Author: Brett Venter

So you’re keen to try out this new NFTs thing, but you don’t have several million dollars for one? Twitter, apparently, has you covered. If you’re one of the 140 lucky folks who will get their hands on one of the 140 non-fungible tokens that the micro-blogging service is giving away. Yes, this is an actual thing, and yes, it’s awfully easy to be in the running for one of them — but, like all online giveaways, it going to come down to luck. All a-Twitter about NFTs https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1410227743636217856? Twitter posted (on its own service, of course — what, you…

Russia is the latest country to take steps to limit how social media companies operate in places that aren’t their home ground. A new law signed by president Vladimir Putin this week mandates that social media giants need to establish a local presence in Russia in order to keep doing business the way that they’re used to. The new law says that “A foreign entity, carrying out activities on the internet in Russia, is obliged to create a branch, open an office or establish a Russian legal entity.” Though this law, according to politician Alexander Khinshtein, only applies to companies…

Netflix, for me, used to be a place to discover new and exciting content or, since they’ve got quite the back catalogue, a way to catch up on movies and series that I missed the first time around. Now, it’s a place where I scroll around aimlessly for a while before, more often than not, watching something I’ve already watched before. And the problem isn’t with me… okay, it’s a little with me… the issue comes in with how the streaming service monitors every single move I make. The reason for this, besides informing them what combination of genres, scripts…

Okay, now we know that there’s a Samsung Unpacked event in the very near future. The company’s unannounced Galaxy Watch 4 Classic has turned up in official-looking renders online, showing off pretty much every aspect of the coming wearable’s design. As the name suggests, the design is more or less what we’ve been expecting from the range. It looks a little bulkier than the Active variant seen last week, along with a large rotating bezel and a much busier design. Supersizing your Galaxy Watch 4 Classic? Like the Active, though, there are two physical buttons visible on the device but…

South African’s are bound to be more familiar with Black and Decker in their guise of power tools manufacturer but, it turns out, the company has ambitions beyond making all the tool brands you’re especially fond of. The company, in kind of a surprising move, has launched a new health division. It’s started out with a line of products called goVia, which are intended for older folks living at home alone. They’re called personal emergency response (PERS) wearables. Guess what they do? The health of Black and Decker We’re using trackers and wearables for just about everything else, so Black…

Every time LG talks about its new QNED TVs, we can’t help but think of Nedal band Okilly Dokilly, a Ned Flanders-themed group — who really need to be seen (and heard) to be believed. But that’s just a convenient excuse for a silly header image, what we’re really here to talk about today are LG’s upcoming TVs, which are set to drop in the States first and the rest of the world soon after. QNED’s neighbour There are three main models of LG’s QNED mini-LED TVs heading to market, which will be available in a range of sizes. There…

South African insurance provider QSure was struck by a major data breach earlier this month, one that led to banking information and other sensitive data being compromised. The company hasn’t said how many records were scooped during the intrusion. Hope they have insurance for this Company COO Ian du Toit, speaking to TechCentral, said “On 9 June 2021, QSure became aware that it had been subject to illegal and unauthorised access to its IT infrastructure, and immediately isolated its IT network and shut down its systems.” Du Toit added, “QSure immediately appointed three industry-leading and independent cyber-forensic and security technology…

When you really think about it, Facebook doesn’t have any original ideas, except when it comes to taking things other people have already done and using them to collect personal information. Facebook is just corporate MySpace ( so without the sparkly bits) and every seemingly original idea the service has had was either paid for (Instagram, WhatsApp, the Oculus system) or stolen borrowed from its competitors. A new Bulletin from Facebook Bulletin is one of the latter. Like pretty much everything Snapchat (or Clubhouse, or TikTok, or anyone) does, Facebook’s taken someone else’s idea and created its own version of…

Whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, the 2021 Olympics will take place in Japan this year starting from the end of July. And even though you’re not attending (if you’re in South Africa, you’re not attending as a spectator — our COVID spike isn’t nearly over), you can still show your support… and give Apple a little more money at the same time. Watch-ing the Olympics Apple’s releasing an Olympics-focused series of bands for the Apple Watch, called the Apple Watch International Collection. There are 22 bands in total and, amazingly, South Africa is one of the…

Man, Samsung really likes to have all of the attention to itself. Despite a stripped-back Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, the company’s presentation was entirely devoted to One UI Watch, Samsung’s new wearables operating system. Not hardware, not phones, just the OS — and a promise that we’ll see it in action on something at the company’s next Unpacked event. Which will probably take place in July this year, now. One UI Watch what I can do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSZvIqYDSM You can watch the entire event, in the event that you missed it the first time around, or you can just…