Author: CraigWilson

French mobile operator Orange has announced it will open its first retail outlet in South Africa in the suburb of Claremont in Cape Town next month. The operator already operates a successful online store selling mobile handsets, tablets and other tech-related items. Orange plans to open additional stores in other parts of South Africa next year. The store will offer many of the same products sold online and will also allow consumers to order online and collect in store. It will also provide a physical presence for repairs and returns and serve as a point of sale for Orange Top-Up…

Once the shining light of telephony, the desktop phone has long since taken a back seat to its mobile brethren. Chinese manufacturer Huawei is looking to buck this trend with its new full-HD intelligent desktop phone, the Huawei eSpace 8950. Huawei’s says its eSpace 8950 isn’t merely an IP phone or a videophone because it also includes a full-HD 1080p camera along with full-band voice codec (that supports sampling rates up to 48 kHz). The device also supports HDMI-based video conferencing by allowing users to project content from the phone to a larger display. Users can also pair the desktop…

What’s the best way to show off a waterproof range of mobile phones and tablets computers? Put them in an underwater store, of course. Sony Mobile Middle East and Africa has done just that with its Xperia Aquatech Store located at The World Islands off the coast of Dubai. The underwater concept store is four metres below the surface and showcases Sony’s latest Xperia devices and accessories. Visitors access the jellyfish-like store by swimming down to it. Once inside the store users can handle the full Xperia range. Spyros Gousetis, director of marketing at Sony Mobile Middle East and Africa,…

A non-profit organisation from Cape Town called the Foundation for Space Development wants inspire Africa’s youth by undertaking the continent’s first mission to the moon and transmitting images from either a probe on the lunar surface or from a satellite orbiting it. “The mission will also provide a platform for one or more scientific experiments, to be defined by the scientific community,” the organisation says on its website. “In this way the mission will also contribute to humankind’s knowledge of the moon and form part of Africa’s contribution to global space exploration activities.” In order to make this dream a…

The next instalment of the Star Wars franchise, which Disney paid top dollar to acquire in late 2012 when it bought Lucasfilm, is due out in the US next month and first trailer has finally appeared online after rumours that it would initially only be shown in US cinemas. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the seventh film in the series that has spawned countless games, books, animated series and merchandise and is set approximately 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi. Filling the director’s chair this time around is JJ Abrams, which means we can expect more…

Lenovo’s latest flagship, contortionist laptop (the company favours the term “convertible”) radiates class – assuming you don’t get it in orange, that is. From its watchstrap-like hinge, which enables the display to fold completely flat against its underside (creating a beautiful – but bulky – 13-inch tablet) to its 3200×1600 pixel display and slim profile, the Yoga 3 Pro veritably screams: “I’m expensive!” The Chinese hardware manufacturer makes two really excellent lines of laptops. The one is the powerhouse workhorse, the ThinkPad. The other is its Yoga range of convertible or hybrid laptops. The Yoga 3 Pro, the new flagship…

Voonja is a new South African mobile app (currently in closed beta testing) built at the mLab business incubator in the Innovation Hub in Pretoria that wants to enable smartphone-wielding citizens to report on anything they consider newsworthy in their own areas. It’s aimed at providing the sort of hyper-localised news that often gets passed over, or simply missed, by conventional news outlets. Available for Android and with an iOS app awaiting approval from Apple, Voonja harnesses the GPS antenna, camera and connectivity built into smartphones to enable users to create and share content to the service. Voonja takes its…

South Africans can now get money back for old feature phones, smartphones and tablet computers thanks to a new, local version of Spanish e-commerce company Zwipit. Consumers can use the website to see whether or not Zwipit has demand for the device in question and, if so, can arrange to have it collected from their home or office at no charge. South Africa is the tenth country to get the service, which buys used devices and refurbishes and resells them. The company says phase one of its South African roll out will only see it buying used devices and distributing these…

French mobile operator Orange has partnered with the city of Cape Town to offer free Wi-Fi in Khayelitsha and Mitchell’s Plain. Users will get 200MB of free data per day. The company also plans to offer paid data packages using the same Wi-Fi network down the line and has hinted at its plans to play in the Internet service provider (ISP) space in South Africa in the months to come. Sebastien Crozier, CEO of Orange Horizons, says there are two planned phases for the project. “The first phase of the project will offer free Wi-Fi to anyone making use of…

In the same way the dawn of computing hurried the death of a range of vocations there’s no doubt that increasing automation and progress in fields like artificial intelligence (AI) will mean the death knell for industries and careers we take for granted today. It’s unavoidable, but there’s no need to panic, the trick is to understand what’s coming in broad terms and prepare accordingly. “Programming is the new wizardry,” says Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, during a session he hosted at Dell World in Austin, Texas earlier this month. “Think of the printing press – the written word used…