The above brilliant promo clip for a new epic BBC programme called SuperPower was done by RKCR/Y&R.

BBC’s SuperPower is a season of programmes starting today that will be investigating how the internet affects lives and has become the catalyst for a fundamental change in societies around the world.

There is a huge amount of interactive content available for the programme, the main site brings it all together, but they have also been actively starting conversations on Twitter and Facebook, even giving anyone the opportunity  to ask questions to some of the Digital Giants of the industry like Eric Schmidt, Jimmy Wales and Steve Ballmer.

If you’re interested in the digital world this is one not to miss. For an overview of the series just watch the clip below. God bless the BBC.

I’m a big fan of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders). They are an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. Basically they go to the places most organisations wouldn’t dare go, and help those who need it most. Volkswagen & Maxim have just teamed up to support them  in Haiti by auctioning off a celebrity-autographed 2010 Golf GTI hood.

VW collected more than 50 celebrity signatures at the 2010 Maxim Party to celebrate the Super Bowl this past weekend in Miami.  Celebrities included Evander Holyfield, Olivia Munn, Marisa Miller, Floyd Mayweather, Jermaine Dupri, Warren Moon, The All American Rejects, Gavin DeGraw, Nelly, Robert Horry, Joanna Kruppa, Ndamukon Suh, Kevin Connolly, Nick Lachey and Tom Arnold.
Bidding starts at $1000. Please help them by bidding your best on eBay, just click on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/haitimsf
If $1000 is a bit steep, please still go to http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ and donate what you can, they are all modern day heroes and need our help.

   Oh my word, If you have even the slightest interest in cars and have any sense of humour don’t miss the Top Gear Live world tour. Last night I was invited to the Launch of the event in Cape Town by the legends from TomTom and I simply can’t thank them enough. The whole evening was one big joyous occasion for me, as a Top Gear addict I don’t think I could have asked for more. On arrival I was given a tour of the stands, several manufactures launched cars at the show (for South Africa) such as Lotus and Volvo, more importantly though look above at the girls above that Audi Cape Town had for the show!. Pictured to the right is the wonderful Avish from TomTom,and I at the TomTom stand ( what a man !). There was a Gala dinner, then the main show, then Q&A with Jeremy Clarkson, then a tour backstage, all in all it was epic. In addition my great companions for the eve were the heads of Cellucity, Cape Union Mart and Due South, all bloody nice chaps doing great work. TomTom also kindly gave away tickets to tomorrows Cape Town show to 2 lucky winners but more on that another time. If your in South Africa or any of the other countries Top Gear Live is visiting I highly suggest you click here, find out when they are coming, then get in your cars, turn on your TomTom’s and make your way there, you wont be disappointed. p.s. I sat next to two of the great chaps than run Cellucity (SA largest independent mobile phone dealer) and check out what one of the bosses uses as his mobile phone (The cheapest Nokia you can buy, pic below) If you’re in SA click here to book tickets

Apple just released all the details of their new tablet computer called the iPad. The short of it is its a 9.7 inch LED multi-touch screen computer, great for browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and eBooks. The iPad can run all the existing iPhone apps full screen and apps are being developed as we speak for its launch (Estimated 1st April in USA for WiFi version and 1st May for 3G version).

The iPad 3G is unlocked to any network and includes a deal in the USA for unlimited web use for $29.99 (offers are expected to be arranged for other countries in the future). Battery life is 10 hours and the iPad comes complete with built in speakers and mic as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and 3 USB sockets.

Prices are as follows:

iPad

16GB

32GB

64GB

WiFi

$499

$599

$699

3G

$629

$729

$829

For pictures look below (click to zoom in). For full specs visit http://www.apple.com/ipad

A crazy in love couple called Jeff and Erin may have just created the best “Save the Date” viral video I have ever seen and it’s becoming a huge hit on YouTube. The Couple who recently got engaged produced the fantastic clip above to encourage friends and family to save the date for their upcoming wedding (10-10-10). Love the video and as Jeff works for Canon now might be a good time for them to offer the happy couple a nice treat in return for a little tastefully done PR. Check out their website to read more at: http://www.jeffanderin.us/

Last Thursday I left a sunny and wonderful Cape Town for a Holiday back home in cold and dark mother country England. As I’m away and wont be back till the 28th December my postings may be a bit rarer but will try to keep you up to speed. The first major leg of my adventure back home was attending my brothers wedding in Norfolk at Holkham Hall (The Earl of Leicester’s digs). Have added some pictures of the venue and the last few days above in a slide show so please feel free to check them out. Have a fabulous week ya’ll.

