You can even video chat with all your Facebook friends for the first time ever right from the Facebook website. Take screenshots of your adventures, make classy filmstrips, and meet fun new people in this addicting and engaging Facebook game.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

PS: First one to unlock the Digsby Badge gets a FREE iPad!

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——

I’m going to say something today that not many people will agree with or perhaps admit to even if they feel the same way: Working with social media professionally can be about as much fun as a pack of rabid dogs slowly eating you from your toes upward so that you can experience every little nuance of pain.

I’m not really exaggerating either.

Try telling people the aspects of your job and some of that explanation includes, “And then I have to do some work via Twitter and Facebook.” Go ahead, just try it, for fun. If you did, you probably got one of three looks:

1. Cluelessness – Because you told your mom and she still doesn’t know what Twitter is.
2. Jealousy – Because they assume your work is a lot of fun and piss easy and they’d love to be doing it.
3. Disgust – Because they can’t believe someone gets paid for that nonsense. It’s not WORK in their world.

Okay so there’s other possible options too but those are the ones I often see…and the only one that has a right to be there is the cluelessness. Let’s dispel the myths of the other two right now. It’s not fun, it’s not always easy and it’s a lot of hard work. I can see why you’d think that though.

We’ve all been there. We started out blogging and sharing our inner most secrets in an anonymous way. Until we made friends and gained some regular readers and now, oh dear, we actually have to think about what we write but it was still FUN. There were memes to do every week and stories about your life to share with an audience when the audience at home had grown weary of them. There were people to care when you were having a rough time and people to congratulate you when things were going well. Then, along came Twitter and it was like IRC for the 21st century but a hell of a lot slower and bulkier but wtf-ever, we’ll just enjoy it. More connections were made and it grew to become this giant phenomenon that many cannot live without during the day. Some of you can’t live without it when you go to the toilet or are doing the dishes – you might need help with that.

It was the latest great big escape.

But then, you start getting paid for it.

Suddenly you have to start thinking about what you say. You have to censor yourself and make sure none of your own beliefs shine through…unless, of course, they’re in line with the company beliefs. You have to pretend to give a damn about pointless websites and special deals that your company is running whilst being absolutely mortified that you have become one of ‘THOSE’ people. You have to be a constant force of happiness and goodwill, no longer are bad days allowed to exist in your world or will you be able to tell that simpering idiot that they should just stop breathing. It’s all about control and politeness – even in the face of abuse.

Ah, the abuse.

People seem to forget or don’t give a toss about who that person might be behind the corporate identity. They just see that identity and therefore do not give a damn about bad manners, using language that isn’t even suitable for the ears of sailors or, in fact, behaving like an evolved human being. Oh how I would love to react to them in the same way. The problem is, I have to grin and bear it. It’s like being forced to laugh about having a pineapple forcefully inserted into your anal cavity. It’s not just me either. On a daily basis I see some of the nicest people I know get torn about for something that happened in a branch they didn’t know existed by someone who is supposed to be a respectable and mature adult.

Then there’s Facebook. You’ve had to take over the Fan Page or Group or whatever the hell the company does on there and make sure they have another 1 million fans by 5 p.m. tomorrow. So what do you do? You invite all your friends and ask them to do the same and it becomes a never ending circle of rage and clicking the ignore button. Yes. The ignore button. I don’t join any groups or page suggestions people send me anymore. I fucking hate them. If I wanted to join something, I would do it on my own, I don’t need any assistance becoming a brand whore as if I was an imbecile incapable of any thought – I have at least one a day. Therefore, when I’m asked to do the same, I feel so embarrassed about doing that to my friends that I almost end up having anxiety about whether I should do it or not.

And that’s just under the company’s name.

If you’re lucky, you’ve been able to hide your personal social accounts from those you work with and your boss. If you’re not so lucky, you’re probably me and this isn’t an option for you. I can’t complain, I was found for the job through Twitter. I do appreciate that. However, I no longer have the escape that it once provided. I don’t have the luxury of going on Twitter at lunch time to bitch about the cow in accounts stealing my yogurt out of the fridge again because…the cow from accounts will pipe up across the room and we’ll end up in an argument. I can’t escape to my blog to dump all my irritation and bitterness that I happen to be feeling for my job on a particular day because I will get asked to have a private chat the next day to find out what’s going on with me and how it can be fixed. Or perhaps to be fired, whichever. In fact, I even have to write this nerdicle anonymously and I haven’t updated my blog in god knows how long.

What the hell is it with companies and using social media anyway?  Why do we need the infringement on our personal little happy places of escaping the mundanity of the world? Half the companies you see out there on Twitter have no business actually being there. It doesn’t provide any kind of benefit to them but they’ve heard it’s the latest trend so they dragged some poor bastard from his comfy job and threw him to the rabid dogs. How about you all focus less on the trends and more on your customer service and product delivery. If you actually got those right, you wouldn’t need Twitter or Facebook or a daily blog post about some mundane rubbish to remind people that you exist.

