clicker launched in November 2009 and tries to offer its users a comprehensive TV Guide-like database of online video content. The service indexes TV shows from most American broadcast and cable networks, as well as Web originals. UCLA students will also be able to access proprietary UCLA content, including videos of lectures and university events. Clicker currently indexes well over 400,000 episodes from more than 7,000 different TV shows. You can find our in-depth review of Clicker here. Making the MPAA HappyOne organization that is particularly happy about this new collaboration is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). According to the MPAA’s general counsel and chief content protection officer Daniel Mandil, the organization applauds “Clicker.com and UCLA for fostering a campus culture that respects creativity and supports the livelihoods of the millions of people across the United States and around the world who create the movies and TV shows that we love, and for helping to ensure that these great jobs will be there for future college graduates.”UCLA – like most colleges in the U.S. – has been trying to discourage students from use illegal file sharing services on campus. UCLA’s associate vice chancellor of information technology actually testified about the university’s attempts to stop file sharing on campus in front of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property in 2004.It will be interesting to see if UCLA’s students will use this program and if file-sharing traffic on the UCLA campus will decline because of it. Top Reasons to Go With Managed WordPress Hosting Why Tech Companies Need Simpler Terms of Servic… A Web Developer’s New Best Friend is the AI Wai… frederic lardinois Tags:#NYT#p2p#web Related Posts 8 Best WordPress Hosting Solutions on the Market
According to the latest study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise. Cloud Apps in your PocketMobile cloud computing is a term that refers to an infrastructure where both the data storage and the data processing happen outside of the mobile device from which an application is launched. To the typical consumer, a cloud-based mobile application looks and feels just like any app purchased or downloaded from a mobile application store like iTunes. However, the app is driven from the “cloud,” not from the handheld device itself. There are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google’s Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud. In the future, there will be even more applications like these available, but they won’t necessarily be mobilized web sites like those in Google’s line-up. Cloud-based mobile apps are perfectly capable of being packaged in a way that allows them to be sold alongside traditional mobile apps in mobile application stores, with no one but the developers any wiser. HTML5 Paves the Way for Mobile Web’s FutureEarlier this year, ABI Research released a future-watching report called Mobile Cloud Computing which comes to many of the same conclusions as the new Juniper Research report. Where they both agree is on how HTML5 technology and the mobilized enterprise will help drive this trend forward. Specifically, HTML5, the proposed standard for the next version web markup language (the core language used to create the web), offers offline data caching. That means cloud-based mobile apps can behave just like their device-based cousins: when the Internet connection goes down, the app still works. In addition, HTML5-enabled apps resuming from cached mode only pull down the data from the server that changed during the time they were offline. That reduces server load which is a critical need in delivering mobile apps to developing nations and other regions where network coverage and connectivity is poor. Enterprise Drives Mobile GrowthLike the earlier report from ABI, Juniper also sees the enterprise as a major force behind the move to the cloud. 75% of the mobile cloud-based application market is enterprise, notes the report. Mobile apps allow corporate users to access company data, share files, collaborate on projects and more via their smartphones. This business need will help fund the growth and development of the mobile cloud-based app market. However, although enterprise will drive this growth, consumer-oriented apps will benefit, too. Over the next four years, these apps will comprise an increasing proportion of the total revenues with business plans that involve subscription-based content and mobile advertising.The Power of the Cloud: ScaleFinally, the Juniper Report notes that the processing power of the cloud itself is also key to the future of mobile. Cloud-based mobile apps can scale far beyond the capabilities of any smartphone. Instead of being limited to the data storage and processing power contained in a mobile device, cloud apps have all the power of a server-based computing infrastructure accessible through an app’s mobile interface. This not only allows owners of low-cost “feature phones” (non-smartphones) the ability to access the same mobile applications used on more advanced platforms, it also allows the apps themselves to become more powerful and capable of more. Cloud Apps in Relation to the Mobile Marketplace What’s interesting about the dollar amount assigned to this trend – $9.5 billion by 2014 – is how that number compares to other analyst estimates for the mobile application store business as a whole. At the beginning of this year, Gartner researchers estimated that the app store businesses would generate nearly $7 billion this year and would reach $29.5 billion by 2013. Assumingly, it will grow even more by 2014 when the mobile cloud-based application market is expected to near $9.5 billion. In light of that comparison, the mobile cloud-based application trend seems impactful but perhaps less disruptive to the market as whole as is being purported. It appears there will still be plenty of room for both traditional, device-based apps and mobile cloud-based apps in the near future. Tags:#Analysis#cloud computing#mobile#NYT#Trends#web Why IoT Apps are Eating Device Interfaces Related Posts Role of Mobile App Analytics In-App Engagement
sarah perez What it Takes to Build a Highly Secure FinTech … The Rise and Rise of Mobile Payment Technology
File photo of BJP President Nitin Gadkari.Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday alleged that the “highest political level” in the UPA government was involved in Commonwealth Games (CWG) irregularities and demanded an investigation by a joint parliamentary committee. “A joint parliamentary committee should be set up to expose those who gave political patronage (to the CWG scam). This scam has the involvement of people at the highest level,” Gadkari said. “The BJP demands that the probe should cover all agencies of the Centre and Delhi government involved (in CWG work),” he said. Gadkari said the Games preparations had seen a cost escalation of 17.5 times but the central ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) kept sanctioning the additional funds without verification. “The BJP wants to know who evaluated and okayed the budget escalations,” he said. The BJP chief alleged that contracts for the stadia and other constructions were given to selective contractors without checking their technical and financial credentials. “The estimates for the stadia were quoted 40-60 times higher and the technical norms tailormade to suit some contractors,” Gadkari said. He also alleged that thousands of crores meant for the welfare of Scheduled Castes were diverted to the Games and only Rs 300 crore out of the total expenditure of Rs 70,000 crore was used for the athletes. Calling the ongoing probe an “eyewash”, Gadkari said: “The prime minister spoke of taking action only a month before the Games when the irregularities started emerging while this corruption has been on for several years.” “The BJP demands that all files related to CWG be seized immediately as they can be tampered with. The Enforcement Directorate should be asked to look into FERA violations and give a report within a month. The CBI should finish its probe within three months,” Gadkari said. Gadkari’s charges came on a day when income tax authorities – as part of the CWG probe – conducted raids at several places in Delhi, including BJP leader Sudhanshu Mittal’s home.advertisement