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I love my Mac, I do. But what I really wish is that it would charge itself using a method other than the power cable. Because cables get tangled. And cables are attached to plugs, which require crawling under the desk to plug in. And cables fall down in to the gaping mac void that exists just behind my desk. Which then requires more crawling under the desk.
Anyway I digress, I was busy moaning about the cable constantly falling behind my desk when Stii sent me (and Justin) a cool link that he had found on hertenberger.co.za while cruising around on GatorPeeps. Justin, it seems, had the same problem with his cables so he checked out the link too. Justin then went on to buy some products from the Blue Lounge website and is eagerly waiting to receive it. I too went on to buy something for my Mac.
Now the scenario above is classic word of mouth marketing. Stii, the referrer, is someone that Justin knows and trusts, so his authority is transferred to the link that he sent Justin. Justin acted on the trusted referral and bought the product. None of this is especially groundbreaking. What is phenomenal is the speed with which all of this happened.
The time it took from me moaning about my cables to Justin and me both making a purchase was roughly ten minutes, if that. Service like GatorPeeps are changing the way that we access and distribute information meaning that we make decisions faster and according to different rules. Now I’m not really smart enough to outline just how exciting and cool this really is, but I’m hoping that you’ll get the gist of it and that some smart people will add more to this is the comments section.
And one other really cool thing – Blue Lounge didn’t spend a cent marketing to any of us. A blogger liked their product and did a post on it, and that post did the work for them.
We’re not ones to gloat* but we just had to share the recent stability report for Afrigator.com. Since June 2008 we’ve been using a third-party server monitoring company, Pingdom, to help us monitor our servers’ stability and uptime on the Internet.
Afrigator runs a complex infrastructure spanning across four servers so it is critical that we are notified if one of them goes down. While you only get to see one website each of these servers makes the whole thing tick and we’re continuously trying to improve stability for your viewing pleasure.
As you can see from the graph below our overall uptime for January 2009 across all four servers was 99.99%. Only one of our servers had any downtime and in total Afrigator.com was inaccessible for only 23 minutes during the entire month.
This is a big feat for us as we’ve experienced some considerable downtime in the past yet despite massive growth the last few months our code (monkey) and servers are handling it all quite well. Have a look at some of the historical downtime we’ve had below.
* Technically we do like to gloat but this just sounds better. Doesn’t it?
We’ve introduced a new feature which allows you to import your blog roll and find your friends on Afrigator to add to your MyGator. It is really quick and simple to do, provided that your blog roll is in XFN format.
See this video for a demonstration and this post for more detail.
Stiaan, more affectionately known to his fellow SA geeks as Stii, has of his own accord put together a marvelous tutorial for people wanting to learn how to make the most of Afrigator.
As I understand it, this tut is the first in a series he’ll be writing, so I know I’ll be looking out for future installments (chances are I’ll learn something ). We’ll also be posting links to the tuts up on Afrigator’s Help Page.
If you have any cool discoveries or Afrigator hacks you’d like to share with us, why not pop them in the comments section below?
Today Erik of White African interviewed me about Afrigator and some other stuff for African Signals, his new project (very cool indeed). From the African Signals site:
African Signals is an internet video news channel that will highlight interesting technology stories from around Africa on a weekly basis. Find out what the movers and shakers of the African world are doing in interviews. See the newest gadgets and technology in action or watch as we explain the importance of new internet and mobile technology.
Stiaan, more affectionately known to his fellow SA geeks as 
). We’ll also be posting links to the tuts up on Afrigator’s Help Page. 
