New government-enforced regulations may force Chinese internet giant Sina to change the way it makes money. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is worried about an upcoming government edict that will force it to verify the identities of users on its immensely popular microblogging service Sina Weibo. The Journal reports that Sina posted a fourth quarter profit but that it had already noticed weaker advertising revenue in the current financial quarter. The government’s demand that Weibo accounts ...

We all know social media plays an important role in the way businesses communicate with each other and the general public. That's old hat by now. It could, however, also play an increasingly important role in the way businesses deal with a crisis. Tech research company Gartner reckons that by 2015, 75% of organisations with a roadmap for continuing operations under adverse conditions will include public social media services as part of their strategies for communicating in the midst of ...

Bill Ford Jr., the executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company used his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last night to lobby for a stronger cooperation between mobile tech companies and the auto industry to avoid "global gridlock." Given numerous predictions that we will see global car ownership go from about one-billion to four-billion by 2050, Ford believes that unless these cars get smarter and become an integrated part of a larger and Internet-connected transportation system, ...

There was a time when you needed a credit card to shop online. Then a few pioneers engaged in some technical wizardry and brought out products that allowed you do use your debit card. But what if you have neither? A solution that allows for people who don’t have either to shop online would be particularly useful in emerging market economies, where large numbers of people might not have credit cards. Triloq Payment Services claims to have developed precisely such ...

Yahoo! claims that Facebook is infringing on between 10 and 20 of its patents -- and if the social networking site doesn’t pay licensing fees, it will pursue legal action. According to a report by the New York Times, Yahoo! accused Facebook of using its patented technology without paying license fees in areas such as advertising, messaging, social networking and personalised webpages. Some of the technology is reportedly used in Facebook’s news feed and privacy settings. “Yahoo has a responsibility to its ...

As part of the preparations for its looming IPO, Facebook has to disclose in its SEC filing some risk factors which could materially and adversely affect the company. These kinds of disclosures make for interesting reading, especially so because the destinies of tech companies can turn on a dime and change rapidly from day to day -- just look at what happened to MySpace and Yahoo!. Let’s take a closer look at some of these issues that Facebook, itself, has ...

One area that we spend a lot of time talking and often complaining about is our health. So it’s surprising that the healthcare industry is lagging behind when it comes to social media as this is where the conversation today is happening. It’s believed that the healthcare industry is almost 10 years behind other industries that are actively engaging with consumers and taking part in conversations in the social media playground. It seems prevalent to say that “Apple each day ...

Apps are the future. We all know that. Some even believe a new “app economy” may replace the web itself. But what about the app stores, the places we go to buy the apps? The Android Market and Apple's App Store have hundreds of thousands of apps. Even smaller stores like Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace and BlackBerry’s App World have tens of thousands of apps. Does the sheer scale of OS-specific app stores mean there’s no space for a different of ...

The Netsurfer Touch is a R2000, 7-inch tablet running Android 2.2 (commonly known as Froyo). It’s the first of its kind really; a proudly South African device aimed at the little people aching to get their tablet groove on. Can it compete with the Kindle Fire and the BlackBerry PlayBook, two other 7-inch tablets with similar specifications? Does it even want to compete? We take a closer look at the Netsurfer Touch, the first tablet from Future Mobile Technology and ...

Anyone who knows what it’s like to live on peanut butter and toast at the end of the month also knows that budgeting isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. But what if R10 000 for a charity of your choice was riding on your ability to save? Financial startup Moneysmart has challenged 10 South African journalists -- including Memeburn’s own Steven Norris -- to test their financial savvy in a challenge which will see them marrying their budgeting ...