S A T E C H H E A D L I N E S New faces for ICASA The regulator will be filled with new faces over the next 12 months, which provides government the chance to bring a firmer hand to communication regulation. Over the weekend, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications head, Ismail Vadi, distributed an advert for the four councillors expected to leave the regulator this year. The position of chairman, currently held by Paris Mashile, is among the four positions up for grabs. Read More ICT gets some recognition While Gauteng's ICT projects received little mention in the recent state of the province address, the Department of Economic Development has revealed ICT as one of its priority sectors. Read More Pay-TV competition begins Consumers hoping to see new TV choices will be pleased that pay-TV newcomers, On Digital Media (ODM) and Super5Media, have left the courts behind. ITWeb can exclusively report that a second application by ODM, to have Super5Media's licence reviewed, has been canned. Read More No to SA porn channel! Child rights and faith organisations have vehemently opposed MultiChoice's announcement that it was researching the viability of a pornography channel.
"In the last few months, MultiChoice has been inundated with requests to provide adult content on DStv," said MultiChoice general manager of corporate affairs, Jackie Rakitla.
She noted yesterday that MultiChoice was not launching a pornography channel, but was responding to requests by looking into it.Read More I N T E R N E T How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. The decisions made at the weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting will wind up affecting the results you get when you use Google’s search engine to look for anything — “Samsung SF-755p printer,” “Ed Hardy MySpace layouts,” or maybe even “capital Burkina Faso,” which just happens to share its name with this conference room. Udi Manber, Google’s head of search since 2006, leads the proceedings. One by one, potential modifications are introduced, along with the results of months of testing in various countries and multiple languages. A screen displays side-by-side results of sample queries before and after the change. Following one example — a search for “guitar center wah-wah” — Manber cries out, “I did that search!”Read More Six Labs features now standard for Gmail users Google has released six technologies tested in its Gmail Labs for use in the mainstream product, including a forgotten attachment detector, previews of YouTube videos, and an autoresponder to send automatic replies while on vacation. The search company uses Gmail Labs to test the popularity and utility of new technologies, but so far it's been rare that labs features such as Gmail tasks "graduate" into Gmail proper. Google has put 60 features through public testing at Gmail Labs, but on Wednesday picked some winners and losers. Built into Gmail for all users now are the following, according to a blog post by Google programmer Mark Knichel: Read More Yahoo! and Twitter strike content-sharing deal Yahoo! and the micro-blogging site Twitter have struck a content-sharing deal, they announced Wednesday -- a plan that will share real-time tweets with the 600 million users in Yahoo's global network. The partnership will let people access their Twitter feeds on Yahoo! properties including their home pages, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports and others -- making it easier to tweet or check on the people they follow. Users will be able to update their Twitter status from Yahoo! sites and share content from Yahoo! in their Twitter stream. Yahoo! Search also will be including real-time Twitter updates.Read More Italy convicts Google execs over uploaded video A judge in Milan found three Google executives guilty Wednesday of violating Italy's privacy code over a video that was uploaded on the search giant's video platform, the company said.Read More 10 billionth song downloaded from Apple's iTunes The 10 billionth song has been downloaded from Apple's iTunes, seven years after the launch of the online store which provided a lifeline to the struggling music industry.Read More Get ready to pay for online TV In the near future, TV is going to be available anywhere, on any device, at any time. Just don't expect it to be free.Read More China Widens Net Censorship; Google Exile Looms The latest browser market share report, Net Applications, quoted Internet Explorer 8 as the most-used browser in the world with 25.6 per cent of market share across all OS’s on a worldwide-weighted usage share basis. Furthermore, Internet Explorer 8 was also classified as the most popular browser on Windows. Read More Bing wows crowd with live-video maps Microsoft Corp. on Thursday unveiled updates to its Bing search engine - and they seemed to wow the crowds here at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California.First, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, architect of Bing Maps, demonstrated a live-video add-in to to the search engine's mapping feature. He zoomed into 3-dimensional images of streets in Seattle, Washington, and showed off a feature that integrates live video feeds into those images. Microsoft says this might be useful, for instance, if you wanted to see how long a line outside a restaurant was on Valentine's Day. Check out a video demo here. It's pretty impressive. Read More B L O G G I N G & S O C I A L M E D I A Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search Google has announced that it has added a new content source to its real-time search feature: Facebook Pages. Google launched real-time search in December, providing a real-time feed of information from Yahoo Answers, Twitter, blogs, news websites, and other sources for hot or trending search results.Read More 7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement Have you ever been ‘talked at’ instead of had someone ‘talk with’ you in a real life conversation? It doesn’t feel good to have someone talk AT you. It leaves you feeling like you might as well not have been there at all. Blogs can be like that and in this post we explore the power of asking questions on your blog and I share 7 types of questions you can ask to increase reader engagement. Read More The Facebook Imperative Why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social. Read More Can Twitter offer ads without driving away customers? Twitter could be getting ready to launch an ad platform in two to three weeks, according to reports. It will need to strike a delicate balance, delivering users' attention to advertisers without driving the users away. Read More Facebook Secures Patent for News Feed A new patent awarded to Facebook this week could have some big implications for the entire social media industry. The world’s largest social network now own the patent for the news feed. Read More B U S I N E S S T E C H In your pocket - and in your face TEN years ago it wouldn't have made sense. Why would cellular network operators end up competing with enterprise software vendors and service providers? The fact that exactly this type of competition is under way is surprising to some, even in today's world. Cellular networks are increasingly utilitarian in mature markets, after all. But the slicker players have realised that their role could be more diverse, and the returns experienced in 2009 have shown that they may not have very exciting futures unless they find new revenue streams. Read More
