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Rowan Puttergill: Columnist

Rowan Puttergill is a technology evangelist and software engineer with a long career working in enterprise environments. He brings with him the experience of being the Technical Editor at SA Computer magazine, and a career history as a technical author. He is a huge advocate of open-source technologies, and is a huge fan of debian-based linux operating systems.

RECENT POSTS

• What does the Linux 3.4 kernel have to offer?

  Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of the 3.4 version of the Linux kernel. While Linus notes that there have been no majorly exciting changes since the last release candidate, it's worth taking a look at some of the things that have made their way into this release of the Linux kernel and what it means to the Linux community as a whole.Perhaps some of the most prominent features and changes that appear in the kernel, are centered on ...

• Google’s Knowledge Graph: Nothing is new under the sun

  Google has just announced the launch of Knowledge Graph, which it sees as a smarter way to search. Knowledge Graph is a way of tying together pieces of meta-data about things, such as their relationships to other things within the world. What this means is that when you search for something that is available in the Knowledge Graph, Google will display additional information about the thing that you searched for, so that you can directly access facts before having to ...

• The dramatic fall of BitCoin: No end in sight

  We've discussed BitCoin at some length on Memeburn, including how it works, its potential downfalls, and its genuine merits. BitCoin has experienced its ups and downs in the few years that it has emerged as an online currency. Last year, a major 'pick-pocketing' scandal when an anonymous BitCoin user claimed that thieves had managed to steal nearly US$ 500 000 worth of BitCoin. Although the case was unverified, a series of similar incidents caused the BitCoin exchange rate to crash ...

• Privacy vs Social: Cool solutions to help you cope

  I've been advocating a stronger approach to privacy for some time now. My biggest concern is that we share so much private information using social media, that identity theft and other security issues are only just beginning to become apparent. Aside from this, we are caught between the need to take advantage of the social networks that the majority of our peers share and simply giving in to the terms and conditions that come as part and parcel of these ...

• Rumours of Google’s demise have been greatly exaggerated

  Recently, Eric Jackson at Forbes, wrote an article that suggests that Google and Facebook will struggle to maintain their market dominance as technology increasingly shifts toward mobile computing.Jackson makes the point that many of the companies that started at the birth of the Web (Web 1.0) struggled to survive as social networking (Web 2.0) began to emerge. Now, he thinks that we are entering a new technical phase, where the Web is no longer relevant and mobile is king. ...

• They’re watching you: Non-members of social networks are still products

  A few people I know have removed their Facebook profiles, in the interest of gaining back some sense of privacy. In fact, I even know a couple of people who have never signed up to a social network in the first place. Sometimes I envy these people, just because they are taking a stand against a growing phenomenon that is rapidly turning personal data into a commercial product. Still, I have often wondered how much of a difference it makes ...

• Amazon next step forward: Buying a massive robotics company

  Amazon has announced that it is going to buy Kiva Systems for US$775-million, in order to help further automate many of the processes within its large warehouses. Kiva Systems develops a fairly unique robotic shelving system, where hundreds of mobile robots can plug themselves into various shelves and move them around a warehouse. In fact, the system is so advanced that shelves literally deliver products to the shipping department from around the warehouse as orders come in.Kiva Systems was ...

• Are social networks really killing the web?

  Occasionally I stumble on blog posts describing how social networks are killing the internet. The claim is that people are becoming locked into social media so much that they no longer surf the web like they used to. Instead, they rely on information shared within the closed environment provided by sites like Facebook.These articles annoy me. To begin with, the internet is really the underlying infrastructure on which everything online, including the social networks themselves, exist. But pedantry aside, and ...

• Why competition for the SKA Telescope is important for tech

  A recent article in Nature states that South Africa has won the backing of the SKA Site Advisory Committee to host the SKA Telescope. Although the report states that the victory was by a very narrow margin, it is great news for South Africa and many of the other participating African nations. If you're wondering what this has to do with your usual dose of IT news, it's actually very important.The SKA Telescope is a radio telescope that consists of ...

• How to create your own hidden network

  For us privacy loons, it's always interesting to find ways to communicate with friends and family on the internet without having to worry about somebody watching everything we're doing. With the battle against piracy heating up, its interesting to watch the technological fallout that is taking place in the software arena.A newsworthy newcomer on the P2P stage is just starting to grab media attention. After installing it and setting it up, I can see why. RetroShare takes advantage of a ...

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