Reed Hastings of Netflix has apologised for the company’s recent handling of a price increase to the streaming services. The new price hike ended the hugely successful US$10 monthly “all you can eat” subscription of DVD and media streaming, replacing it with a separate price for each. Customers can now select from US$7.99 for DVD or streaming, or pay US$15.98 for both products.Netflix relied on a low-level managed to announce this on its blog and the public feedback was brutal ...

Taiwanese mobile phone giant HTC is unleashing its latest smartphone, the “Rhyme” on the world. One of the smartphone’s unique new features is a flashing charm which can be attached to any object to show that a call is taking place, or that a message has come through.The Rhyme will be powered by the latest version of Android, known as “Gingerbread” and will cost US$200 through Verizon.Launching on 29 September in the States, the Rhyme is a “stylish” phone according ...

Apple and Samsung have been caught up in a patent war which has seen the two electronic giants facing up against each other in pitched court battles around the globe.Samsung’s latest manoeuvre involves the South Korean giant seeking to ban all sales of the iPhone 5, possibly filing lawsuits in South Korea and other unnamed countries. The patent wars between the two companies have centred around design and technology features of their smartphones and tablet computers.This has been seen as a ...

Hours after the official repeal of the US military's ban on "public" homosexuality, an American soldier has released an emotional video of him coming out to his father. The soldier has previously chronicled his experiences of being gay in the US military on the video-sharing platform.Since April of this year, the more than 8 000 subscribers to his YouTube channel and millions of viewers have been transfixed as the formerly faceless US soldier who says he's deployed in Afghanistan has ...

If you believe all the hype online and offline, your business is going to die a horrible, slow, excruciating death unless you join Twitter right now. Put down your coffee, stop reading this article and open up a Twitter account for your business. Just do it.If every major (and minor) corporation out there is setting up a Twitter account, surely it makes sense for you to be tweeting with the masses. If Richard Branson is doing it, then so ...

Steve Ballmer’s quote -- "for the cloud, we’re all in"; spoken in March last year, is rapidly becoming IT folklore. For most industry watchers it was construed as a declaration of war against Google, but it was also a clear recognition from Microsoft that the shift from client server to cloud computing was an irresistible force.There are those who criticise Microsoft for being late to react to big macro-technological trends -- the internet being one of the most obvious ...

Social media is seemingly the greatest marketing strategy since the advent of the thirty second radio spot. But where are we going to go from here and is this as good as it is going to get? What and where is the next giant leap in technology going to take us in this connected world of ever increasing augmented reality?Where are we now with social media?While businesses are doing their best to get to grips with the social media band ...

Collaboration is an important factor in the way a number of companies do business. But what if you need to collaborate with a colleague on the other side of the country, or even on the other side of the world? That’s where collaboration in the cloud comes in and, according to research house Gartner, it's on the rise.Gartner estimates that penetration of cloud email collaboration services (CECS) will stand at 10 percent by the end of 2014. By ...

"The future of storytelling lies in social and mobile," says journalist and academic, Julie Posetti Australia's "Twitter Queen". Posetti achieved notoriety as the subject of Australia's first threatened Twitter lawsuit, although no papers have been served to date.At this year's Digital Citizen's Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, Posetti highlighted 10 tips to building a community via social media while telling stories. The tips she highlights work for brands, individuals and journalists using Twitter, Facebook and other social media ...

TED started out as a group of bright minds meeting up every year in Monterey, California 25 years ago. The principle behind it was simple: "Ideas Worth Spreading". These days it’s an international phenomenon with conferences bearing the famous TED logo taking place all over the world. These conferences include the TED Global and TED X streams.The TEDx stream, while licensed by TED is independently organised.Soweto, Johannesburg will be hosting its second TEDx conference at the end of September. ...