Smartphones dominate corporate space The Mobile Corporation in South Africa 2010 report reveals that 75% of South African companies have deployed smartphones within their organisations, compared to almost none two years ago. This is a surprise finding from a new research study released yesterday, Thursday, 25 February 2010, by World Wide Worx. Read More O N L I N E M A R K E T I N G & S E O Sometimes Social Media Does Trump Email There has been much debate over whether social media is supplanting email marketing as a way for companies to reach out to customers. Any number of studies can be cited to support either argument - an argument in which both the Wall Street Journal and the Email Experience Council have weighed in on.Read More The New Advertising Age Meet Omar Hamoui, the entrepreneur who channeled innovation and frustration to build a mobile advertising network Google couldn't live without. Read more 3 Steps for Optimizing Content for Long Tail Keywords One of the most pivotal aspects of driving large volumes of search traffic in most verticals is effectively targeting long tail keywords. While ranking for competitive phrases and developing link authority are certainly crucial aspects of SEO, much of ranking on long tail keywords is properly targeting and optimizing for them. A while ago Aaron made the following image as a conceptual example of how the relevancy algorithms may differ for different types of keywords:Read More S O F T W A R E Beautify your Ubuntu desktop using the software center There is nothing wrong with wanting to spruce up your computing environment. Sure there are those who live and breathe more than comfortably in a console environment but if you function in a GUI then appearances can matter and if it does there are more than enough options for you to do so in Ubuntu. In fact any Linux desktop can be beautified in this or a similar fashion. I have found two important programs for you to install from the Ubuntu Software Center that will allow you to drastically change the appearance of your Ubuntu desktop and app windows. Read More IBM speeds up data analysis with new algorithm IBM researchers have developed a new algorithm that could in minutes analyze terabytes' worth of raw data to more quickly predict weather and electricity usage, the company said today. The mathematical algorithm, developed by IBM's laboratories in Zurich, can sort, correlate and analyze millions of random data sets, a task that could otherwise take days for supercomputers to process, said Costas Bekas, an IBM researcher. The algorithm is just under a thousand lines of code and will be instrumental in establishing usage patterns or trends based on data gathered from sources such as sensors or smart meters, he said Read More Parallels stakes out tricky spot in the cloud Parallels, known widely for its Parallels Desktop software that lets Mac users run Windows in a virtual machine, faces a problem that currently plagues many cloud companies: an identity crisis. Read More Amazon Launches Kindle BlackBerry Application Following from the launch of the PC e-book reader application, and iPhone e-book reader application, Amazon has now made their free Kindle application available on the BlackBerry platform. Read More H A R D W A R E Keep Your Laptop Powered Longer Going on a trip? A long plane ride? Camping out for the weekend? Here are some tips for saving battery life that will keep your laptop alive for the duration of your journey. Read More Time for Apple to get serious about video The Web's video-on-demand sector is filling up fast with some serious heavyweights. If Apple wants to make a mark in digital video that even vaguely resembles the one it made in music, perhaps the company should start treating Apple TV as more than just a "hobby." That's Apple's attitude toward the streaming-media device, said Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who spoke at a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.Read More D E V E L O P E R S PayPal to open app store for developers PayPal will open an applications store this year where developers can offer their wares, the latest step in the company's multi-pronged strategy to deepen its relationship with external programmers. Developers have a big opportunity to offer applications for merchants and consumers that PayPal doesn't have the interest or resources to build itself, a PayPal official said Tuesday.Read More 10 Essential Chrome Extensions for Web Developers As a web developer, you’re probably among the earliest adopters of new browser technologies. Google’s relatively new Chrome browser is one of those products that developers jumped all over as soon as it became available, but its initial lack of extensions was a dealbreaker for many.Read More Five Fabulous PHP Frameworks Today's web developer must be well-equipped in order to fully harness the enormous horsepower and features at his disposal, not to mention satisfy the tastes of an increasingly finicky user. It's also imperative to embrace sound practices that ensure high quality, testable code written with a minimum investment of time and effort. Read More
G A D G E T B O X Samsung Launching Skype Enabled HDTVs Samsung and Skype have announced that they will be launching a range of HDTV’s which feature built in Skype software and broadband capabilities. The new range of HDTV’s will enable users to use Skype’s video chat in their living room, as well as make calls over the Skype service. Two models are being released initially the Samsung LED 7000 and LED 8000.Read More First look: Toshiba Camileo X100, H30 If you're an entry to mid range camcorder user what you're probably looking for a device that is small, easy to use, films beautiful-looking images and doesn't break the bank. Read More Magic Flute Speakers These fantastic looking speakers, designed and created by SW Speakers look as though they have been inspired by jet engines, with their sleek lines. Read More
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South African consumers are becoming increasingly spoilt for choice in the broadband space, but making sense of the range of offerings available is not always easy given different pricing models and package structures.That's according to Tim Walter, general manager for product and marketing at independent telecommunications service provider, Nashua Mobile. He says that consumers need to remember that the total cost of a broadband service will include an access fee, bandwidth and Internet service provider costs, and possibly a lease or monthly payment for access equipment such as routers or an antenna. "ADSL is still the broadband technology of choice, provided it is available in your area," says Walter. "It offers a lower cost per megabyte, coupled with superior performance, when compared to most mobile broadband technologies." "Given the different packages on the market, it isn't always easy for consumers to understand the real bottom-line cost of an ADSL service," says Walter. The total cost of the service will include the line rental fee (the access cost) as well as bandwidth costs. Some packages will include only the bandwidth costs - for example, you might pay the Internet service provider R299 for 5GB of bandwidth, and then you will still need to pay Telkom a line rental fee and buy a router of your own. Other packages will include the bandwidth, a monthly payment for a router and line rental cost as an all inclusive package. It's also important to consider the value-added services you'll have access to, such as a free mailbox. The picture is further complicated by the different tariff structures that various service providers and packages offer for out-of-bandwidth data, i.e data you consume on top of the bandwidth included in your package. Consumers also need to be aware that some packages may offer local bandwidth only - perfect if you just want to send and receive email and browse locally hosted sites, but useless if you want to take full advantage of the World Wide Web. Says Walter: "It's important to find a transparent package that gives you a clear idea of what you will be paying every month. "People are using more online applications and downloading more content as prices come down - so it's important to find a package that will accommodate your needs as they change and grow. You should pick a service provider with a competitive per-gig price for data you use above your monthly allocation."
