The 2012 US presidential election campaign broke many records: the most money ever raised (and spent), the most ads ever flighted, the most words ever written. And, in the back offices of the Obama campaign, chief technology officer Harper Reed and his team were busy making it the most
Browsing: Alistair Fairweather
It began in 2006 as a pretty stupid idea: a service that let you post public messages on the Internet but limited them to 140 characters. Seven years later, Twitter has burrowed deep into the fabric of parts of society. Its highly anticipated initial public offering provides a fascinating glimpse
There are few arenas more brutal and merciless than the cellphone market. In just five years, BlackBerry has gone from the world’s leading smartphone brand to a company teetering on the edge of collapse. The fact that BlackBerry is struggling is common knowledge
It has been a bad year for Western intelligence agencies. Being front-page news every week for months at a stretch is not ideal when your business is secrecy. But, whatever the supposed threat to national security, the recent orgy of revelations is a healthy release of toxins
Trust is the world’s most valuable intangible commodity. Economies, political systems, partnerships and marriages rise or fall based on it. All commerce – both online and offline – rests on it. And yet the US’s National Security Agency is actively and recklessly undermining
A slew of surveys have shown that many young people do not bother with wristwatches, using their cellphones to keep time instead. When Mintel, an industry analyst, surveyed Britons in 2010, it found 28% of 15 to 24-year-olds had no use for a wristwatch. Another survey, by YouGov, found that
Has the country’s foremost value-destroying monopolist finally seen the error of its ways? On the surface, that seems to be the case. In mid-July, Telkom meekly agreed to pay a R200m fine for anticompetitive abuses committed between 2005 and 2007, and to split its wholesale and retail businesses. TechCentral reported
Apple has hit a plateau. Its quarterly earnings results revealed flat revenues, falling iPad sales and markedly lower profits. But the company is not doomed to collapse, despite what some of the more excitable pundits are claiming. Apple is clearly going through a rough
On 18 July, Microsoft announced yearly profits of nearly US$22bn. Its shares immediately plunged by more than 11% and have yet to recover. What has made investors so nervous? Part of the problem is around expectations. Investment analysts had been expecting an additional $1,35bn in profit
Human beings can be exasperating creatures. We go from amazement to bored entitlement so quickly that even rapidly evolving technology is soon passé. Geosynchronous satellites? Ho hum. Smartphones? Yawn. So it takes something quite special to remind us of the wonders of technology, and Google Loon