PayPal unveiled a new micropayments service on Tuesday that makes it easier to buy digital goods and announced an integration with social networking giant Facebook.PayPal said the new micropayments system "lets consumers pay for digital goods and content in as little as two clicks, without ever having to leave a publisher's game, news, music, video or media site."It described the service, which will be available later this year, as the "online equivalent of dropping a quarter in the slot to ...

Google, which has strained relations with publishers worldwide who accuse it of aggregating articles without compensation, says it is to donate $5-million (about R35-million) to encourage innovation in digital journalism.But the donation, a paltry sum in the face of significant losses by traditional publishers worldwide, is unlikely to mollify media owners who accuse Google of spidering content without sufficient compensation and threatening their advertising models via the disruptive (but extremely innovative) Adwords and Adsense programmes."Journalism is fundamental to a functioning ...

Ask web entrepreneur Stefan Magdalinski why he moved from London to Cape Town two years ago, and he points to a map that illustrates the technological revolution reshaping Africa.The map shows the 14 undersea fibre-optic cables that will link the continent's internet service providers to the servers of Europe and Asia by mid-2012, increasing the capacity of its cable internet connections almost three-fold from today and nearly 300-fold from 2009.The cables are drawn in different colours and in thicknesses that ...

I love Cape Town's mythical iceberg. And so it seems, do a lot of other people. After none of the "official, big-name" brands jumped in and claimed ownership of it, Cape Town's creative community began to stir and the first iceberg-hijacking in history took place.Take a look:In case you missed the story, it revolves around a strange and intriguing iceberg which appeared off Cape Town's Clifton beach on Monday morning and caused much excitement. The authorities revealeded that ...

When you're working in a community that has been devastated by drug abuse and ravaged by social problems, then prestigious marketing awards probably seem a million miles away.But that is the strange position that Reconstructed Living Labs (RLabs) finds itself in after being nominated in the category "Best Use of Mobile" in the first annual Bees Awards, which recognises outstanding work in the field of social media.Marlon Parker, the man behind RLabs, explains: "We were nominated for the best use ...

Who would think that there is a business in providing an online copy and paste service? Tynt believes that there is a very large opportunity even though it hasn't yet figured out how best to monetise it.Tynt provides publishers with a way of monitoring how and where content is being shared. A reader highlights some text and pastes it into an email or a blog post and Tynt automatically adds a link to the original content.A dashboard shows publishers what ...

With everything that's going on around the world, it is always difficult to predict what people are talking, thinking and tweeting about. But there are some basic truths you can rely on, and one of them is this: Wherever people gather, the talk will eventually turn to sports.What The Trend, a Twitter aggregator that positions itself as "the front page of the real time web", has released its findings for the most popular topics being spoken about on ...

Digg, the news-sharing site once one of the hottest destinations on the Web, announced on Monday it was cutting over one-third of its staff in a bid to try to be profitable next year.Matt Williams, who took over as chief executive of Digg.com six weeks ago, said the San Francisco-based start-up was slashing its staff from 67 employees to 42."The fact is our business has a burn rate that is too high," Williams said in a memo to staff posted ...

Ever had a great idea for a website that you really wanted to share with the world? How about using the power of the social web to attract popular artists to perform at local venues? This idea from Will Gubb, called Rock Me, was adopted at October's Digital Cowboys gathering, a crowdsourcing initiative started by the digital marketing specialists at AD:DYNAMO.This monthly creative initiative is changing the way people think about collaboration and web development. The concept behind Digital ...

Average daily US newspaper circulation fell 4.99 percent during the six months ending on September 30 compared with the same period a year ago, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) said.Average Sunday circulation fell 4.46 percent, the bureau said.While the drop provided another dose of bad news for an industry that has seen a wave of bankruptcies, closures and cutbacks, the decline was not as steep as during the previous reporting period.Average daily newspaper circulation fell 8.74 percent during the ...