It’s been a pretty big week in tech: Microsoft bought Nokia for US$7.2-billion in a bid to increase its tiny slice of the global mobile market. Samsung released its Galaxy Gear smartwatch, officially starting a new age of wearable tech. And Yahoo!, the company that was the Google of yesteryear, released its new logo… it’s not great.
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TECH
Microsoft set to buy Nokia for €5.4 billion
This was the biggest one of the week, in the wake of the news of their CEO Steve Ballmer calling it quits and an ongoing attempt to becoming a “devices and services” company and so far not doing so well at it. Microsoft has made a massive step in the right direction by acquiring Nokia’s mobile unit for US$7.2-billion. Here is a nice infographic on what it got for all that cash.
The deal, which is set to close early next year, includes Nokia’s current CEO Stephen Elop returning to Microsoft. The rumour mill has obviously done the math and sets Elop up as a primary candidate to take over from Ballmer as Microsoft CEO, however both companies are saying squat about it. Looking to the future, Microsoft wants the deal to triple Windows Phone’s mobile marketshare by 2018, yeah… sure… good luck against Apple and Android on that.
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear is a smartwatch like no other
Yes it is here! the Galaxy Gear’s arrival is important because it could pave the way for a whole new product category.
But Samsung’s has its work cut out though. There already is some competition in the way of sports and fitness watches out there some are very jacked up. But the one to beat has yet to arrive, namely Apple’s iWatch. After all, the Cupertino-based giant which has been well underway hiring the best to make it the best.
The Galaxy Gear, works in conjunction with a smartphone, it can pick up notifications, control music, has a camera that can do movies, even has microphone and speakers to make calls with and yes it can even tell you the time.
Your heartbeat is your new password
This is just plain awesome! I have no doubt either the Samsung guys mentioned above or the Apple iWatch team will buy this company/concept because it’s great and needs to become a reality.
Elon Musk shows off Iron Man-style rocket design with gestures and 3D printing
Yeah so this is Elon showing off his new Iron Man toys. No seriously the guy talks about designing rockets like it’s a boring day job. His new toy is utilising a Leap Motion controller to model things in a 3D space. Video in the link.
INTERNET
Yahoo! finally unveils its new logo
After a month-long campaign of rebranding the search browser we used before Google came along is back with a vengeance and looking, well… meh.
Late Wednesday the new look was unleashed upon the web and it was done with style because it ‘ate its own dog food’ so to speak and did it via a Tumblr post, gotta love it. Anyway back to the point, Kathy Savitt, the Chief Marketing Officer at Yahoo was the one who gets the byline this time, it seems. Good to see not all credit goes to ex-Googler and now Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer for revitalizing Yahoo!.
Spoiler: the iconic exclamation mark stays.
Nestle wins the internet with Android KitKat tie-in site
It’s cool when marketing is done in a new clever way, and this was achieved in fine form by the Nestle team this week. The new Android 4.4 was unveiled and it is going to be called Kit Kat. Yes, really.
ENTERTAINMENT
Elysium is released in SA and seems to cater especially for it
This new cinematic gift from Neill Blomkamp is just jam-packed with quirks that only South Africans would get. Worth checking out though on the basis that it shows the likely progression of where wearable technology is going.
Ian McKellen will play Sherlock Holmes in a new movie
Elementary, my dear Frodo.
NICE FIND
I’ll just leave this here.
