A number of South African state schools using English as their medium of instruction, are reportedly considering scrapping their syllabi in African languages such as Xhosa and Zulu. All pupils in South African state schools are required to learn two language. The proposed move would force pupils in such schools, no matter what their background, to study Afrikaans as their second language. This is a particularly controversial idea given the country’s past experiences with language in schools. The forced use of ...

Facebook has once again caught the attention of everyone's favourite hacktivist group, Anonymous, reports Business Insider. The group has been on a retaliation quest over the past few days, following the takedown of MegaUpload. In a weekend of mass attacks, the group diverted all traffic away from CBS.com, took down Universal Music Group and various government sites. A new video posted on a supposed Anonymous-affiliated YouTube account, has singled out Facebook as the group's next target. The video, ...

In an effort to mitigate the potential fallout, file sharing sites with affiliate programs are shutting down regular operations. In the wake of the MegaUpload crackdown, FileSonic, FileServe and numerous others have disabled their affiliate rewards programmes and now only allow users access to their own files. The programmes rewarded members for uploading content -- pirated or legal. Many other file-sharing sites are following suit and some are taking drastic measures, blocking incoming traffic from the US, deleting incriminating content or ...

YouTube is now streaming 4-billion videos a day, a 25% increase over the past eight months, according to a report from Reuters. The number represents daily videos viewings across all platforms including mobile devices and PCs. The company has also revealed that roughly 60 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube every minute, compared with the 48 hours of video uploaded per minute in May 2011. YouTube is seen one of Google Inc's key opportunities for generating new sources of ...

The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) has put out a call on Facebook and Twitter for the country’s citizens to have a say in the drafting of the National Space Programme (NSP). According to agency’s website, the aim of the NSP is to "make South Africa a leading space player by 2030". The site also invites South Africans to share their "thoughts on 'Space Vision 2030' via the face book [sic] or Twitter". Speaking to Business Day, a ...

I've often wondered what it was like in the early days of creating Twitter. It must have been interesting times working out what the social network would be, what it would look like and how it would function. Of course, no-one then knew for certain it would be the slam-dunk success of today. In those early, startup days of rapid development and innovation, there must have been countless arguments, debates and jousts over how it would look and how it would ...

Social media is not about brands. It’s throwaway headlines like that which make brands and businesses -- especially SMEs -- shy away from social media and from entering into a conversation with their potential clients online. At first glance this reinforces a marketing manager's preconceived notion that no good can come from his brand engaging online, but what is the truth behind this kind of sentiment? Offline discovery still works Brands are still largely being discovered offline -- this is through word ...

A campaign by the student wing of South Africa’s official opposition party is causing a sensation on social networks. The campaign by the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO) features a topless white man and black woman embracing. The poster, which is an advert of the organisation’s 2012 membership campaign, also comes with the tagline: “In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice”. Since hitting Facebook a couple of hours ago, the poster has generated around 150 "likes", 75 shares and 370 odd ...

Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, released a statement today announcing that co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down in a management shuffle. As a result of mounting pressure by shareholders who watched RIM’s stock price tumble 75% last year, eventually falling below book value, RIM announced that Lazaridis who founded RIM in 1984 will become vice chairman, while Balsillie will continue to sit on the board forgoing any operational roles. Chief operating officer Thorsten Heins will take over ...

The most popular of China’s microblogging services Sina Weibo, saw record traffic over the Chinese New Year. According to Chinese tech site Do News, an average of 32 312 messages were sent per second, while 481 207 messages were sent during the first minute of the year. This smashes Twitter's record 25 088 tweets per second -- achieved when Japanese users took to the social network en-masse during a national TV broadcast of the classic Anime series Castle in the ...