I started taking my blog serious earlier this year and it grew rapidly. I never really received the support from the blogosphere that I deserved, except from a handful of fellow bloggers (and my most loyal reader, Island-Chic!), and many times I have considered quiting.

But I kept at it and months later, my blog has overgrown the functionality offered by the Blogger platform and it has become necessary to move it to a platform that can support a custom domain, highly customizable templates and ironically, better SEO support.

With this in mind, I have launched my blog on www.DChetty.co.za and will discontinue posting on this domain. I will leave this blog up for a few weeks, until all my faithful readers have been redirected to my new domain. I will then delete this blog entirely!

Thank you for your support on this domain and I truly look forward to having you on my new domain. If you have backlinked to me on any of your posts, Blog Rolls, Link Lists, etc, please consider changing this link to land on DChetty instead.

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A few months ago, the CEO of MWEB, Rudi Jansen announced that a strategic decision has been made by Nasper's to "auction off MWEB" to a company that can provide MWEB with access to a network.

After months of rumours and speculation, it was announced today in a letter to the staff by Rudi Jansen announced that the sale process has been called off.

"Following months of work and endless late nights working on the sale of MWEB, I am now able to give you a final update on the process. Naspers has decided to end the formal auction process for the sale of MWEB South Africa due to current market conditions. MWEB South Africa will therefore remain within the Naspers group.

An agreement has also been concluded whereby Telkom will purchase the MWEB Africa business. This transaction will take some time to close, mainly due to regulatory approvals that are required. We expect the date of closing to be some time in quarter 1 2009."

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At midnight tonight, the petrol price in South Africa will be dropping for the 4th consecutive month now!

Dropping by a huge 45cents, this is a welcomed relief for the economy and highlights the strength of our economy and the ability for our markets to fight off further inflation!

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Click on the image to few an enlargened version!

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I love Audi! I've said it before and you are damn sure that you will hear it again! When Audi launched the new Audi A4, I couldn't help but skip a heart beat. It is stunningly sexy and an absolutley amazing car to the point that I had to have one.

So I am an Audi owner now. My biggest problem with this though, is that every time I see a new model, I start having these cravings and I'm almost tempted to pull into the driveway of an Audi Dealership and get the enthusiastic salesman to do a swop for me!

I've just had a look at the new Audi Q5 on the video below... and those urges are back! Somebody slap me!

Thanks to Zoopy for the videos of the Johannesburg International Car Show!

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Windows only: Chart Advisor, a free plug-in for Excel 2007, takes the guess-and-hope element out of making your spreadsheet data presentable. The plug-in adds a single button to Excel's "Insert" toolbar, and clicking it brings up a window with the Advisor's recommended layouts, ranked in order of relevance. Mouse over the chart layouts to see a preview, then click on "Modify Chart" to filter and change the data being used.

It's definitely more helpful than Excel's default chart and graph chooser, and helps graphing newbies figure out how to tweak their displays. Chart Advisor is a free plug-in, requires 32-bit Windows XP or Vista and Excel 2007. See below for a video demonstration of Chart Advisor's features.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:3092cdf1-75ff-409e-9bdb-b4a818b39952&amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;from=shared" target="_new" title="Chart Advisor Overview">Video: Chart Advisor Overview</a>

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The last month has seen the South African Rand get kicked to hell and gone by a fearful market. Global recession has been the new hype on the block of late, before that it was iPhone and before that it was Facebook.

But even though the price of the dollar is still pretty much the price of a dozen syruped koeksusters, (since the price of sugar is skyhigh...trust me boet...its not cheap!), the international oil price is at a low unmatched in about 18 months. Reported to have traded at around $59 to a barrel recently, which puts it at lows that were last matched in Feb 2007 if I'm not mistaken.

35 cents off the petrol price and about 20 cents off diesel is expected to be announced this friday, which also marks the last day of October. Now, the pattern has been that price changes happen at 12:01 on the Wednesday after the announcement... so if you can hold off filling your tank for about a week, you could end up saving about R22 off your next tank of fuel... thats a box of smarties, a coke and a packet of crisps bru!

