On Friday, Nest Labs – which was acquired by Google in January for US$3,2bn – said it was buying Dropcam, a San Francisco-based company specialising in home-monitoring cameras for US$555m. Things are hotting up in the smart home market and consumers may soon be exposed to hundreds of new hardware devices and
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Microsoft on Wednesday launched a television white-spaces spectrum pilot in Limpopo, using unused portions of radio frequency spectrum reserved for broadcasting to deliver Internet access. It hopes the project will encourage further deployments throughout Africa. The pilot follows the launch of similar
Last week, Vodafone, the world’s second largest mobile operator, made startling revelations about secret wiretaps that allow government agencies to listen into and record live telephone conversations. These revelations come a year after American whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of US and UK
Spare a thought for Google. In the wake of a ruling by the European court of justice, the Internet search giant has to set up extensive new machinery to deal with requests to take down embarrassing material. It all began when a Spanish man, Mario Costeja González, tried to force the website of the newspaper
Consumer electronics companies holding out for a “killer application” to drive the sale of smart watches are likely to be disappointed. That’s the view of Jonas Olsson, who heads the experience and design team for mobile accessories at Sony, where he focuses on wearable computing
Someone may be reading all your e-mail. At both security agencies and cybercrime enterprises, thousands of geeks are busily sifting through e-mails that they have intercepted. This is happening every second of every day, around the world. Of course it’s highly unlikely that anyone at America’s National
SpectraLink Wireless, with help from Facebook and Microsoft, has rolled out broadband coverage using television white spaces (TVWS) across campuses at All Nations University College and Koforidua Polytechnic in Koforidua, Ghana. The spectrum being used has been
It appears that one of world’s most popular music subscription services, Spotify, is getting ready to launch in South Africa, and possibly other markets in Africa, in the coming months. The Swedish company has appointed Oscar Sehlberg Westergård to head up the region and sources say the firm, which already offers its services in 56 countries, is
The quaint “village” of Parkhurst is one of my favourite weekend spots and I often visit its pubs and eateries with the missus. So, as the resident of a neighbouring suburb, news that Parkhurst is planning to roll out fibre broadband to all homes and businesses piqued my interest. What was of particular interest was
Online video behemoth YouTube, owned by Google, is said to have reached a deal to buy Twitch, a company that streams video of people playing videogames, for more than US$1bn. But why? According to a report by Variety, in which it quotes unnamed sources close to the deal, the purchase will be an “all-cash offer” and will be announced