Following the 18 January blackout protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act), TED has released a video of renowned New York University (NYU) professor Clay Shirky explaining why the bill passing before congress is bad.The talk, called "Defend Our Freedom To Share (Or Why SOPA is a Bad Idea)", took place at TED's New York offices. The video wasn't part of the company's traditional conference video lecture series about "ideas worth spreading".The 14 minute ...

It feels cheap, the sound quality is dire, and the signal is rarely clear. But hell, I love the DSTV Walka. It’s compact, low-res and filled with charm. But is it worth dropping R600 plus the R36 per month subscription?The DStv Walka is a handheld TV with a dubious name, but oodles of personality. The screen is tiny -- a mere 320p by 240p resolution which can by no means compete with the full HD capability of DStv's PVR offering. ...

The Chinese government is cracking down on users of the country's widely popular microblogs, known as weibos, to register using their real names -- making it easier for authorities to track them.Real name registrations began with just five cities in 2011 and internet regulator, Wang Chen, said the scheme would eventually be extended."This started at the end of last year. At first it applies to new users only, and it will then be expanded to existing users," said Wang Chen, ...

Facebook Timeline has added apps from some 60 new media partners. At a special event, the world’s largest social network announced apps for the signature feature from the likes of Foodspotting, Foodily, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Kobo, Gogobot, and TripAdvisor.The new apps allow users to update their timelines with activities relevant to them. Pintrest or Pose users, for instance, can use the apps from those companies to post pictures of their favourite items onto their timeline.In an ...

Amazon's self-publishing section appears to have entered into a hotbed of a plagiarism scandal. The site's Kindle store seems to be housing a host of fake authors publishing copyrighted material in its erotica section, reports Fastcompany.It would appear that there is more than just lust, incest, fake tans and incredibly obvious clichés going on in Amazon's erotica section.Amazon, it seems, is full of fake authors who are selling erotica copied word-for-word from stories posted on "popular and ...

We all know that Facebook apps, particularly the gaming, ones are incredibly popular. What might be surprising, however, is how rapidly the use of Facebook apps in the workplace has grown in the past year.According to new research from network security vendor Palo Alto networks, app traffic in the work place grew from four percent to 14% between October 2010 and December 2011. Time spent on games from specialist social game developer Zynga -- responsible for titles such as ...

Wimpy is a great South African brand that has moved with the times, kept up to date, and kept up with consumers. Known especially for its Wimpy coffee -- there are a lot of clever marketing brains behind the brand.The food outlet has had a really great run of ads, playing on South African humour and making us all laugh. Here are two of my favourites:Now check out its new campaign, recently announced on Twitter: on 19 ...

Google employees seem, once again, to have pushed the limits of its "Do no evil" corporate mantra. According to Wired magazine, high-ranking members of OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open source mapping project that allows "to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth”,claim that “user accounts attached to a range of Google internet addresses in India have been maliciously tampering with its data".Google, meanwhile, claims the people behind the accounts were contractors using machines ...

Wikipedia’s decision to black its site out in protest against SOPA has generally been greeted with enthusiastic support from around the web. The truth is, whether or not you admit it, some of us are feeling a little lost without the world’s most popular tool for settling bar fights and deep intellectual rants -- "the Sun is a star", for instance. That’s why we showed you how to get around the blackout. The Twitterverse has, however, come up with its ...

In 2011 "Social Search" became a hot topic as Google introduced "Realtime Search" via the Twitter “firehose” and Bing began to index Facebook. In July, Twitter didn’t renew its deal with Google and Realtime Search was no longer offered. In the past week Google came under fire for including "your world" in their iconic search results and analysts began speaking about antitrust investigations.While analysts discuss the social search race in terms of adoption, partnerships and the invaluable data gleaned from ...