Metro FM

Metro FM is the largest National Urban Commercial station in South Africa with around six million adult listeners tuning in from all across the nation. The station’s core genre, R&B, is the most popular music genre among South Africans between the ages of 16 and 34. Metro’s penetration within this market is 43 percent of the total market. (source)

I know next to nothing about this identity design (their marketing dept. never replied to my e-mail), other than to say that the typeface is the FF DIN family. Metro FM is an SABC radio station (SABC logo featured in Part 1) so it might be safe to assume that their design team are responsible for this one too.

I really like how the M letterform, resembling both an audio spectrum analyzer and cityscape, breathes life into the logo when animated, like the Sasol logo. Take a look at their website or TVCs to see the M in action:

Kalahari.net

Kalahari.net is the largest and most dominant e-Commerce platform in Africa offering a huge range of books, music, DVDs, games, electronics and gifts. First registered in April 1998, Kalahari.net offers top-selling products available on 24-hour delivery, various payment options, door-to-door delivery, wish list facilities, vouchers, free gift-wrapping, etc.

Kalahari.net is a division of Media24, a Naspers brand. The name links the brand to Africa by its association with the Kalahari Desert, a well-known African landmark.

Interestingly, they might have been called Kalahari.com by now, if they'd won a domain name dispute back in 2001. I really enjoyed the below extract (for context, I was employed by Electric Ocean a month before, just as they were entering a state of turmoil, so it comes as no suprise...):

On a date prior to June 9, 1999, the Complainant entered into an agreement with a company named Electric Ocean to acquire the registration of the Domain Name which was at that time held by Electric Ocean. However, before the transfer could be effected the registration of the Domain Name was cancelled on Electric Ocean’s failure to pay the fees. The Domain Name fell back into the public domain.

The logo was designed by Garth Walker of Mister Walker Design (formerly Orange Juice Design, who were later acquired by the design house of Ogilvy South Africa). Garth never responded to my e-mail either, but I had better luck contacting Kalahari.net themselves, and they had this to share:

In essence, it was our aim to capture the spirit of the organisation through the use of a 'symbol'. The 'symbol' itself is the man running with the sun/streamer and with the use of warm colours, the logo represents the spirit of our organisation. i.e. A happy, warm company within an African heritage. The logo is horizontal in format for web legibility with no use of vignettes or thin lines. Type is simple and complimentary to the logo's message.

My favourite part is the hypnotic ribbon. I'm not sure what the typeface is - the closest match I can find is Fiendstar Extended (UPDATE: it's Nimbus Sans Extended). The running man (Khoisan rock paintings figure) also features in the 2010 FIFA World Cup logo.

Kaizer Chiefs

Kaizer Chiefs is a South African football club, founded 7 January 1970 in Soweto, Johannesburg, by soccer legend Kaizer Motaung shortly after his return from the USA where he played as a striker for the Atlanta Chiefs of the NASL. (How about this for a classic moment in time.)

The team is nicknamed Amakhosi which means "lords" or "chiefs" in Zulu. The club is unarguably the biggest football club in the country in terms of success and popularity, estimated to have over 16 million (very, very, very fanatical) supporters - Nelson Mandela being one of them.

Kaizer Chief's brand manager responded to my e-mail request for information on the logo with the following:

Kaizer Chiefs logo was made in 1969 and the only changes that have been made have been tiny graphic details to make it easier for embroidery etc. At one stage we were called IWISA Kaizer Chiefs after a sponsor. The Chiefs insignia has always been there and the colours have always been the same.

After some more digging around I found the Atlanta Chiefs logo (1967 - 1972, altered slightly when the club briefly reformed in 1979), and so the origins of the Kaizer Chiefs identity became clear. The chief mark underwent some small cosmetic changes, the full "Kaizer Chiefs" name was added around the mark, and two footballs were added on either side.

I feel the footballs are unnecessary and redundant though, and I'm not a fan of the arc effect on the type either (although it doesn't bother me so much in the Atlanta Chiefs logo). And I'd always thought that the Kaizer Chief's chief had a visible eye line, but it turns out to be the beginning section of his headdress!

Sorry to all the Media24 employees that I know, I couldn't resist ;)

If you're in the business of printing t-shirts, please give me your details. I receive numerous unwanted requests for t-shirt printing (let alone design) and I have no idea why, because I've never offered this as a service or suggested that I do. Here's my favourite one so far, which arrived in my inbox 2 weeks prior to the launch of the official logo:

Can you please provide me with a quote for a Tshirt design. I am looking for a logo for the world cup that will be here in 2010. I really have no ideas at this point but I'm sure your creative mind can come up with something.

