Yahoo’s back, baby
Last week, Yahoo released new applications for mobile phones and tablets. Android tablet and iPad users got an e-mail application, while iPhone users received a weather app that makes Apple’s equivalent look rudimentary and crude by comparison. These are just
Thugs stealing SA’s broadband future
Laying fibre-optic cabling isn’t normally considered a dangerous job — difficult, time consuming and labour intensive, yes, but not physically dangerous. Except in Johannesburg, where gangs of thugs have begun threatening contractors with guns. Why on earth are these gangs terrorising
Could Naspers buy Telkom?
Six months after Sprint announced it was in talks to sell 70% of its equity to Japan’s SoftBank for US$20bn, Dish Network Corp, a US direct-to-home satellite pay-TV operator with 14m subscribers, has put in a bid of $25,5bn to buy the wireless communications firm. It’s a move
Is Google evil?
At barely 15 years old, Google enjoys the kind of market dominance in web search that would have made the oil barons of the 19th century envious. Its market share in most countries is 90% or higher. Even in its competitive home market Google accounts for 70% of all web searches, despite rivals like Microsoft spending
Broadband plan more of the same
A revised version of government’s national broadband plan, published in the Government Gazette last week, makes all of the right noises about bridging the digital divide, making connectivity affordable and reducing duplication of infrastructure but, like a previous incarnation, it fails to offer concrete direction
Spectrum of offence
The under-resourced and often ineffective Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has a reputation for lacking teeth when it comes to enforcing order in the telecommunications sector it regulates. For example, there’s still no clear outcome in the case of the alleged unlawful use by wireless Internet
Facebook Home, the Trojan Horse
For a company with a billion customers, Facebook can be quite stealthy. Its latest product, Facebook Home, could convert tens of millions of Android-powered phones into Facebook portals constantly connected to its services simply by encouraging users to install a piece of software. By doing so, Facebook has wheeled a
Facebook Home built on Google land
Getting to grips with mobile interfaces, and serving targeted advertising using them, is key if Facebook is to make nervous shareholders happy. Its latest effort, Facebook Home, is built on top of Google’s Android operating system, a move both fitting and cheeky given Google makes its money in the same way as Facebook
Facebook ups ante with Google
By creating its own interface for Android phones, Facebook is taking the fight to its arch enemy, Google, ironically using search giant’s own cellphone operating system, Android, to do it.
Called Facebook Home, the software is a skin over Android that displays information such as a user’s Facebook feed, along with Facebook applications and messaging
Another chance for Telkom
Telkom is a shadow of the company it once was. As little as 10 years ago, it thoroughly dominated SA’s telecommunications landscape. Today, it’s not even among the top 40 companies listed on the JSE. Its market value has dwindled to such as extent that, at R7,8bn, it’s worth less than 5% of Vodacom, in which it once
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