Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad on 27 January 2010, which happened to be the day my mother turned 88. Back in 1922, the year she was born, sales of the Model T Ford had begun slowing down after it had dominated the market for more than 13 years. Some analysts of the time suggested the plateauing of sales meant the automobile was a passing fad, and the cheaper and more familiar horse-drawn carriage would make a comeback, restoring the transport ...

Save the planet, have infinite battery life, and look good while you're at it. Samsung has produced a 10” netbook with a big ol’ solar panel on the back to let you work and work and work and work. It’s got “green” written all over the promotional flyers, and “green” written into every line of code of the Eco Mode app that lets you be really rather green. Getting back down to earth, it’s a US$400 netbook with a really, ...

CNN International, one of the world's largest news organisations has released an interactive visualisation tracking Twitter traffic around the 17th UN World Climate Summit, being held in South Africa. The visualisation takes the shape of a manipulatable globe, and features trees sprouting from it, each representing a different point of discussion at the conference being tweeted on. The so called "Ecosphere" will also be projected in the form of a hologram at the actual conference, giving delegates an insight “in ...

Fresh off accusing Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard of being an "embarrassment", the cantankerous Julian Assange has -- on separate occasions -- launched attacks against the UK press and railed against questions about his status as a journalist. After accepting a Walkley Award for journalism (Australia’s version of the Pulitzer) on behalf of Wikileaks, Assange has yet again faced questions about whether or not he is a journalist. Speaking via Skype to the News World Conference in Hong Kong, where ...

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and indeed that could perfectly describe Africa where it comes to innovation, particularly on mobile. Utility vs Coolness In a great talk at TEDxVienna Alexander Oswald, Head of Marketing at Nokia, tells the story of how he and his family visited Kenya and were immensely shocked at just how much people in Kenya were able to accomplish via mobile phones. From sending and receiving money, to banking and paying for utilities & ...

Big and clunky, awesome and funky - Skyrim poses a bit of a conundrum. Its sprawling size affords unparalleled immersion, but the game is hampered by performance and user interface issues. Its features definitely make it worth your time and money, but the mountainous road will be full of bumps along the way. Feature Length Skyrim is packed with features, some adapted or improved from the previous Elder Scrolls games, others completely new. Here’s a quick run-through of the most exciting ...

Fresh on the heels of a Thanksgiving commercial that bored audiences, Google has released another Google+ television commercial. But have they hit the mark this time or is it another miss? The ad encompasses everything that is Google, it's simple, slick, and presents the social network's features in a somewhat humorous manner. The previous ad was built on nostalgia and people's need to connect and share with the right people. This new ad looks at the evolution of social connections using ...

If there’s one thing Google’s never failed at, it’s search. Googling has, after all become synonymous with performing a web search. As such, it’s not all that surprising that it's something of an authority on the subject. In celebration of this, Google has released a video chronicling the evolution of its online search products. According to the official blog post the video is posted in, it highlights "some of the most important milestones from the past decade—and a taste of ...

Fresh whispers of a date for Facebook’s long-awaited initial public offering have emerged. According to the Wall Street Journal, the IPO could come as early as the first half of 2012. This despite Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently saying he was in no hurry to take the social networking giant public. According to the Journal, Facebook hopes to raise around $10-billion in the IPO which would see it valued somewhere around the US$100-billion mark. That is around twice the current ...

The tech industry is scratching its collective head about a new acquisition by Twitter of a startup company that develops security software for Android smartphones. Whisper Systems, founded by the larger-than-life Moxie Marlinspike, a security researcher, cryptographics specialist and manic maritime enthusiast. The fit seems strange as Whisper focuses on on-device security software for Android phones – although Twitter may be looking for brains, not products, as it has taken some stick for the lack of security on its globe-spanning microblogging ...