YouTube Go turns YouTube into offline video portal

One of China’s most popular microblogging platforms, Sina Weibo, is set to introduce a new user policy which restricts free speech on the service and can be used to punish those who criticise the government. The policy, which is currently described as a ‘trial’ which will come into full effect on 28 May, has a lot of new requirements for the platform’s 300 million users. Among them is the stipulation that users cannot create or share content that harms the "unity" or "integrity of the nation", disrupts the stability of society, promotes rumour mongering or calls for illegal gatherings or...

With all the hype and drama surrounding the launch of personal finance app 22seven, it's hard to believe it's been in beta all this time. All that's about to change. That's right, the product that generated massive online buzz and was blocked, then embraced, by banks is finally opening up to the public. The company claims that in the three months since its beta launch, it's been "fixing bugs, getting feedback from users", and "gauging how much 22seven is helping people do more with their money". 22seven also claims the site people find tomorrow will include a couple of...

Some pretty impressive mobile innovations have come to the world's attention after Kenyan success. MPesa and Ushahidi come to mind immediately. Now a couple of organisations in the country want to use SMS to warn farmers about potential disasters. According to The Next Web, the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) thinks that some 7 500 coffee farmers in the Nairobi and Mount Kenya regions could be receiving SMSes from an automated warning system by the end of the year. The IICD has built the system in collaboration with the Progreso Foundation and Frontline SMS. Together the organisations will...

Tech’s going green. It has to. Hell, the world has to. The kind of action we’re seeing now with Facebook and Google’s data centres and Microsoft pledging to become Carbon neutral is just the beginning. In fact, the number of phones like the Samsung Replenish -- made from 82% recycled materials – is set to grow more than 10 times by 2017. UK-based tech analysis company Juniper Research, Juniper Research reckons that around 31-million ‘green’ handsets will ship this year. By 2017, it expects that number to reach 400-million. Approximately half of those, it says, will be smartphones. The...

So we all know Abraham Lincoln was a pretty badass president. He reunited a country torn apart by civil war, helped end slavery and invented Facebook. Yup, that’s right Mark “I’m worth more than Yahoo!” Zuckerberg, Abraham Lincoln patented the basic idea for your social network 146 years ago. Except he didn’t. The story appears to be the latest hoax to take the web by storm. The story originated as a claim made by reporter Nate St.Pierre after he did some digging around at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. While there, he claimed to have across the...

When First National Bank (FNB)’s GeoPayments service leaked earlier this week, we were fairly impressed. Now the banking giant has officially gone live with it we can give the full low-down. In an official press release, the company confirms that the new functionality uses location-based services. It claims that it can “locate other users, within close range, to make safe and secure cashless payments without the need of their bank account details”. Oh, it also turns out that you don’t have to be an FNB customer to use GeoPayments. That said, FNB customers will make and receive payment, while...

Starting a business baby, starting a business. It can be a wild ride. Sylvia Gruber co-Founder and CEO of Rubybox broke down her experiences with Rubybox into eight, bite-sized tips for burgeoning startups. Gruber is big on keeping things basic and personal, simplicity is key -- often the most difficult and the most important aspect to get right. Rubybox is a monthly beauty box subscription service that provides its subscribers with beauty product samples. The service allows for business-to-business opportunities by being a conduit for beauty product companies, to push out product samples into the market, for research and promotion....

For large numbers of people, watching TV still entails having a fairly large piece of furniture in their living room. In the next few years though, it could just mean having a smartphone. According to UK-based tech analysis company Juniper Research, around 240-million people are set to watch TV on their smart devices by 2014. The company reckons that this growth will largely be driven by a combination of both increased smartphone penetration and, critically, an increasing usage of live and on-demand services both on TVs and PCs. Smartphones mean that you can take live TV with you. That’s particularly...

Think First National Bank's Geo-payments is cool? Well it's not the first. Apparently MXit has been doing it for a while. According to the Stellenbosch-based startup, its staff has been using a "geo-fenced mobile payment" system since early April. The application is called Gust and a Beta version is expected to be ready in June. MXit earlier this year announced its mobile payment system, dubbed M2, which it rolled out to restaurants, allowing users to pay for meals using the platform. MXit’s payments system previously worked as an in-app purchase model. Users could only purchase digital content from the platform. People...