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  • Android phablets are winning everywhere… except in the US

    By on 4 September, 2012

    Remember how, back in the day (i.e. a few years ago), all you wanted was a smaller cellphone? 'Bricks' were not cool: the more anorexic and petite the phone, the better. Skip forward to 2012 and you have people drooling over giant phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note and a fresh batch of statistics that show that more than a quarter of new smartphones sold in eight countries around the world have screens larger than 4.5 inches. Oh, and that most of them are running Android. According to a new report by telecoms researcher Kantar, the little green robot...

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  • 6 tips for making meaningful business connections on LinkedIn

    By on 4 September, 2012

    You most likely already have a LinkedIn profile, connected with a couple of people that you know, and joined a few groups - now what? Did you know that you can use LinkedIn as a source of leads for your business? LinkedIn is not the same as Facebook, Twitter or any of the other popular social media channels. Even though there are more than 175-million members on LinkedIn and two new members joining every second, many people are still unsure how to really use this professional network for lead generation. Like all the other social media channels, LinkedIn does require...

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  • Revolution, innovation, cyborgs: 10 top TED Talks from 2012

    By on 4 September, 2012

    A taste of the world as we will know it, or a taste of the world we currently live in. TED talks are always innovative and refreshing. Here are 10 TED Talks that will make you think of the world a little differently. Ramesh Raskar: Imaging at a trillion frames per second A camera that can record at the speed of light? Who would have thought it possible? But here it is, a trillion frame a second femto camera. Watch as Ramesh Raskar displays the way this new technology shows how light actually behaves at its own speed and how it...

  • Why Renren’s mobile and ecommerce pivot might just make sense

    By on 4 September, 2012

    It looks like Chinese social networking giant Renren is about to shift its business model in a big way. The Facebook clone is now looking to take on the mobile and ecommerce spaces. It might seem like an odd move, but it could well make a lot of sense. According to The Wall Street Journal, Renren has been battling to compete with China's microblogs (known as weibos) from Tencent and Sina. It hasn't been doing particularly well when it comes to advertising either, largely because of a reluctance on the part of advertisers to spend on social networks. That's...

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  • 5 of the latest, hottest iPad games

    By on 4 September, 2012

    Presenting five of the best, and most recent, games for iPad. All titles are valid for a purchase on the US App store. Bastion -- US$4.99 Stop what you're doing and buy Bastion. We gave it a great review when it released on Xbox Live earlier this year and the far cheaper iOS version is just as good, if not better suited to the touch controls. It controls well, looks and plays like a dream and is almost a third of the price it was on Xbox Live Arcade. Think of Bastion as the love child between Zelda and a bucket...

  • AntiSec hacks the FBI: releases a million Apple UDIDs

    By on 4 September, 2012

    It's a been a while since we had a major hacking story. Just to make sure you don't forget about it, AntiSec has hacked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and released more than one million Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) according to a post on Pastebin. The group claims it has well over 12-million IDs that include personal information such as user names, addresses, device names and mobile numbers. Here is how it did it: During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber...

  • Twitter mourns ‘Green Mile’ star Michael Clarke Duncan

    By on 4 September, 2012

    Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for his starring role in 1996's The Green Mile, has passed away aged 54. According to a statement from a family representative, the actor "suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered." Duncan had been in an LA hospital after suffering a heat attack seven weeks ago, his life prolonged by the actions of girlfriend Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, a reality TV star. The actor's death has sent Twitter into mourning with "RIP Micheal Clark Duncan" and "Green Mile" both trending globally on Twitter: The tributes included tweets from some of his fellow...

  • Preparing for the next disaster: Japan sets up emergency information site

    By on 4 September, 2012

    According to The Wall Street Journal’s Japan Real Time blog, the Japanese government is aiming to create an improved system for spreading emergency information in the event of an earthquake or tsunami. It has established a sort of ‘IT disaster lifeline’ portal over on itbousai.go.jp which is in a month-long testing phase. The website will also be easily accessible from feature phones and smart phones, which is certainly a big plus since in the event of a tsunami or prolonged blackout, many citizens are suddenly without the use of a personal computer. It will bring together a number of online...