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(CNN) -- Some people think of online gamers and see gaunt loners huddled in dark rooms, the sad blue glow of the computer screen on their faces as their lives pass them by. Game designer Jane McGonigal sees "superheroes" with untapped potential that can be used to fix vexing real-world problems. "Gamers are willing to work hard all the time if they're given the right work," she said. She calls them "super-empowered, hopeful individuals," and includes herself among the bunch. McGonigal's latest online game, called "Urgent Evoke," launches on Wednesday. With it, she hopes to channel the obsessive focus online games create into something more productive than conquering monsters and earning virtual weapons. She wants to push people in Africa -- a long-troubled continent where people might feel less empowered than elsewhere -- to solve problems like environmental degradation, lack of food, water scarcity, poverty and violence. To do this, the Urgent Evoke game -- classified in the emerging "alternate reality" genre -- straddles the online and physical worlds. Players, a few hundred of whom are in Africa, earn points and power-ups by completing real-world tasks like volunteering, making business contacts or researching an issue, then submitting evidence of their work online. At the end of the game, McGonigal expects some players to have business plans about how they will improve the world. Play a game, get a job Depending on how well the game goes, Urgent Evoke could influence the future of alternate reality gaming and spur innovation in Africa. Bob Hawkins, senior education specialist with the World Bank Institute, said one big reason people in African countries aren't as entrepreneurial and innovative as those in the West is that they don't feel as empowered to create change. That's largely why his international development group is funding McGonigal's project to the tune of $500,000. "There have been studies, for instance, in South Africa that the public investment in universities isn't producing the types of new ideas and innovation that industry wants," he said. "What happens is that industry is importing ideas from outside the continent and outside of South Africa." He hopes Urgent Evoke will empower people in Africa to change their own futures. This game will act as a kind of hyper-engaged online social network, he said, setting people in the developing world up with contacts in Europe, the United States and elsewhere who may offer insight or even cash. An unannounced number of game "winners" will be given mentorships, internships, start-up money and scholarships for playing the game. Responding to an 'Evoke' At first, none of that may sound especially game-like. But McGonigal, the game designer, said the power of Urgent Evoke is that it doesn't feel like work when you're immersed in the story and working with other gamers around the world to chase bite-sized goals. Video: Watch McGonigal explain her game  Urgent Evoke gamers follow a story that's presented each week like a comic book online. The central figure of the Evoke narrative is a mysterious character who spots the world's big problems and sends out "Urgent Evoke" messages to a team of game players on Wednesdays, asking for help. A new challenge, such as a famine or water shortage, is presented to players at midnight for 10 weeks. Players earn points by accepting the challenges and then responding with evidence that they've used their real-life "superhero" powers to help. A person might, for example, contact a community organization that specializes in environmental issues, or try to provide meals for someone in their neighborhood. Players catalogue their activities and submit the evidence in the form of a blog post, a video or a photo, which players post on theUrgent Evoke Web site. Other people in the game network read these posts and, if they feel the player has done a good job, can award them further power-ups in a number of categories like creativity, collaboration, sustainability and courage. Players with the most points at the end of the game win, but McGonigal and Hawkins said the experience of playing is what's most valuable. The game will "open their eyes to the range of challenges that they could roll up their sleeves and take on," Hawkins said. Potential for addiction McGonigal makes the controversial argument that if people played more online games like Urgent Evoke or World of Warcraft, our society would be better equipped to battle big problems. That's because gamers are trained to believe they can win, and because they're matched with tasks that are fit to their skill levels, based on what level they've achieved in the game, she said. McGonigal wants to see people exhibit the same level of enthusiasm and optimism they display in games in their real lives. People spend a collective 3 billion hours per week playing online games today, she said. That number must be 21 billion -- seven times the current amount -- for our society to realize its innovative and creative potential, she said. Not everyone thinks that's a good thing. Kimberly Young, a PhD psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, argued that online games, educational or not, are an addictive force in our society. People can learn and develop skills in online worlds, she said, but "they do that to the exclusion of developing those skills in the real world." Internet access Even those who support the Urgent Evoke game admit it faces a number of challenges. Chief among them is that the online game is designed particularly for people in Africa, a continent where people have less Internet access than anywhere. About 400 of the 3,500 people who have signed up for the game so far come from Africa, said Hawkins. He said the World Bank is launching an ad campaign in South Africa to encourage people to play. Many university students have access to computer labs with the Internet, he said, and the game is designed so it can also be played over SMS text messaging or on mobile phones that use the Opera Mini operating system, which is popular on the continent. "Even if you never get to a computer, you could do everything that you would need to do in the game on your cell phone," McGonigal said. "Pretty much everyone that we would be trying to reach through this game has cell phone access." People outside Africa are also encouraged to play, and the game has a "mentorship" program so people all over the world can give guidance. Lasting impact The other nagging question is to what extent the online game actually can inspire lasting change in the real world. McGonigal's previous work shows some degree of lasting change may be possible. In 2007, she created an online game called "World Without Oil," which challenged people to re-imagine their lives without their dependence on fossil fuels. McGonigal did not conduct scientific focus groups with the game's 1,700 players, but she said she has gotten feedback from many of the players. They reported their energy consumption habits changed during the game and that they've kept those changes up in the years that have followed, she said. For Urgent Evoke, McGonigal said she plans to conduct surveys of participants to see if the game actually led to real-world change. She said she will measure success by how involved people are in the game, whether they stick with the story until the end and if they've joined organizations or taken real steps to create change in their communities. If all goes well, the World Bank may sponsor an Arabic version of the game next year. There are also tentative plans to hold sequels in Africa.
