Former US vice president Al Gore is spearheading a global internet campaign aimed at raising awareness around climate change.The "Climate Reality Project", which aims to bring the "facts about the climate crisis into the mainstream and engaging the public in conversation about how to solve it," kicked off with an event called "24 hours of reality".The event featured an online multimedia presentation showcasing how extreme weather events like floods, fires and storms are linked to climate change.The ...

Handheld gamers rejoice. The Playstation Vita will be released on the 17th of December in Japan. Sony's anticipated handheld gaming machine and the successor to the PSP will go on sale for 24 980 yen (US$325) for the Wi-Fi version and 29 980 yen (US$390) for the 3G model. The announcement was made at a pre-press conference before the Tokyo Game Show.Previously, Sony had said that it aims to release the console before the end of the year in Japan. ...

Intel, left badly behind in the market mobile phone processors by comptitors like ARM, is looking for a fast catch-up by teaming with Google to tailor chips to get top performance out of Android-powered smartphones."Our collaboration with Google will bring a powerful new capability to market that helps accelerate industry innovation, adoption and choice," Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said at the opening of the US chip maker’s developers conference in San Francisco.The alliance with the world's largest computer chip ...

This week I take a look at Dolphin, a highly intelligent smartphone web browser that Safari can learn a lot from.When it comes to browsers, I'm quite a weird guy. On the Macbook I use at work, I just can't decide which one I like more: Firefox is incredibly stable and supports tree-style tabbing (it'll change your life), but looks a bit too rigid. Chrome has the awesome "speed dial" screen when you launch and the aesthetically pleasing tabs with ...

Open source. Free information. The power to customise what I want, when I want. These are not simply words used to describe one of the biggest unheralded revolutions in modern times, Google’s Android, they also sum up my ethos as a person.This comparison between operating system and personal philosophy may be a strange one, but considering how mobile devices have become essential tools to survive modern society, I believe it a very relevant one.Who is not affected?Consider the number of ...

We may need new words for journalists, editors and the "news", because their definitions are constraining and changing. Maybe the editors of the future will be known as "community managers"? Everyone's publishing, everyone's writing these days -- and perhaps these community managers will be the new curators?In this interview, Wired editor and international technology commentator Chris Anderson (Read Part 1: "The Closing Web" here) suspects that "the ranks of people creating news is going to grow hugely, including many people ...

Crowdsourcing is the new black. Everyone's doing it. Iceland is crowdsourcing its new constitution. Microsoft is crowdsourcing aspects of Windows 8. All this hype must mean it's a new thing right? Surely it has to be a product of the web 2.0 or social media era?This is a popular view. The term itself only goes as far back as 2006 when it was coined by Jeff Howe in a Wired Magazine article entitled "The Rise of Crowdsourcing". However, if you ...

In the wake of the firing of its colourful CEO, Carol Bartz, Yahoo! has dominated headlines with stories of boardroom politics and rumours of acquisitions. The latest rumour, from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), points to AOL, Yahoo!, and, Microsoft forming a partnership to battle Google's web dominance.According to the Journal, ad executives who were pitched a new ad-buying system say that the three internet companies have devised a plan wherein they will sell advertising on each other's sites. The ...

Southern Africa has immense potential for growth in the mobile business sector. The region has one of the world's highest mobile phone infiltration rates, after all. It also faces a number of challeneges though. In a bid to help guide mobile entrepreneurs through these challenges, mLab Southern Africa, a hub for technology entrepreneurs, application developers, and innovators has officially opened its doors in Pretoria.In an official press release, the mobile innovation hub stated that its "activities are aimed ...

Facebook is all about mobile. Its number of active users -- 750 million -- is impressive. Even with engagement slowing in more mature markets, it is on track to be the first platform in history to crack the 1-billion user mark.A full third of those active users (250-million) access the site via mobile devices. Facebook itself admits that people who use Facebook on mobile devices are "twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users".So where's the innovation?That said, not ...