More and more people are using their mobile devices for watching online content. In fact, the latest stats from online video service provider Ooyala suggest that non-desktop video plays more than doubled in the final quarter of 2011. Intuitively you’d think that much of that growth would be driven by short-form videos. It’s just more difficult to pay attention to a long video on a smaller screen right? Ooyala’s stats, however, suggest that people actually prefer watching longer videos on ...

Social games: the end of hardcore gaming or its untimely saviour? Decide for yourself as we look at the top social games for iOS, which are all incidentally, free to play. CityVille Hometown Zynga, the kings of copying original titles, know how to reel the suckers in. CityVille Hometown, an updated version of FarmVille, offers little in the way of innovations, but has the same emotional hook which reels users in for that elusive “one more game”. Users or “residents” remain active ...

Mobile telecommunications giant Orange has launched a brand new service which it claims will make Facebook “accessible on every phone in Africa”. The French-based company says that it will allow its subscribers across the continent to via USSD -- a technology used by all GSM mobile devices to send information across a 2G network. It is already used widely in Africa for services such account information and callback services. This means that even the most basic of handsets without an ...

Revelations that Path had been uploading users’ address books without their permission seem to have opened up the metaphorical floodgates as more and more social apps are revealed to have been doing the same. The latest to admit to harvesting user contacts is social networking giant Twitter. According to the BBC, Twitter’s iOS app gains access to people’s address books when they click on the "Find Friends" feature. Unlike Path, which admitted to wrongdoing and at least claimed to fix ...

The Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer's Edition has named Call of Duty: Black Ops the game with the "best ending ever". The game topped a poll of well over 13 000 gamers. Gas Deaves, Guinness World Records Gamers Edition editor, speaks out on the choices. "Everyone has an opinion on how to end a game whether it's an epic boss fight, a clever plot twist or a 90-minute movie. This list recognises some of the greatest endings and hopefully will get ...

Pothole reporting apps are nothing Street Bump is different. Over in Boston USA, they’ve figured out a way to report potholes in their city without all the tedious manual labour of, you know, typing and stuff. Through a collaboration by the city of Boston, The New Urban Mechanics and crowdsourcing platform Innocentive, Street Bump uses a smart phone’s accelerometer and GPS to automatically detect and report potholes to the city.

It’s official, everyone now has "new new" Twitter. The social network announced the redesign late last year but initially only rolled it out to a limited number of users as it was given final performance tweaks. Twitter’s official support account made the announcement earlier today: As of today, all users have been upgraded to the new version of Twitter. Looking for a feature? Take the tour here: support.twitter.com/articles/20169…— Support (@Support) February 16, 2012 While the new design hasn’t been met with quite ...

When you think Tunisia and Facebook, a couple of terms come to mind: the Arab Spring, protests, regime overthrow...and marijuana? Just months after the country held its first democratic election in decades, a group of Tunisian Activists is reportedly using Facebook to campaign for the legalisation of Marijuana. According to Global Voices Online, some 4 600 Facebook users have joined an event which will see them meet up in front of the Tunisian parliament to demand that legal prosecution for smoking ...

Twitter is a great platform for businesses, journalists and everyday people. We all know that. But what may not have occurred to you is that it could also be an incredibly useful commerce platform. At least one company was thinking differently to you. A Portland, Oregon based startup called Chirpify claims that it “turns tweets into transactions, enabling consumers and businesses to buy, sell, donate and transact on Twitter.” Although founded in 2011, the company only officially launched its product today. ...

Apple is now the world’s top smartphone manufacturer, but iOS still has less than half the market share of Android. That’s according to the latest findings from renowned tech research firm Gartner. According to the report, around 51% of the world’s smartphones are rocking Android, with iPhones accounting for just under 24%. Both appear to have taken market share from Symbian and Research in Motion. The former went from having running on just over a third of smartphones on the market ...