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Johannesburg - Analysts predict PC sales will jump by 20% in 2010, driven particularly by mobile PCs.Recently released items such as the Apple iPad are also set to promote growth in new market segments. International IT research and consulting firm Gartner said worldwide PC shipments are projected to total 366.1 million units in 2010, a 19.7% increase from the 305.8 million units shipped in 2009. Gartner's preliminary forecast expects the market to reach $245bn worth of sales in 2010, up 12.2% from 2009. "Mini-notebooks are again forecast to boost mobile PC growth in 2010 but their contribution is expected to decline noticeably afterwards, as they face growing competition from new ultra-low-voltage (ULV) ultraportables and next-generation tablets," said research director at Gartner George Shiffler. "Desk-based PC shipment growth will be minimal and limited to emerging markets." Shiffler said Apple's announcement of its upcoming iPad tablet computer created much discussion in the marketplace. He predicted that vendors could ship up to 10.5 million tablet devices worldwide in 2010. "We expect mobile PCs to drive 90% of PC growth over the next three years," said Shiffler. "In 2009, mobile PCs accounted for 55% of all PC shipments; by 2012, we expect mobile PCs to account for nearly 70% of shipments." Opportunities - and threats Added Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst at Gartner: "With the rise of web-delivered applications, many users no longer need a traditional PC running a resident general-purpose operating system and fast x86 CPU to satisfy their computing needs. "Apple's iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry. This will create significantly more opportunities for PC vendors as well as significantly more threats." Head of research for ICT in Africa at Frost & Sullivan, Birgitta Cederstrom, said South Africa's consumer PC industry is slowly recovering and that smaller laptops and notebooks were hot items. She predicted the country would follow international trends. "It's a combination of slow economic recovery and companies needing to upgrade their systems. It's a natural investment cycle," said Cederstrom. She added that Windows 7 was a big driver for PC sales, both in South Africa and globally, along with the IT refresh cycles of big corporates. JSE-listed PC distributors Pinnacle and Mustek last week reported good results for the second half of 2009, supporting the prediction that sales are showing strong recovery. - Fin24.com
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Home Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has cancelled the smart card ID project, saying her department has run out of money after it used the R114 million allocated for the project “for other things”. While Zuma previously highlighted the importance of the project, she has now stated the project will not continue in the current financial year, as no money has been allocated to it. The department allocated R114 million for the project in June 2008, for the 2009/10 financial year. Another R335 million was expected to be allocated for the project for the following financial year, but the funding was not approved. “In our budget, we don't have the money for the smart card... but once we have an alternative we will try to put in a bid in the next budget,” says Dlamini-Zuma. The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) was mandated by Cabinet to replace the national identity document with a smart ID card. The smart cards, which will have embedded chips in them, are set to be used for a number of functions, such as the payment of pensions and social grants. Other possible uses are being considered. The project was originally supposed to be piloted at the end of 2008, using pensioners as the sample group, but this did not happen. In March last year, ITWeb reported the pilot was delayed and it would take about three months to start once the tender to manufacture the ID cards had been awarded. However, the project was cancelled in August 2009, following requests by the DHA to restart the tender process. “Having stopped the tender, the money went back to treasury and, with the recession and all the problems we have, the money was then used for other things, but we are still pursuing [the project],” says Dlamini-Zuma. Still SITA? Last year, she announced the DHA was looking to award the tender for the long-awaited smart ID card project within the current financial year. Dlamini-Zuma, however, also publicly lambasted the State IT Agency (SITA) for the delays to the project, saying the agency didn't “do as it was supposed to do”, with tender irregularities leading to cancellation of the tender. The DHA has also not yet released the findings of a forensic audit on the tender process. A forensic report was requested by SITA in 2008 on the tender process. The agency says the report is yet to be validated by the DHA. “We are not sure whether we should go back to SITA, or be given an alternative way of dealing with [the tender]. So that is the situation we find ourselves in with the smart card,” Dlamini-Zuma explains. Source: ITWeb
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Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder.  (Credit: Apple) "We received a very unfortunate e-mail today from Apple stating that WiFi-Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information," WiFi Where-maker Three Jacks Software, wrote on its Web site. There was no explanation as to what Apple meant by "private frameworks." Apple representatives were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNET. TechCrunch says Tonchidot, a Tokyo-based developer, had its app Sekai Camera removed because of its use of Wi-Fi, too. Sekai Camera uses PlaceEngine as a way to determine a user's location over Wi-Fi. PlaceEngine developer Koozyt says other apps that use its technology have also been removed, including Yahoo! Maps for the iPhone. This isn't the first time Apple has gone after a category of apps. In late February, Apple targeted "overtly sexual" apps, removing almost 5,000 apps from the App Store. Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10464021-37.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
