The topic in the latest Apple patent war is the slide-to-unlock feature on some of Motorola Mobility’s Android devices. A Munich court ruled in favour of Apple, who patented the feature in 2010, and placed an injunction on the sale of Motorola devices with the technology in Germany. It’s unclear how long the court-ordered ban will last, as Motorola has already indicated it plans to appeal the judgement. The slide-to-unlock feature (which allows users to unlock their phone by swiping their ...

Chinese search giant Baidu wants to dominate the country's exploding mobile market in 2012. That’s according to CEO Robin Li, who was speaking during a fourth quarter earnings conference call. During the call, Li explained why the company needed to push its mobile monetary focus, an area he admitted it had neglected in the past: "We do think mobile will become a very important channel to distribute our products and that has increasingly become true over the past quarter. And ...

Another crowdfunding project has hit South Africa's Angel investment landscape. Crowd-funding.co.za, a site aimed at raising money for startups in South Africa, recently launched. For those not in the know,crowdfunding is chiefly a product of the internet, where individuals come together to support private or commercial ventures. This follows a crowdfunding initiative by Eve Dmochowska, Crowdfund, which didn’t see the light of day. Dmochowska's project website has been shut down, and no further news has been heard from the founding members. Hopefully this ...

Everyone's favourite hacktivist group is back again and this time its target is bigger than ever. Anonymous has declared war on the internet, yes save all your files now, download all those movies you keep pretending you're not downloading because, the internet is about to be shutdown. In a Pastebin post, the group that has managed the breakdown of big corporates and threatened the safety of government websites has decided it needs to teach Wallstreet a lesson by taking Operation ...

Facebook will start allowing public figures to verify their accounts and include pseudonyms from today, according to a report by TechCrunch. This means that public figures will be given the option to be listed under their nickname if they supply the site with a copy of personal identification, like a driver’s license or passport. In return for supplying Facebook with their documentation, celebrities like Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta), Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus) and Pink (Alecia Moore) can receive higher rankings in ...

I love Linux and I have been fortunate enough to have been able to use it as my base operating system in all of the different companies that I've worked for the last ten years or so. But, I know that unless you're a systems administrator, most fans of the OS find themselves battling against corporate IT if they even try to run a non-Windows system at work. Just recently, I noticed a post on Slashdot where a user was ...

I like to define a startup in a way that goes something like this: A startup in my world is a young company in a new, fast growing and evolving industry that could swing, change or be disrupted very quickly. The reason that it's relevant for me to lay out how I define a startup is because this definition is extremely important when considering hiring a team. It is often not as simple as hiring the best person for the job. ...

Twenty-one of the most renowned social media marketing professionals from around the globe will gather to honour the best social media marketing has to offer at the third edition of the Bees Awards in San Francisco. The Award organisers claim that the jury was handpicked “on the base of their expertise, the references they received from peers, their passion for social media and their geographic location.” Entries will be judged according to 26 categories ranging from best “Best use of ...

In a world where Google is the most visited website, and “just Google it” is an answer to many questions, are there any up-and-coming search engines with something more to offer than the usual round-up of Google, Bing/Yahoo and Wolfram Alpha? While Google and its specialised search options (like Google Scholar and Google Blogs) have the monopoly, there are other choices for those looking for a search provider that doesn’t track your queries, store your personal information or fill their ...

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 ...