Ever wanted to give your future self advance warning about something you're about to do? Do you remember what you were doing when you were 12 years old? Wouldn't it be cool if scientists stopped obsessing with the meaning of life and particles that will always be there and just did something useful like invent a time machine? These (and I am sure many more) are the kind of questions that kept filmmaker and actor Jeremiah McDonald awake at ...

Ah ha! So this is what that exec who said that Twitter search and discovery was set to "change forever" was talking about. The social network just announced an update that will make searching for users and topics on the platform easier and even more personalised. Ever tweeted about a topic only to realise you're using the wrong hashtag? Now Twitter will offer you suggestions via an autocomplete function to let you know what terms most people are using in ...

Campaign Asia-Pacific and Nielsen have just published the 2012 Asia’s Top Brands report -- a list of the most popular brands in Asia based on a survey of 4 800 consumers across the continent. This year’s report has seen Apple climb to the number two spot for the first time -- although it is still behind competitor Samsung, which has taken the top spot from Sony. Sony has now dropped down to third place, followed by Nestlé in fourth and ...

If you suddenly find yourself cut off from the internet in the near future, your ISP, or a break in an internet cable might not be to blame. Nope, the real culprit could be year old malware. According to online security firms, the threat comes from a piece of malicious software called DNS Changer, which effectively showed people a different version of the internet, altering user searches, and promoting fake and dangerous products. Until now US authorities have been able ...

This is big. The way you search for and discover things on Twitter is about to "change forever". That's according to a tweet sent out by Pankaj Gupta, an engineering manager at the social network, who indicated that there would be an announcement about the changes later today: Search & discovery in @twitter set to change forever after tmrw. Team - congrats and enjoy the enormity of ur impact few understand today!— Pankaj Gupta (@pankaj) ...

A few weeks ago, speculation hit the media circuit that Draftfcb, a global advertising agency owned by the New York Stock Exchange-listed Interpublic Group (IPG), was in talks to buy a Cape Town-based award-winning digital agency called HelloComputer. It’s true: HelloComputer has been bought! In an exclusive interview with the shareholders of HelloComputer, we learned that this acquisition will see Draftfcb’s current digital arm, Mesh Interactive, be absorbed by HelloComputer. At the helm of HelloComputer is co-founder Mark Tomlinson and ...

South African mobile operator MTN is launching three new low-tier packages aimed at making the BlackBerry service even more affordable. The news comes hot on the heels of RIM’s latest earnings call, during which the BlackBerry smartphone maker singled out South Africa as being one of its strongest and growing markets. For about a quarter of the regular price, the BlackBerry Messaging Plan allows email and BBM use, but no web browsing. Only one email account can be linked to your ...

It's amazing what you can find hidden in a piece of code. The future strategy of the world's largest social network, for instance. The developer who found out that Facebook was working on a "want" button has uncovered a new piece of code that suggests the social giant is working on a new series of actions that would allow people to share what they'd bought, which charities they'd donated money to, and what items they'd bought in games like Farmville. ...

South Africa's primary online tourism portal has repeatedly gone down over the last week because the organisation behind the site failed to pay its web-hosting bills. A source close to Memeburn said that SA Tourism, which owns the Twitter handle @SouthAfrica and is effectively the face of tourism in the country, had failed to pay hosting service provider Rackspace for several months before southafrica.net was taken down. SA Tourism spokesperson William Price confirmed that Rackspace had taken the site down because ...

Whistleblowing site Wikileaks has just published some 2.5-million emails from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names. According to Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, the files are “embarrassing to Syria, but [...] also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents. "It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it." The Syria Files, says Wikileaks, "shine a light on the inner workings of the ...