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In a blog post today, Google essentially reminds its enterprise customers that Google Apps provides an alternative to expensive, complex solutions as far as data disaster recovery goes.Synchronous replication is a system that Google Apps uses to store customer’s info in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google says it nearly instantly transfers data over to the other one that’s also been reflecting the actions taken by the customer all along. On the practical side this means that thanks to the cloud-based storage solution, Google customers won’t lose any data in a data center failure. Just as crucially, they are theoretically back up and running straight away — although the online giant does acknowledge that no backup solution is perfect. This synchronous replication is applied to the entire Apps suite as well as Gmail (Google Calendar,Google Docs and Google Sites), with the sales angle being enterprise-class back-up for all at a much lower cost than if companies were to provide or contract separately for their own data redundancy systems. Google, ever keen to push its Apps suite to new corporate clients of all sizes, estimates that this kind of backup could cost up to $500 for 25GB of data from other providers, but says it can bundle it in because it’s already running large, fast data centers. This is essentially Google reminding enterprise customers (and potential customers) about one of the significant benefits of cloud computing over traditional in-house server farm data storage. How does your business handle data backup and redundancy issues? Do you think cloud computing is the ideal solution to hardware failure? Source: Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/03/04/google-apps-disaster-recovery/
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In December, Yahoo revealed a new strategy: lots and lots of Facebook. Today the company announced that it’s gradually rolling out the first feature to come from the partnership — Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail. The new feature means that Yahoo Mail users can now connect their Facebook accounts and integrate theirFacebook friends’ e-mail addresses into their Yahoo Contacts list. Users can visit the Import Contacts page to be guided through he Facebook friend import process. Of course, this is just the beginning of the full FacebookConnect feature bonanza on Yahoo. You can expect functionality to be integrated into News, Sports, Finance and even Flickr in the months ahead. Given that Facebook is now 400 million members strong, we have to believe that there’s a significant shared user base between Facebook and Yahoo. In a perfect world, Yahoo will see those users stay on Yahoo properties and use the Facebook contact and sharing functionality to push Yahoo content out to the world’s largest social network and generate more traffic in return. Source; Mashable
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S A T E C H H E A D L I N E S ADSL: What are your options? South African consumers are becoming increasingly spoilt for choice in the broadband space, but making sense of the range of offerings available is not always easy given different pricing models and package structures. Read More Online game seeks to empower Africa McGonigal's latest online game, called "Urgent Evoke," launches on Wednesday. With it, she hopes to channel the obsessive focus online games create into something more productive than conquering monsters and earning virtual weapons.She wants to push people in Africa -- a long-troubled continent where people might feel less empowered than elsewhere -- to solve problems like environmental degradation, lack of food, water scarcity, poverty and violence. Read More PC sales 'to surge in 2010' Analysts predict PC sales will jump by 20% in 2010, driven particularly by mobile PCs. Smart ID cards cancelled – for now Home Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has cancelled the smart card ID project, saying her department has run out of money after it used the R114 million allocated for the project “for other things”. Read More New life for e-government E-government will be renewed and handled with more vigour, because of its future importance to service delivery, says deputy public service and administration minister Roy Padayachie. Read More Union warns Telkom of 2010 havoc Telkom needs to deal with its labour issues, or face a communications calamity during the Soccer World Cup, says Solidarity. Just 99 days before kick off, the union claims Telkom staff members are unhappy. It says the company will “urgently have to tackle its labour relations problems in order to ensure the Soccer World Cup goes off without a hitch”. Read More Top 10 tech skills for 2010 What areas should you focus on over the next year? This survey-based list highlights the 10 most sought-after IT skills. I N T E R N E T Cloud security, cyberwar dominate RSA Conference Cloud security loomed over the RSA Conference this week as a major concern of business, but worry about the threat of cyberwar was also strong, with officials from the White House and FBI weighing in to encourage private participation in government efforts to defend information and communications networks. Apple removes Wi-Fi finders from App Store Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder. Knichel: How Google Keeps Your Data Safe in the Cloud In a blog post today, Google essentially reminds its enterprise customers that Google Apps provides an alternative to expensive, complex solutions as far as data disaster recovery goes. Yahoo Mail Makes Friends With Facebook In December, Yahoo revealed a new strategy: lots and lots of Facebook. Today the company announced that they’re gradually rolling out the first feature to come from the partnership — Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail. 10 billionth song downloaded from Apple's iTunes The 10 billionth song has been downloaded from Apple's iTunes, seven years after the launch of the online store which provided a lifeline to the struggling music industry.Read More Get ready to pay for online TV In the near future, TV is going to be available anywhere, on any device, at any time. Just don't expect it to be free.Read More China Widens Net Censorship; Google Exile Looms The latest browser market share report, Net Applications, quoted Internet Explorer 8 as the most-used browser in the world with 25.6 per cent of market share across all OS’s on a worldwide-weighted usage share basis. Furthermore, Internet Explorer 8 was also classified as the most popular browser on Windows. Bing wows crowd with live-video maps Microsoft Corp. on Thursday unveiled updates to its Bing search engine - and they seemed to wow the crowds here at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. First, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, architect of Bing Maps, demonstrated a live-video add-in to to the search engine's mapping feature. He zoomed into 3-dimensional images of streets in Seattle, Washington, and showed off a feature that integrates live video feeds into those images. Microsoft says this might be useful, for instance, if you wanted