Last week I was kindly invited to a Nokia roundtable event called “The way we live next 3.0”. The event was held at the new One & Only hotel in Cape Town and Nokia invited Missing Linking entrepreneur and legend Richard Mulholland to be the guest speaker. He shared his vision on the latest trends in the mobile space and where he sees these trends going in the future. The short of it was that mobile phones/devices will eventually replace computers and that for companies and leaders to be successful they will have to heed Alvin Toffler’s wise words: “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The other speaker was Nokia’s product marketing manager Patrick Henchie who talked about Nokia’s vision of what the future (see video above) and how mobility might evolve. Nokia also introduced us to some future products and let us have a play;

• N900: This is the first Nokia phone to run on the open source OS Maemo. Its basically a 3.5” touch screen phone with slide out keyboard. My brief impression was its a step in the right direction but still not an iPhone (and a bit fat). For the specs PDF click here.
• X6 touch phone: I didn’t get to play with this for too long but it was my favourite product on show. Its a 3.5” capacitive touch screen phone. It runs Nokia’s symbian OS and it just worked great. Also when you get the phone you get access to unlimited free music downloads from the Nokia Ovi Store (For the phone only but still is a great bonus and the phone has 32GB internal memory).
• Nokia Booklet 3G: This new Nokia laptop is pretty exiting, its made from a single piece of machined aluminium and feels great. It has shortcuts to the Ovi store and maps built in, as well as an integrated 3G HSPA modem. The machine runs Windows 7, has a 10.1” screen and has an incredible battery life of up to 12 hours. After a little play I thought it was very sluggish, but then I turned off the power saving mode and it worked fine. Great bit of kit if you travel lots and want to use it to access cloud services and do some light work on the go. For the specs PDF click here.

Overall the event was a great initiative and I liked the way they made the sessions intimate with only about 15 influential journalists, developers and bloggers invited, it gave us the chance to interact very easily with the speakers and products. On another note thanks to Olga from Nokia South Africa for inviting me even though she knew I’m a Sony Ericsson fan !   

     Yesterday was like a mini Christmas day for me. It started off with being invited to the Cape Town Whiskey festival, then when I picked up the tickets from Atmosphere I received a limited edition Chocolate Steri Stumpie Levi T-shirt !. That’s not it though, I then came home to relax by the pool and have a glass of fine wine, but before I got to the door I was handed a package by a delivery man that contained a VW Citi Golf farewell send off pack (The Citi golf is like a MK1 VW Golf that has been made in SA for 25 years and sold to generations of teens as their first car). Anyway so later last night I popped over to try out some of the fine Whiskey and ended up having a great night (my Scottish grandfather would have been proud of me). Bushmills exceeded my expectations in more ways than one, Firstly its a pretty good drop, secondly they gave me a promo pack with a bottle of Bushmills and 2 whiskey glasses, and they even let me engrave the bottle there and then ! legends, check out the pictures above to see for yourself, (you may like the engraving I got them to do: “Enjoy irresponsibly”) Notes:

• Bushmills are also giving away an E-Type Jaguar, click here to find out how to win
• The Whiskey festival is on now, is worth a visit if your in South Africa: Click here to book
• The VW goodbye City Golf  tour will be starting soon in South Africa, to find out more click here
• Steri Stumpie only has a few limited edition custom Levi T-shirts left: Click here to find out more

(Hat tip to Amy and Tess for hooking me up)

Last week I organised the second Audi Cape Town MVP day. The general idea if you missed my last post on it, is to get Audi cars into the hands of SA’s most influential people in the digital space and have some fun while we are at it. The members are hand picked, and we only allow 8 people at a time to keep it select and private. MVP (Most Valuable Player) status gets you invited to excusive Audi events and track days along with a few preferential other things. This time the following fantastic people were in attendance: Lili Radloff, Justin Hartman, Matthew Buckland, Bradley Voges, Charl Norman, Joe Botha, and Sue Rutherford.

