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

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

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

Craig Wilson joins Adam Oxford and Brett Haggard for a random episode all about the week’s weirdest tech news. Topics include Qualcomm’s being declared a monopoly in China, the Nvidia-powered Tango tablet, Facebook forcing Messenger use on iPhone/Android, the University of Johannesburg

Liron Segev joins Brett Haggard in the studio for a chat that focuses quite heavily on mobile. Topics discussed include Vodacom’s earnings, Microsoft’s decision to kill off Nokia’s Asha range, Microsoft’s quarterly results, the rumoured Apple iWatch, Windows 9, PlayStation 4

Newly licensed pay-television operator Siyaya TV, which hopes to offer consumers a low-cost bouquet using digital terrestrial television transmission, has reportedly secured a R1bn broadcast deal for the rights to broadcast Bafana Bafana football games. According to the City Press newspaper, the deal gives Siyaya the rights

Based on a relatively obscure crew of characters in the Marvel comic book universe and made for a reputed budget of US$170m, Guardians of the Galaxy qualifies as a brave bet in today’s world of blockbuster film-making. It’s an exuberant B-movie with A-scale production values; a goofy cosmic adventure that disarms cynicism through

Walk into a mobile retailer today and you’ll be greeted by a wall of phones, many of them black, almost all of them drab slabs of plastic with large touch screens. Before Steve Jobs got onto a stage in San Francisco seven years ago and unveiled Apple’s first iPhone, cellphones came in all sorts of nifty shapes. There were candy bars, sliders

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

There’s a revolution under way, and this one’s not being agitated by the working class, although they certainly have their part to play. It is being waged by banks, cellphone providers and entrepreneurs hoping to capitalise on a mobile commercial market that is estimated will be worth more than US$800bn by 2016 and have more than 400m users