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Online
Deleting your stuff is all part of the service
There may no be such a thing as a free lunch in real life, but it is different on the internet where companies are falling over themselves to give you free services such as photo hosting, video storage, email, word processing and spreadsheets. A common feature of these services is that what we do is increasingly being stored on the web. |
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Games
Don't get angry over murder in the cathedral
Another week, another public-relations cluster bomb for Sony. The company has been accused of "desecration" by the Church of England thanks to the appearance of Manchester Cathedral in the PlayStation 3 shooter Resistance: Fall of Man, and is facing possible legal action. |
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Software
Blurring the border between online and offline
One of the biggest drawbacks of web-based applications is that you can only use them when you are online -- and very often you aren't. But that could change. Google, Adobe and Microsoft are all working to make online applications available while you are offline, or vice versa. |
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New media
Collaboration won't make the sun orbit the Earth
It is not often that something makes me laugh so hard I cannot breathe, but a recent piece on "wikigroaning" did. It consists simply of a list of paired topics on Wikipedia: the game is just to guess which has the longer and more detailed entry and thus is more important to the nerds who write Wikipedia. |
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Hardware
Hot tips for keeping your PC cool
Everyone looks forward to summertime -- but computers hate it. That's because along with summertime comes a computer's worst enemy: heat. Too much heat can cause hard drives to fail prematurely and entire systems to become slower and less stable. |
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Online
China overtaking US for fast internet access
Almost 300-million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube. |
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Online
Collecting friends is the new philately
It is curious how the globalisation of people is happening much faster than the globalisation of goods. While trade talks to cut subsidies on products have been immobilised for years, the global expansion of relationships between people via social websites is probably the fastest growth area on the planet. |
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Online
Apple web browser now on a PC near you
Apple launched a version of its Safari web browser for Windows-based PCs on Monday, pitting it against Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. The free program is the latest move by Apple to expand its reach beyond its Macintosh computer while attracting converts to its products. |
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Tech news
US backs Microsoft against Google complaint
The top antitrust official at the United States Justice Department last month backed Microsoft by urging state prosecutors to reject a confidential complaint filed by Google, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Google accused Microsoft of designing its Vista operating system to discourage use of Google's desktop search program. |
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Tech news
Kenya pioneers 'mobile money' in African first
Eyeing his cellphone with a mixture of suspicion and amazement, Paul Kangethe reads and rereads the SMS he has just received. "I've never seen anything like this before," Kangethe says of the alert that instructs him to report to the nearest cellphone shop to retrieve money his brother-in-law sent him just moments ago. Kangethe is one of more than 65 000 registered users of M-Pesa, a mobile money-transfer system. |
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Online
Watchdog accuses Google of invading privacy of users
When it comes to snooping in cyberspace, internet giant Google is the online world's biggest brother, according to a new report. The California-based company, famed for its enlightened style of management, is painted in a less flattering light in the first attempt to rank internet companies on their respect for users' privacy. |
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Games
A Second Life for journalists
Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently entered a thriving virtual world called Second Life to be interviewed by Reuters bureau chief Adam Pasick. Somehow this doesn't seem as strange as it would have a few years ago. Pasick explained that Second Life has a real economy and real culture, and therefore real news. |
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Online
Bowie, Beastie Boys headline at Webby Awards
David Bowie spent less than a minute on stage, the Beastie Boys asked if anyone could fix one of their computers and Manchester United boasted they had given the world David Beckham. The somewhat surreal occasion was a gala ceremony in New York on Tuesday for the 11th annual Webby Awards, the "Oscars of the internet". |
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New media
'Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere
Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music start-up audiocafe.com, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs. |
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Online
Firefox vat vlam in Afrikaans
Already translated into more than 40 languages, the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser now sports an Afrikaans interface thanks to Translate.org.za, a non-profit organisation working to give local flavour to open-source software. The Afrikaans version was translated by one man and rigorously tested thereafter. |
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Hardware
Which laptop per child?
As the head of a project that wants to take hi-tech into the developing world, Nicholas Negroponte has had to get used to criticism. Over the past two years the One Laptop Per Child initiative, a scheme aimed at building low-cost computers for education in developing countries, has been attacked many times. |
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Mobile
 A road map to going mobile
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Going Mobile, the latest in the Hitchhiker series by South African communications expert Arthur Goldstuck, aims to help its readers choose a mobile device and -- more importantly -- how to get the most out of it. |
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Hardware
Microsoft to unveil coffee-table-shaped computer
Microsoft will unveil a coffee-table-shaped "surface computer" on Wednesday in a major step towards Bill Gates's view of a future where the mouse and keyboard are replaced by more natural interactions using voice, pen and touch. Microsoft said it will manufacture the machine itself and sell it initially to corporate customers. |
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New media
CNN to stop charging for online video service
CNN will give away access to an online video service that now costs $25 (about R177) a year, becoming the latest news organisation to revamp its revenue model on the web. Spokesperson Jennifer Martin said the change, effective July 1, reflects lower costs associated with delivering bandwidth-intensive video. |
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Games
Wii gets the magic gaming mix right
Computer-game makers and industry analysts agree that the Wii is trouncing rival video-game consoles due to a captivating blend of ease, fun, family, friends and affordability. Demand for Wii consoles has outpaced supply since they debuted in November last year. |
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