Browsing: World

There are more than 1 200 active satellites orbiting Earth right now, taking pictures, relaying communications, broadcasting locations, spying on you, and even housing humans. Thanks to a database compiled by the

More people across Africa have access to a cellphone network than they do to electricity, piped water or a health clinic, according to the latest Afrobarometer released on Wednesday. The survey, titled “Developing Africa’s Infrastructure: the Rough Road to Better Services”, also highlights enormous

While there is only one world power on the Internet, that situation will not last forever. The Internet’s underpinning technologies were mostly created in the US, the initial networks were based there and today the US hosts the majority of the most powerful Internet companies. Although minor battles

The excitement over the potentially transformative effects of the Internet in low-income countries is nowhere more evident than in East Africa — the last major populated region of the world to gain a wired connection to the Internet. Before 2009, there wasn’t a single fibre-optic cable connecting the region

This year saw the 43rd anniversary of e-mail. Compared to a human working life, e-mail has after more than four decades on the job now reached retirement age. Is it time for e-mail to step aside to allow us to embrace the alternative? Every minute in 2012 saw 168m e-mails sent around the world

Android updates don’t matter anymore — or at least that’s what many people think. Back-to-back-to-back Jelly Bean releases and a KitKat release seemed to only polish what already existed. When Google took the wraps off of “Android L” at Google I/O, though, it was clear that this release was different

Imagine launching a robotic spacecraft on a 10-year mission to land on a comet 600m kilometres from Earth knowing that you will not be able to make any physical repairs to the craft during the journey. This daunting engineering challenge has been the ultimate goal of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta

Kenya has become the third African country after Zambia and Tanzania to get the Facebook-led Internet.org application, giving Airtel customers in that country zero-rated access to a range of services, including Facebook, Wikipedia, Daily Nation, SuperSport and BBC News. Speaking at the opening keynote

Twenty years after the genocide, Rwanda wants to become Africa’s hi-tech hub. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren already have their own computers and nearly the entire population is due to have Internet access