The weather was yet again fantastic and the legendary Chapmans peak drive was open, so we popped over to Bob Skinstad’s wonderful Toad restaurant in Noordhoek for a fab late breakfast snack, then we gave away a special test drive in the new Audi S4 and the fantastic Audi R8 V10 to two lucky people. Next we drove for lunch at the Cape Grace and were treated to a wonderful meal from Audi Centre Cape Town.

The cars we used this time were the Q5, Q7, A5, TT and a bonus test drive for two in an S4 and an R8 V10. My favourite for the day had to be the Q5 3.2 Quattro, I cant believe how sporty and solid the drive was and its pretty stunning looking too, especially considering I normally loath small SUV’s.

I have added a selection of pictures from the day below, for more pics check out Joe Botha’s pictures here and here.

For the last month or two if you happen to live anywhere in Cape Town and have ever left your house you would have noticed posters all over the place advertising something called the Triple Helix. Naturally I was fascinated to find out more so wrote about them on Twitter and got a reply to come visit their “lab”. Yesterday I finally made it to the Lab and have been blown away. Cant say too much but the chaps that have been running it are fine adventurous gentleman and they seem to have all the right people buzzing, trying to work out what the posters, videos, tweets, blog posts etc are all about.

I took the following pics from the lab and have been lucky enough to get a VIP invite for the Triple Helix Launch Party (in a test tube filled with blue liquid, how awesome is that !)

To check it out for yourself have a look that any of their following sites: Helix Twitter, Helix Facebook, Helix Blog and Helix VIP party site. Check out the video below that they just released to get a better idea. Great work, so glad to see its working and cant wait to have it as a local case study !

As I was saying on Monday I was very kindly invited to see the launch on ZA News. The show is essentially a South African version of the old hit UK political comedy puppet show Spitting Image.

Created by Executive Producer Thierry Cassuto, with some help from local political cartoonist legend Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro) the premier showing was just fantastic.

Huge respect has to go to kulula.com (the airline) and Mail & Guardian online for getting behind the guys and letting ZA News finally get off the ground. Thanks to Atmosphere I have managed to put together some nice pics from the launch below.

The show will be published every week day from now on. To watch latest episodes just visit www.zanews.co.za

   Fun week so far and its only getting in to Tuesday ! This morning the cool cats from Atmosphere have kindly invited me to the launch of a new TV political comedy show called ZA news at the fab Grand Daddy Hotel in CT. Some people may remember the show was originally called Znews but after the local state run TV station SABC refused to air it for allegedly “lacking balance” it was never aired and so sat derelict. However the great guys at Kulula and Mail & Guardian have picked up the show so now we can see what cartoonist legend Jonathan Shapiro & co can get up to when given some puppets and air time. This time however the show will be online and free for all !!!! Will let you know how it goes, am being joined by local hero Matthew Buckland for the launch. In other news my favourite phone people over at Sony Ericsson have launched a partnership with SA band legends “The Parlotones”. To celebrate it, all new W995’s (the same I have) now will come with exclusive Parlotones content, think pre-release new album (before anyone else), video interviews, themes etc etc !!! The W995 also recently won “Best Product in the European Music Phone category” at the prestigious EISA awards so not only do you get great content but now you know it will sound legendary too. On a related note congrats to the Parlotones for releasing their own branded wine called “Giant Mistake”, my good friends Sir Justin Hartman and Sir Stii have assured me its music for your taste buds, so if you see it around why not give it a try. Will be interesting to see how many other bands follow suite with personalised wine. Check out the website, some pretty good content on it for a wine website, nice to some innovation again in the wine space.