Author: CraigWilson

Usually installing fibre optic infrastructure in suburbia means digging up streets and pavements, but Johannesburg-based company Fibrehoods has taken a different approach to bringing high-speed internet to Johannesburg’s suburbs: aerial fibre. “We’re building an aerial fibre network on streetlights and putting up some of our own poles where required. Aerial deployment provides various advantages in both costs and speed of deployment” Alon Hendel, director of Fibrehoods, explains. “Fibrehoods a joint venture between the Waterfall Investment Company (WIC) – the owner of Waterfall Estate and RMBD Holdings – and a private company with various interests, including a stake in private security…

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Last year Nike designer Tinker Harfield, who designed the iconic Nike Air Mags worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, hinted that this year the footwear giant will make the Nike Air Mags available to the public, complete with the “Power Laces” that allow the shoes to effective lace themselves up. In 2011 Nike made and auctioned off 1 500 pairs of specially made Air Mags for the Michael J Fox Foundation, albeit without Power Laces. Despite the shoes missing one of the key features that made them so desirable to sneakerheads and movie buffs, the exercise…

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South African 3D printing enthusiast Hans Fouche has built his own large-scale 3D printer called the Cheetah (on account of its speediness) and used it to print the shell of a lawnmower. But the printer isn’t just capable of printing larger objects than even the biggest MakerBot 3D printer (which local IT distributor Rectron recently began distributing in South Africa) it does so in a fraction of the time – albeit at lower resolution: the Cheetah uses a 3mm extruder nozzle rather than the 0.5mm nozzles found on most large 3D printers. Fouche, who lives in Kempton Park, east of…

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Last year high-quality audio became a hot topic again thanks to musician Neil Young’s Pono, an iPod-esque music player for audiophiles. Now Sony has entered the race, too, with its Walkman ZX2. The company is showing off the device at CES in Las Vegas this week and its expected to cost around $1 100 (around R12 000) when it goes on sale later this week. The ZX2 is powered by Google’s Android operating system (albeit the older 4.2 Jelly Bean version) and includes 128GB of storage and an SD card slot for adding even more should you so wish. Given…

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Last year rapper 50 Cent’s company SMS Audio entered into an unlikely partnership with Lucasfilm to release four pairs of Star Wars-themed headphones (Stormtrooper, Rebel Alliance, Boba Fett and Imperial editions). Because, you know, rap and sci-fi have such a long and illustrious history. Oh wait. Nonetheless, this week at CES the company announced it’s adding four more pairs to the line-up. The R2D2, Chewbacca, Darth Vader and the TIE Fighter editions for this year are expected to cost around $200 (+/= R2 400) a pair and include 40mm drivers and passive noise cancelling. With the trailer for the latest instalment…

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Since its launch in late 2010, Instagram has become one of the most popular mobile photo-sharing services on earth and now boasts more than 300 million users. Instagram is no longer just about sharing square-cropped happy snaps with friends and family, it’s a global community of mobile photography enthusiasts and a means of promoting people, products and in some instances, even places. It’s this idea of promoting a particular country and showcasing its natural (and urban) beauty that led local Instagram enthusiast Craig Rodney to start the @southafrica Instagram account. Instagram users are encouraged to tag photos they consider quintessentially…

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“For people who like physical keyboards.” That ought to be the slogan for the BlackBerry Classic, the latest device from the embattled Canadian mobile device manufacturer. With its physical keyboard and navigation keys the Classic looks like a BlackBerry Bold, the company’s quintessential (if somewhat aspirational) device in its heyday. The Bold was like the overdressed version of the wildly successful Curve. It’s what Curve owners who came into money bought, and there were plenty of Curve owners. The Classic runs BlackBerry’s current OS, BlackBerry 10, and has a touch display (with a middling resolution of 720×720 pixels) that’s square instead…

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Cape Town-based high-end audio distributor 13hof is now importing Germany’s Avantgarde range of speakers for South African music fans. As much objets d’art as they are functional, Avantgarde’s products aren’t for the faint of heart or the light of pocket. The Zero 1 range, for example, starts at R190 000 for a pair and goes up to R240 000 for the Zero 1 Pro units, which include better processing. Achim Spelling and Joel Kopping run the Cape Town and Johannesburg offices of 13hof respectively. The company also distributes other top-notch audio gear from the likes of Gryphon and Rega. So,…

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Darling of the square, shareable image Instagram has added five new image filters to its repertoire for the first time in two years (in December 2012 the company added the Willow and Mayfair filters). It’s also included the ability to rearrange the filters and hide those you never use. The five new filters are Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden and Perpetual. Here’s what they look like (courtesy of the Instagram blog): “Inspired by the photography, art, fashion and design of the global Instagram community, we’re releasing five new filters that we believe are our best yet. You’ll see the filters at…

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Every year for the past six years YouTube has released a list of the most watched videos and most popular channels of the preceding year. Politics featured heavily in the South African rankings this year, from Julius Malema’s antics in parliament to a statement from the official opposition on a controversial advert, but even South Africans weren’t immune to the charms of a Polish prankster who dressed his dog like a spider and unleashed it on unsuspecting members of the public – which, incidentally, was the most popular video of 2014, globally. [youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoB8t0B4jx4″] The most watched video in South Africa…

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