to see how long a line outside a restaurant was on Valentine's Day. B L O G G I N G & S O C I A L M E D I A Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets t’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. While Gigatweet’s counter is down due to over-traffic., you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. Facebook not rushing for IPO Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the popular social networking site public, the Wall Street Journal reported. YouTube brings auto-captioning to everyone On Thursday Google announced that YouTube is turning on its auto-captioning technology to all users--a move it hopes will make videos both easier to watch and find in its search engine. Israeli military calls off raid after soldier posts details The Israel Defense Forces called off a raid after one of its combat soldiers posted information about the operation, including the time and place, on Facebook, the IDF said Wednesday. American Idol Strips Contestants of Social Media Accounts This year American Idol made headlines for pushing out individual Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts for each of its 24 finalists. However, the show made a drastic change in strategy last night by consolidating all of them under the AI9Contestants username across sites. GOOD BLOGGING IS LIKE GOOD STANDUP This post was inspired by Revision3’s ROFL podcast. I’ve been on the road all day and I had a ton of episodes of ROFL, which is a standup comedy show. I’ve always been a fan of standup and other forms of comedy but standup is my favorite form. So, I got to thinking of how blogging can be compared to standup comedy B U S I N E S S T E C H Why the Google-Italy Privacy Case Matters to Your Business What makes this event so troubling, and important not just for multinational corporations like Google but small startups, is that none of the three men had any connection with the incident at the heart of the case. No Internet? It Could Cost You It seems unlikely that a business would be well-established enough to offer its employees a pension plan or 401(k), yet not be modernized enough to use e-mail or even be connected to the internet. But if you're out there, the Department of Labor is looking for you. Google Buzz for Business Google Buzz: A social networking tool that allows Gmail users to share updates, photos, videos, links and more instantaneously online and on Android phones and the iPhone--made its debut today. By the end of the weekend, Google says all 175 million or so of its Gmail account holders will have access to the new service. O N L I N E M A R K E T I N G & S E O Learning SEO: It Can Get Noisy The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information do you need to know, and what information is filler? http://www.seobook.com/learning-seo-noisy Customer & Influencer Research in Social Media “If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Pink Floyd, The Wall. That quote from Another Brick in the Wall reminds me of the cart horse situation with social media marketing: If you don’t know your customers you can’t engage them. How can you ever hope to engage your customers if you don’t understand who they are? S O F T W A R E Microsoft plans to patch 8 Windows, Office bugs next week Microsoft today announced it will ship two security updates on Tuesday to patch eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Office. In its monthly advance notification, Microsoft spelled out next week's two-update Patch Tuesday, a far cry from February's massive roll-out of 13 security bulletins that fixed 26 flaws. Opera 10.5 looks good The browser otherwise known as Opera 10.5, was launched the other day and is proving popular. A serious overhaul of the aging browser technologies has brought it up to speed with the competition and Opera is promising FireFox, Chrome and Internet Exploder a run for their money. H A R D W A R E iPad to spur tablet sales to 10.5M in 2010 While Apple's marketing machine generally downplays the threat to the iPhone posed by Google's new Nexus One mobile device, the company's lawyers see it differently. Apple: HTC Phones Caused 'Irreparable Injury' You’re not crazy, and neither are we: The touchscreen on the Apple iPhone really is more responsive than the screens on the BlackBerry Storm, the Motorola Droid, the Nexus One and many other phones, even though all of these devices use essentially the same touch-sensing hardware. D E V E L O P E R S The Top 10 jQuery Plugins for the JavaScript-Weary jQuery's user-friendly syntax and powerful features are clear evidence of the innovative thinking that has sparked a JavaScript renaissance within the web development community. However, jQuery's popularity is also due in part to the ease with which extensions can be created and shared among the open source project's hyperactive user community. The result is an ecosystem of over 4,250 plugins available through the jQuery Plugins web site alone, and thousands of others hosted on sites such as GitHub. Five Indispensable MySQL Tools In the twelve years since first being introduced to MySQL, I've spent a substantial part of my professional life interacting with the database. Like any long-term relationship, my success using MySQL can largely be attributed to how well I've been able to communicate effectively with the database. Thanks to a number of well-designed tools, MySQL simply is a very easy database to "talk to," a convenience which is particularly important because developers often are tasked not only with constructing very complex schemas and queries, but also with monitoring overall server health and performance. The latter often is a unique blend of art and science. In this article, I introduce you to five indispensable MySQL tools, including some that I've used for more than a decade and one that I've been using for only about two weeks yet am already wondering how I ever got along without it. G A D G E T B O X Sony Working on a PSP Phone and iPad Competitor Consumer electronics juggernaut Sony is apparently stepping up to the plate to tackle Apple’s iPhone (and soon iPad) pantheon with a PlayStation Portable Phone, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. If you haven’t been following the vicissitudes of the mobile rumor mill for as long as we have, you might want to know that a PSP phone has historically been a mythical device about equally as hot and sought-after as the likewise completely mythical and often-rumoured Microsoft Zune phone — the latter of which is also reportedly about to materialize. Mind-reading computers turn heads Devices allowing people to write letters or play pinball using just the power of their brains have become a major draw at the world's biggest high-tech fair.
