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  • Reviewed: Epson MegaPlex Projector — 60″ HD glory

    By on 1 June, 2012

    First thoughts: this thing's a goddamn monster. It's the size of two Xboxes squashed together, makes a hell of a noise when it's on and blinds you with its 3LCD display. But then I plug in my laptop via the HDMI port, run a copy 1080p copy of Tron: Legacy and everything's as right as rain. It's big, it's black, it's Epson's MegaPlex projector. To quote its full name, it's the Epson MegaPlex MG850HD Home Projector. I like to call it "my little cinema". If you're a smart shopper, you can grab it for roughly US$650 online and my fellow...

  • SA youth caught between digital ambition, cultural traditions [Study]

    By on 31 May, 2012

    South Africa’s youth are living in the progressive digital age but still strongly influenced by cultural traditions. That's according to the results of a brand new study by the Praekelt Foundation -- an organisation which aims to use mobile phones to improve the lives of people living in poverty. YoungAfricaLive (YAL), its award-winning mobile platform, aims to educate the country’s youth about HIV and AIDS start open discussions about love and relationships. The portal, which has almost a million users in the country and recently launched in Tanzania and Kenya, surveyed more than 170 000 of its users to gather the results of this year’s...

  • The age of the Zettabyte is upon us. Almost

    By on 31 May, 2012

    The age of the Zettabyte is upon us. Well, it will be in four years’ time at any rate. By 2016, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year or 109.5 exabytes (10^18 bytes) per month. That’s according to the latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast from US-based networking giant Cisco Systems. To put that into some kind of perspective, one zettabyte is equal to equal to one sextillion bytes, or one-billion terabytes. To get there, IP traffic will have to grow fourfold from where it was in 2011. That’s not all that unlikely though. Back in...

  • Facebook powers up Pages with admin roles and scheduled posts

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Facebook has just beefed up it Pages offering. The latest attempt to do so has seen it offering admin roles and scheduled posts, features that were previously only available third-party apps. The admin roles give page managers the ability to control how much any one administrator can do on a page. The privileges range from Managers, who can do anything they want on the page, to Insight Analysts, who can only view a page's insights. The new admin roles are potentially great for large community-driven pages, where content might need to be strictly controlled. It's also a boon...

  • 24.com claims social sharing app a success

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Africa's largest online publisher 24.com claims that its recently released Facebook app has resulted in a massive spike in referrals from the social network and more eyes on its stories. The app is designed to allow users on the social network to read, share and comment on articles. The publisher says that it "opens up increased engagement around the news" as users can see what their friends are reading in real-time and comment on their articles. The app automatically shares all the articles users are reading on their Timeline and News Feed but they have the option...

  • Facebook fundamentals: Why its share collapse simply does not matter

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Facebook's share collapse has the social network's strongest critics buzzing, some even going as far as questioning the future of the platform. Are we really betting that this is going to be one of the most valuable companies in the world or is this just business as usual in the technology sector: dot.com crash all over again? By far the most vehement of criticisms comes from Vanity Fair contributing editor and Newser founder Michael Wolff. In an article on MIT site Technology Review, Wolff melodramatically predicts that the social network "...is not only on course to go bust, but will...

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  • Emerging markets are driving the web, no bubble in sight: The Meeker files

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Emerging market countries are driving internet growth. Thing is, it’s not the only the usual BRIC suspects that are steering the ship. In fact the countries that are really surging ahead include likes of The Philippines, India, and Indonesia. That’s according to the 2012 Internet Trends report from renowned web analyst Mary Meeker, sometimes referred to as the "Queen of the Net". Meeker, a partner at VC company Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB), unveiled her annual trends report at All Things Digital’s D10 conference. According to Meeker, there are now 2.3-billion web users around the world. Despite continued...

