We all know that one person. One who is either terminally ill, has some or other rare disease or that one who has tried to commit suicide numerous times, sometimes even giving us a blow-by-blow account of how they were doing it.We know these people, perhaps not personally, but we know their Twitter handles, their forum names, their blogs. What many of us don't know is that while these people might indeed be ill, it might not be in ...

Real-time communication over the web through Twitter has had an enormous impact on journalism. Twitter is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for reporting. It started out as a simple alarm bell. One tweet about an accident was a wake-up call for journalists to follow-up on the topic and/or get in touch with tweeps on location. Think, for example, about the plane crash on the Hudson River, or the tweets from Cairo's Tahrir Square.Journalists now have more and better ...

Microsoft is going through an exciting phase of innovation, says Microsoft corporate vice-president for Visual Studio, Jason Zander. The company's aim, he claims, is to build connected devices focusing on elastic resources, composable services and to take away the worry from the cloud by making it more secure through carefully controlled access.Zander addressed an audience of more than 3 000 people at the opening keynote of this year's Tech-Ed conference in Durban South Africa.Tech-Ed Africa is billed ...

Google has announced that it will be holding its second large-scale web conference in South Africa. The event, called "G-South Africa" aims to provide "training on web and mobile tools to spur innovation, business growth and local internet economy".The internet giant claims the event will see “Over 800 business people, marketers, entrepreneurs, engineers, and web developers, together with over 30 Google experts from around the globe,” gather to “discuss the future of online business and web application development, and ...

According to Silicon Valley super-star Sean Parker, for Google to take the title of leading social network, Facebook would have to blunder in a big way.During an interview to open the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Parker said, "Facebook would have to screw up royally and Google would have to do something really smart."Parker's profile in Silicon Valley comes from his co-founding of controversial music-sharing service Napster.Parker was also featured in the Academy award-winning film chronicling the ...

The Blackberry software developer’s conference begins today and RIM faces the difficult battle of gaining traction in light of its global BBM blackout.App developers will be given training sessions during the Blackberry DevCon which takes place in San Francisco. RIM filled the conference with seminars, informative sessions and discussions which are aimed at rebuilding the status of Blackberry’s applications on its Playbook tablet and smartphones.Co-founder of RIM, Mike Lazaridis opened the conference for the developers, mobile partners and "passionate enthusiasts" ...

Chinese internet giant Alibaba says that it will delay a fee hike for some sellers on its online shopping site after a storm of protest over the planned rise.The group also announced that it will invest 1.8-billion yuan (US$284-million) in its Taobao Mall site. This as the firm looks to help disgruntled small vendors.The announcement came after tens of thousands of users attacked big brands on the site, threatening to place massive orders online and immediately cancel them in ...

Online auction giant eBay is mourning the loss of Chinese customers as it was recently revealed that the East Asian country is now banning foreign internet users from selling goods in China.Chief executive of eBay, John Donahoe spoke of the ordeal during the Web 2.0 Summit. "The domestic China market for internet-based service is, in essence, closed. The Chinese government is not going to allow a non-Chinese Internet company to succeed in China...it is a weapon in national security," ...

For most of us, going a day without using a Google product is unimaginable. The internet giant serves up our news, email and maps. It gives us the internet on a platter, all from a single domain. Occasionally you'll use it to do something you'd never thought of before and you'll think you’re pretty damn clever. Chances are, though, you never thought of using a Google tool to track a deadly disease in a remote mountain kingdom.That’s precisely ...

Stephen Birrell, a 28-year-old man, has been jailed for eight months in Glasgow Scotland after pleading guilty to posting hate-speech statements on Facebook.According to media reports, Birrell made multiple posts on a Facebook page titled, "Neil Lennon Should be Banned". Neil Lennon is the current manager of Glasgow football club Celtics FC.The first post to garner notice said, "Hope they (Celtic fans) all die. Simple. Catholic scumbags ha ha". The second employed regional slurs for Catholics, and stated, "Proud to ...