Mate of the Week - Instant VPNs

I recently discovered Hamachi, a very neat little application that allows you to establish a Virtual Private Network (VPN) within in minutes without configuring any routers or firewalls across any network.

For the non-techies out there: A VPN fools your computer into thinking it's on a private network, thus allowing you to share files & folders, print to shared printers or, in my case, play a quick game of DotA with a friend of mine without needing to organise a LAN party.

Hamachi works on some of the same Peer-to-Peer principles that allow Skype to bypass most firewalls (and Vodacom/MTN engineers). The interface is uncluttered and ridiculously simple.

Hamachi comes 'freemium', meaning you can get a basic, yet fully functional version for free. If you want to start linking up 100s of computers, you can pay $5 a month for the premium version.

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Organising your Life

If you're as bad as I am at organising your cr*p (which you may fondly refer to as your post-its, shopping lists, phone numbers or doodles), then I strongly recommend you to check out BackPack from 37Signals.

Backpack is a Web 2.0 'Information Organizer' (aka 'Lifesaver', in my mind anyways) that allows you to gather your gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos & files online. You can also set email and mobile reminders to be sent to you.

Backpack organises your information around pages, where each page can have several lists or notes. A note can include a picture or links. One way I've been using it lately is in my search for office space. I created a page for this 'project', and added a separate note for each potential location with the details, contact numbers and a photo.

The functionality is just right for 'Getting Things Done' and ties in very nicely with the GTD philosophy. Furthermore, Backpack is 'Oh So Slick', with a quick AJAX interface which further helps to get things done quickly, rather than wasting your time working with the app itself.

Here's a screenshot with annotations: (Click to enlarge)


The biggest drawback about Web 2.0 applications is that you can't use them when offline. Not to fear, that's where PackRat comes in. It's a very simple app (for Mac OS X) that links with your Backpack account to keep things synchronized. Get it here.

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Free Music!

At last week's 27dinner I had the pleasure to meet Galen Hossack, who together with Daryn Smith is the co-founder of LoadTheShow.

Here's how 'LoadTheShow' works:

You register as a user. You download free music. The artist receives R2 every time you download their songs. This is paid for by advertisers.

Now that's a simple yet clever business model!

It does raise some sustainability questions. Overseas the typical rate per 1000 impressions is $25 or R175, so every song that gets downloaded needs to provide about 12 impressions. In South Africa, advertisers probably pay a bit more, but it could still equate to a lot of advertising noise. In the short term, LoadTheShow has a daily limit of 50 downloads, on a first come first serve basis.

LoadTheShow has attracted sponsorship from Levi Jeans, and is about to launch a new website soon (the current one is very 'early stage' and somewhat too verbose)

Galen has a solid background in the music industry, as a band member, owner of a recording studio and as a partner in a music publisher. This has helped the site to "sign" 75 artists since launching in April.

If they keep adding artists and advertisers and can figure out how to make 1000s of downloads available daily, LoadTheShow could well be another great South African success story!

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Mobile Tracking

This week I had iTrackLive installed in my new motorbike. (My last bike was stolen 6 weeks ago).

Cape Town based iTrackLive provides a small portable, rechargeable, GPS tracking device that you can install in your car or simply drop in your child's backpack and then track using your cellphone or iTrackLive's brilliant web interface.


iTrackLive being installed. This is still the 'large' prototype version.


iTrackLive founders Tristan Phillips, Jean-Claude Malengret and Richard Parry


This is my trip back from the video store. (Click to enlarge) If I mouse-over any one of the arrows, it shows me the speed I was going. The maps are useful for visualizing the info, but iTrackLive also has a very decent reporting tool for fleet management and asset tracking.

iTrackLive is only just starting to provide their service publicly. What's unique about iTrackLive is that it's not yet another satellite tracking & recovery service, but rather that you can track your assets yourself (and see how fast your 18-year old is going when your lend him your car).

Because they use GPS, they are also not limited to providing their service in South Africa, but anywhere where there are cellphone networks available.

At R2400, you'd struggle to find a cheaper solution for tracking your car or your kids!

Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week - Vo3G

Think Skype. Ever tried it on your mobile phone? Those of you who did probably know that it doesn't work too great. Skype was written in the Delphi programming language, for fast computers running Windows. I'm one of the first 100,000 or so people who started using Skype, so I'm huge fan, but today we need a VoIP service that actually works on our internet-enabled mobile phones.

Enter Yeigo. Yeigo was built from the ground by 3 UCT graduates to be run on internet-ready mobile phones, whether they use 3G or Wi-Fi. Yeigo to Yeigo calls are free. If you call a friend who doesn't have Yeigo, you'll save about 80% on your calls. Even SMSs cost a 10th of the usual price.

Normally, a 1-hour call to my wife would cost me R150. With Yeigo, it should cost about R10, according to their co-founder, the vivacious Rapelang Rabana!

This means that Yeigo uses about 5MB of bandwidth in an hour. Compare this with Skype's 30MB!

Rapelang and her team are onto something phenomenal with Yeigo. She did a live interview for SaFM on Friday and the phones were ringing off the hook.

For MASSIVELY bringing down the costs of mobile phone calls in SA, Yeigo definitely gets this week's 'Yeah!Fi Mate of the Week' award!

Mate of the Week - Eye Candy

Chris Rawlinson from Stormhoek yesterday introduced me the Windows XP Zune theme.

I've never been a fan of Windows themes, as they always seemed to slow down everything and were often clunky around the edges, but Zune is simply stunning:


(Click on image to enlarge)

What's even better about Zune is that it comes direct from Microsoft, not a 3rd party.

If you're like me and you're a bit fed up with looking at the same XP desktop for the last 6 years, click here to download the Zune theme (only 1.6 MB), this week's Mate of the Week.