Author: Brad Lang

Ever lost your phone? Car keys? Anything that a small tag can be attached to? Well, Apple has you covered with the AirTag, announced during tonight’s Spring Load event. Working alongside the Find My system, which has been used by over 1 billion iPhone users, the AirTag is designed to help you figure out exactly where your lost items are. It’s not just a case of listening for a ping or a vibration, it’s using something Apple calls Precision Finding to make the process of discovery even easier. AirTag, you’re it! Making use of everything from haptic feedback to a…

Poor Cell C, it just can’t seem to catch a break. It’s felt like the writing has been on the wall for the cellular provider for some time now. The release of the company’s latest financial report for the last half of 2020 is even more illuminating. You see, while Cell C made a profit of R2.1 billion in the second half of last year, that pales in comparison to the whopping R7.5 billion it lost on the first half, despite some rather appealing data deals. So overall that’s a net loss of R5.5 billion in 2020 for Cell C.…

It’s no secret that Facebook has been hard at work cloning Clubhouse, the latest social media platform to take off thanks to its snazzy audio room premise. In the second quarter of 2021 Live Audio Rooms will be added to Facebook. And if you’re wondering what exactly this feature entails, just take a crash course in Clubhouse because they’re practically the same thing. The social network’s rollout is happening incrementally and will first hit Facebook Groups before expanding to public figures and then eventually Messengers so you and your friends can have conversations while that one person you don’t really…

Perhaps Google was a little spooked by the release of Edge for Android as it’s currently pushing Chrome 90 out the door to fend for itself. The update is slowly rolling out to users around the world and includes a whole bunch of neat new features that feel like they should have been added ages ago. But what are you gonna do? So let’s run down some of the new additions to the app. Rather than defaulting to HTTP, Google Chrome will now default to HTTPS which is exactly the same as the original, a standard old webpage that’s coming…

While MetroFibre may not be one of the big fibre ISPs in South Africa, operating mainly around Gauteng, Durban and Gqeberha, even it is benefitting from the recent fibre infrastructure boost. Announced this morning, MetroFibre will be upgrading the line speed for all fibre-to-the-home customers on 1 June, 2021. As for many other ISPs, this means that user’s will benefit from faster internet connections absolutely free of charge. It’s been a fairly common occurrence for ISPs around South Africa in recent months with most offering a similar deal… except for Vumatel, which has earned the company the (fib)ire of it’s…

Selling fluorescent bulbs may be banned in South Africa A change in the regulations in South African light bulbs is currently being undertaken, with the aim of improving general safety and energy efficiency of lighting around the country. The new specifications that determine what may be sold in the country will more or less ban

If you’re an Android user then you’ve largely been stuck with one browser for years now: Google Chrome. Sure, there are technically other browsers on the mobile platform but Chrome is owned by Google, which also owns… Android. The introduction of Microsoft Edge on Android might be exactly what you’re looking for if you’ve half a mind to step away from Google’s search engine. Microsoft quietly went and released a preview version of Edge on the Google Play Store, named Edge Canary, and it’s available for anyone to test. The easy joke to make would be say, “Great, another platform…

It seems like the smallest of features and yet ever since Amazon first launched the Kindle it’s been missing: Displaying what you’re currently reading on the device’s lock screen. Having the cover of whatever book you’re reading show on the lock screen on Amazon’s eReader feels like an obvious feature and yet… it’s only been added now via a small update quietly pushed out by Amazon last night for all versions of the device, those being the Amazon Kindle, the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Oasis. The firmware update allows users to switch their lock screen display to the cover…

There’s a very cool thing happening with local ISPs at the moment that involves upgraded speeds and lower prices across the board. Well, mostly across the board; Vumatel isn’t all that keen on cutting its customers a break. Afrihost on the other hand is trying to do right by its users by slashing the price of its DSL packages by quite a margin. This is all thanks to those speed upgrades implemented by Openserve which is reducing the cost of its copper network all around. This is certainly nice if you haven’t been upgraded to fibre at this point (you…

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) assists a great many students around South Africa who aren’t in a position to put themselves through the university experience but it’s also known for being fairly… obtuse. One of the cooler options for students working through the NSFAS is a newly finalised tender that will see anyone being funded by the organisation being equipped with a notebook. As in a laptop computer, not an actual pen-and-paper notebook. That would certainly not be worth an entire article. Yet, as with all things regarding communication from a government organisation, the messaging around how you…