At home, I love it all. I always have. Some of my favourite people I have met through blogs and Twitter. Getting paid for it is a different story though and if I really didn’t need the job, I’d move onto something vastly more interesting and safer for my emotional health, like being a lion tamer. I have the hat and everything.

I was greeted personally by the doorman and ushered in to the venue. After some breakfast and general chinwagging with the Nokia people, it was off to the Ovi Maps presentation. The small hall was decked out with LCD screens and fantastic finger food.

The Ovi Maps presentation was very interesting and we even got to meet the GM of Nokia SA, Mathia Nalappan. Very down to earth guy, and what an intelligent one at that.

We were then split into teams of four and sent on an “Amazing Race” sort of adventure. We were given a nice BMW rental car to drive around in, the first clue and a Nokia N97 Mini to navigate with.

It took the four of us some time to find the first clue, and I have to admit that we battled with the search facility on the N97 Mini. It simply just couldn’t find anything within our vicinity, instead returning results from as far away as the Gold Coast in Australia. I also found that the N97 touch screen was quite inaccurate and found myself navigating to menu items I never intended clicking.

We eventually finished the race, stone last. But I don’t think it was a very good way to truly experience the Nokia Ovi Maps and the N97 Mini. We were under too much pressure and one definitely needs some sort of initial instruction on how to operate the ovi maps software.

The ovi maps now include directions with a voice, and something that really got me excited about this product, developed by NavTeq, is that the voice actually mentions road names when giving directions. That is a first for any navigation system.

The boring NavTeq presenation did shed some interesting stats which I wrote down somewhere and now cannot remember where I wrote them down. But if you do a search on Twitter for #NokiaCTIA I am sure you will find a heap of stats.

We were given a tour of how Navteq go about mapping out roads and places. We piled into a Navteq van, fitted with a GPS and a big screen TV so we could see exactly what they do and how they do it. Amazingly, it’s pretty darn simple. The very basic software shows the van moving and the user simply draws, with a light pen, what he says, the name, type of place and the contact details. Once they are complete at the end of their day, they capture the information into their database. Very, very simple, but it works, somehow.

Overall, I think that Nokia are going to do well with their latest interation of Ovi Maps and with some further refinement in the future will more than likely top the charts as the navigation system to behold.

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See those big names up there?  Somehow mine got mixed up in between them.

I do hope some of you will come watch me trip over the podium, or some such other inevitably clumsy act while I speak about Social Media stuffs.

The funniest entry will win a free shirt.  Because we’re awesome.

Here are some of our entries so far:

Don Packett

Rich Mulholland

Rob aka @Antithetical

@Green_guerilla aka Dave's official entry

Warren

Sexy G

@AndreVR

@GregNietsky

Dave

@King_Tyrone

@Terrance_B

@RoyBluMental

Lester

We don’t do things at half mast here at NerdMag.

Send your entries in by emailing them directly to me sheenagates @ gmail or upload them to Twitpic and tag @NerdMag.

You heard right! It’s all true!

I just finished up at the FNB PayPal launch in Newtown and not only was it confirmed, it went live at 11am today!
If you have a verified PayPal account, and an FNB account, you can log in to your online banking at fnb.co.za and link the two accounts right now!

What does this mean?

This agreement will enable customers to make or receive payments for goods and services online, all this without having to share your financial information.

• Top Up to PayPal – Top Up your PayPal account in USD from your FNB account.
• Withdraw from PayPal – Withdraw available funds from your PayPal account into your FNB account.
• FNB PayPal History – View your FNB Top Up to PayPal and Withdraw from PayPal transactions.
• Maintain PayPal Profile – Change your Primary PayPal Email Address on your FNB PayPal Profile.

The Media Launch event this morning was fantastic, brief, to the point and left no questions unanswered (except the question of how long PayPal SA will be exclusive to FNB and it’s users)

The event was MC’d by Bruce Whitfield (from 702) who did a fantastic job of keeping it quick, slick and casual. FNB CEO Michael Jordaan and a PayPal’s regional director for Israel (and now South Africa), Oded Zehavi, were clearly excited and remarkably candid.

We all know that a twitter leak not long ago got the rumour train started, Michael Jordaan claims that it was not a marketing ploy as many of us suspected, and that he was just as surprised as us when the news hit the web.

Quick facts from the event:

1. South Africa is the 190th country to join PayPal.
2. You must bank with FNB to make use of the new connection.
3. PayPal will not be supported on mobile banking just yet.
4. PayPal will work with the PayPal iPhone app for ‘bump’ payments
5. There will be a much lower 1,5% commision fee on transactions.
6. Every transaction will be reported to the SA Reserve Bank.
7. FNB has 6.6 million customers, certain to grow now that PayPal is exclusive to FNB customers.
8. eBucks is not supported yet, FNB CEO Michael Jordaan suggested that, that could change in the near future.

Overall, this is exciting news for South Africa’s eEconomy. Look forward to many new online startups catering to the world.

