BurnCast • 9 Oct 2015

Weekly Round Up #38: Microsoft event, Reddit’s Upvoted, Impact Investing and Samsung Note 5 prices

Welcome to Weekly Roundup, our podcast discussing the latest tech trends, innovation and news from the last few days.

This week on BurnCast, Stuart Thomas, our charismatic host, was away at the Tech4Africa event, and so hosting this week’s round up is Gearburn Editor Andy Walker, joining him is Jacques Coetzee, Graham van de Made and the new guy, Nick Thomson, the Sales Manager.

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The team discusses the Microsoft event, Reddit’s new site, Upvoted, Impact Investing and Samsung Note 5 Vodacom prices.

Earlier this week, Microsoft, the Redmond based tech company, had its event in which it launched some exciting gadgets. Though the team is excited about the Lumia smartphones that will run Windows 10 and the Microsoft Surface Book, it is concerned about the price of the Surface Book. The bigger debate which the team gets into is whether Microsoft is beginning to move away from ‘midrange’ market and going for the Apple market.

Microsoft also launched the Holo lens developer kit and it is really expensive.

The year 2015, bar the Windows 10 launch, has been a good year for Microsoft, is this the turning point for the company? The team debates.

Reddit has always had a loyal following, so loyal in fact that the users are not really opened to change on how the site works. Upvoted, Reddit’s new site, is its attempt to try out new things without facing backlash from the loyal users that exist in Reddit. The site appears a BuzzFeed-ish site, offering long, short and quirky stories.

Already Reddit is claiming that they have a lot of subscribers and are doing well. The team debates the future of Upvoted, whether it has one and what void is it feeling in the publishing space.

Unlike Silicon Valley where companies raise million and even billions, in Africa the funding is never that high. Even with this, Impact Investing appears to be on the raise. Jacques talks latest trends in Impact Investing and the dangers of the fact that a majority of it is not coming from Africa.

Vodacom released its Samsung Note 5 prices and the device will cost consumers R14 579. The team discusses the price and whether anyone should be paying that much money for it.