I’ve finally finished my South African News aggregator website. It’s a website that collates news items from various news sources from South Africa and puts them on one page. You click through to the actual news story website if you want to read more than just the short excerpt.

Why South Africa and why do this?, I hear you ask. Well firstly I thought the domain name was funny so I bought it on a whim. I overheard a South African talking about his country in a pub and it did sound like Ifrica, but maybe Efrica is more accurate?

Then I was left with what I wanted to achieve with the actual site. Greedily I just wanted to earn money from advertising and get as high up certain online search facilities for the phrase “South Africa”. I suppose thats what every other commercial site wants. South Africa is hosting the 2010 World Cup so that gives me three years to climb those rankings and get a piece of that action. The World Cup will be a huge boost for the country and it could be possible to sell the domain name for a very nice profit.

Now I had to work out what to actually do with the site (I’m sure I’ve thought about this the wrong way round). I was toying around with RSS feeds and I suddenly thought of making one place where all the news from South Africa could be screened on just one page. Add some local bloggers and we have a site! Thats what’s up there now.

Over 2007 I’ll keep tabs on its search rankings, the amount of bandwidth the special Magpie RSS aggregator engine uses and the visitor statistics. If it does well then I’ll probably work on stage two of the site which would have the ability for people to select their local cities, choose sports and businesses, nominate their favourite blogs etc.. A little more interaction. We’ll see.

Oh, and if you know any South Africans please send them the site URL and ask them to forward it to their friends, thanks!

Fluffy kitten playing with a laptop, on Google Video.

Found this at the bottom of an old bag I haven’t opened in over fifteen years. Very prophetic.

Moon War, funny online game.

Extremely creepy Monoface person generator. This is great fun and very clever, if a little too high definition occasionally.

Play the 5 Minutes To Kill Yourself game.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ - Superb music video.

And finally, make your own long lost cassette tapes using this online cassette generator.

I’ll update this at various points tomorrow but so far here are the four horses standing out for me:
L’AMI: 14-1
SIMON: 16-1
MONKERHOSTING: 25-1
IDLE TALK: 16-1

If you’d like to bet online then please click on the link on the right side of the page, thanks!

Update:
Well I’ve had a complete change of mind. After the last few years of success I don’t know who will win. Mainly due to the heat and the firmness (oo-er) this year will be a bigger lottery than usual.

I can’t choose a winner from four horses so I put on a four-way accumulator which should allow me to retire if it comes in. Here are the first four horses: L’AMI, SIMON, IDLE TALK & NUMBERSIXVALVER. Remember they ALL have to finish in the first four.

The actual horse I put £8 to win on was POINT BARROW at 11-1. That’ll get me £100 if it comes in.

My main each way bet is £7 on MONKERHOSTIN at 25-1.

I also have £2 each ways on GRAPHIC APPROACH and KNOWHERE.

Here’s hoping I can turn that £30 into something more! Good luck everybody!

Update:
MONKERHOSTING and POINT BARROW have now moved to joint favourites at 8-1. Lucky I fixed the odds. Five minutes to go!

Update:

Gah! How disappointing. All three favourites (two that I backed) didn’t even make it over the first few jumps. AND West Ham are losing. Can it get any worse?!

I know it’s really sunny out there but when the usual April weather returns here are some online goodies to keep yourself amused with.

Peggle from PopCap Games. This is one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played. A cross between Bust-A-Move and bagatelle, this game starts off quite easy but soon toughens up. Free download for PC only.

Mastermind. Here’s an online version of the old boardgame Mastermind retitled Guess The Colors. I’m sure this game used to be hard but I seem to be winning this all the time. Play online at Games For The Brain.

Cisco Binary Game. Probably the geekiest game ever made. Do your binary addition using this funky application. I nerdily did quite well on this. I’d turn off the music if I was you too.

SkyChart. What with all the clear skies it’s now perfect for some stargazing. This interactive chart will tell you what’s in the sky and when.

Ah, the old ones are the old ones. Here’s a comprehensive list of jokes based on locations in the world, of the type:
- My wife’s gone to the West Indies
- Jamaica?
- No, she went of her own accord.