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The Nokia E61 and E62i were evangelists in its domain, and the launch of the Nokia E71 saw the business phone grow up quite a bit. I'm a Nokia E71 owner and I absolutely love the device.

Everything from the E71 alarm clock to the Mail for Exchage integration. The design is stunning and the form factor is pure perfection. Kudos to the designers and engineers on the E71.

I guess, when you have something so close to perfection, its tough to beat it. SO the designers at Nokia must have had a real hard time coming up with something decent for the E63. But judging from the spy shots of the Nokia E63, it looks like it was designed at 4:45pm on a Friday by a Finnish designer who just bought himself a new set of colouring pencils!






<--Nokia E71 Nokia E63-->














Early reports show it as having a 320 x 240 resolution display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Symbian S60, a microSD card slot, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and UMTS / HSDPA. And judging from the pics, the keyboard has been altered slightly to include easy access to brackets and the space bar has been shortened. Good move!

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So you all now that I have this major love for Gmail and I am so glad that Google has finally started throwing some serious money at Gmail and the Gmail team has been rolling out a series of some pretty cool and nifty features lately.

They have just added a feature that bypasses the warning message that is displayed when you leave the content of the mail empty.

Now, I often myself whacking off mails where the subject carries enough of a message to get the message across that I don't need to type anything in the mail... eg. "Call me asap!" or even just a link to an article that I think should be read.

The new feature basically requires you to add "EOM" at the end of the subject header and the mail will be sent off without the annoying message. "EOM" stands for End Of Message!

Check out the full details of the feature here if you don't understand what I'm talking about!

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Here's a Gmail feature I wouldn't have noticed without a post from Gmail's blog: emoticons. If you use the rich-text mode when composing messages, you can now include small images that reflect your intentions.

"The black and white days of text-based emails have had their day. Following the evolutionary path blazed by colored labels, we present, in all their technicolor glory, emoticons in your mail," says Darren Lewis from Google.

Google also added a new set of emoticons in Gmail Chat and it's strange to see that you can add much more emoticons in an email than in an IM conversation.

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ChrisM from iMod has started a small campaign on Muti to raise funds for the Blogger Bake Off, which aims to raise $1million towards food for the Africa's hungry communities!

I think that it is a brilliant cause and ChrisM's plan is to donate R200 for 100 votes on Muti. He was quickly joined by Thakadu , Sue, Charl and Wogan who have each matched his pledge. Follow them on Twitter at @christopherm, @muti, @cow_grrrl, @zoopedup and @woganmay respectively!

I pledge R200 for every 100 votes received on Muti!

Please head over and vote asap as the campaign ends on Monday at 13h00 SA time!

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Afrigator has been doing some amazing work and have really done well. They are social media aggregators for African publishers!

I was very honored today when I was informed by Afrigator that they rate me as one of Africa's top bloggers! They have compiled a list of 45 blogs that they feel worthy of representing Africa's best. I am ranked number 24 on the list!

It's REALLY funny to me though... you see, the list is called

Top 45 Female African Bloggers!

Thanks ChrisM for bringing it to their attention!

I have never felt it necessary to clarify my gender, though I have referenced my girlfriend and I would have thought that my obsession with tech stuff and cars would have given it away, but I guess that we live in a time when these things are tough to tell... so here goes...

HoTsTePPa is male!!!

The list is pretty amazing and I highly suggest that given the time, you read some of the blogs listed! Nice Work Afrigator!

