WATCH: dramatic video of Cape Town cash-in-transit heist emerges

Brace yourselves, because the 2018 FIFA World Cup is now firmly upon us, and social media. And it's set to remain this way for the next four weeks. To celebrate, why not get to know 10 of the world's most famous ball kickers up close and personal by stalking them on Twitter? If this sounds good to you, grab a pen, find your Twitter login details, and get ready to hit that follow button. Cristiano Ronaldo Formerly of Manchester United, the Real Madrid and Portugal striker will probably be one of the tournament's top scorers come the end of the group stage. But...

France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, and most recently Germany, have won the coveted FIFA World Cup trophy. They were all pretty great footballing teams, but what about their presence on social media? Before the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia kicks off later today, we take a look at how the 32 countries rank in terms of social media fans and followers across Instagram and Twitter. Let's begin with the latter. Twitter's likely the social network where chatter surrounding key moments on the pitch will develop organically, but the current frontrunner hasn't yet won a World Cup. Mexico is the most followed team as of...

Just a few days ago, the world witnessed pure bravery when a Malian national scaled four storeys to save a child dangling from a balcony. But even this feat has just been outdone... by a raccoon. Internet fame doesn't last long, especially when a fluffy, determined trash panda decides to scale one of St Paul, Minnesota's tallest buildings. Under the hashtag #Mprraccoon, users across the internet united to watch this furry little fella do the near impossible. And by impossible, we mean becoming even bigger news than Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's landmark Singapore summit. ...

Uber Lite is now a thing, but it's not a new offering from the ride-hailing service. Instead, it's a new app, keeping up with tech companies' recent trend of developing low bandwidth, low footprint apps for emerging markets. "Uber Lite is a simple version of the rider app that saves space, works on any network, and on any Android phone," said Shirish Andhare, the company's head of product for emerging markets, in an announcement. Uber Lite weighs in at around 5MB, notably slimmer than the 40.4MB required to install the traditional Android app. Visually, it sheds the default initial map overlay on...

There's some more good news this week for thirsty Cape Town. As of 11 June 2018, the city's total dam storage levels stood at 31.8%, marking an increase of 2% over the previous week. Overall dam levels have seen a 10.9% increase since 7 May. At the same point in 2017, the city had just 20.9% stored within its six largest dams. In 2016, that figure stood at 29.6%. So currently, Cape Town has a larger amount of water stored than it did at the same point in June 2016. Individual dams continue their positive trend, albeit see smaller gains this...

Say goodbye to Marvel's dominance of SA's box office charts in 2018, and usher in our new dinosaur overlords. Displacing Deadpool 2 from this past weekend's top spot (8 - 10 June) is the Chris Pratt-starring Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Although receiving a lukewarm response from critics, at least according to its prequel, the film has since made more than US$151-million globally. Ryan Reynolds is still fending off Breaking In from second spot, with Sherlock Gnomes climbing one spot to fourth place. Avengers: Infinity War is still the SA box office's biggest grosser, albeit in fifth. It has since made more than...

You just can't keep US President Donald Trump out of the meme world for too long. Well, at least him and German chancellor Angela Merkel. On Friday, Merkel's social media team published the image to Instagram, where it received more than 65 000 likes and 4700 comments. From there, it found its way onto Twitter, where users highlighted the indifferent expressions of the world leaders. The scene itself is straight out of a baroque painting. Angela Merkel's office has released this photo taken today at the G7, which tells you a lot about how things went. pic.twitter.com/IXX6K3ayys — David Mack (@davidmackau) June 9,...

It must suck if you've bought Bitcoin any time this year. The cryptocurrency, along with a slew of its competitors and peers, crashed in value this past weekend. This comes after a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea dubbed Coinrail was hacked. The hack only saw US$40-million in cryptocurrency lost -- around 30% of the exchange's value -- but the implications were far reaching. According to Coinmarketcap, the price of Bitcoin was hovering at the US$7400 mark late Saturday. By Monday morning, the price dropped to US$6700. Its market cap now stands at US$116-billion, but that itself is down from US$130-billion two days...

Dads can be tricky to buy gifts for. Golf balls, socks, hampers and CDs are grand. But, for something functional; something they will actually use and something to last longer than a hamper of biltong; think Solo. From New York to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, thanks to Gammatek, Solo is the go-to brand for cases and bags. For work and play, Solo bags are stylish, functional and packed with character. Produced with quality, durable materials, they have great features that will impress dad.  These include internal organizers and compartments for organizing documents; internal pockets for keeping iPads and tablet devices...

In a new update, Instagram will now let you include a story that you've been tagged in in your own Stories. According to the social network, this lets those "caught up in a soccer game" to relive and share moments. How nice. "When someone mentions you in their story, you receive a notification in your Direct message thread with that person — now, you’ll see an option to add that content to your own story," it adds. "Tap it to see that story as a sticker -- you can scale, rotate and position it and add creative tools like text or stickers...

Facebook today debuted its own game streaming portal dubbed Fb.gg, in a bit to compete with Microsoft's Mixer, Google's YouTube Gaming and Amazon's Twitch. The service is baked into the Facebook experience. You'll need to be logged in to begin streaming, but others' streams can be watched sans account. Beyond that, it pretty much does what every other video streaming service does: allow gamers to live stream a title of choice. At the moment, it seems Fortnite, Mobile Legends and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is among the top picks, appealing to the current battle royale and mobile gaming craze. For now, the experience is...

Businesses across South Africa have spent the past few weeks in a last minute scramble to finalise their compliance with the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the 25 May deadline. With that deadline now past, many of those companies will again turn their attention to South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPI). The good news is that any organisation that took its GDPR efforts seriously should be well on its way to PoPI compliance. Like GDPR, PoPI aims to give ordinary people more control over their personal data and ensure that companies are more transparent in...

We're just a few weeks away from the global phenomenon of watching men kick an inflatable bladder around a patch of grass, and cyber criminals have never been more excited. The FIFA World Cup, taking place in Russia this year beginning on 14 June, is an event that brings together billions of humans online. And taking advantage of these humans through online scams is an attractive proposition for some. According to security firm ESET, a number of scams have already been spotted in the wild. A majority of these dupes have taken the form of emails with documents attached, while others are...

The Burn Media Group, a media stable with publications that include Ventureburn and Memeburn, has broken away from M&C Saatchi Abel’s digital agency Creative Spark and has embarked upon a new “aggressive” growth curve, says Burn Media’s founder Matthew Buckland. Buckland, the former CEO and founder of Creative Spark, this week announced the conclusion of a deal with M&C Saatchi Abel and the formation of Burn Media Group — an independent digital media company. The deal with advertising company M&C Saatchi Abel was concluded on Monday (4 June). It follows Buckland’s exit in April from Creative Spark  — the company he founded in 2010 and which he subsequently sold...

Like movies and music, fashion is a cyclical internet culture phenomenon. As the online world influences it, fashion itself fuels sentiment online. And as more netizens focus on their physical attire on a daily basis thanks to the boom of image-heavy social media, trends are often made, or in this case, revived on the internet. The latest example is straight from the 1980s: fanny packs. And no, it doesn't seem to be an ironic Weird Al Yankovic style revival either. Google Trends data notes an uptick in search traffic for these waist-secured utilitarian satchels, spiking massively since the beginning of the year....