We need to fix energy. That much is obvious. Fossil fuels are slowly choking the planet, nuclear is falling out of favour and although the alternatives are getting more efficient, the scope for improvement is massive. One way to get people innovating is to give them an incentive. About US$4-million sounds good. The Zayed Future Energy Prize is offering exactly that amount of money for companies, individuals, organisations and high schools that think they can change energy for the better. Held ...

Royal Dutch Shell is frequently blamed for turning the Niger Delta into the conflict-ridden ecological disaster it is today. Its apparent solution: the Live With it App. Actually, it turns out the video is part of Friends of the Earth Netherlands' latest campaign against the oil giant. The campaign, called Worse than Bad, aims to highlight the devastation that drilling for oil has caused in the region. Worse than Bad claims that over the last 50 years "Shell has helped ...

In another example of the censorship that lead to the country being declared the biggest enemy of internet freedom, the Iranian government is reportedly banning access to international email providers like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. According to AFP, the Iranian telecommunications agency has ordered that banks, insurance firms and telephone operators in the country switch over to email providers with .ir domains, and cease contacting clients who are using international email providers. If people want to communicate with these ...

So just how much is a stock image site worth? Well US$115-million is apparently a reasonable enough assumption. That’s the maximum value the US-based site Shutterstock is looking to get out in its Initial Public Offering (IPO), after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today. In its filing it said the IPO would be managed by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities and Jefferies. At present, it is unclear how many shares will be put up for sale ...

I've been advocating a stronger approach to privacy for some time now. My biggest concern is that we share so much private information using social media, that identity theft and other security issues are only just beginning to become apparent. Aside from this, we are caught between the need to take advantage of the social networks that the majority of our peers share and simply giving in to the terms and conditions that come as part and parcel of these ...

Go to most boardrooms today and you’ll see less and less people with laptops and more people using tablets and smartphones. As Android and iOS have firmly cemented themselves into the on-the-move computing via tablets and smartphones, Microsoft is yet to make its cautious leap into the fray. While Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system still dominates in laptop sales, the truth is that more people are looking to tablets for running around. Enter Windows 8. Microsoft has already partnered with Nokia to introduce ...

Zando has hit the African continent. The ecommerce outfit has been building a presence in South Africa for the last three months. The local stores in the country, like the Naspers-owned Kalahari and the newly relaunched Takealot are about to get some serious competition. Zando is an online shoe and fashion retail outlet that apes the model pioneered by US-based company Zappos and it's been making serious waves with a massive advertising campaign in print, online, and radio. ...

Gearburn’s Ronan Steyn got a chance to exchange some candid words with Max Payne: the star of the hotly anticipated Rockstar Studios’ game. Gearburn: So Max, thanks for taking time to chat to us today. Now we all know the old Max Payne, but tell us a bit about the new you. Max Payne: Like a bad soap’s storyline, mine keeps going. I had to leave New York City after Mona died, and Sao Paulo seemed as bad a place as any.

German-based cloning giant Rocket Internet is set to open up an Amazon-style ecommerce site in Nigeria. The company made its first big forays onto the continent with a number of properties in South Africa. These include a stake in Groupon, shoe and clothing site Zando, and make up testing service Glossybox. Nigerian tech site Techloy claims a reliable source confirmed that the new ecommerce property would sell books, DVDs and electronics along the Amazon model. This is contrary to a ...

Wow. Just wow. There's nothing quite like a view of our humble little planet taken from space to give you a sense of perspective. You can't get much clearer perspective than this stunning 121 Megapixel shot of the Earth taken by a Russian weather satellite. The image, which is the clearest shot of the planet to date, was taken with a single shot, unlike NASA's updated 'Blue Marble' image which is a composite of multiple images. According to Mashable, the ...