Browsing: Google

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

South Africa could become one of the fastest-growing renewable energy markets in the world, according to a recent study. This is not bad for a country that in 2011 had almost no renewable projects on the table and was the 12th highest carbon-emitting nation in the world

BlackBerry appears to have scored a hit among Android and iPhone users with its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) application. According to the company, the long-delayed app has been downloaded more than 10m times in just 24 hours after release on the two platforms

With the release of Windows 8.1 this week, Microsoft did an about-turn and brought back the Windows “Start” button, found on Windows computers for 17 years until the company killed it off in 2012 in Windows 8. The Start button has a storied history, having first appeared