Weekly Round Up Podcast #79: Blackberry, Motorola, Ventureburn’s Pitching Den & Twitter

Independent educational provider Curro saw two of its South African schools -- Grantleigh and Meridian Cosmo City -- walk away with gold and silver medals respectively at the World Robot Olympiad's national finals held in Pretoria earlier this month. This year's theme "Rap The Scrap" focuses on best recycling practices. Students were required to build LEGO-based robots which could reduce or manage recyclable waste. The Grantleigh team, consisting of 16-year old Dominique Spies and 15-year old Bonga Gumbi, designed a robot which sorts waste into its respective recycling containers at recycling plants. The team's robot had two minutes to complete its given challenge...

Facebook's other chat app WhatsApp has received some shiny new updates today, with others arriving in the coming weeks. Available at the time of writing, the app now allows users to tag individuals in group chats by using the @ symbol. This seems to be the only actively-functioning new addition to the Android app, but also works on iOS. Users can simply head to a group chat, drop the @ symbol in the text field, and WhatsApp will pull up a list of names within that group. Users can then tap on a name to add them as a mention. It's...

Great news, Twitter users. From today, the social network will no longer count certain types of content towards the arbitrary 140-character limit. First announced in May 2016, the move will allow tweeters to get more written content into their tweets, regardless of how many images or @names they have included. Previously, these were counted towards the limit. Twitter did ponder pushing that limit to 10 000 characters back in January Polls, videos, GIFs, images, @names and practically any other embedded media won't be counted as one of the 140 characters. Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and...

Update #4, 18 September, 3.27pm: In the wake of the student protests on South Africa's various university campuses, UCT's Faculty of Health Science has announced that it plans to march to Parliament on Thursday, 22 September, to hand over its memorandum to Blade Nzimande. The Faculty has also called on "colleagues, students and concerned citizens" to join. It has also asked academics to dress in "full academic dress". CALL FOR NATIONAL PROTEST ACTION FROM FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCES AT UCT pic.twitter.com/I5940etSCg — UCT Law Student(s) (@UCTLawStudents) September 19, 2016 Update #3, 18 September, 2.47pm: The University of Pretoria has now also joined the...

South African ecommerce store Yuppiechef has commented on its trademark battle with Yuppie Gadgets, another SA online establishment. Memeburn reached out to Yuppiechef for its side of the story, which saw CEO and co-founder Andrew Smith responding. The cases came to light over the weekend when Yuppie Gadgets published a blog post on their website about the cases. "We beat them at the Western Cape High Court and now Yuppie Gadgets beat Yuppiechef in a HUGE case at the Supreme Court," reads the post. In Yuppiechef's own public post (published on Medium), and written by Smith, he explains that when Yuppiechef...

In Apple's bid to show off the features of the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2, the Cupertino-based tech giant has released three adverts highlighting the features of the devices. There's something that the company's getting right with these adverts: not only do they showcase the devices' features, but they also show pure human resilience and beautiful cinematography. The three adverts focus on the iPhone 7's  low aperture camera qualities, and the IP67 water resistance on both the iPhone 7 and Watch Series 2. Apple's iPhone 7 and Watch Series 2 now boast water resistance ratings, unlike previous generations The first ad,...

After years of dispute, local online store Yuppie Gadgets, has won two legal cases against fellow ecommerce store Yuppiechef. The ongoing battle between the two companies came to light after a public blog post on Yuppie Gadgets' website. In the post, Yuppie Gadgets states that the two companies have been "embroiled in a legal battle" for two years. "We beat them at the Western Cape High Court and now Yuppie Gadgets beat Yuppiechef in a HUGE case at the Supreme Court," reads the post. According to Yuppie Gadgets, the company received a lawyer's letter from Yuppiechef in 2013, which threatened legal action for use...

