United Nations to launch its first space mission

It seems Digg isn't the only platform from the early days of the web that decided to add a fresh coat of paint; Last.fm is cleaning up too. According to a blog post by the company, it has been working on the redesign for the last couple of months and after weeks of beta testing, it is ready to release it to the world. Most of the changes can been seen on the artist, album and track pages, where the music-centred social network has introduced bigger images and a new look for the music player with extra listening stats....

Say what? Apparently Microsoft is about to ditch the name "Metro" for something more commercial reports The Next Web. It seems as the Redmond-based company will get rid of the name that it had given to the Windows 8 interface as the product official commercial release gets closer. According to the software giant, "Metro" was just a code name, and not the official one which will be used after launch. "We have used Metro style as a code name during the product development cycle across many of our product lines. As we get closer to launch and transition from...

Moneysmart, the online personal finance manager (PFM) we covered last year, will be exiting beta in the next few days. It sports a new look, iOS and Android apps, and now, direct integration with all but one South African bank. Absa is yet to give Moneysmart its blessing, but CEO Tobie van Zyl is confident that an agreement will be reached by the end of this year. With big name backers and a maturing feature set, Moneysmart is coming out guns blazing in its bid to lead a pack of new personal finance tools that aim to give you...

Um. Remember when Facebook said it had grown to 955-million users late last month? As it turns out, it could have around 872-million actual monthly active users (MAUs), because around 83-million Facebook accounts are fake. According to the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 8.7% of Facebook's monthly active users are either wrongly classified as personal accounts, or they're duplicates or spam accounts. In addition, Facebook also admits that its user data could be less than 100% accurate, as it's not always possible to precisely measure their user base. According to the filing: The numbers of our...

To the people living on the African continent, the brilliant innovation emerging from the continent’s unsung entrepreneurs is axiomatic. The rest of the world however remains largely unaware of its rise as a tech powerhouse. To those paying attention however, it’s clear. In its Fortnightly Thoughts research report American investment banking and securities company Goldman Sachs asks: “Is now the time for multi-nationals to be investing in Africa?” The answer: In short, our conclusion is yes. Africa’s exceptionally robust growth over the last decade is probably understated (informal parts of economies are very bigvar 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");

Geeks, are you ready? The latest installment of popular British science fiction show Doctor Who is almost here and BBC America is not holding back. A few months ago the broadcaster released a teaser trailer of the upcoming season, setting the Doc Who fan world into a froth of anticipation over what is to come. Now a full trailer is ready to go and the Doctor and his companions will once again face a world of danger, time travel and creatures bent on destroying the universe -- Daleks. The promo for the upcoming season released on the show's Facebook page...

This is brilliant. Not the gold for South Africa's lightweight four rowing team. Sure that's brilliant if you're South African. What people from around the globe will be able to appreciate though is Durex's quick response to it. The South African office of the condom brand tweeted out a picture of a rower, along with a bottle of its lubricant and the text, "it's all in the stroke". A quick, clever, relevant pun that alludes to sexuality -- that's a definite advertising win. Well done Team South Africa on another big finish ;)#DurexSA twitter.com/DurexSA/status…— Durex South Africa (@DurexSA)...

Unless you've somehow been avoiding its products, Google probably hosts your email, stores your documents, knows who you interact with (via Google+), customises your searches, tracks which YouTube videos you've watched, and maybe even built your phone's operating system. Now the tech giant could soon keep your debit or credit card info on its servers and help you pay for everything from your morning coffee to your new Chromebook, thanks to some major updates to Google Wallet. Google's mobile payments app (which essentially transforms your smartphone into your wallet) previously only supported a card from one American bank. But thanks...

The raw emotion shown by Olympic swimmer Chad Le Clos' father in the wake of his son's victory in the 200 metre butterfly endeared him to the media and people around the world. As his interview with BBC sports presenter Claire Balding went viral though, the South African also became a social media phenomenon. That video only has 17 000-odd views, but the post of the interview on sports site Deadspin has over 26 00 likes on Facebook and has been viewed nearly 276 000 times. The younger Le Clos has a couple of his own memes: The...

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the world's top professional social network. And just like if you don’t tip a car guard you’re a bad person, society would also have you believe that your profile on the platform may be the most important web presence you hold, and what you put in your profile could open plenty of doors for you. I don’t know about the car guards, but the belief about LinkedIn, I’ve found is, without doubt, questionable. Unlike most social networks, the nifty thing about LinkedIn is that it allows you to see just how many people have looked at your...

Video marketing is on the rise globally and emerging markets are no exception. While some countries' internet landscape is still years behind that of the US and Europe, they're slowly catching up, and trends that have developed over there will eventually make their way to them. But we still need trend setters (for want of a better word) to decide when the best time is for these trends to surface. And for video, I’d say the time is now. Some global stats about online video: Video views on YouTube have increased by 25% in the past eight months, to an astounding...

If you love mobile tech, regardless of which OS you support, you should’ve heard about the new version of Android by now. Android 4.1.1, or Jelly Bean, has been out for a while via AOSP, OTA and factory images straight from Google, so the developers have had quite a bit of time to spend digging into the source code to tweak, improve and streamline the OS. I’ve been playing with some of the custom kernels and here are three. I think are worth trying. Read more on Gearburn. 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");