Apple and BlackBerry aren’t the only fruit-flavoured brands that can cause a stir with new hardware releases. The UK-developed Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized, bare-bones computer selling in two variations for US$25 and $35 respectively — slightly less than an iPad 2 plastic cover. After the Raspberry Pi’s pre-order

The ruling ANC wants a broad overhaul of policy and regulation in SA’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector to grow the industry and ensure universal access to broadband and other technologies. In a detailed overview of the sector, tabled on Monday

John Holdsworth is known for giving SA’s mobile operators a hard time. As former CEO of ECN Telecommunications (now Nashua ECN), he was the biggest proponent of and lobbyist for the lowering of the wholesale fees the operators charge each other to carry calls between their networks. But now Holdsworth has come

JSE-listed technology group Gijima has lost half of its desktop outsourcing project with Absa, with about 50% of a long-running desktop services contract to be “in-sourced” to the banking group. Absa is one Gijima’s biggest clients and the deal is worth about R200m/year top the IT group

Subscription-based news applications and pay walls are regarded by some people as a denial of the fundamentally open nature of the Internet. But is it really practical or in our best interests to assume everything online should be free? Free content carries no guarantee of quality whereas paid-for content implicitly does

Dave Brown, the booze, pill and testosterone-fuelled antihero of Rampart, is one of the filthiest cops we’ve ever seen on screen — thuggish like Russell Crowe’s Bud White in LA Confidential, more unhinged than Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant, and as shamelessly decadent as Denzel Washington in Training Day

Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung says its instant messaging service, ChatOn, is now available on Apple and BlackBerry devices. The application is already available for Samsung’s Bada operating system and for Google’s Android platform. Samsung SA MD Deon Liebenberg says ChatOn is now available

The Independent Communications Authority of SA’s (Icasa’s) proposals for licensing high-demand broadband spectrum are “fundamentally out of line with international best practice”, the GSM Association (GSMA) has warned in a submission to the authority. The GSMA is a powerful industry lobby group

The Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) has decided to postpone the licensing of “high-demand spectrum” in the coveted 800MHz and 2,6GHz radio frequency bands “until further notice” to ensure a forthcoming policy direction from communications minister Dina Pule is taken into

Sunny countries are often poor. It is a shame, then, that solar power is still quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper by the day, and is now cheap enough to be competitive with other forms of energy in places that are not attached to electricity grids. Since 1,6bn people are still in that unfortunate position