One of those "uhh, what??" requests. No offense to the dude, but is that overly opportunistic or what? And damn, here I am determined to avoid blogging the whole 2010 World Cup logo debate due to the general trend that it's become, in my opinion, disappointingly pessimistic.

It was blogged to death, dugg, farked (wow, do Brand SA have a job on their hands), flickr'd, redesigned, has been compared to previous World Cup logos, likened to a frog jumping over a pork chop and even referred to as a rip-off of the Intel logo (sorry, what??).

May I suggest, for an alternative and refreshing view on the matter, that you stop to consider the bigger picture by visiting Commentary's 2010 Logo Revisited. And as for that silly Russian logo, consider the comments on this adfreak post.

Aaah, fresh air. Anyway, moving on...

Another thing I've avoided blogging this week, is the launch of what they're calling "the biggest online business on the continent", namely 24.com - a result of Media24 Digital merging with MWEB Studios.

Touchy subject - if you're a regular on this blog you'll understand why. In short, I have no patience for anything related to the Naspers/MWEB group. Their marketing agency e-mailed me on Wednesday, I quote:

I an article that I found on your site entitled: Nobody Owns 24.com - here's the latest.

A 24.com launch press release followed. The article they're referring to is this post I imagine, so I don't understand what they were getting at by suggesting that the launch of the 24.com brand should overshadow their bad business practices? I could continue this with a scathing review, but Windows has strangely BSOD'ed on me twice while I was writing this blog, and it would be hypocritical of me anyway because I'd have nothing positive to contribute, so I'm calling this one quits. Wheee!

UPDATE [26/07]: Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (via BizCommunity)

The winners were supposed to be announced on Tuesday this week. But not even a suggestion of a peep so far - I guess it's to be expected. Media24 just continue to rack up popularity points, don't they...

Listed media group Naspers' subsidiary Media24, which holds the group's print and internet titles, has sent a letter to www.RENTALS24.co.za and sister company www.BONDS24.co.za, insisting that the websites stop using 24 in their company names.

But the websites' owner, Christopher Riley, said Media24 were bullies and that he was prepared to contest the right to use the number. He was issued with the letter in November last year.

You may remember three years ago, Naspers tried to register "24" as a trademark, while intimidating small businesses to either abondon domains ending in 24.com or 24.co.za or transfer ownership of those domains to them. The result (following painful legal fees) then was a victory for the small guy, and Naspers withdrew their trademark registration application. Read more about that incident here: Website firm accuses Naspers of hijacking domain names, and M-Web in 24.com domain tug of war.

Unfortunately, Johan's nobodyowns24.com site is down, but you can view it thanks to archive.org here. nobodyowns24.com

If you search my site for 'Naspers' you'll see I've never had anything positive to say about them. That trend continues; code of ethics my ass.

Saturday night was BIG - we tore up The Swan to say farewell to Esterche who returned Southside yesterday after a seasonal visit. Some of the 135 photos I took are up at Flickr. in a new "Life" set which I'll be renaming as soon as I come up with something more creative. UPDATE: I lomoized them... 'cos I can. Dig!

I spent the rest of the day in front of my notebook, until now - almost 24 hours later - moving once to buy some dinner. It started out having the biggest laugh with Warrenski over our first webdesign attempts in 1996 (that's an entirely separate blog). And then rediscovering the brilliant political cartoon humour of Cape Town-born Zapiro. Someone has kindly archived all of his Bush-related strips, "from ignominious start to ignoble present". Alternatively, you can view his latest cartoons over at the M&G website. If you're visiting from outside South Africa, you need to be a KuduClub member to view the daily cartoon and full archive, sadly - but that's the best part.

You see, the KuduClub is a subscription-based, online premium service for expatriates. Or in other words, a big time-wasting, money-making scheme. I've mentioned it before. It's also a division of Xpatrinet Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Naspers Ltd. I've mentioned them before. And it's powered by none other than Entriq. I've mentioned them before too: they're also responsible for M-Net On Demand, which I reviewed in depth - an entertaining read if I can say so myself.

So where I'm going with all of this, is simply: disable JavaScript in your web browser, which is really easy to do. Thanks to this past advice from one of my readers pointing out the shockingly poor client-side security of this whole KuduClub/Xpatrinet/Naspers/Entriq venture, expats and other international visitors can bypass all ugly log in screens and save US$9.95 per month!

