I love it when brands get creative -- especially when they leverage cheesy pop hits to make cool viral videos. Oh, and without shirts. Eye candy on steroids, the latest lip-dub video making the rounds on social media networks is definitely sure to brighten up any gal's (or maybe guy’s) day. Abercrombie & Fitch made girls around the world gawk and swoon when it challenged the hottest guys from its flagships stores around the globe to make a parody ...

Google+ just got a makeover. It wasn't the most dramatic one in history, but it did make the internet giant's social effort seem a whole lot more appealing. Like most makeovers, it was probably a long time in the making and the big reveal happened all at once. Unlike most makeover reveals though, the locations was a developers' conference: Google I/O to be precise. Stop! Tablet time! Google+ has been available on smartphones for some time, but it's never ...

There are now 400-million devices running Android and they're downloading apps like crazy. That massive number was announced by Google senior vice president of engineering Vic Gondutra at the internet giant's I/O conference. This, says Gondutra, translates to one-million new Android device activations every day and around 12 device activations a second. That's substantial growth even from the 700 000 activations Larry Page said the mobile OS was getting in January during an earnings conference call. Google says much of that ...

CliQr Technologies emerged from stealth mode with the announcement of a cloud based service that can port large enterprise applications to any cloud platform in under one day. If the Palo Alto based startup can deliver on its promise it could result in significant IT cost savings. Enterprise applications are notoriously difficult to rewrite for cloud platforms and their performance can be unpredictable. "With CliQr we can port an app in under one day," said Gaurav Manglik, co-founder and CEO. "You can ...

The company at the centre of an internet radio readership row says it is engaging with industry experts to set up a forum to verify internet radio statistics, and that it issued a letter of demand to blogger Shaun Dewberry because it was aggrieved that he had not engaged with them on his findings. In an official statement, the company says it does not agree with the methodology or the basis of Dewberry’s arguments and they stand by their stats. ...

Every website needs incoming links (back links) to achieve high search engine positioning and they’re essential to build, regardless of how difficult it may be for the particular industry you’re targeting. Creative link building, or thinking outside the box to achieve links, is the ideal way to entice users into linking to something unique. Link building has changed and it is no longer sufficient to submit your website to a 1 000 directories, build links on forums, comment on posts, use ...

With so much focus on advancing the entrepreneurial ecosystems around African startup hubs at the moment, more and more Africans are starting their own businesses by choice as opposed to necessity. But, not all interesting ventures that launch can automatically claim ‘startup’ status. While the essence of successful innovation-driven Silicon Valley startups can be found in the African spirit of Ubuntu, African ventures are still mostly backed by efficiency-driven entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, game-changing startups from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana have ...

Globally, the discussion around innovation has been one of great interest especially in the wake of troubling economic times in the recent past. The discussion is strong in relation to Africa’s situation as well. Innovation sometimes can be a bit hard to describe in exact terms but one thing is for sure, you always know genuine innovation or innovativeness when you see it. Yet, it is a critical component to our ability to deal with the challenges of today and the ...

A couple of months ago, Facebook acquired the wildly popular photo sharing social network, Instagram, for a cool US$1-billion. Popular yes, profitable? Nope. With zero revenue to speak of, hacker-CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw something in Instagram and its thirteen employees that justified spending a chunk of Facebook’s newly acquired change after its record-breaking, yet troubled IPO. What’s the next billion dollar idea? It’s anyone’s guess, but here are our favourites. Pinterest Pinterest, the social scrapbooking darling has seen its user base shoot past ...

Magic: The Gathering, released in the early 1990s, is the most widely played trading card game in the world. With numbers in the region of 12-million players and fans, Magic has expanded each year with new cards, rule tweaks, global tournaments and, more recently, tapping into the digital market. The aim of the game is to take out your opponent(s) by casting spells, creatures and artefacts to ultimately reduce their life to zero. The decks of cards come in different colours: ...