OK, after chatting with Dave the other day, we’ve come up with an ingenious plan. To break the ‘Cape Town is cliquey’ mould, and generally open things up in the spirit of all things 27 and 2.0, we’re going to change things ever so slightly in our Sony DVD video camera giveaway.

The original plan was to give two cams away, both to two lucky CT dinner guests. One to the person who uploaded the most videos or pics, and one to a random uploader.

But to make things more interesting and get the GP Ganstas to upload their 27 Dinner videos and photos, we thought it would be a better idea to send one of the video cameras up north.

SO long story short: at this weekend’s 27 Dinner in Joburg, Dave will be announcing the competition and roping everyone into contributing like good online people should. Then at the following 27 Dinner in CT (June), we’ll give one video camera away to the person who posted the most videos and pics leading up to the dinner. And the next month at Joburg’s July dinner, we’ll give the other one away to an equally upload-friendly dinner guest.

Got it? Like it? Then start uploading!

After much testing, sharing and getting all excited about moving out of Alpha, the Zoopy Mobile app has finally launched into Live Beta and is now officially ready to be used, abused and played with by Zoopy members around the house, around the country and around the world

In fact, you don’t even need to be a Zoopy member to use it. The app includes full registration functionality as well - so your friend in the Valley of 1000 Hills (that’s in Kwa-Zulu Natal for those who’ve never been!) doesn’t even need a PC to sign up and share their videos and photos with friends and family.

So, here’s the step-by-step plan to giving it all you’ve got on Zoopy Mobile:

1. Download: Point your mobile browser at: http://www.zoopy.com/Zoopy.jad
   if your phone has an issue with this file, you might want to try: http://www.zoopy.com/Zoopy.jar
2. Install: The download will start (60k) and then self-install in your Applications or Games folder on your phone.
3. Sign up or login: Once installed, it’ll auto-run for the first time and present you with a login screen. If you’ve already registered at Zoopy, enter your username and password to login. If you haven’t registered before, choose ‘Sign Up’ in your Options/More menu.
4. Main menu: Once you’re logged in, you won’t ever have to log in again! Next time you open Zoopy Mobile, you’ll be taken straight through to the Main Menu, which consists of three simple options:
   • Share Photos
   • Share Videos
   • Log out

   The third option is there to allow you to change users/usernames if you’re using someone else’s phone or if you just prefer to leave your phone logged out for security purposes.

5. Permissions: After the first time you’ve installed the app, just click on ‘Log out’ because you need to set the security settings on your phone to allow the sharing of files from your phone to the app. Once you’re logged out, go to the applications/games folder where Zoopy Mobile was installed and move down until Zoopy is highlighted. Then press the More/Options key on your phone and choose ‘Permissions’. Find the ‘read user data’ option and change the setting for this
   to ‘Ask once’ or ‘Never ask’. You won’t have to go through any of this again after doing it the first time!
6. Share it: Once you’re done with permissions, open up the app again and you’ll be taken to the main menu. Choose ‘Share Photos’ or ‘Share Videos’ and you’ll be taken to a list of the videos or photos stored on your phone or memory stick. Simply
   mark/tick the files you’d like to upload to Zoopy (as many as you’d like) and then click ‘Share’.
7. Describe your file/s: On the next screen, you’ll have all the same description fields you’d have when uploading via the web. For each file you’re uploading, you’ll be able to enter a Title, Description, Tags, Channel and Public/Private status. Enter all of this and then click SUBMIT.

After that click Send and get comfy - depending on your phone and the size of your files, it may take a while.

Once you get the ’successfully uploaded’ message, you’re all done. Your video/photo will be live on Zoopy immediately, in the right channel, with the descriptions you entered.

EASY, right? Enjoy - and please keep us posted on your experiences, thoughts and wishlists!

Zoopy Mobile in action at the 27 Dinner in April

We’re thrilled to welcome Helen Zille (Mayor of Cape Town and Leader of the Democratic Alliance) as one of our newest Zoopy members. With her own video and photo profile at http://www.zoopy.com/helen, she’s taking South African politics in an exciting new direction, and we’re thrilled to be helping bring it to life.

While this new communication channel gives Helen an online identity and voice, it also guarantees the ordinary citizen on the street the opportunity to engage in a two-way interaction, directly with Helen herself. This is truly the start of a whole new relationship that Helen is very keen to start.

This is new South African politics - or Politics 2.0 if you like User-generated content online can now begin to evolve into user-generated CHANGE in REAL LIFE, thanks to the wide-spread and regular access to someone in a position to make those changes. There’s no discrimination whatsoever - anyone can add a comment to Helen’s profile and everything will be heard and responded to publicly.

Coming from a political leader in a developing country in Africa, this takes guts. As fellow citizens of this beautiful land, we love it.

Watch Helen’s profile for updates on her Mayoral and DA progress, comments on issues as they arise and some behind-the-scenes coverage of what makes this remarkable South African tick - both in her public and personal lives.

Now it’s up to you to seize the opportunity to make yourselves heard. Put your problems and compliments on the table. Come together and use the internet to its fullest.

Madam Mayor, glad to have you with us. Fellow Capetonians and South Africans, over to you!

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun … while working.

Even more so when working and living start to blur into each other.
And more so when you can’t see a dividing line anymore.
And all the more so when you stop caring about a line even existing in the first place.

No prizes for guessing that everyone at Zoopy HQ has TipEx-ed the line out completely by now

But there ARE prizes for uploading your 27 Dinner photos and videos to our 27 Dinner channel. Two prizes in fact! Both of them shiny new Sony DVD video cameras. So don’t forget to upload your stuff before the 27th!

Then, our Zoopy Mobile application is in the thick of final alpha. From the start, our plan was to make it EASY and FUN to share videos and photos. Mobile makes it incredibly easy and our mobile app makes it even easier. Because it’s a permanent application on your phone, you only need to log in once. And you don’t have MMS file size restrictions. AND you can describe your files with full titles, descriptions, tags and channels - meaning that by the time your upload is finished on your phone, your video or photo is live on our site (with ALL the info you would’ve entered if uploading online).

The app is fully functional and loads of uploads have already gone through without a hitch. But we want to test with as many different phone models as possible before opening it up to everyone in beta. If you’re up for a bit of mobile fun, give us a shout and we’ll send you the mobile download link (and a big thank you for helping us get things juussst right).

We also have another little mobile surprise that’s still bubbling in test tubes - more on this soon.

And speaking of more coming soon, we’ve been busy tweaking our profile page layout to include a little more information at a glance, along with slightly more customization (over and above the existing CSS background functionality).

We’ll be launching this together with some other exciting news that will go a long way to prove the substantial value of social media. All a bit cryptic, we know, but all shall become clear in the next few days.

Til then, keep your camera close … and your friends even closer, at Zoopy of course!