Author: Brett Venter

Robot vacuum cleaners are a surprisingly trendy segment of tech right now. Ecovacs’ new Deebot X12 OmniCyclone is just the latest entry into an increasingly crowded market. Right now, though, South Africans will have to admire it from afar. Ecovacs has unveiled its newest contender for your favourite floor assistant and put it on sale, but it’s confined to the European market for now. The company does have a local presence, so it’ll likely turn up once the marketing plan makes it as far as South Africa. Deebot X12 you’re looking for? What can you expect from a (likely) R30,000…

We’ve seen loads of Chinese humanoid robot projects. There are surprisingly few from Japanese companies and even fewer from Japanese auto-makers. The Toyota CUE7 is here to break that drought. This mostly-humanoid creation — it has a wheeled base instead of legs — has a very specific skill set. It can play basketball. That’s not strictly accurate, though. It can certainly shoot hoops, but the robot hasn’t yet demonstrated its skills on a packed court. The CUE7 was revealed on WELT, a German news program, on a (currently geo-blocked) YouTube video. Taking your CUE7 Stuff found a way to watch…

Once upon a time, social media was… well, social. Nowadays, it’s all about serving ads and impressions to people you’ve never met. A new app out of the UK, Swizil, hopes that enough users are annoyed by the current state of affairs and just want to go back to sharing with their immediate social circle. The whole point of the app is heading back to private sharing, apparently with a focus on “a better way to stay connected, one that reflects how we actually live and share, not how platforms expect us to perform.” That’s marketing speak, of course, but…

China’s Geely has a new EV coming to the local market, and, as these vehicles go, it’s positively affordable. It’s also positively adorable. The Geely E2 arrives in two variants, the Aspire and the Apex, with the former starting at R340,000. The Apex version is a substantial chunk of your bank account more expensive, starting at R390,000. Based on the price alone, this is the version of the E2 you want to drive. But… a solid EV for less than R350k has its attractions too. Geely E2: Geely harder Most of the important features are common across the Geely E2…

Imagine taking the Nokia 3310 build (the original one), scaling it up to laptop size, and then sticking modern internals inside it? That’s more or less what current brand owner HMD Global wants you to have in mind when it reveals the Nokia Booklet X15 Enterprise. If the company reveals it. See, the Booklet X15 Enterprise isn’t an official device yet. It surfaced via leaks from an X account, which also detailed the company’s similarly rugged Mission-Safe Phone 2. The product shown by leaker @smashX_60 isn’t remarkable as laptops go. The Finnish brand’s involvement makes it notable. Built Nokia tough?…

Pokémon has, since its inception, featured the Pokédex. A little handheld device capable of identifying the little ball-based monsters, it has appeared in the anime series and Nintendo’s never-ending games. Now? It’s a real thing, and it works just the way it does in fiction. The non-fiction version of the Pokédex is, sadly, a custom-built item. You’re unlikely to encounter one at retail unless Nintendo likes the concept and grabs the plans from YouTuber Mr. Volt. Honestly? The company probably should. It would make a hell of a Switch 2 bundle edition. Pokédexter’s lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5cQ_2DNEOU Toy versions of the Pokémon…

The writing has been on the wall for months. It’s just gotten a little larger. Microsoft has suddenly inflated the pricing for its Surface range overseas, with increases possible for the range in South Africa (which is currently on a deep discount — just saying). The affected range includes current Surface Pro and Surface Laptop 7 devices, some of which are on sale in this country. The jump, as spotted by WindowsCentral, isn’t insubstantial either. The only good news for locals is that these pricing changes are, for the moment, on the Microsoft.com store as opposed to regular retail. Microsoft…

Google launched its AI Mode in South Africa in the second half of last year. Now, the company has added an additional feature for the country. It’s aimed at the sort of people who find other humans dreary (or who struggle to pick up a phone). AI Mode hopes to upskill (and dehumanise) your dinner plans, letting users “go from planning to booking in just a few steps,” according to the company’s blog post. The impression the post gives is that the feature is aimed more at visitors hoping to indulge in “South Africa’s world-class dining scene” than at locals.…

It sounds a bit like a joke, but Meta is reportedly working on digitising its head and founder, Mark Zuckerberg. The company isn’t planning to release the Zuckerbot onto the wider internet, according to the report. Instead, it’s being used internally. If the report had come from any source other than the Financial Times, we’d question just how real the apparent development is. Specifically, the AI-powered chatbot will communicate with Meta’s staff in Mark Zuckerberg’s style, using his mannerisms and thought processes. That’s very Meta It won’t simply be a chatbot, either. The new function will make use of a 3D…

The PocketTerm35 is the latest cyberdeck-like device we’ve seen in the past few months, and it looks like this one is ready for retail. More or less. Unlike Rabbit’s possibly ill-fated Project Cyberdeck and the completely home-made CyberPlug, you can buy one of these right now. In theory, anyway. A website called WaveShare has these up for sale, but we’re unable to get one through to the checkout screen so shipping data becomes available. It might be a regional issue, or perhaps something else, but that hasn’t stopped us from wanting one. Serving your PocketTerm35 There are two versions of…