1.	So Close	South Africa Rank: 9	Overall Rank: 10	Blog
2.	Urban Sprout	South Africa Rank: 10	Overall Rank: 11	Blog
3.	Black Looks	Nigeria Rank: 1	Overall Rank: 14	Blog
4.	Kenyan Pundit	Kenya Rank: 2	Overall Rank: 17	Blog
5.	Cape Town Daily Photo	South Africa Rank: 19	Overall Rank: 23	Blog
6.	Angel’s mind	South Africa Rank: 27	Overall Rank: 34	Blog
7.	Ladybrille	South Africa Rank: 30	Overall Rank: 38	Blog
8.	Cooksister	South Africa Rank: 31	Overall Rank: 40	Blog
9.	Bosom Buddies	South Africa Rank: 39	Overall Rank: 48	Blog
10.	Scarlett Lion	Uganda Rank: 1	Overall Rank: 57	Blog
11.	Hottest Gossip	South Africa Rank: 48	Overall Rank: 60	Blog
12.	Mother City Living	South Africa Rank: 51	Overall Rank: 65	Blog
13.	JustB[Coz]	South Africa Rank: 54	Overall Rank: 71	Blog
14.	Melissa Attree	South Africa Rank: 60	Overall Rank: 78	Blog
15.	Entertainment Blog	South Africa Rank: 63	Overall Rank: 85	Blog
16.	Sugar. Spice. And all things nice!	General Rank: 3	Overall Rank: 96	Blog
17.	Jackfruity	Uganda Rank: 3	Overall Rank: 98	Blog
18.	Africa Expat Wives Club	Kenya Rank: 8	Overall Rank: 108	Blog
19.	Anja Merret	South Africa Rank: 74	Overall Rank: 109	Blog
20.	Glad to be a Girl	South Africa Rank: 78	Overall Rank: 114	Blog
21.	Insight	South Africa Rank: 81	Overall Rank: 117	Blog
22.	Inside Candy	South Africa Rank: 82	Overall Rank: 118	Blog
23.	FeistyFemale	South Africa Rank: 87	Overall Rank: 124	Blog
24.	Through My Own Eyes	South Africa Rank: 88	Overall Rank: 125	Blog
25.	Szavanna_blog	South Africa Rank: 94	Overall Rank: 132	Blog
26.	Ore’s Notes	Nigeria Rank: 7	Overall Rank: 153	Blog
27.	Tania	South Africa Rank: 106	Overall Rank: 155	Blog
28.	Onder die maan en sterre	South Africa Rank: 115	Overall Rank: 165	Blog
29.	The Vegan Diet	South Africa Rank: 120	Overall Rank: 174	Blog
30.	What An African Woman Thinks	General Rank: 7	Overall Rank: 181	Blog
31.	The Adventures of Miss M	South Africa Rank: 153	Overall Rank: 223	Blog
32.	Photography by Jeanette	South Africa Rank: 154	Overall Rank: 224	Blog
33.	Libby	South Africa Rank: 160	Overall Rank: 234	Blog
34.	Vampira’s Life	South Africa Rank: 163	Overall Rank: 239	Blog
35.	Michelle Clarke	South Africa Rank: 183	Overall Rank: 269	Blog
36.	An Ordinary Life	South Africa Rank: 189	Overall Rank: 278	Blog
37.	Hunter of Genius	South Africa Rank: 191	Overall Rank: 281	Blog
38.	Deshanta’s World	South Africa Rank: 200	Overall Rank: 292	Blog
39.	Helen Zille	South Africa Rank: 202	Overall Rank: 294	Blog
40.	Afromusing	Kenya Rank: 21	Overall Rank: 307	Blog
41.	Memories, Sentiments, Rants and Raves	Kenya Rank: 22	Overall Rank: 314	Blog
42.	Wandering the World	Eqypt Rank: 15	Overall Rank: 323	Blog
43.	Mama Etiopia	Ethiopia Rank: 2	Overall Rank: 338	Blog
44.	Victoire	South Africa Rank: 238	Overall Rank: 355	Blog
45.	My Whorl	South Africa Rank: 239	Overall Rank: 357	Blog

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Show your love for Mozilla Firefox with one of these really cool high-res wallpapers! Don't forget to check out Firefox 3 and the really cool plugin selection that I suggest!

Click on the image to enlargen it, then right-click and select "Set as Desktop Background"!

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If you're happy enough with the features your iPod offers out of the box that you don't want to install a custom firmware like Rockbox, but you'd still like to add a little personal flair to Apple's cookie-cutter look, you're in luck. Freeware application iPodWizard customizes the look and feel of your iPod's interface while still using a customized version of your iPod's default firmware on the device. That means you still get the same iPod software that you already know and love, but you can skin it to look however you want. Let's take a closer look at how to customize your iPod with iPodWizard.

