Activity streams, wireless power, internet TV, NFC payments and private cloud computing are some of the technologies that are being hyped at the moment, says IT research company Gartner.But some of the new technologies at the start of the hype curve include trends like social analytics, gamification, big data, social TV, natural language question answering and the "Internet of Things".Gartner's now-famous 2011 Hype Cycle Special Report provides an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than ...

In recent days, the streets of London have descended into bedlam as riots and looting spread, sparked by a protest organised around the shooting of an alleged gang member.Scotland Yard reported that a total of 44 officers have been injured during running battles with angry youths and, as has become tradition, social networks such as Twitter have come under fire for enabling the orchestrations of public violence. This time, however, there has been much finger pointing at BlackBerry Messenger, the ...

Almost better than any film adaption of a comic book, is the anticipation built up from the viral campaigns which leak out from the silver tap of Hollywood.The internet has become a bridge which connects the public to their childhood memories and marketing agencies are quick to pounce on our nostalgia in the form of videos, online games and interactive websites which slowly reveal the next major blockbuster. In the past decade, the internet has assisted in marketing the ...

There's an old adage that goes, "you need to break a few eggs to make a cake". This doesn't mean, however, that you have to break every egg you have in order to get the cake just right. There is a bit of an advantage to being in an emerging economy. The fact that first world markets have gone through the pain of developing and learning online marketing techniques first means there is a wealth of knowledge which emerging economies ...

"Hacktivist" group Anonymous has issued yet another threat of a cyber attack, this time against Facebook, reports tech blog Mashable.The loosely organised group of hackers has declared, in a statement aimed at the global body of Facebook users, that "your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed".The statement goes on to explain the reasoning for what has been dubbed, "OpFacebook":Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so ...

Back-to-back Review: The Samsung NX11 and Canon SX30 bridge cameras are aimed at the same photographer, but take different approaches. Both very light and very compact, ideal for doing the tourist or family holiday thing. One goes with an interchangeable lens system, one with a beast of a lens that does everything. Ish. Cameras in the bridge camera segment have, for a long time, been squeezed between their little brothers, the steadily more powerful and capable point-and-shoots, and big brother ...

Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's largest opposition party, has responded to a recent spat between herself, officials from her party, and South African singer Simphiwe Dana that played out on Twitter.The spat began when Dana directed a number of barbed political points toward Zille on the microblog, to which the Democratic Alliance leader replied in kind, characterising them as "baseless assertions".Dana and like-minded Twitter users then began sending Zille and other DA officials a series of increasingly difficult-to-answer tweets.The ...

Take a moment to think about what you expect from a social network. It doesn't matter whether you're thinking about one-size-fits all megaliths like Facebook and Twitter or a site for professionals or even the incredibly specialised niche sites Memeburn drew your attention to recently. It really all boils down to one word: Connections.Connections, whether they be between friends, followers of celebrities or working professionals, are at the crux of every social network. So how would a social network ...

Japan's Sony and Panasonic and South Korea's Samsung Electronics have announced that they will jointly develop new standards for glasses used to watch 3D images on television, computer and movie screens. The three Asian consumer electronics giants, working with European technology firm X6D Limited, said their collaboration will cover a technology called "3D active glasses", according to their joint statement.The universal glasses — which can be used on TVs from all three firms — will go on sale in 2012 and ...

Facebook has launched a messaging application for use on both Android and iPhones. An engineer within Facebook, Lucy Zhang said that the messaging app can be used to not only exchange messages within the user's Facebook friends, but also to send messages on a user's mobile phone contact list.In a Facebook blog post Zhang explained the relevance of the product, saying, "When you're on the go, coordinating a bunch of people can be tricky, especially if plans change at ...