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
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
When Roger Shawyer first unveiled his EmDrive thruster back around 2003, the scientific community laughed at him. They said it was impossible, that it was based on a flawed concept, and couldn’t work because it goes against the laws of conservation of momentum. But somehow, despite all of the reasons it shouldn’t work, it does. Scientists
Crowdfunding has come a long way in its short history. Today, it is even changing the way we consume. What was once a way to give a largely ready product a helping hand on its final push to market has become a means for consumers to get involved with something still on the drawing board, or simply to buy innovative new products before they’re
Rwanda has become the second country in sub-Saharan Africa, after Tanzania, to complete migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television. The nation switched off analogue broadcasts on Thursday night, while South Africa hasn’t even started commercial digital services. The New Times, a Rwandan daily newspaper, reported on Thursday that the
Have the UK police successfully broken anonymity on the Internet? They certainly seemed to imply as much when the National Crime Agency proudly announced last week that it had made 660 arrests after an operation to identify people viewing indecent images of children online. The announcement raises questions about just how anonymous it is possible
The pain, it seems, is not over for former Nokia workers as their new employer, Microsoft, prepares to cut its workforce by a massive 18 000. Microsoft has not announced where all of these cuts will come from, but 12 500 are expected to be from the newly acquired Nokia mobile business which added
Having been a child of the home computer boom of the early 1980s and then worked with computers for many years, I can’t help but sigh every time a new campaign to reduce piracy comes into effect. It’s the same now that the
