For many technophiles, 2013 was a slightly disappointing year. Sure, there were one or two groundbreaking launches (such as Google Glass), but for the most part it was a year of consolidation rather than raw innovation. This year is likely to be more exciting as several waves of long-awaited
Browsing: Google
Former South African president Nelson Mandela, who passed away earlier this month, is the top trending South African search term on Google in 2013, the search engine giant announced on Tuesday as part of its annual Zeitgeist rankings. The court appearance of sportsman Oscar Pistorius and
The horror truck accident on Fields Hill near Pinetown in Durban, posted by eNews Channel Africa, was the video South Africans watched the most on YouTube in 2013, Google, which owns the video platform, said on Wednesday. Globally, the world watched the The Fox more than 265m times
Eight leading American technology companies have joined forces to demand changes be made to US surveillance laws, calling for current laws and practices to be reformed in light of revelations of mass surveillance of Internet users’ activities by the National Security Agency. In a letter
It emerged this week, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, that Snapchat, a Californian start-up that develops a smartphone app of the same name popular among teens, recently spurned a US$3bn-plus all-cash offer from Facebook to buy it out. The offer value was at least three times the already
Nestlé South Africa has come up with the world’s first 3D-printed chocolate exhibition. Chocnology, currently on show at the Museum of African Design in Johannesburg, is being held in conjunction with Google, which recently launched Android “KitKat”, version 4.4 of its operating system for
Zero. Zip. Nada. That’s how much interference a television white-spaces trial in Cape Town by Google and a number of technology partners has caused since it kicked off in March. News of the success of the project, which involved providing wireless Internet access to 10 schools using
South Africans now have access to hundreds of thousands of books on Google’s Play store including bestsellers and classics from hundreds of publishers. Santiago de la Mora, regional director of print product partnerships at Google, says that with the launch of e-books, Google Play will
Microsoft is following US rival Google by launching a South African Web portal that offers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) access to free Web domains, hosting and other services. The Microsoft offering, called Biz4Afrika, offers a range of free
Hidden in the debacle that was BlackBerry’s first-round aborted attempt at launching its BlackBerry Messenger chat service onto Android and Apple phones, is a lesson that shows how Android is ultimately doomed unless Google takes drastic action. The highly publicised “porting” last month