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S A T E C H H E A D L I N E S FNB to reveal PayPal details Local big four financial business First National Bank (FNB) will soon release the details of its discussions with international online payment solution, PayPal. http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31251:fnb-to-reveal-paypal-details&catid=159:it-in-banking No word on new MTN chief Africa's largest cellular company, MTN, has not provided any indication of who will lead the company when CEO Phuthuma Nhleko leaves next year. http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31261:no-word-on-new-mtn-chief&catid=76:cellular Investigators seize Cipro data The Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI's) ministerial investigation team this week seized further evidence from the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro), as the probe into a R153 million IT tender deepens. http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31256:investigators-seize-cipro-data&catid=160:it-in-government E-books hit SA Debuting on Kalahari.net, e-books have made their entrance in the South African market. http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31258:ebooks-hit-sa&catid=100:e-business Committee to finalise SA's broadband policy A special inter-ministerial committee is to be set up to finalise government's broadband policy, government spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Thursday. http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iSectionId=2884&iArticleId=5387732 I N T E R N E T Opera delivers browser for Android WOpera Software has unveiled a version of its Mini mobile browser for use on cellphones running on Google's Android software. http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31245:opera-delivers-browser-for-android&catid=219:reuters Huge 'botnet' amputated, but criminals reconnect The sudden takedown of an Internet provider thought to be helping spread one of the most promiscuous pieces of malicious software out there appears to have cut off criminals from potentially millions of personal computers under their control. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_botnet_takedown;_ylt=AsXEnm7e6GeAip1R4wjknVzw7rEF;_ylu=X3oDMTJ0NHA1OHZoBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzExL3VzX3RlY19ib3RuZXRfdGFrZWRvd24EcG9zAzI4BHNlYwN5bl9wYWdpbmF0ZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA2h1Z2Vib3RuZXRhbQ-- Why no one cares about privacy anymore Norms are changing, with confidentiality giving way to openness. Participating in YouTube, Loopt, FriendFeed, Flickr, and other elements of modern digital society means giving up some privacy, yet millions of people are willing to make that trade-off every day. Of people with an online profile, nearly 40 percent have disabled privacy settings so anyone may view it, according to a Pew Internet survey released a year ago. The percentage is probably higher today. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20000336-38.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1 Bing use inches up in February Microsoft's Bing grabbed 11.5 percent of all search queries in the U.S. in February, slightly higher than its 11.3 percent share the prior month, according to the latest figures from ComScore. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10467712-93.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 Apple plugs 16 holes in Safari as Pwn2Own looms Apple has patched 16 bugs in the Safari browser, 12 of them critical, just two weeks before it faces off against rival technologies at the 2010 Pwn2Own hacking challenge. http://www.itnews.com/internet-based-applications-and-services/15399/apple-plugs-16-holes-safari-pwn2own-looms 8 weird but cool Android apps Some fun ways to play with your new smartphone. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9166778/8_weird_but_cool_Android_apps B L O G G I N G & S O C I A L M E D I A Reuters to Journalists: Don’t Break News on Twitter Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter. http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/reuters-social-media-policy/ Firefox Account Manager Aims to Make Your Social Life Easier Mozilla sets out to alleviate this issue with a new Firefox plugin called Account Manager. It currently doesn’t do much; it recognized that you’ve signed in into a website and displays an icon that says that yes, you’re indeed signed up under that username. However, Mozilla has ambitious plans for online identity management from within a browser. http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/firefox-account-manager/ Hate Blogger Wins Second Mistrial Deadlocked jurors in the Hal Turner hate blogger case were excused late Wednesday after deliberating two days. It’s the second mistrial in the government’s case to prosecute the New Jersey man for allegedly threatening to kill judges. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hate-blogger-wins-second-mistrial/#ixzz0hy01rtly How The Roxy Became the #1 Venue on Twitter If you’re a small business wondering how social media can be relevant to you, someone in public relations looking for creative ideas, or an organization looking to take your first steps into the waters of social media, you’ll want to read on for a resounding success story and a number of practical tips. If you’re a music fan, don’t touch that dial or miss a slice of history. http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/roxy-twitter-interview/ B U S I N E S S T E C H Why the Google-Italy Privacy Case Matters to Your Business What makes this event so troubling, and important not just for multinational corporations like Google but small startups, is that none of the three men had any connection with the incident at the heart of the case. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2010/03/why_the_google-.html What Is The Cloud? For anyone running a small business the “buzz words” that come from the IT industry on a regular basis can be bewildering. For those who are not IT experts talk of the latest must-have product or service can be very confusing; particularly when they all seem to promise greater efficiencies and cost savings. The latest hot topic is the Cloud. The confusion around cloud is not helped by the fact that there are so many definitions flying around. However, it is fair to say that cloud genuinely has all the hallmarks of being a disruptive technology that could revolutionise the way small businesses are created and run. But if a lack of understanding about cloud exists, how can those are already running, or looking to start a business really reap the rewards that the cloud promises? http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/channels/technology-in-business/guides-and-tips/995597/what-is-the-cloud.thtml O N L I N E M A R K E T I N G & S E O The Challenge: Traversing the Cloud of Sales 2.0 We all know about the oft-confusing array of new technologies, the social media, and the explosive growth of virtual means of learning about prospects and reaching out to customers. The Doubting Thomases are fewer and farther in between and almost all of us are converts. We’re on the bandwagon. OK, but now what? If Sales 2.0 (often referred to as social selling) is about merging Web 2.0 technologies with traditional