The under-resourced and often ineffective Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has a reputation for lacking teeth when it comes to enforcing order in the telecommunications sector it regulates. For example, there’s still no clear outcome in the case of the alleged unlawful use by wireless Internet
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For a company with a billion customers, Facebook can be quite stealthy. Its latest product, Facebook Home, could convert tens of millions of Android-powered phones into Facebook portals constantly connected to its services simply by encouraging users to install a piece of software. By doing so, Facebook has wheeled a
Getting to grips with mobile interfaces, and serving targeted advertising using them, is key if Facebook is to make nervous shareholders happy. Its latest effort, Facebook Home, is built on top of Google’s Android operating system, a move both fitting and cheeky given Google makes its money in the same way as Facebook
By creating its own interface for Android phones, Facebook is taking the fight to its arch enemy, Google, ironically using search giant’s own cellphone operating system, Android, to do it.
Called Facebook Home, the software is a skin over Android that displays information such as a user’s Facebook feed, along with Facebook applications and messaging
Telkom is a shadow of the company it once was. As little as 10 years ago, it thoroughly dominated SA’s telecommunications landscape. Today, it’s not even among the top 40 companies listed on the JSE. Its market value has dwindled to such as extent that, at R7,8bn, it’s worth less than 5% of Vodacom, in which it once
When TopTV announced it was planning a fresh bid to screen adult content, a number of the self-appointed guardians of South Africa’s moral fibre rushed to our aid. The usual suspects (African Christian Action, the Family Policy Institute) spoke of the “flood of filth” that would destroy our families, corrupt our children
Samsung’s new top-end smartphone, the Android-powered Galaxy S4, has set the benchmark that other manufacturers, especially Asian rivals such as Sony, HTC and Huawei, are going to have to beat in 2013. The S4, launched at a no-expense-spared event in New York two weeks ago, packs the sort of technology into its
In a country where textbooks are routinely not delivered to thousands of schools, public hospitals are struggling to keep running and millions live in poverty, information and communications technology (ICT) might not seem like a priority. But the department of communications, which oversees ICT, is doing
As the farce called the South African Broadcasting Corporation plumbed new depths this week, a story related by Ivor Wilkins and Hans Strydom in their must-read book about the Broederbond, The Super-Afrikaners, became more instructive. Having won
The Democratic Alliance reiterates its call for President Zuma to fire communications minister Dina Pule without any further delay. The latest revelations in the Sunday Times this weekend that Pule’s boyfriend, Phosane Mngqibisa, had been able to secure top jobs for friends and relatives at the Post Office, Sentech, the Universal Service & Access Agency of