Author: Duncan Pike

Curro, one of South Africa’s independent school networks, has announced its first inter-school esports tournament for young Gauteng learners. If you or someone you know is aiming for a career in esports, this could be a good place to start. The tournament, dubbed Curro Clash LAN, will take place on Friday and Saturday, 24 – 25 March at Curro Krugersdorp High School. It aims to give aspiring competitors the opportunity to hone their skills and experience a formal competitive gaming environment. Likely a first for many. The two-day-long tournament will see teams compete in a capture-the-flag game mode within Minecraft…

American audio device manufacturer Sonos has officially unveiled its latest pair of smart speakers, the Era 100 and Era 300. With these new speakers, the company is promising “a whole new chapter in sound and design innovation”. Judging from its previous products, we’re inclined to believe it. Sonos’ new Era starts now If you’re already a fan of the brand, the Era 100 might look a little familiar. That’s by design – as it is a “remastering” of the company’s popular Sonos One smart speaker. Although this time it’s a little bigger. The One has held a spot in our…

Global tech giant Apple doesn’t seem as keen as the rest of the tech industry on the recent generative AI boom. You aren’t alone if you think every second company is jumping on board, following OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT, built on its proprietary GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) language model. They’re either integrating it into what they already offer or they’re coming up with new products and services based on the core AI capabilities. Apple has never been one to follow the crowd when it comes to trends like this. If it does eventually plan to use generative AI in…

The introduction of coding and robotics to South African schools has been on the cards for a few years now. Some schools didn’t wait around for a plan from the government and have already implemented the subjects their own way. Hopefully, the recently announced partnership between Oxford University Press and Resolute Education will bring the new subjects to more schools in the country. Coding and robotics are child’s play The partnership aims to provide learners in a classroom or online learning environment with a practical kit of techy components. But those kits are for schools that already have the means…

Before any new piece of tech becomes commonplace, industry enthusiasts get their hands on it. Support for graphics cards and SSDs using the new PCIe 5.0 standard has been around for a few months already. It showed up with Intel’s 12th- and 13th-gen desktop CPUs and AMD’s Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs. But PC enthusiasts have yet to get their clammy hands on GPUs or SSDs that make use of the new standard. Well, they’ll need to liquidate some (read: all) of their crypto and strap on their anti-static bands because the first consumer PCIe 5.0 SSDs have started to show…

Qualcomm and Thales, a France-based IT company, have announced the first commercially deployable iSIM (integrated subscriber identity module) at MWC 2023. Although the acronym uses most of the same letters, iSIMs do differ slightly from eSIMs. But only in ways that matter to smartphone manufacturers. The physical SIM card has been dying a slow death for the better part of a decade. Everyone thought the introduction of the eSIM (embedded SIM) in 2017 would expedite that death. Some American iPhone 14 models, for example, don’t have a physical SIM tray at all. So maybe the SIM has died. Just not…

All-in-one PCs satisfy a rather niche section of the PC market. The Asus ExpertCenter E5 AiO we recently spent time with dials that in even further. Most folks looking for an AiO are usually setting up some kind of small business and don’t want to worry about component compatibility. They could go for a pre-built system, but maybe their available workspace is limited or they’d rather not have to deal with the mess of cables usually found behind a PC. That last point is especially true if the PC can’t be shoved under a desk and is visible to customers…

The world’s most popular chat app, WhatsApp, isn’t resting on its laurels. We’ve previously covered a few features currently in the pipeline. Some even made it out of testing and are now available. But it ain’t stopping there. The platform is constantly seeking to add new features and quality-of-life updates. Well, that’s what it wants everyone to think, anyway. If you’re reading about WhatsApp updates, there’s a high chance that the new feature is still in development. If they have made it to the testing phase, it’s only available to a handful of testers. There’s an equally high chance that…

We’re one day away from the official launch of GSMA’s MWC 2023 (Mobile World Congress), the biggest mobile technology show of the year. This is the second year back to an in-person format, following 2022’s show after a quiet 2021 and a cancelled show in 2020 – one guess as to why. Before the disruption, MWC had become the show to attend for mobile tech companies, who often saved their biggest (and best) announcements for the coveted Barcelona stage. Even with a return to physical events, these days the big mobile tech players mostly opt to host their own events. Why share…

Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices, announced at its Unpacked event on 1 February, have been available for pre-order since 17 February and will start shipping out today, 24 February. We’ve already spent some time with the flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra and compared it to last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra. But its starting price of R31,000 is probably too steep for most folks. If that’s you, maybe the Galaxy S23+ or base S23 models are more your speed. We’ve compared the spec sheets of the Galaxy S23+ and S22+ while we wait for our review unit and now we turn to the…