Author: Editor

Brett Haggard gets together with Andy Hadfield and Steven Ambrose for a mobile money- focused episode. Topics discussed by the panel include Vodacom’s new R550 smartphone, the Internet.org app, impressions of

Anyone who reads the technology news can’t have failed to notice a certain preoccupation in the past couple of years on the part of developers to bring viewers close to the action of TV, films and computer games through virtual reality. Every other day, it seems, we hear of yet another allegedly ground-breaking solution in the quest for

Next Friday’s ConvergeSA conference, taking place at the Bytes Conference Centre in Midrand and for which TechCentral is media partner, will discuss the idea of zero-cost calling in South Africa. “Zero-cost calling will become a reality and is already available through international voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) on-net services such as Skype

Ask 10 people what they think about Africa’s rising cities and you get 10 different opinions. The only thing they will agree on is that traffic is awful. In truth, 52 cities with more than a million inhabitants are becoming a magnet for innovation, with echoes of the industrial revolution. Take a look at sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest number

Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) was one of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s grand gestures. Sweeping to power in 2007, he quickly set to fixing that country’s problems in education, health and productivity. Although it was clear that he only ever understood technology superficially, he nevertheless saw it as the answer to all of

Vodacom has taken the wraps off a new, low-cost smartphone that it hopes will propel adoption of smart devices and Internet use among consumers who haven’t been able to afford a smart device until now. The new Smart Kicka, which is the first Vodacom-branded device, has gone on sale at a prepaid retail price of R549

If the music industry is to be believed, music piracy is a huge problem. So far, however, very little has been done to stop it. But we are starting to get an idea of what motivates people to do it. If record labels want to survive, they should start looking at the growing body of evidence about why music lovers continue to refuse to pay. Although there is some scepticism

If press coverage is any measure, it appears electric vehicles (EVs) have finally arrived. Tesla’s Model S was named Automobile Magazine’s Car of the Year, the Nissan Leaf is topping the EV sales ranks and the industry is abuzz with anticipated sales impact of BMW’s super-light i3. Yet for all the hype, EVs remain more common in glossy

University engineering and commerce are among the many post-school study options closed to pupils from Ndwakazana Combined School in rural KwaZulu-Natal because they can only do maths literacy – not maths – in matric. The simple reason is that the pupils have no choice: their school does not offer maths. This is despite

Mxit chief product officer Vincent Maher has left the social network, where he spearheaded the transition from feature phones to smartphones, and has been named as chief innovation officer at Kagiso Media. Maher, who co-founded Motribe with Nic Haralambous – the business was later sold to Mxit – will look after the development