sales strategies, which tools should we use? How many? What is productive and what just wastes our time? Now it’s all about collaboration tools, virtual customer engagement and sales productivity in the cloud. http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/internet-www-web-2/14081909-1.html Online ad spend in US expected to beat print in 2010 Online advertising spend is expected to outstrip print advertising this year in the US, according to a survey of advertisers. http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page304825?oid=473160&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226 5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites. http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/03/ecommerce-marketing-social-media-tips/ S O F T W A R E Hackers love to exploit PDF bugs, says researcher Last month's Adobe Reader vulnerability now under attack, says F-Secure and Microsoft http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9168918/Hackers_love_to_exploit_PDF_bugs_says_researcher?taxonomyId=18 Microsoft tries to lure NetSuite users with new deal Microsoft is offering financial enticements to customers of on-demand ERP vendor NetSuite to switch over to Microsoft's Dynamics family of business applications. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9169518/Microsoft_tries_to_lure_NetSuite_users_with_new_deal?taxonomyId=18 H A R D W A R E Keep Your Laptop Powered Longer Going on a trip? A long plane ride? Camping out for the weekend? Here are some tips for saving battery life that will keep your laptop alive for the duration of your journey. Read More http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Keep_Your_Laptop_Powered_Longer No Camera on Apple's iPad, After All? Apple's latest iPad software development kit nixes references to video calling and chatting, creating uncertainty about the chances of a camera coming to the iPad. http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100311/tc_pcworld/nocameraonapplesipadafterall;_ylt=AiQ8nO3g8c7BAQlH9KdJ4Wvw7rEF;_ylu=X3oDMTM4MG52NjVsBGFzc2V0A3Bjd29ybGQvMjAxMDAzMTEvbm9jYW1lcmFvbmFwcGxlc2lwYWRhZnRlcmFsbARwb3MDMTgEc2VjA3luX3BhZ2luYXRlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDbm9jYW1lcmFvbmFw
D E V E L O P E R S
The Foundation of an OSGi-Based Application: Design and Bundles Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) is a popular standard that begun in embedded systems, expanded to mobile platforms, and is now actively adopted in the Java world. OSGi characteristics such as modularity, service orientation, reuse, dynamic updates and component versioning allow it to overcome the factors that limit the scope of the Java platform. For its part, Java is working towards OSGi-style functionality by including JSRs like JSR 294, 291, and 277 the upcoming Java 7 release. http://www.developer.com/features/article.php/3869941/The-Foundation-of-an-OSGi-Based-Application-Design-and-Bundles.htm Open Source CouchDB Heads to the Cloud SQL-based relational database management systems (RDBMS) are beginning to be challenged by a new movement of NoSQL databases. Among those NoSQL databases is the open source CouchDB, which provides an alternative to the relational datastores used by RDBMS vendors -- and which is banking on cloud-based deployment options to sweeten its appeal to users. http://www.developer.com/features/article.php/3869036/Open-Source-CouchDB-Heads-to-the-Cloud.htm G A D G E T B O X Apple Store is Down, Prepare for iPad Pre-Orders t’s finally here; the moment where the iPad actually comes into some sort of contact with the market. As we announced before, iPad pre-orders begin at 5:30 AM PT (in about 1:30 hours), and the Apple Store is currently down, indicating that pre-order forms will be available when it comes back up (and possibly something more – you never know.) http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/apple-store-down-ipad-preorders/ Toshiba's robot Toshiba has unveiled it latest robot, the Toshiba Wheelie which is an autonomous two wheeled robot that was shown off at the Toshiba Science Museum on March 10th 2010. http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/toshibas-wheelie-robot-12-03-2010/
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There's a wealth of High Def video available on the web these days on Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and YouTube. To watch this stuff on your full-size HDTV instead of your laptop's 13 or 14 inch screen, learn how to hook your computer to your TV. Source: Wired.com
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St. Petersburg may be best known for its imperial palaces, famous museums, and White Nights, but it is also a growing hub of Russian hi-tech. Join us on the fast train to the Northern Capital, and we will take you off the typical tourist map to visit top-class naval navigators, the worlds most powerful neutron-beam reactor, Intels Russian innovators, and a new generation of wireless wonders. St. Petersburg lights a whole new way on Technology Update. Weve got the future covered.
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New York - Facebook is about to change the way it asks its users to connect to brands on the site. Instead of asking people to "become a fan" of companies such as Starbucks, Facebook will let them click on a button that indicates they "like" the brand. Facebook already lets people show that they like comments or pictures posted on the site, and it says users click that term almost twice as much as they click "become a fan". Facebook says changing the button will make them more comfortable with linking up with a brand. Facebook had no immediate comment about the move on Tuesday, but a memo from the company to advertisers about the change has been widely circulated online. Businesses use Facebook pages, which are free to create, to connect with their customers and promote their brands. Facebook makes money from the advertisements these companies often use to draw users to their pages. The average user becomes a fan of four pages each month, according to Facebook. "The idea of liking a brand is a much more natural action than (becoming a fan) of a brand," said Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, which helps companies establish their brands and advertise on social networks such as Facebook. "In many ways it's a lower threshold." But while it might seem to be less of a commitment to declare that you "like" say, Coca-Cola than to announce you are a fan of it, the meaning essentially would stay the same: Your Facebook friends would see that you clicked that you "like" a page, and such pages would still be listed on your Facebook profile for anyone to see. Facebook did not say whether the change will apply to all pages, such as those for celebrities or musicians - where the term "fan" is still appropriate - or just brands. The world's largest online social network is known for constantly tweaking the way users experience the site. This often draws loud complaints, but Facebook continues to draw millions of new fans. More than half of its 400 million users log in every day. Source: http://www.news24.com/
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Source: http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iSectionId=2884&iArticleId=5378306