In an unassuming house on a golf estate in Centurion, south of Pretoria, nearly 30 Dell desktop computers run 24 hours a day in a makeshift server room. The machines are crawling Web feeds of breaking news along with all of the text of the US Library of Congress. This is the home of technology
Browsing: Google
Some would look at Google’s recent PR flub over privacy policies and settings as a bit of a fiasco. Microsoft, of course, sees it as an opportunity. This week, the software company is placing a series of advertisements in newspapers across the US to remind consumers that it
You could almost feel sorry for Google’s management team lately. Their every move draws stinging criticism from the media, regulators and customers. The latest kerfuffle? Google is changing its privacy policies on 1 March. Now, website privacy policies are generally like Ayn Rand novels and the Government Gazette
Looking around SA, it’s hard to believe BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) is in trouble. The BlackBerry remains South Africans’ smartphone of choice but in developed markets consumers are shunning it in favour of alternatives. The resignations this week of long-serving
Mobile operators need to find ways of boosting revenues and sustaining or growing profits by selling applications or other value-added products and services that can make up for the growing deficit between profit margins on data and those from traditional voice calls. This is the view of Fernando Usera
It seems such an obvious truth now: the Internet can be catalyst for political and social change. But until the Arab Spring of 2011 few people fully realised or believed quite how powerful it could be. Now the US government, accustomed to celebrating the democratising power of the Internet, is getting a taste of
Google has launched a new initiative to get SA small and medium-sized businesses online. Called Woza Online
Online social networking is “broken”, Google+ is Google’s attempt to fix this, and the service will change fundamentally all of the Internet giant’s products, from search to YouTube. These are the key messages to come out of a recent Q&A session between TechCentral and Google+ chief of staff Matt Waddell
Google’s sub-Saharan Africa office has reacted with dismay to allegations of fraud by its Kenyan operations, vowing to get to the bottom of the matter. The Mail & Guardian reported on Friday that Kenya’s largest mobile business directory Mocality, which has more than 170 000 listings and helps to
Google lost its status as the darling of the Internet earlier this week following an uproar over changes to its search results. Now the search engine and online advertising giant faces a fresh PR disaster after Kenyan mobile start-up Mocality, on Friday, accused