For the last two weeks I have been having major issues with my Telkom line, and not knowing what to do about it, until know…

I stick with Telkom because I’ve signed a contract, but I voice my utter disgust at the service delivery while singing the praises of an age old method of getting a message, and now data, from one point to another via the wings of a carrier pigeon.

Winston the Pigeon, owned by The Unlimited,  has gained overnight fame on all  social and media fronts with over 2600 Facebook fans, nearly 400 followers on Twitter and mentions across many news channels.The idea for Winston was born from the concept that a pigeon could do a better job transferring large data files than a Telkom landline. And who did a better job? Well, Winston was able to get a 4Gig card from Howick to Hillcrest in an hour and 8 minutes according to Kevin Rolfe of Unlimited, this excludes the download and short travel by car. This added to the total “data transfer” time which took it to two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds, giving Winston an upload/download speed of about 525kbps. The Telkom line was at 4% complete by the time Winston was picking at seeds and being admired by many, for his awesomeness.

So with the arrival of Seacom and now Winston, at R1 per day, it seems that Telkom might have a bit more competition than it had initially expected.

For quite some time now, everyone has been telling us how to use Twitter as a business tool and, until now, we had to take their word for it.

Twitter has launched what they call Twitter 101, with the focus of educating businesses on how to use Twitter, follow the lingo and leverage their business using the platform. Finally Twitter has come out and is telling users how the whole thing works and how to use it effectively.

Twitter 101 covers many aspects of Twitter, from the setting up your account and your first tweet to best practices for business as well as case studies.

“One of Twitter’s key benefits is that it gives you the chance to communicate casually with customers on their terms, creating friendly relationships along the way—tough for corporations to do in most other mediums.” Source: Twitter 101

So if you are a heavy Twitter user or just starting out, Twitter 101 offers most of tools you need to get tweeting with a results, they even have it available in PDF so you can take your online, offline.