Finding your Angel! June 23, 2010

Guest post by: KingRoss

In preparation for substance abuse week (which is this week), RLabs has teamed up with Mxit to bring drug advice and support to the tip of Mxit subscribers fingers. 28,000 plus subscribers added the Angel Information Service .Yesterday the team had to be ready as they did not know how many people would come online seeking advice and support with their substance abuse problems. Yesterday in a 3 hour service session the following statistics were achieved with 8 counsellors:
Number of Conversations: 385
Number of Messages: 2867
Average Conversation per counsellor 44
The technology we are using to manage the conversations is JamiiX.

Thank you to the RLabs team for all the hard work and sacrifice in helping our youth.

Twitter – 140 second tour – Promoted Tweets June 19, 2010

Visiting Moms 3.0 by Veera Uusoksa

This is a Guest post From The Penguin Trail – Cape to Cairo by Veera Uusoksa

It just so happened that I was in Cape Town for some open source related business (Freedom Toasters for Northern Cape) and decided to spend a weekend in town. I was dining at Kloof Street on Fr‎iday evening when Monique phones me asking if I would not like to visit RLabs the following day and join the Mom3.0 session. Well, of course I would. And what an amazing group of women it was!

RLabs is situated in Bridgetown under the shadows of the Athlone power station cooling towers “salt and pepper”. As I was turning off from N2, driving past a fancy looking mall through side streets and asking people for directions I was excited. I had heard about the work in the Reconstructed Living Lab, read about it and met Marlon Parker in quite a few events but never actually visited the centre. There is a few potential buildings on the street and it takes one U-turn to find the brown brick building with Youth Centre sign one can hardly read from a distance.

In front of the centre a legion of boys and young men greet me in the most polite way, giving directions and wanting to have a chat. I found it hard to believe that this is a community plagued with violence, drugs and gangsterism. Can’t quite put my finger on it but definitely something positive is cooking. First time in the community like this I felt a sense of pride. Or hope. Or future perhaps.

After the session there was no question about it. I want to be part of this! Yes, I will gladly spend a day in Athlone. There is no other place in the world I want to be right now but to watch community soccer and hear the old men shouting at the referee (some things don’t change no matter where in the world you are). Sun is shining, mountains surround the field and people are out.

And the moms? Mom3.0 Cafe Session is a social media gettogether for women. Twitter, blogging, Facebook and Gmail is shared every second Saturday by Monique Theron and Rene Parker. The class will last almost a year and after that ladies will be social media fundis. Monique herself is a graduate of the reconstructed class 2008 and blogging at She’s the Geek. At this session we concentrated on Twitter. Some where used to it, others signing up for the first time. Vibe at the session was fantastic to say the least. I had forgotten the special magic in all women technology groups. You can meet The Moms and feel the vibe on Twitter.

RLabs is “reconstructing communities through innovation”. Just check out their amazing projects and results. I surely was humbled and awed. It is rare one meets so many genuinly good people that inspire you to work better, smarter and get involved. I believe we found a perfect venue to launch our trail in January.

Speed dating with the Moms…

Speed dating with the moms

View more presentations from Rene Parker.

New from the App Store…Tiffany & Co.

I downloaded this App on my iPhone recently. It was released on 14 June 2010 by Tiffany & Co. and it is called: Engagement Ring Finder.

Well as I don’t need an engagment ring for obvious reasons, I had to play around with the App to see what it actually entails. So if you are not in the market to shop for an engagement ring or if don’t live in one of the countries listed in the App Store (like South Africa, we always missing out on these cool things) you can use the App to find out your ring size and see the various cut, colour, clarity of diamonds and ring designs.

Funny enough Marlon told me about this App and after I downloaded it and was spending quite a bit of time browsing he became real worried as I told him that ‘a girl can never have too many diamonds’. I’m sure he is glad that it is not available in South Africa lol.

This App is very useful for the guy who has to go out and buy an engagement ring by himself. I am sure he is nervous enough as it is to propose let alone choose a ring that his fiance might like and don’t talk about him finding out the ring size.

Sharing first pictures of Apple’s new iPhone 4 June 18, 2010

The first pictures of apple’s new i phone 4

View more presentations from Monique Ross.

RLabs in the Tech Report (via From the balcony…)

RLabs has again drawn interest from the media, this time etv’s new show ‘Tech Report’ paid them a visit to get some footage and the story behind the success of RLabs. The crew arrived and were surprised to find that RLabs only consisted of one room they are renting from Impact Direct, a community based organisation in Bridgetown. They interviewed Marlon Parker, founder of RLabs, a Social Entrepreneur and an Information Technology Lecturer at Cap … Read More

via From the balcony…

Angel on MXit supports over 23,000 (via RLabs) June 17, 2010

Guest post by RLabs.

Another exciting project that RLabs have been involved in has been the Angel on MXit project where we offer people support and advice in the areas of substance abuse, abuse, depression, debt counselling,stress and coping via their mobile phones. This partnership with MXit Lifestyle will allow us to scale our services and also provide much needed access to all MXit users. The Angel project allows MXit users to “find their Angel” where they can get help for the social issue they are dealing with.

Over the next few weeks we will increase the capacity of our mobile counselling support centre and grow it to support thousands of MXit users across South Africa. Since starting our new campaign yesterday we’ve already attracted more than 23,000 users to the service.

Is it too cold to blog?

Is it really too cold to blog? I haven’t blogged in just about a week.

I spent the last part of my day chatting to my friend Monique or as the world knows her She’s the Geek. We had an interesting chat and as always I left with my head full of stuff. She mentioned that I haven’t been that active on Social Networks and I mentioned that she has been quiet. Even Marlon kept asking me when last I blogged? So my answer to both of them was that I haven’t felt inspired.

I only write and share my thoughts when I feel I have something to write about and have sonething worth sharing.

When I asked Monique why she’s been quiet she said: “it’s too cold to blog”.

On my way home I kept thinking about this. What makes us stop doing what we normally love doing for a while? Is it too ‘cold’ to blog, get on a social network (like twitter, facebook, gtalk, skype), be sociable, put yourself out there? Well ‘cold’ could mean different things to different people or in different situations. And yes sometimes it is too ‘cold’. Sometimes it’s ok to shut down and just be! Nothing lasts, it has to get warmer sooner or later.

So as I’m heating up (literally as I’m sitting next to the fire) and felt inspired to blog tonight after a whole week of not even visiting my blog, I would like to thank my friend for listening to me whine about where I am at and what’s frustrating me right now.

I do feel so much better and feeling inspired right now. So to everyone out there feeling ‘cold’, don’t worry you will heat up and find your groove again!

So to answer the question: Is it too cold to blog? Yes, sometimes it is!

Fire, #WC2010, friends, cake and tea June 10, 2010

What happens when you have in the same room: fire, friends, world cup fever on the TV, cakes and tea and coffee?

An enjoyable warm, cosy and relaxing evening.

It’s Winter in Cape Town and everyone is excited all over South Africa for the start of the World Cup tomorrow.

We have a couple of friends over tonight. A long overdue visit. Marlon made a fire and served us some tea with the cakes. And now we watching the World Cup Kick Off Concert on TV.

Interesting music and artists. Happy World Cup Fever!

Here are some pics of our evening.