In the first of a series of extracts from the opening chapter of his new book "Mobinomics", South African-based entrepreneur Alan Knott Craig Jr speaks about what it was about Mxit -- the massively popular youth-based social network he now owns -- that turned him into "an evangelist, an unpaid, unofficial ambassador for the network". He also offers a glimpse of the respect he has for the company's former owner Herman Heunis and how difficult it was to turn down ...

Haha. Sorry, but it seems that Google thinks that .lol has "interesting and creative potential" -- which is why the search giant has applied to have the domain registered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In a blog post, Vincent Cerf ('father of the internet' and Google's chief internet evangelist) said that the company had applied for a number of new domains -- including .google, .youtube and .docs -- as part of ICANN's open call for ...

Foursquare is changing. Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but it is promising a major redesign. The first of those changes is set to come in the form of a new maps feature. The company sent out a tweet, previewing the feature. Maps. There are many others like it, but this one is yours. The #allnew4sq is coming soon! bit.ly/L0fbOy— foursquare (@foursquare) May 31, 2012 The tweet came just a day after another one showing off the ...

Popular fast food franchise, Nando's has launched a new campaign that plays on the issue of Xenophobia in South Africa. The campaign has Nando's teaming up with non-profit volunteer group, Cheesekids, to "create pop up soup kitchens" in parts of South Africa that have been affected by Xenophobia. The franchise says it aims to walk the talk in galvanising the message of creating "dialogue between the diverse". You too can volunteer to join our soup kitchens by visiting the Souperstars ...

Venture Capital for Africa (VC4Africa), an online community of venture capitalists, angels and entrepreneurs, today announced the launch of new tools aimed at helping people raise funds for their startups. The network, which is dedicated to building business on the African continent, claims that the new tools make private investment easy, secure and social. It also says that they allow entrepreneurs to register their funding needs. These are then shared for investors, registered as part of the VC4Africa investor ...

Someone's been a busy boy haven't they Microsoft? Just a day after launching the latest preview of Windows 8, the Redmond-based software giant rolled out its new social search function in the US. The new three column design sees social media feeds from sites like Facebook and Twitter incorporated into a new social side bar on search results pages. The bar includes relevant posts from people you’re following using your social accounts (assuming you’re signed in at the time), as ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...