Someone's been a busy boy haven't they Microsoft? Just a day after launching the latest preview of Windows 8, the Redmond-based software giant rolled out its new social search function in the US. The new three column design sees social media feeds from sites like Facebook and Twitter incorporated into a new social side bar on search results pages. The bar includes relevant posts from people you’re following using your social accounts (assuming you’re signed in at the time), as ...

First thoughts: this thing's a goddamn monster. It's the size of two Xboxes squashed together, makes a hell of a noise when it's on and blinds you with its 3LCD display. But then I plug in my laptop via the HDMI port, run a copy 1080p copy of Tron: Legacy and everything's as right as rain. It's big, it's black, it's Epson's MegaPlex projector. To quote its full name, it's the Epson MegaPlex MG850HD Home Projector. I like to call it ...

South Africa’s youth are living in the progressive digital age but still strongly influenced by cultural traditions. That's according to the results of a brand new study by the Praekelt Foundation -- an organisation which aims to use mobile phones to improve the lives of people living in poverty. YoungAfricaLive (YAL), its award-winning mobile platform, aims to educate the country’s youth about HIV and AIDS start open discussions about love and relationships. The portal, which has almost a million users in the country and recently ...

The age of the Zettabyte is upon us. Well, it will be in four years’ time at any rate. By 2016, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year or 109.5 exabytes (10^18 bytes) per month. That’s according to the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast from US-based networking giant Cisco Systems. To put that into some kind of perspective, one zettabyte is equal to equal to one sextillion bytes, or one-billion terabytes. To get there, IP traffic ...

Facebook has just beefed up it Pages offering. The latest attempt to do so has seen it offering admin roles and scheduled posts, features that were previously only available third-party apps. The admin roles give page managers the ability to control how much any one administrator can do on a page. The privileges range from Managers, who can do anything they want on the page, to Insight Analysts, who can only view a page's insights. The new admin roles ...

Africa's largest online publisher 24.com claims that its recently released Facebook app has resulted in a massive spike in referrals from the social network and more eyes on its stories. The app is designed to allow users on the social network to read, share and comment on articles. The publisher says that it "opens up increased engagement around the news" as users can see what their friends are reading in real-time and comment on their articles. The app ...

Facebook's share collapse has the social network's strongest critics buzzing, some even going as far as questioning the future of the platform. Are we really betting that this is going to be one of the most valuable companies in the world or is this just business as usual in the technology sector: dot.com crash all over again? By far the most vehement of criticisms comes from Vanity Fair contributing editor and Newser founder Michael Wolff. In an article on MIT site ...

Emerging market countries are driving internet growth. Thing is, it’s not the only the usual BRIC suspects that are steering the ship. In fact the countries that are really surging ahead include likes of The Philippines, India, and Indonesia. That’s according to the 2012 Internet Trends report from renowned web analyst Mary Meeker, sometimes referred to as the "Queen of the Net". Meeker, a partner at VC company Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB), unveiled her annual trends report at ...

Times have changed. Getting yourself out there is no longer about shouting as long and as hard as you can until you are blue in the face, trying to get people to listen to you. So why are we still measuring it by the same metrics? Depeche Mode sang about it in the early 80s (wow that gives away my age) but their hit “Get The Balance Right” was not referring to marketing metrics; let alone digital marketing metrics for measuring ...

You know your country’s digital landscape is maturing when locally brewed memes make international news. Brett Murray’s controversial The Spear caused an inadvertent ruckus in the South African media, and web-going South Africans were on the forefront of spreading the word, sharing news content and creating their own graphics lampooning the situation. Thousands of news stories, images and Facebook shares later, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone around the office water cooler or in the grocery store queue who isn’t ...