It’s an open secret that SMS is a cash-cow for operators. They can charge obscene amounts for messages (compared to the cost of delivering them), obscene amounts that become crimes against humanity when they rape you for sending SMS when roaming. WhatsApp is one of the best alternatives -- and one that may actually have a future when compared to much earlier incarnations like MXit that have millions of users but are still trying to find a way to make ...

African mobile giant MTN is stepping up to the broadband plate and releasing an uncapped, throttle-free product from October till January, as reported by MyBroadbandThe company will introduce a broadband package that removes the "uncapped without speed throttling" fair usage policies for a period of four months, but will most likely apply the policy once the trail period is over.Speculation is that MTN is testing the waters to see if a legitimately uncapped offering could be possible on its network. ...

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) annual review has named Samsung as the "world's most sustainable technology company". According to the report, Samsung received the highest score of the 52 technology companies listed.Byungsuk Choi, executive VP at Samsung said of the report, "Samsung is delighted that our sustainability efforts have been recognised in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index."“This result is a reflection of Samsung’s belief that we can deliver positive value by protecting the environment and contributing to communities in ...

Mexican authorities found a woman's decapitated body in Nuevo Laredoa, a Mexican city that borders the United States. Alongside the body, a handwritten sign saying she had been killed as retaliation for her postings on a local social networking site.A website dedicated to covering Mexico's drug conflict which it calls "the neglected war", believes the killing to be the third instance of an emerging trend of people being murdered for talking about the conflict on social networks. ...

According to Samsung, the Galaxy SII has sold over 10-million devices since its April launch. The phone has seen a particularly strong surge in sales since July, when sales were sitting on just under five million.Samsung’s premium smartphone debuted in South Korea in late April and May in various European countries. It finally went on sale in China in July and in the US markets in September. JK Shin, chief of Samsung mobile devices said, “In just five months the Galaxy ...

Marko Ahtisaari is the head of Nokia’s design unit and the man tasked with presenting the new Nokia N9 to a captivated audience at a glossy launch event. The Minority Report style setting invokes one word, “design”.The N9 is a device torn between two worlds: Cultural relevance and OS irrelevance. It is a beautiful device, cast in polycarbonate from end to end and finished off with an Active-Matrix OLED screen otherwise known as AMOLED. The user interface is minimalistic to ...

Groupon announced via its blog that its chief operating officer, Margo Georgiadis, would be leaving after just five months for a job with her former employer Google.Georgiadis left her position as Google's vice president of global sales back in April to work for the group buying giant. According to the blog post, she will return to the search giant as president of the Americas."Groupon is a great company and I feel privileged to have worked there even for a short ...

A social music service is among the updates being rolled out by Facebook in the wake of its f8 developers' conference. This audio service does, however, have a predecessor and its developer claims the project was killed for reasons very different to the ones reported on at the time.Former Motorola exec and entrepreneur Numair Faraz dropped a nuclear bomb in a blog post about his experiences as an early Facebook platform developer.Faraz launched "Audio" on ...

Apple's iPad is projected to account for 73.4% of worldwide media tablet sales in 2011, down from 83% share in 2010, says respected research company Gartner.But beyond Apple's platform, known as iOS, and Android's operating system, Gartner does not expect any other platforms to secure more than a five percent share of the tablet market in 2011.“We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50% of the market until 2014,” ...

There are millions (and millions) of smartphones in South Africa. And growth is accelerating.Vodacom’s latest financial results disclose some interesting numbers: Between April and June, it added 406 000 smartphones70 percent of smartphones sold in the quarter were BlackBerryAs of 30 June, there are 3.7-million active smartphones on its network33 percent of its smartphone subscribers use data bundlesMTN, the second-largest network in the country, has 2.6-million smartphones on its network at the end of June. And Cell C, latecomer to the ...