If Chinese hardware manufacturer Huawei is right, the Bluetooth earpieces that have largely disappeared from the sides of consumers’ faces will be back soon. Not content to release merely an updated version of its existing fitness tracking band, Huawei has made its new TalkBand B2 a two-in-one fitness band and Bluetooth earpiece. The new device was unveiled alongside Huawei’s first foray into the smartwatch market, the Huawei Watch, and a pair of fitness-orientated in-ear headphones, the TalkBand N1. Two buttons at the base of the TalkBand B2 wristband release the unit that houses the display and reveals a rubber earbud on…
Author: CraigWilson
Samsung’s collaboration with Oculus on its first virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR, was a welcome glimpse at what’s to come, but with only the Galaxy Note 4 handset supported and limited content available it was destined to remain a curiosity. Now the Korean electronics company has updated the Gear VR headset to support it’s two new flagship devices – the S6 and S6 Edge – and announced that paid apps will come to the Gear VR Store, starting with the US. The announcements were made at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week and are good news for VR developers,…
22seven, the personal financial management web service and mobile app that uses pretty graphs and charts to show you exactly how you’re spending your money in the hopes that it’ll change your financial behaviour for the better, is adding the ability to invest in two Old Mutual products from 1 March. The timing of the move coincides with government’s recently announced tax-free savings and investment incentives that allow South Africans to invest up to R30 000 per year (or R500 000 during their lifetime) without losing a chunk to SARS. 22seven users can choose to invest in either Old Mutual’s…
We’ve been wearing Fitbit devices since the days of the Flex, but the Charge HR is the first of the US company’s fitness trackers we can recommend (almost) without reservation. That’s because, unlike its forerunners, the Charge HR includes a heart rate monitor, and when you’re trying to track activity and evaluate fitness that makes all the difference. The Charge HR looks almost exactly like the Fitbit Charge that preceded it. It has the same OLED display and a similar rubber casing and keeps the altimeter that set the Charge apart (which counts every 3m change in altitude as a…
Chinese electronics company Lenovo has been in hot water this week after users of some of its laptops (the G40, Y40 and Y50 specifically) noticed sponsored links popping up in search results. The cause of the problem was a third-party browser add-on called Superfish, a Google Goggles-like visual search tool Lenovo stuck on its machines and didn’t let customers opt-in to. Worse, it didn’t even tell users it was there in the first place. Worse (again), Superfish apparently functions in the same way as a man-in-the-middle malware attack, inserting itself between users and whatever it is they’re doing. Even if…
M4JAM, a mobile service that pays job seekers for completing short tasks like answering surveys or confirming addresses, has secured investment from instant messaging service WeChat Africa. The size of the investment has not been disclosed. M4JAM launched in August last year and uses WeChat to connect companies looking to have small jobs done with individuals in need of employment and pays up to R30 per completed job. More than 7000 jobs were completed within the service’s first 24 hours of operation. WeChat Africa, which is a joint venture between Naspers and Tencent, says the investment will help M4JAM expand…
Wearables are big business, and one of the biggest names in the game is US company FitBit. On Wednesday the company launched its Fitbit Charge HR device in South Africa. The device is the successor to the FitBit Charge and adds a continuous heart rate monitor alongside the pedometer, altimeter and sleep tracker that came standard with the earlier device. Priced at R2 299, the Charge HR monitors the wearer’s heart rate all day, not only during exercise. The monitoring function is made possible by what FitBit calls “PurePulse” technology. The heart rate is calculated by using low-intensity LED lights that detect expansion and contraction of the capillaries below…
From today South Africans can subscribe to high fidelity streaming service Tidal for $9.99 (R120) per month. The service offers users access to more than 25 million tracks, over 75 000 high-definition music videos and a range of curated playlists. Users can try the service for a week for free before committing to the monthly fee. Tidal aims to set itself apart by offering higher-quality content than its rivals, albeit for a higher fee. The service faces plenty of competition in South Africa from the likes of Simfy Africa, Deezer and Rara, each of which have comparably extensive libraries and…
Fibre connectivity may no longer be the only means of delivering high-speed downloads in Africa after network equipment company Ericsson, in partnership with mobile operator Unitel, demonstrated speeds of 450Mbit/s using a commercial LTE Advanced (LTE-A) network in Angola. The download speed was achieved by combining three 20MHz LTE carriers on Unitel’s commercial network in Angola. This sort of LTE-A Carrier Aggregation (CA) allows operators to use spectrum more efficiently and push more data more rapidly over their networks. The demonstration, conducted at the end of last year, utilised 60MHz of spectrum – three 20 MHz allocations in band 3…
A South African start-up wants to make doing charitable work easy by connecting those who want to give back with those in need. Called Forgood, the new initiative is the brainchild of technology entrepreneur Andy Hadfield and Garth Japhet, CEO of multimedia non-governmental organisation (NGO) Heartlines and the man behind public health education series Soul City. Hadfield says he’d been wanting to get into the NGO sector for some time, but had been frustrated by the fact that many NGOs seemed more focus on how to make money than on how to do good work. Japhet saw a blog post…