Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma has delivered an ultimatum to Yahoo!. The head of the Chinese online retail giant says he expects an answer from once-dominant US tech firm within weeks to his offer to buy all or part of it. Delays, he added, were hurting both firms.The Chinese entrepreneur denied having a US$20-billion war chest ready for the ailing Yahoo! He added, however that money would not be the biggest obstacle to what would be a milestone takeover ...

Two weeks after his death, tributes continue to pour in for late Apple co-founder and visionary Steve Jobs. The latest and, perhaps most poignant, came from the tech giant itself.Apple set up a dedicated memorial site for Jobs and shops closed temporarily as workers celebrated his life.At Apple stores across the globe, doors were locked and curtains drawn to allow employees to tune into a private memorial being held in an amphitheatre at the company’s headquarters in the ...

US online security giant Symantec has warned of a new super-virus similar to the malicious Stuxnet worm believed to have preyed on Iran's nuclear programme.Symantec said the new virus, dubbed "Duqu" because it creates files with the DQ name prefix, is similar to Stuxnet but is designed to gather intelligence for future attacks on industrial control systems.The company, along with Canadian security giant McCafee believes the threat is part of something much larger."Duqu is essentially the precursor to ...

With the requisite eerie music and a shot down an empty corridor, it begins like countless slasher films, the difference is that this time the victim is you.A Facebook app, Take This Lollipop, is taking the internet by storm by brilliantly distilling the often unacknowledged fears Facebook users have about so much of their personal information being on the web into three minutes.Once you (ironically) grant the app access to your information a very well-produced video reminiscent of the Saw ...

Why are abusive comments on news sites like road rage? And what does being online have to do with picking your nose in traffic? The connections may seem tenuous but, trust me, they're there. Let me explain.Leading South African news site, News24, is now requiring readers who wish to comment to sign in using their Facebook accounts. The move is a reminder of the pitfalls of online anonymity, and why the only way to guarantee good behaviour is the ...

"Windows Phone is designed to help you be productive right out of the box," says Microsoft. One of the ways the software giant hopes to do this is through the integration of a SharePoint social feature into Windows Phone 7 applications which can help most businesses "work better on a people level".At this year's Tech*Ed Africa, founder and director at Aptillon and SharePoint expert, Matthew McDermott discussed some the ways in which Windows Phone 7 users can use SharePoint web ...

SMS is dead, or almost dead. It’s a fairly common refrain and one that is threading its way into the mainstream as smartphones become increasingly ubiquitous. Surely it must be true. I mean, with services like BBM, WhatsApp and the recently unveiled iMessage, why would anyone need to send something as old-fashioned as a text message?Well, the numbers would beg to differ. According to research gathered by online business course provider mbaonline, text messaging is the most used data ...

There is a happy medium that needs to be reached when looking at a social media platform’s need to monetise and actually turn a profit and the end user who needs to be exposed to advertising in order to fund the social network they are socially invested in.Revenue Generation Each and every social network is largely out there for one reason and one reason only. To make great big bags of cash! Now most of the networks are doing this ...

The Samsung NP600 is an entirely excellent notebook PC, which is to say about as special as a fried eggs on toast dinner. There’s nothing wrong with it, plenty right, and even pretty tasty and filling. This guy is mostly anything you could want in a US$1000 midrange machine, plus top-notch build quality and a magnesium casing to protect the screen, supposedly able to take a small truck driving over it. Great gobs of horespower, nice bright screen, looks damn ...

When the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement first began, it wasn't so much a movement as a group of a couple hundred people who had sent tweets out declaring 17 September to be the day that protesters would "occupy Wall Street" and stage demonstrations in Zuccotti Park, a few blocks away from the New York Stock Exchange.Now, it’s become a force of energy, and has moved from a hodge-podge of grievances and issues to an initiative with a logo ...