What You'll Get

Before you put in the effort, it's always nice to see what you're working toward. Below I've rounded up some of my favorite custom themes, all of which you can install using iPodWizard.

Beautifully Black

iPod OS X

Northern Lights

Install Custom Themes

First, download and install the latest version of iPodWizard from the GetiPodWizard web site (as of this writing, the latest version is 1.3). This version of iPodWizard works with every iPod on the market except second and third generation nanos, the iPod classic, and the iPod touch. That means that if you've got a first through 5.5 gen iPod or first gen nano, you're ready to go with iPodWizard.

The iPodWizard Wiki already has a great tutorial detailing the process of installing new themes, so I won't go into a lot of detail. I will, however, share a few extra tips that would have helped me when I followed their tutorial.

First of all, since iPodWizard patches the firmware that's already on your device, you need to be able to tell iPodWizard where to find your firmware on your computer. Finding and downloading the latest firmware can be a pain, but if you know where to look, it should already be on your computer. To find it, go to Start -> Run and paste the following into the run box:

%appdata%\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPod Software Updates

That should take you to the directory that holds your latest installed firmware update—it's the file that ends in .ipsw. (If that doesn't work, try navigating to a similar folder manually.)

You can find themes on the iPodWizard Theme forum. It's a bit of a mess to look through, but if you pick your iPod type and sort the thread by number of views—like I did for 5th generation iPod themes—you can find a lot of the best themes really quickly.

Once you've got a theme you want to install and you've got your firmware handy, installing is a breeze. Just fire up iPodWizard, select iPodSoftwareFile from the Edit Mode drop-down, and select Open iPSW. Next, go to the Pictures tab, click the Load All button, and point iPodWizard at the folder containing the images of your theme. If your theme swaps layout and fonts, you'll need to perform similar operations on the layout and font tabs.

Once you've swapped the files you want to use with the defaults, just click the Write to iPod button. Disconnect your iPod (make sure to eject it properly first), and it should automatically reboot. When it does, your iPod's sporting a whole new look.

I'm relatively new to theming with iPodWizard, so if you're an old hand with this customization app, share you expertise in the comments.

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The Great Wall of China is an ABSOLUTE must see when visiting China!

Its an absolute marvel and the history behind the wall is simply amazing. Spanning a total length of about 6700 km end to end and during its peak, the wall guarded by about 1 million soldiers of the Ming Dynasty at any single given time.

It was build as a defensive structure to safe guard the empire from attack from the Mongolians and the enormity of the structure is simply mind-boggling to imagine a wall wrapping an entire nation. It is also said to be the only man-made structure that is visible on Earth from the Moon!

The wall was a great cost to the empire and as a result the Ming Dynasty lost millions on building the wall, but it deemed it a necessary expense in assuring the safety of the of the dynasty from raids from the north eastern neighbours.

I saw the wall during a national holiday. I highly recommend that you avoid these days, as the wall is bustling with local tourists who come to share in the oogling of the masterpiece. It makes for a crowded trip and is not desirable.

A tour to the wall at Badaling came with a trip to the Ming Tombs (which is not great), a stop at a silk factory (which was pretty interesting for the first 20 minutes before I got bored) and a trip to a Jade factory (this was very cool and i really did enjoy it!).

The tour cost us CYR180 each and included pick up and drop off at the hotel and an authentic Chinese lunch. We had an English speaking tour guide who was friendly and fairly knowledgeable of the sights. She did try to crack a few jokes that I just didn't get, but all in all it was cool. The bus was air-conditioned and decently comfortable!

I'll post the tour companies details as soon as I find it again ;)

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Since my last post, I have been to Beijing and I am safely back in South Africa. I had the most amazing trip and my flights and traveling ended up being quite amusing to me, even though not all glory!

Flight Centre did not help me out after screwing up my transfer hotel and visa, so I did in fact end up stuck in Doha International for 18 hours and have still not contacted me with an apology. I am very disappointed in their service and would not recommend the company to anybody and suggest that you make your own bookings via CheapTrip.co.za instead!

If ever you are stuck in Doha, I suggest that you head over the Oryx lounge. Its on the first floor on the far right hand side of the building. They charge a small entry fee for access to the VIP lounge of QR140, some credit cards allow you free access as a value added service by your credit card provider, like mine did. The Oryx is a great place to chill for a few hours.

