The world of wine is about to get super social and dramatically less snooty. Real Time Wine, the 140-character wine blog is now available in the form of beautiful apps for iPhone and Android phones. Real Time Wine makes it easy for those who don't consider themselves intrepid wine connoisseurs to venture out and try something new “Most wine buyers are not wine experts,” says founder Andy Hadfield. “The challenge of discovering new wine at the right price is so great ...

"More wood behind fewer arrows". That's been the operating rationale of Google ever since Larry Page returned as CEO in 2011. Hardly surprising then that the product cull that began with Google Labs is ongoing. As part of what it calls its "spring cleaning" efforts, the internet giant is killing off iGoogle, Google Mini, Google Chat Talkback, Google Video, and the Symbian Search app. Although it wont be officially killed off until November 2013, we've got to admit we're pretty ...

Scientists at the CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research have found a particle consistent with the illusive Higgs Boson, sometimes referred to as "the God Particle". That's big. Finding the Higgs Boson particle is one of the primary reasons the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built in the first place. If you're not sure what the hell a Higgs Boson is, Business Day science editor Sarah Wild has a fairly comprehensive explanation that most people should ...

Google is looking to get its hands on Yahoo's ad technology. In fact, it's been looking for some time now, having made its first offer three months ago. An inside source speaking to Business Insider said that offer, made while Scott Thompson was CEO, didn't make it past corporate development. According to Business Insider, the likes of Accenture and IBM have already looked into buying the embattled internet giant's ad technologies. This is one of those "inside source" stories that sort ...

This is interesting. One of China's biggest social networking powers Tencent has been granted the exclusive rights to distribute Call of Duty Online in the country. The multiplayer game, which involves missions familiar to anyone who's played the Call of Duty Modern Warfare series, has been in development for the past two years. Free to play, it makes its money through in-game purchases. The game's publisher Activision Blizzard today announced the deal with the Chinese company, in what it ...

Let's be serious for a minute folks. Getting a loan from a bank can be a right royal pain in the arse. Surely you could save a load of admin if you, the willing borrower, could sit down at your computer and find a willing lender? That's exactly the premise behind a RainFin, a social lending company that says it wants to completely change the way people borrow and loan money in South Africa. The company provides a compelling alternative ...

Egyptians have won the right, for the first time in 7000 years, to democratically elect their president. From the outset of the revolution Egyptians took to social media to express their opinions, thoughts and concerns. Subsequent to the first round of the recent  presidential elections, two candidates went head to head into the runoff which led to two polar opposites competing: Ahmed Shafik, the last Prime minster for the former regime and Mohamed Morsy a former Muslim Brotherhood member. The first ...

As a practicing B2B social media marketer, I use LinkedIn and Twitter extensively to share thoughts with my Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections. To make it easier to share the same content across both platforms, a link was provided between Twitter and LinkedIn. You could use this in two ways by either replicating all your tweets on LinkedIn or selectively sharing your tweets with your LinkedIn contacts by including a #in hashtag in your tweet. Sadly, this feature is no longer ...

Fairfax, the second largest Australian newspaper publisher, recently said it would cut 1900 jobs, almost 20% of its staff. I was asked for comment by the Australian Broadcast Service, which was concerned about the effect on independent news from the loss of hundreds of top journalists. I said that it would have an adverse effect because well-financed special interest groups would have a field day promoting their agendas. There's very little that can be done to stem the loss of journalists because ...

A lot has been said about how Twitter users have leveraged the service during recent political protests, but it seems the social media giant itself is quite keen to "hold governments accountable" too. It's decided to go the same route as Google, and have published their first ever transparency report, detailing which countries have asked it to withhold content and supply it with user information. In the same way as Google's report showed that Western-style democracies were ...