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  • Social media campaigns need a new measure of success

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Times have changed. Getting yourself out there is no longer about shouting as long and as hard as you can until you are blue in the face, trying to get people to listen to you. So why are we still measuring it by the same metrics? Depeche Mode sang about it in the early 80s (wow that gives away my age) but their hit “Get The Balance Right” was not referring to marketing metrics; let alone digital marketing metrics for measuring return on social media campaigns. As a viable marketing channel, social media is in danger; maybe a danger more grave...

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  • What does ‘The Spear’ have in common with Barbara Streisand?

    By on 31 May, 2012

    You know your country’s digital landscape is maturing when locally brewed memes make international news. Brett Murray’s controversial The Spear caused an inadvertent ruckus in the South African media, and web-going South Africans were on the forefront of spreading the word, sharing news content and creating their own graphics lampooning the situation. Thousands of news stories, images and Facebook shares later, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone around the office water cooler or in the grocery store queue who isn’t familiar with the painting. But this raises the question of whether any of this debate would have happened -- in...

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  • Space X Dragon to return to earth today

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Attention, earthlings: the Space X Dragon capsule is on its way home. Well, if by 'way' you mean hurtling through the atmosphere and 'home' you mean a splash-landing in the Pacific Ocean. The first privately funded and built space craft to dock at the International Space Station (ISS) left earth just over a week ago and was captured by the ISS on 25 May. After spending five days attached to the station while its crew unloaded supplies and picked up some new cargo, it was released this morning to start its journey back to earth. It is scheduled to land...

  • People now watch more online video on iPads — and on Saturday nights [Study]

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Do you spend your Saturday nights curled up with your new iPad, watching the latest episode of your favourite TV series or flitting through YouTube like the power user you are? No? Well, you’re in the minority, according to the latest global online video statistics from Ooyala. The recent study of over 200 million users worldwide showed that people aren’t just watching three minute videos of cats -- they’re watching more long form video, more often, on a variety of platforms. Half of the time users spend watching video online is spent watching videos longer than 10 minutes. It varies depending...

  • Baidu set to launch Android ROM

    By on 31 May, 2012

    Baidu is taking its smartphone push into full gear with the release of a ROM that takes Google's full suite of Android services and replaces them with its own. The Chinese internet giant has a lot to gain if people decide they like the new product. According to The Next Web, just under 70% of new phones in China ship with Android. Baidu claims that the ROM, which comes standard with services including the Google-Drive like Wangpan, music, maps, apps and new photo album site Baidu Xiangce will give users a “richer, more social, more personalised experience”. Back in February...

  • Google SA to launch online child safety initiative

    By on 30 May, 2012

    Google South Africa will announce on Friday the launch of a local child safety initiative. The search giant says that it and its partners will create a safe cyberspace for children to engage with technology as well as empower parents and guardians with tools to help them choose what content their children see online. Partners include the South African Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities (DWCPD), the Department of Communications, the Film and Publications Board (FPB), youth-based social network Mxit, Childline South Africa and UNICEF. Google says that Friday's launch is the first step in an ongoing online child...

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  • Facebook opens office dedicated to Middle East, North Africa

    By on 30 May, 2012

    Facebook has opened up operations at its new Dubai offices, aimed specifically at expanding its operations in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). In a statement made at a press conference in the Gulf emirate, the social network said that its Mena team "will work with brands across the region to help them harness the power of the world's largest social network". Joanna Shields, Facebook's vice president and managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the network has some "45 million users" in the region, adding that the main thrust of the regional office was to "share our...

  • Google Places is dead, long live Google+ Local

    By on 30 May, 2012

    We called it. After Google bought out restaurant review site Zagat in 2011, we said that it signalled the company had "good taste" and that Google+ would become "a repository for your Google user data". The company's announcement that it would be scuppering Google Places and replacing it with Google+ local, which it calls "a simple way to discover and share local information featuring Zagat scores and recommendations from people you trust in Google+", shows just how far we've come along that road. Back in January we said: If you allow it to, Google is going to use that data...

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