When news broke that Simon Cowell, a professional giver of opinion, and rumoured transatlantic music mogul had joined Twitter, it seemed like a match made in heaven. Bar the slight Spartacus moment at the end of the tweet, Cowell’s first was the usual Twitter fair, "It's official, I know it's taken a while. It's really me! We're live in 10 minutes. I'll keep you posted. Lots of love #iamsimon". Of course, Cowell is famous for his frankness and it was not ...

The Praekelt Foundation has been named the first South African winner of the Social Impact Category of the 2011 Mobile Marketing Awards for Innovation, Creativity and Leadership, held in Los Angeles. The foundation, which "builds open source, scalable mobile technologies and solutions to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in poverty" was honoured for its YoungAfricaLive project. The project, hosted on the Vodafone Live mobile web platform, is essentially a mobile community where people ...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has pulled in US$775-million in sales worldwide during its short five-day release period. This puts it in line to eclipse Call of Duty: Special Ops, which managed to rake in US$1-billion in sales. Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision was über-chuffed at the success of his shooter empire saying, “Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded US$6 billion worldwide, which makes Call of Duty one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world.” Comparisons paint a ...

In the wake of claims by FIFA president Sepp Blatter that there was no racism in football, Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand has taken to Twitter to express his dismay, resulting in a flood of tweets from the two. Blatter has faced worldwide condemnation and calls for his resignation following the comments. When CNN asked him if racism still existed on the pitch, Blatter denied it and said such incidents should simply be settled by a handshake at the end ...

The combination of online payments and social media has hit a turning point. Online payment giant, PayPal, has released a "Send Money" application on Facebook that allows friends to send each other money. "We are bringing the largest online payments company to the world's largest social network to make it even easier to send money to your friends and family directly from Facebook," said PayPal's senior product marketing manager JB Coutinho in a blog post. "Our new Send Money application ...

The success of Groupon paved the way for a number of clones to enter the group buying game, but not all of them have survived. South Africa's late entrant to the daily deals space, Zappon, has bitten the dust, joining a string of other small daily deal startups which found the group buying road was not paved with gold. The startup, owned by South African media company Avusa Media, joined various other Groupon-like deal sites in the country earlier this ...

Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA was introduced by the US House of representatives as a positive means of combating piracy but, noble as its intent may be, it could fundamentally change how we use the internet. The new bill effectively hands over the user's freedom of expression to the entertainment industry. If an IP address is seen as "engaging in, enabling or facilitating copyright infringement", its domain is blocked. The corporations who own media want to shut down sites where people ...

While some might question the logic behind Alan Knott Craig Junior's purchase of MXit, one can only stand up and applaud the astuteness of his first actions as the instant messaging giant's new Owner, CEO and all round Big Cheese! His first steps were simple, focus on what MXit's core product offering is and make sure it is the best at it. I liken this to the experience when you walk into McDonald's where, despite years of success around ...

It’s "all Android, all the time". That's what they’ll tell you. It's "totally blowing away the competition". According to Gartner, Google's pet project (which as we all know, doesn't generate any meaningful revenue) Android now commands 52.5% of the global smartphone market. Huh? Where are all these Android phones? On the face of it, the market share numbers make sense. You have a powerful operating system and ecosystem (second in number of apps only to Apple). You have numerous device makers, including ...

Visa, the world’s largest credit and debit card network, has unveiled a new product that allows people to access a prepaid account through their mobile phone. The product, which appears to be nameless, was developed in conjunction with Fundamo, a leading South African mobile money platform bought out by Visa for $110m earlier this year. The mobile banking solution is aimed specifically at emerging markets and, according to Visa, offers "unbanked and under-banked" people in those regions a "secure, ...