Back to my day. It became one of those rare occasions where I'd visit one site, jump to another remotely-related site from there, and continue on that path for hours until I had 5 browser windows open, each with 5 tabs, all the while generating ideas, adding to my bookmarks, downloading hordes of completely unrelated files, and updating my projects page. Which I should announce has finally seen the light of day. It's still a fraction of the size of it's mirror in my mind. Not to mention this 5am blogging marathon which I've apparently undertaken.

Very little bugs me more than the ignorant misapplication of technology, especially when a large content provider with a recently-acquired global audience is concerned. Don't think I wouldn't have picked up on the fact that M-Net's new M-Net On Demand offering, an Internet Broadband service, has several flaws that render it completely unacceptable to someone such as myself.

A brief introduction: Currently live and available commercially in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, South Africans living abroad (me, for example) are now able to choose from 80 hours of viewing material, at a cost of R112 for 10 hours each month. One catch: provided they have...*sirens and flashing lights*... the required web browser - the de facto browser - the discontinued browser - Internet Explorer. And Windows. And Media Player. And Macromedia Flash Player.

It would be naive to claim that a service such as this wouldn't really be possible without the latest technology - but streaming content is a well established broadcasting medium, so there's no excuse for lack of similar services from which to gain some technical insight.

But let's take a step back for a second. It's been recently widely speculated that the removal of IE as a free, downloadable software application could have a profound effect on the Web and the development of Web standards. Read that as a good thing.

So what does all of this mean? I've always liked comparing the cross-browser compatibility of websites and web-based applications to something we all do daily; watching television. All television sets, however physically different they appear, still receive exactly the same picture. Why should the web be different? Well, it shouldn't - but it is. Different browsers interpret the presentation layer of the same content differently. As web developers we've learnt over the years to accept this fatal drawback as just another limitation to work around. Removing IE along with it's list of proprietary standards is in my mind a big step forward in providing a much richer web experience.

Not wanting to sound like a stuck record, but if M-Net had considered employing even the slightest hint of forward thinking, they would have realised the multiple benefits of developing their new subscription-based service to support existing AND future browser applications 5 years from now. There's no debate - other browsers do everything Internet Explorer does, and much more - much better. This would open their service up to a wider audience for years to come.

But M-Net's problems don't start and end with browser software. Microsoft's Windows OS is another requirement. Linux and Macintosh users, whatever small percentage of web users they make up - this is insignificant - don't even receive the choice to use Internet Explorer if they wanted to: it was discontinued for UNIX almost a year ago and was dropped for Mac over a year ago. These users will have to spend in excess of R3000 to switch to the required Windows platform, and then they'd still need to download the other requirements. Taking into account that M-Net On Demand's target market have established satellite networks to choose from, why would they subscribe to a computer monitor-based service such as this one?

M-Net might not even be the ones to carry the blame - they appear to have partnered with Entriq Inc., who enable "content and broadband service providers to protect, track, sell and syndicate online media in an efficient and secure manner". Entriq are an independent subsidiary of Naspers (a multi-national media company located in South Africa) who I've picked apart here before. (A quick visit to their site redirects to an IP address - 196.2.157.131 - how professional of them.) A demo at Entriq's own website also spews out the same 'Browser Not Supported' page. The noticeable different between their and M-Net's site however is that M-Net have chosen to restrict the entire site to meet their requirements, locking out anyone who doesn't have the correct software installations from even finding out whey they're denied access in the first place.

All that said, experience has shown that contacting M-Net directly about these issues will prove pointless - I e-mailed them about their online newsletter unsubscribe "option" months ago, and am still awaiting a reply. That, and you're required to use Internet Explorer just to send a basic contact e-mail.

And I'm sure I'll live quite comfortably without Die Kasper Rasper Show. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but in all honesty their target market is only expats - students and young professionals living with a visa won't bother - and if you're missing South African broadcasting that much then you shouldn't have emigrated in the first place.

More news from Johan is that Business Report have written an article about his domain battle against the Naspers/M-Web Group: 'Website firm accuses Naspers of hijacking domain names'.

Are you a Jedi?

And also on IOL: I caught this last night. Clearly they're not familiar with that handy application called a spell checker. Or something. Heck, who knows - yay, It's Friday!

M-Web in 24.com domain tug of war

The 24.com domain name is at the centre of a bitter wrangle between M-Web and a little known Pretoria-based Internet service provider.

Host24.com has been running for the past four years and hosts 300 domains. Johan Pretorius, the owner of the domain, says he has already lodged his objection with the Department of Trade and Industry.

I'll take great pleasure in seeing M-Web lose this one.