I’m so glad I’m already and FNB banker! I linked mine this morning, took 5 minutes!

What do you think? I’m having a tricky time seeing the down side of this.

Post by Nick Hunt-Davis

Back in December, we introduced a string of new search innovations on Google.com to bring our results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web.  We’re delighted to announce that from today this feature will be available in South Africa.

Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, MySpace and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news reports and blog posts published just seconds before.  When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information on the search results page.

Try searching for a celebrity currently in the news, your favourite sports team or the latest political development.  Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google straight after it’s published on the web.

Additionally, by clicking on “Latest results” or selecting “Latest” from the search options menu, users can get view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling on Google’s results page. You can also filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others.

Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day.  Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our partners including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.cah.

Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you’re in line to buy tickets.

By Dylan Casey, product manager, Google

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Let’s start with the speakers.

I am consider a bit of a sound perfectionist and I cannot handle speakers that simply cannot produce all the necessary tones and frequencies to bring out the best in music.  Well, these speakers come pretty darn close.  They unfortunately don’t come cheap at around R950, but the quality is really great.  Crystal clear with a nice all round sound.  The only issue I had was that the bass, low frequency tones were a little flat and sound like someone was banging on the bottom of an up-side-down plastic bucket.

These speakers feature a unique 360 degree “surround sound” system which gives you the impression that the sound is coming from all around you, rather than two boxes in front of you.  I loved that about these speakers.  They have peak RMS of 26 Watts which is really great for a small set of desktop speakers like these.  And they boast auxiliary inputs for your iPod/MP3 player without having to have the speakers connected to your PC.

The question is this, would I pay R950 for the speakers?  Personally, no, I would go for a much more high end system and probably spend a lot more.  But if my budget were R1000 for a decent set of desktop speakers, then definitely.

The other product I tested was the 2 Megapixel Webcam.  What a brilliant gadget.  Look, there is only so much one can say about a webcam.  it transmits video, in high quality, has a built in microphone and is really simple and easy to use.  The microphone pic is good quality, and the 2MP quality is such a treat.  Not so great with our lowclass broadband in SA but will definitely be worth it when our speeds increase in SA.

This is an expensive webcam coming in at about R800, but the quality is well worth the price.

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Briget from BecauseIcan has started a new initiative.  You see, basically her car is breaking down and due to financial constraints of the recession, she can’t afford to buy herself a new one.  So she’s come up with a mathematical calculation that works out to 500 people paying R260 each.  This will enable her to get brand new wheels.  Already 9 people have signed up, that only leaves 491.  Come on, you know you can spare it.  I only wish I’d thought of it myself.  Good luck Briget – we’ll be watching how well this campaign does!

I’m urging all Nerdmaggers to join in & help her out – it really won’t be the end of the world for you, but it might mean the world to her.

Go, go go!

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If we take a moment to break down online romances I believe they make almost a bit more sense than meeting people face to face. Let’s see quickly:

Pros

• No awkward face to face rejection
• It is a meeting of minds more than physical attraction
• Meeting of minds is often more meaningful than just pure physical attraction

Cons

• People can put on facades a lot easier
• People get involved in your love life if you meet in community based media (e.g. IRC or its modern day equivilant: Twitter)
• Bonds develop a bit stronger when you are physically with the person
• The hot 18 year old picture is really some fat creepy 47 year old guy with croocked teeth *shudder*

In my (vast!) experience through the years the pro’s have managed to outweigh the cons. I believe this is all purely because I was an early adopter and the perverts hadn’t made it online yet. Thank goodness.

For me there are laws that you need to follow if you are going to have a successful online romance. In fact, most of these apply to the real world too.

Firstly:
Do not fight on public forums.
Secondly:
Your sex life should remain out of the public domain. No matter how good you or your significant other think it is.
Thirdly:
Make it real. Be with each other in person.
Fourth:
Be honest with each other about who you are.
Fifth:
Set up expectations upfront.
Sixth:
Distance. It is a bitch. Don’t do it if you don’t want your heart broken and your wallet devoid of purpose.

Speaking of long distance relationships. This is mostly what online romances are. Be it self imposed, or just cause you connected with that individual across the country/ocean/planet. I will admit I’ve been this stupid. It filled a deep seeded need in me to feel a connection with someone, yet remain free to do what I want to do.

Here some arb stats that I found on long distance relationships:
Average distance apart: 200km
Avaerge visits: 1.5 times per month
Average number of calls: 1 every 2.75 days
Avergae length of phone calls: 30 minutes
Average letters written (letters, not emails): 3 per month
Average time before they can be closer together: 14 months
Average success: 1 out of 10 relationships of this nature end up together and married

My advice on this topic. Use the interwebs as a means to communicate when you have to, but don’t have your relationship online unless it is a long distance relationship. Before you get into the long distance relationship, think about see the person only once every 3 weeks a phone call every 3 days that last 30 minutes and 3 letters per month. And doing that for a little over a year. It sounds to me like the relationship I have with my grandmother in Cape Town.

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