It has great ambient lighting, soothing music and loads of comfy couches to kick back in. They serve light snacks, softdrinks and tea and coffee complimentary all day long. They have TV's with quiet a few english channels, a meeting room and free wifi. The bathroom facilities are very clean and very well maintained and it was a real pleasure taking a shower as well. I highly recommend the Oryx to stay fresh during a long transit!

Onroute back home, I left Beijing in the wee hours of Saturday morning, to arrive in Doha just after first light. The airport was busy and I had a total 40 minute transit time from one flight landing to the next flight taking off, so I was pretty stressed out about missing it.

I managed to rush through and get on the flight in time, only to have the flight delayed by 2 hours because of a system failure.

Now, dear Captain Johnson of Qatar Airways, in future... please understand that hearing the words "System Failure" is very unnerving as a passenger on a flight. Further, it would be preferable if you avoid supporting terms like "might be able to fix the problem". Fixing the problem is one thing, but that word "MIGHT" is definitely not the kind of assurance that I want to be hearing while strapping myself into your fueled to the max Boeing just before take-off!

All in all, Qatar Airways is a great airline with great service. The meals were very impressive, the staff were courteous and friendly and even played with the little kids on board the flights.

They are also the cheapest airline to fly to Beijing from South Africa and would recommend that you check out a flight booking on a flight aggregator like CheapTrip.co.za!

The flight cost me R8900 inclusive of all airport taxes and levies!

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I’m on my way to Beijing, China, to spend some time with my babes! I’ve been meaning to go for a long time, but circumstances and Murphy made sure that I haven’t made it as yet!

So early evening yesterday, 30 September, I was dropped off at Cape Town International Airport and a few hours later I’m boarding a flight to Doha. It was a pleasant flight, bar the stale toasted roll that I was served as a snack. Chicken, cheese and peppers…yum! The other meals were really good!

After a pretty long flight and me doing a small acrobatic stunt to fit my +PLUS sized ass across 3 seats dodging armrests and managing to stay strapped in with my seatbelt (This feat would make McGyver jealous!), I arrived in Doha about 2 hours ago, just before 7am local time.

Doha International is a kinda funny to pin down in words. It’s a mix between the glam life of Dubai but on a very rundown, unmaintained level. The floors are dirty, the bathrooms are horrible and the airport food court reminds me of a dodgy Gatsby take-away in Cape Town called Golden Dish, but the lights are bright and they have a Range Rover parked in the Duty Free area!

On arrival, I’m told that my visa wasn’t arranged by my travel agent, so I’m stuck here for 18 hours. Great!

The guys at Flight Centre better pull through for me, cos I’m borderline pissed now!

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This is a quick video review of the Nokia E71 that I found online!

Part 1:


Part 2:

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It is really great that Symbian is starting to show signs of maturity across their OS. One of the really great features of the Nokia E71, is the highly manageable alarm clock. We take this feature for granted, but we must admit that we use this feature alot more than quite a few other features on our phones.

Setting up the alarm on the Nokia E71 is slightly different to the standard Symbian S60 layout, in that it is now found in a new folder in the menu and the alarm settings now allow it to be a lot more customisable.

Follow this easy step by step guide to set up the alarm:

1. Press the menu button. By default, this is the button with the home icon. See the diagram below:
2. Open the Office folder.
3. Open the Clock application
4. Use the right scroll to open the alarm tab.
5. Press the Options button and click on New Alarm.
6. Set the time.
7. Give the alarm a name.
8. Set how often you would like it to repeat, daily, weekly, or workdays.
9. Click OK!

You can have multiple alarms set for multiple tasks, with multiple repeat schedules, which is very cool.

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This is a really BRILLIANT video and an absolute MUST SEE for anyone interested in the internet or Google!

The first 2 minutes are in Spanish, its the introduction and you can ignore, but the rest of the video is in English, so don't worry.



I've noticed a trend with Google country managers; they are all really brilliant speakers! They have this natural coolness about themselves and are all filled with some REALLY amazing stats about their company.

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