The future of Yahoo! Inc it seems remains uncertain. China's Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank are in talks with private equity firms about making an unsolicited bid for Yahoo!, reports Bloomberg. The bid would be for all the shares of California-based Yahoo!, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Yahoo! has been through a tumultuous journey, moving from one rumour to another, since the axing of colourful of chief executive Carol Bartz in September. The company has been looking to ...

A smack down has been laid on BlackBerry from the mighty Google and comes in the form of total Gmail app removal from the Blackberry store. From November 22, Google will no longer be supporting its Gmail app for BlackBerry. If it is already installed, the app will continue to work. Google said that it has stopped development in order to concentrate on the mobile browsing experience. BlackBerry users who want to access Gmail will have to go through the web browser ...

Google has announced new research findings detailing smartphone usage in South Africa. The findings reveal that South Africans are opting for smart devices -- 15% of South Africans now have smartphones. Half of the new smartphone users, though, have only been using a smartphone for the past 12 months. The survey found these users consider their smartphones to be as important as their purses and keys, with 83% of mobile subscribers not wanting to leave home without their smartphones. Google's findings ...

With a single leaked email, Adobe effectively announced the end of Flash for mobile. The email, intended for Adobe's partners, details the demise of one of the company's flagship products. The following email comes courtesy of ZDnet. Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or ...

After months of campaigning, activists have cause to celebrate following Facebook's decision to finally relent to calls for pages celebrating rape culture to be shut down, reports the BBC. These pages, with names such as "You know she's playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alley," were not a new phenomenon. Campaigns and petitions to get them removed, however, only began in earnest in August of this year. Despite the widespread support these campaigns received, Facebook was ...

New CEO Alan Knott-Craig is ringing the changes at MXit, a key emerging market mobile social network. Recently it was announced the company's restructure would mean more focus, innovation and job losses. Knott-Craig bought MXit a few months ago for an undisclosed sum from founder Herman Heunis and emerging markets internet giant Naspers. The mobile youth messaging service operates in 128 countries. It is represented in international markets that include Malaysia, Kenya, India, Indonesia, United Kingdom, United States, ...

I recently watched a documentary on Steve Jobs called "One Last Thing". It was well done, mixing a fair bit of the good, the bad, and the ugly about the life of the man. There was also a lot of praise for the "marketing genius" of Steve Jobs. Then it struck me: If Steve Jobs were starting out today in Silicon Valley, he would have trouble getting funding because he's a "marketeer" -- not an engineer. Venture capitalists(VC) generally won't fund startups ...

The Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 makes me feel like an idiot for loving Apple. For years I defended the iPhone, calling it the next coming of mobile phones and now, out of the blue, the Note has knocked me flat on my back. It’s the biggest, brightest and fastest smartphone currently available and Samsung is now the deserving wearer of the mobile crown. Samsung should also be congratulated for bringing the stylus back into the 21st century with an ambitious new ...

Deep Fried Man is a well-known local comedian. He tells his story about how he used Twitter to get some customer satisfaction. This is the story of my battle to use social media to solve the problems I had with my internet contract. You could call it a David and Goliath story. Except in this version, Goliath is just mildly bruised rather than slain, and David escapes (largely) unscathed to fight another day. It was, at least, a partial victory. It ...

The latest release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 worldwide makes it the latest in a series of million selling titles to hit the current generation of consoles and computers. While Black Ops may have gathered record sales of its own, Modern Warfare 3 has already shattered pre-order sales, and currently sits at a healthy 6.5-million orders. Activision, publishers of the Modern Warfare series have already gone on record to say that the pre-orders are its best yet. The US has ...