  • Health and welfare mobile service Impilo is powerful, free

    By on 3 September, 2012

    Impilo is a new mobile service that helps people easily locate health and wellbeing service providers in South Africa. It can also be used to give confidential feedback on the services received at public health and South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) service points. The service is free -- no airtime is required -- and as it is USSD based, it will work on any mobile phone. To use it, simply dial *130*448# and follow the menu prompts. Read more on Ventureburn. var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

  • Does Bruce Willis read Memeburn? His ‘fight’ with Apple says he might

    By on 3 September, 2012

    Last week we wrote an article about what happens to your digital legacy when you die. The basic premise being that whatever digital music or books you buy through Amazon and Apple doesn’t really belong to you and that you’re simply “renting” ownership until the day you die. The Digital Media has non-transferable rights and you are therefore not able to leave them to your descendants. News on the wire today announced that Bruce Willis is considering taking Apple to court over the fact that music and books bought via the online iTunes store doesn’t actually belong to him. It...

  • Rocket Internet woes continue with mass Nigerian layoffs

    By on 3 September, 2012

    Looks like things aren't exactly rosy at ecommerce cloning giant Rocket Internet at the moment. A couple of weeks ago, he company revealed that it was scuppering its Chinese operations. Now it's downsizing in Nigeria. Rocket Internet only launched its Nigerian presence a couple of months ago, but is reportedly already downsizing its staff in the country. According to tech news site Techloy, the company fired 50 members of staff, mostly from its support division, on Friday. When the company first entered Nigeria, it hired aggressively taking aboard some ex-employees from Kalahari Nigeria, which was scuppered by parent company...

  • Mobile overtakes fixed-line web in India

    By on 3 September, 2012

    It's finally happened, ahead of schedule too. More people in India now access the web via mobile than fixed-line access. The latest data from tech research company StatCounter suggest that 56% of the country's population now accesses the web via mobile, versus 45% who access it via desktop. Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile vs. Desktop Market Share Back in May, StatCounter's figures suggested that we would reach this point by the end of this year. That large numbers of Indians are using their phones to go online isn’t surprising when you consider the prohibitive cost of broadband,...

  • Freddie Mercury Angry Bird is the most awesome yet

    By on 3 September, 2012

    Check this out. It's Freddie Mercury re-imagined as a character from Angry Birds, mustache, hairy chest and all. The character is part of the "Freddie For a Day" initiative, which encourages people to dress like the renowned Queen front man on 5 September. The day is in support of Aids charity the Mercury Phoenix Trust. “Freddie For A Day and Rovio Entertainment are proud to announce a unique and innovative partnership that sees the most iconic Rock’n’Roll frontman of all time, Freddie Mercury, become an honorary member of the Angry Birds family,” says the announcement today. var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var...

  • Why big data means big things for the future of marketing

    By on 3 September, 2012

    There has been a lot of hype and content generated about big data of late, but what does it really mean to people looking to push their business into people's minds? How can they take advantage? So the first thing to note is that big data is not solely dedicated to the world of IT. This is not something that IT managers and CIO’s alike can get excited about and then hide in their server rooms, never again to see the light of day. Big data is... well... big! According to a survey by eMarketer, nine out of every 10...

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  • Is TV really still trouncing the web when it comes to ads?

    By on 3 September, 2012

    Delegates to the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival were in need of some good news, accustomed as they are to the view that the internet is inches away from swallowing their entire medium and raison d’etre. So imagine their delight when they were informed that “most consumers still consider TV the most impactful advertising medium”, according to a new report released by Deloitte last week. The survey, conducted amongst 4 000 UK-based adults, confirmed that TV’s status had dropped from 64% of consumers in 2009 who considered it the most impactful, to 57%. Nevertheless, there is still a...