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
Let’s make a mobile OS that will rival Apple’s iOS, and let’s give it away for free. Clever thinking by Google, at the time. As of early 2013, Google’s Android operating system has come to dominate smartphones worldwide, with Samsung taking the lion’s share of this dominance. The irony is
News last week that the Competition Commission is in early-stage talks with Telkom with a view to possibly reaching a settlement ahead of the tribunal hearings should be welcomed if the outcome benefits consumers. The tribunal hearings relate to a broad complaint brought by industry players against
