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The Frock Report
Dispatches from the front row of fashion and style… 
The Times features editor Aspasia Karras is an inveterate snoop - she will keep you posted on sartorial developments as and when they strike her. You might also notice that she has a guest blogger - Simon Shear - whose Friday party tracks and other musings are most welcome.
Pendock Uncorked
BLOG - South Africa's leading independent drinks commentator… 
Neil Pendock is South Africa’s leading quasi-independent drinks commentator – he has no financial connections with any importer, producer, distributor, retailer, show, competition or restaurant.
A columnist for the Sunday Times, Financial Mail, winenews.co.za and WINE magazine, he was voted “most trusted palate” by readers of WINE in 2007. An enthusiastic amateur, he has a healthy disregard for the anoraks, bowties and Emperors of drink and their new clothes, both locally and internationally.
Susan Boyle's album shot to the top
November 30, 2009
Susan Boyle's album has become the fastest-selling debut ever. The Scottish singer - who shot to fame after appearing on talent show Britain's Got Talent earlier this year - has broken records with her first album, I Dreamed a Dream, which shot to the top of the British album charts on Sunday.
The record has become the fastest-selling debut album ever released in the UK after selling 411 000 copies in one week and has also sold over 2million copies worldwide - making it the fastest-selling debut album by a woman ever. Susan, 48, said: "It's fantastic!"
However, the singer's success has been marred by New Zealand TV presenter, who labelled the 48-year-old singer a "retard". During his live breakfast show, Paul Henry criticised Susan - who suffered learning difficulties as a child after she was starved of oxygen at birth - and told viewers he had made a "revelation".
He said: "Here's the really interesting revelation - she is in fact retarded. And if you look at her carefully, you can make it out."
The show was flooded with complaints from viewers and disabled charities, who blasted his unkind words.
However, Paul claims he has no regrets over his remarks. He explained: "These were light-hearted remarks. I can't recall a time that I've regretted saying anything."
Philippa Sellens, from New Zealand disabled group the Intellectually Handicapped Charity: "Paul thought he was being very funny, but he wasn't, it was highly offensive. Very few people would have found it funny."
The presenter is now said to be facing the sack.
BLOGGERS ARREST SETS BLOG RUMOUR MILL ABUZZ
November 08 2009 at 06:53PM By Eleanor Momberg
The blogger-sphere was buzzing this week with claims that the South African police were clamping down on people critical of the government and crime.
This came after the arrest on Wednesday morning of Albert Oosthuizen who runs zasucks.com - a blog that has as its mission "to bring news to the outside world of the cr*p that has become of South Africa".
The confirmed arrest of the zasucks blogger and claimed arrest of two bloggers from the Boerevryheid website sparked fears of a renewed clampdown on rightwingers and rightwing groups critical of the government ahead of the 2010 World Cup.
The police refused to answer questions about the arrests or these allegations.
Oosthuizen, who writes under the name Uhuru Guru, was arrested by members of the Linden police, organised crime and cyber crimes units at his Linden home on a warrant of arrest that was issued in 1993.
Gauteng police confirmed that the officers were also in possession of a seizure order permitting them to confiscate Oosthuizen's computers.
A 9mm pistol and two loaded magazines, for which he could not produce a permit, were also confiscated.
Captain Julia Claassen, police spokeswoman, said Oosthuizen had appeared in court on the 1993 warrant issued by the Randburg Magistrate's Court for a fraud charge.
She could not say why it had taken police 16 years to effect the arrest.
The arrest of the blogger saw a flurry of chatter on the internet when word spread that he had been arrested on "trumped-up charges".
According to the posting, Oosthuizen's door was "ripped off" and his wife was prevented from making any calls.
"His children's cellphones were confiscated, his little daughters were ripped out of their beds; you cannot believe the cruelty," the blog read. "This arrest is motivated ultimately by the state. No doubt it has to do with zasucks."
The blog alleged that Oosthuizen had been extensively questioned about his blogs, his rightwing affiliations, which rightwing meetings he had attended, and about Dan Roodt, author and Afrikaans activist.
According to the site, Oosthuizen was released from custody after the state prosecutor refused to place the 16-year-old case on the roll.
This could not be independently confirmed. In another blog, Peter the News Guy, said zasucks had been targeted by various leftist groups and the South African government since its inception in 2004.
"It has been banned from Google and other search engines and hacked because of its controversial political content," he said.
This article was originally published on page 6 of Sunday Independent on November 08, 2009
SHOPPING INTO THE FUTURE: SELF-SERVICE AHEAD
Wendy Knowler October 28 2009 at 05:08PM 
Britain experienced a sci-fi milestone of the supermarket kind last week - supermarket chain Tesco opened an Express store in Northhampton with not a cashier in sight.
Instead, all five check-outs are manned by self-service computers, allowing customers to scan the barcodes on each item themselves, before paying by card.
Just one employee is tasked with overseeing all five check-outs to make sure that there are no snags or misbehaviour, such as kids buying alcohol.
While rival Asda scoffed and said hell would freeze over before it deprived its customers of a chat with a cashier, Tesco said customers were just interested in how fast they could get what they wanted and get out.
