Where are SA’s next mavericks?
Mark Shuttleworth certainly isn’t afraid of taking the proverbial bull by the horns. After selling his South African Internet security business Thawte for US$575m at the height of the dot-com bubble, spending $20m and a year in training to become the first South African in space, and launching an operating system
Exchange control: Shuttleworth speaks out
Internet billionaire and Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth is engaged in a high-profile court battle with the South African Reserve Bank in an effort to have the country’s exchange control system declared unconstitutional. TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod asked Shuttleworth
Reserve Bank lays into Shuttleworth
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth’s bid to have South Africa’s exchange control system declared unconstitutional could have a devastating effect on the country, the South African Reserve Bank said on Tuesday. Jeremy Gauntlett SC, for the
Shuttleworth declares war on exchange control
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth has taken the South African government to court to have the country’s exchange control system declared unconstitutional. Shuttleworth also wants the high court in
Not lost in translation
In Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, alien species from across the universe communicate using a “small, yellow, leech-like” animal called the Babel fish, which “feeds on brain-wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically
Shuttleworth sets sights on smartphones
Mark Shuttleworth, the South African billionaire who sold his young, Cape Town-based start-up Thawte Consulting to VeriSign for US$575m and who then went on to spearhead the creation of the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system, has now set his sights on shaking up the global smartphone business. Shuttleworth
Steve Song: connectivity crusader and cartographer
When he isn’t talking at technology conferences and seminars, or travelling to them, 49-year-old Steve Song lives and works in Durbanville near Cape Town. He’s perhaps best known for his map of the various submarine cables that have landed in Africa in recent years, and for his passionate advocacy of the use of television white-spaces
TechCentral’s best-read stories of 2011
It’s almost the end of another busy year in SA’s technology industry. We know what our favourite stories were in 2011, but which articles did you, TechCentral’s readers, pore over the most? These are the pieces, in ascending order from 10 to one, that generated the most reads during the year
Ubuntu Linux coming to phones, tablets
Ubuntu Linux, the free and open-source operating system, will power tablet computers, cellular phones, TVs and smart screens in cars and elsewhere, Mark Shuttleworth, the South African behind the software announced in a blog post on Monday. The software will support
Patently insane
In contemporary commercial warfare, there’s only one guaranteed winner: the lawyers. The patents system exists ostensibly to encourage newcomers, protect their intellectual property and encourage innovation. But the reality is the big players are buying up every
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