Emailing robots By Louis Eksteen Over the holidays I brushed up on my ping pong skills with my godson. He had already downloaded an iOS game before we left, which we used in preparation. Real life is different though and where we played, the tables were outside, so wind was always a factor. You can [...]
The machines have won By Louis Eksteen In a kind of cosmic justice of sorts, long-established television is now starting to feel the internet winter. For years only traditional print media was hammered by the internet’s all encompassing advertising juggernaut. These days venerable old media can seemingly only be saved by billionaire philanthropists. Bezos bought The [...]
Voice first, mobile second By Louis Eksteen I can’t stand Siri. Apple’s voice assistant is irritating beyond, because she always pops up out of nowhere when I’m actually trying to do something else. At Toast HQ we often hear someone shouting rude comments at Siri, such as “Shut up Siri!”. So at the moment I’m not [...]
Learning machine systems By Louis Eksteen As the world turns increasingly to a reliance on the automation of repetitive and/or complicated tasks, the role of business managers changes. Rote execution of mundane actions are better served by software. This is well-known and "IT", as it's incorrectly referred to by the C-suite, has already permeated most management [...]
Learning new tricks By Louis Eksteen Paddling at Emmarentia dam yesterday, I regaled my early morning kayak school buddies with my latest midlife crisis. I was in Durban last week and “had to” go around to legendary shaper Spider Murphy’s Safari Surfboards. I walked out with a 9.6" L2Pro longboard, just in time for the holidays. [...]
The Wild West of online ads By Louis Eksteen The humble banner ad originated at Wired magazine when its creator started using this advertising unit on the then-influential magazine's website (HotWired) in October 1994. I remember HotWired well, as I was busy researching the early origins of the web for a varsity project. This was a time [...]
Automated investment advice gains traction By Louis Eksteen At Twisted Toast we are proud to be the technology provider to SmartRand™, South Africa's first automated investment advice product, commonly know as a robo adviser. Since creating SmartRand as a stand-alone product, we have enhanced the technology with our partners Galileo Capital to now be able to [...]
Creativity is scarce; use it well By Louis Eksteen One of my favourite writers is the Czechoslovakian great Milan Kundera. His quote that “business has only two functions - marketing and innovation,” for me means he values creativity as an essential part of business, because both marketing and innovation require original thinking of a creative kind. (Kundera [...]
Don’t think the digital world always delivers By Louis Eksteen Just because the internet and its myriad machinations mostly work, it doesn’t mean it always does. Websites aren’t always available, email isn’t always received, passwords aren’t always safe, things aren’t always what they seem to be on the internet and the cloud... well, the cloud isn’t really [...]
The road to our destiny By Louis Eksteen Kim and I are sitting down for breakfast at a fabulous foody retreat hotel in the Drakensberg during one of the legendary UpperCase Media management conferences/jols. During the session the day before we were introduced to this new thing, a kind of chat app with place for only [...]