Computers don't need tea or lunch breaks or sick leave "Customers like the fact that there are five checkouts available," a Tesco spokesperson said. "Before, you could have four manned checkouts but only one person working the till."
Yes, that is a distinct advantage - computers don't need tea or lunch breaks or sick leave.
I experienced this do-it-yourself supermarket check-out concept while visiting my sister in Colorado a year ago. We were in a branch of King Soopers, which had some check-outs manned by humans and some by computers.
Intrigued, I opted for one of the self-service ones. It struck me as I was scanning my groceries how unaccustomed we South Africans are to being trusted by companies.
"How do they know I haven't deliberately failed to scan a few items?" I thought. "Never in a million years would this work in South Africa."
'How do they know I haven't deliberately failed to scan a few items?'
As it happens, self-service check-outs aren't being considered by South African supermarket groups. They're not even on their radar, although no one's saying it's because we can't be trusted.
"We evaluate new innovations and technological trends that emerge in the global marketplace," said Pick n Pay director Bronwen Rohland. "However we can confirm that implementing a self-check-out system is not on our priority list."
Woolworths said it had "no plans" to go this route, and Spar's Mike Prentice said their cashiers played an important role as the "final touch point with the customer", so removing them is "not even a consideration".
"However, we are paying close attention to RFID (radio-frequency identification ) trials where items are tagged and can be scanned without removing them from the trolley.
In other words everything in the trolley is scanned in one go. "We believe this will have quite an impact on the functioning of the cashiers, but their role will not become redundant."
That presents a practical challenge, if you ask me, given how many individual items have to have their barcodes punched in by the cashier because the scanner refuses to "read" them.
Meanwhile a pricing innovation as radical as the barcode is quietly being introduced to supermarkets across the country - electronic shelf labels.
One of the downsides of paper shelf labels is that the prices they carry often don't co-incide with the price of that item which has been programmed into the tills.
Spar has introduced electronic shelf labelling - which enables prices to be updated instantly from a store's central computer - at key stores and Tops liquor outlets countrywide as a trial.
Pick n Pay also has the system on trial in all its KwaZulu-Natal corporate stores and several Western Cape stores. It is scheduled for roll-out in PnP stores throughout the country next year, according to Rohland.
"The technology essentially creates a two-way communication between the label and server," she said.
"We have received a positive response from customers regarding the visual display and accuracy of the system."
Could this spell an end to price mismatches? Eskom willing, let's hope so.
This article was originally published on page 9 of Daily News on October 28, 2009
COMPUTER NEWS
HAVE A LOOK AT THIS GREAT BLOG!
The Wheel Deal
Fixing you up with life in the fast lane.
Thomas Falkiner is a car-crazed eccentric who gets off on the roar of V8 engines and the stench of burning rubber. When not rolling around in the hottest sheet metal, he's giving you an alternative look into the world of motoring.
IS THIS SOUND CAR INDUSTRY LOGIC?
May 26 2009 at 05:49AM
This article was originally published on www.hayibo.com, a satiricial news website
Johannesburg - South Africa's automotive industry says it will fight plunging demand for new cars by raising the prices of all vehicles, and expects local car buyers to respond with their traditional enthusiasm for paying three times more for the cars than they are worth. "Unfortunately it's economics," said a spokesman. "I don't know what that means, but it's true."
Demand for new vehicles has plunged by up to 40 percent this year as corporate buyers make difficult decisions in the current tough economic climate, with some blue-chip companies reportedly having to choose between updating their fleet and keeping the free cocaine and high-class prostitutes in the washroom.
"I know that's a choice I couldn't make," said car industry spokesperson Edward "Fast Eddie" Cheetan-Steele.
Luckily, he said, private car buyers could always be counted on to spend whatever the industry told them to.
He said the system worked "beautifully" because neither the industry nor the public had any formal education in the fundamentals of economics.
"I don't know much about economics, but what I have heard sounds absolutely diabolical," explained Cheetan-Steele.
"Apparently in economics if you buy something you're only supposed to pay what it's worth, and obviously that's just ridiculous."
He said the less people thought about economics and true value, the happier they and the car industry would be.
However, he said, there was "sound car industry logic" behind the latest decision to raise prices to fight falling demand.
"Some South Africans, mostly hippies and girls, continue to ask why they are paying twice or three times international prices for cars made in Uitenhage," said Cheetan-Steele.
"Our answer is simple: your mamma."
Asked why motoring journalists never questioned grossly inflated prices, Cheetan-Steele explained that most of them were still sleeping in pools of their own vomit in sponsored hotel suites.
However, he conceded that it was perhaps time to phase motoring journalists out of the marketing equation.
"We spend absolute piles on wining and dining them, and frankly they can't tell a Chateau Lafite '29 from a flagon of Late Harvest Crackling," he said.
"In any case, you only need a sycophantic motoring press if you've got a critical or intelligent car-buying public, so yes, we could probably do without them." - Haiybo.com
Cars is an online new and used car portal. We have thousands of vehicles for sale from all areas of South Africa. Contact Ross Mc Ilroy at 011 614 5612 or info@cars.co.za or visit us at www.cars.co.za