Email marketing has had to deal with its fair share of industry rumours (a.k.a. myths) during its many (largely successful) years of existence. Thankfully most of them never actually materialize, and those that do are promptly dealt with, which is how we end up with an increasing set of ‘best practices and standards’. Standards that are constantly evolving and refining themselves alongside the technology and client specs they feed off. Then there are those rumours that just don’t seem to go ...

At CES International 2012, there seems to be a general certainty in the notion that the future of video entertainment lies on the web. It seems natural, therefore, that the show should play host to the inaugural International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV) Awards. The award show is sort of like an Emmy Awards for web TV series. The fact that it took place in the famous Venetian hotel, just down the hall from where the technical Emmys taking place ...

An idiot thief busted by an iPhone? Thank you, Apple. In Pretoria, South Africa, a part-time cleaner who stole an iPhone has been tracked and arrested thanks to iCloud, and Find My Phone. The phone's owner, Sean Dunn, tracked the thief on his iPad, locating him to within two meters of his last known location. With iPad in hand, the thief was easily tracked, as Find My Phone displays a satellite map, with fairly accurate coordinates. The thief was found 60km ...

The human world is unprepared for emotive robots. Japanese robots with human-like faces which smile, cry and shout only create a larger gap in the uncanny valley. Enter Mimbo, a cardboard creation which more gently resembles human expression thanks to an emotive iPhone as its visage. Mimbo is a simple cardboard design wrapped around an iPhone. Anyone can cut it out, prop an iPhone inside and turn it on. Eyes, eyelids and a mouth are cartoon-like in nature, but easy enough ...

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was pretty big news when it launched. It holds the honour, after all, of being the first phone to come preloaded with Android 4.0, better known as Ice Cream Sandwich. At CES International 2012 we managed to get hands-on with it for the first time. First things first, it’s big. With a 4.5″ screen, it’s a little bit smaller than Samsung’s hybrid phone tablet offering, the Note but it’s still not what you’d call discreet. This small ...

Taxis in Cape Town, South Africa, just received their first mobile ordering service, in the form of Taxi Rank. 10and5.com reports that the website is available for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. The site is light, loads quickly and presents two very simple options for users. Enter the “Pick me up at…” point, then the “and take me to…” destination and click “find taxi”. Users then select a taxi from step 1. Step 2 lets you confirm your booking and check the details of ...

There are plenty of tablets on offer at CES International 2012. Some of them are from big players such as Samsung, while others are from small outfits, looking to find a place in an already crowded market. The Wikipad, however, is the only one I’ve seen so far that is taking on 3D and serious gaming right off the bat. A representative of the company showed me the prototype of the of the 3D tablet which, apart from being a little ...

US videogame company Electronic Arts is sending Facebook members out to conquer the world with a humour-infused version of the classic strategy board game Risk, sneakily named "Risk: Factions". The game - in which players march across the globe and seize territory with the goal of world domination - has been re-designed for Facebook, with on-screen characters including zombies, cats, donkey cannons, and mermaids. Risk: Factions for Facebook is based on versions of the game released in 2010 for play at Microsoft ...

YouTube isn’t going to fundamentally change the way we view video entertainment in the future, it already is. That was the message of the video sharing platform's Vice President, Global Content Partnerships, Robert Kyncl's keynote at CES International 2012 in Las Vegas. Kyncl isn’t alone in this kind of thinking either. Anthony Zuicker, creator of the hit CSI franchise, reckons that YouTube turns the people producing content on it "not only into the future but possibly the extinction of TV ...

Perhaps two of the biggest computing trends that have gained momentum in the past year have also opened up some of the biggest security problems that the internet has faced in its entire history. Cloud services and Mobile internet afford us maximum flexibility and ease of access to the information that we want and need on a daily basis. That ease of access and flexibility has also increased our vulnerability. In this article, we look at recent security trends and ...