News moves at the speed of social media in today’s world, and that’s especially the case on the weekend. Take a look at the world news you might’ve missed this weekend through the 140-character lens of Twitter. Welcome to the Weekend News in Tweets (16 September – 18 September). South African middle-distance runner Charl du Toit won his second gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, taking gold in the T37 400m event. This makes him South Africa's first double-medal winner of the games thus far. All the Glory 2 God!!! #TeamSArise! #Rio2016 #Paralympics Photo credit: Zimbio...

Two years after its initial debut, South African comic book fans are finally getting the DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection from Eaglemoss. This bi-weekly series is distributed through Jacklin Enterprises locally. The graphic novel collection consists of 60 hardback volumes containing 'classic' stories from the DC Comics universe. Some of these include The Long Halloween, Public Enemies, and A Death in the Family. The first issue will cost R29.90 and include Batman: Hush (Part 1). The second issue will include the second part of Batman: Hush and cost R79.90. Issues three, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, and onwards will stay at...

42.2km is pretty far to travel in a car, let alone on foot, but that's what these athletes overcame at the Cape Town Marathon this past Sunday. While the South African local record might've been set on the day (and kudos to Asefa Negewo for doing just that), it's the stories of the hundreds of other part-time competitors that makes the event -- and events like it -- extremely special. The first Cape Town Marathon took place in 1994, and was then a relatively unknown event. But it has become one of the premier events on the running calendar, for the...

Update, 18 September, 12.43pm: Mandoza's funeral will take place Saturday, the kwaito star's family today announced. The venue has yet to be announced. A memorial service will also be planned for Wednesday. In the wake of the artist's death, President Jacob Zuma also extended his extends condolences to the star's family and fans in an official statement. President Zuma extends condolences on #Mandoza's passing. 🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/5Hj8Srj0Bv — Scapegoat (@AndiMakinana) September 18, 2016 Original article: South African kwaito and hip-hop recording artist, Mandoza, has died. The news emerged Sunday afternoon from SABC reporter Sthembiso Sithole, who was at the kwaito star's household in Soweto. An...

South Africa is about to get yet another virtual network operator from a rather unlikely source. Nope, it's not a retailer, an Austrian beverage company, or even a bank. Instead, it's Malawi-born church leader, Prophet Shepherd Bushiri, who's entering the market with his own, eponymous network. The alternatively-titled Prophet Shepherd Bushiri (PSB) Network, according to a press release, will "provide a service to like-minded primarily individuals who were looking for a more community focused, inclusive operation." PSB Network will also use Cell C's mobile infrastructure and airtime system, which is a route that many other mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) like...

A South African edition of the Huffington Post will be coming later this year, courtesy of a deal between the publisher and Media24. HuffPost SA will be the 17th edition and the first one for sub-Saharan Africa, the duo announced in a press statement. "South Africa is an extremely exciting market for the company as internet users there are expected to grow to 35.4 million by 2018, digital video is expected to grow by more than 29%, and overall mobile phone users to 41.5 million," said Jared Grusd, CEO of The Huffington Post in the statement. "On a personal level, I'm particularly...

"My Way" might be pretty famous song lyric for a certain New Yorker, but Scottish recording artist Calvin Harris has today used these two words to stir up some controversy on social media. Debuting his latest track on YouTube, "My Way" boasts some summer house beats with lyrics sung by Harris himself... and lyrics that the internet believes cites his feud with former partner Taylor Swift. Harris and Swift haven't exactly seen eye to eye recently, especially since the duo's July 2016 Twitter war surrounding Harris' other 2016 hit, "This is What You Came For". The track, which featured Rihanna, was...

Atoms -- the building blocks of all matter -- remain as complex and mysterious as ever. Science, in general, remains this way due to the vast applications, research and discoveries which can still be made. This new study proves how much and how little we know about the world around us. Professor Martin Wolfram Zwierlein, the principal investigator at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, made a remarkable discovery along with the rest of his team. Freezing atoms to several nanokelvins (a temperature just slightly above absolute zero) the team trapped the slow-moving atoms in a lattice consisting of crisscrossing lasers. Using a powerful...