Author: Brett Venter

Just when you thought they were doing all right for a change, Telkom comes along to prove you wrong. The state-owned telecoms company has filed an urgent court order attempting to stop ICASA’s upcoming spectrum auction. The move, if successful, will further delay the expansion of 4G services in South Africa. It’ll also slam the brakes on an already plodding 5G rollout in this country. Really, Telkom? Telkom yesterday filed its objections with the Gauteng High Court, calling the invitation to apply “tainted”. The operator maintains that the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has made several errors with…

Remember when Sony announced its first car, back in 2020? You know, before the world ended? Well, that situation is becoming permanent. The company, at CES this year, revealed the pending launch of Sony Mobility. What’s that, you ask? Sony’s own car company, of course. That isn’t all that’s happened in Las Vegas this year. The Vision-S turned up (again), as well as a new SUV called the Vision-S 02. Really imaginative naming there, Sony. Sudden Sony Mobility  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bC81mPR6s The two Vision-S vehicles are supposedly coming, but first Sony Mobility has to turn up. Sony is forming Sony Mobility Inc.…

In a move that even people wearing VR headsets all day saw coming, Sony has confirmed the PlayStation VR 2. And, as with the reveal of the PlayStation 5 logo at CES 2020, that’s all the company is willing to let us see. Oh, the hardware exists. It’s real. It’ll eventually launch. And we even know what it does and which features it’ll include. But Sony doesn’t want anyone looking at it just yet, which is why all they’ve shown off is the logo. PlayStation VR 2: The Return of PSVR In addition to confirming the name (which we could…

If you think the farming world is exempt from technological innovation, think again. Besides farms-in-a-box or closed-loop farms, automation is also heading to the field. Which, arguably, takes the most exciting bit of farming out of farmer’s hands. But that’s not the point. Farming giant John Deere reckons it can see the future and that future includes less driving. Unless you’re one of the company’s Deere 8R tractors, that is. The company has used CES 2022 to show off its new fully-autonomous tractors, a product it has been punting since about 2019. It’s taken a few years to get it…

4K TVs used to be a pricy purchase. Now you can’t turn around without tripping over a decent budget set. Skyworth’s 50SUD9300F, as the unwieldy product designation suggests, is a 50in 4K TV with a less-than-R10k price. Skyworth’s TVs have almost all adopted Android as their operating system. The ones that don’t repack Google’s mobile OS are all ‘dumb’ TVs. You’re probably looking for something with a little smarts, though. The SUD9300F should deliver what you need — but it has its fiddly bits. Some assembly required Happily, things don’t really get fiddly until you’ve actually assembled this TV. This…

BlackBerry, we’re sorry to say, is going away. That’s been happening for a while now and in varying degrees, but those folks with a death-grip on their physical BlackBerry hardware? Yeah, your time is up. Software support for BlackBerry software officially ends today, meaning you should have replaced your device last week to avoid service interruptions. The last BlackBerry More specifically, legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS (or earlier), BlackBerry 10, and BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 are coming to a close today, 4 January. This doesn’t mean that your device will stop working immediately, however. But it does mean that…

Just before the business world took a few days off at the end of December, Apple was awfully close to a world first. The company was closing in on a $3 trillion market cap valuation, which would make it the world’s fifth-largest economy, just after Germany. Well, it’s happened. And then unhappened, just as quickly. Apple yesterday became the first company to be worth more than $3 trillion, but it also uncrossed that milestone by the end of the day. An Apple a day Yesterday, 3 January, was the first day of trading for the year. Apple, during the day,…

It’s 2022, which means that we’re staring down the barrel of a Samsung Galaxy S22 announcement. It’s going to happen, that’s never been in doubt. Unless Samsung’s suddenly started hating money, there will be a new flagship smartphone out soon. Usually, Samsung tries to take the lead, so we’re expecting something official either this month or early in February. Last year, the company took its swing on 14 January. That’s just late enough that folks have woken up from December, but too soon for anyone else to be hogging headlines. So what can we expect from the Galaxy S22? Well,…

It’s the last day of 2021, which means that a) 2022 is right around the corner and b) you’re probably not going to read this until the hangover’s worn off at least a little. That’s fine. We’re just doing a little prognosticating about the year in tech to come. We don’t need alcoholic beverages to see into the future, though it does help from time to time. These are mostly guesses, in the same way analysts and stockbrokers are guessing what’s about to happen next. But we really wouldn’t be shocked to find that we’re not far off the mark,…

Everybody loves Fujifilm’s Instax cameras. If you don’t like them, you either don’t have a soul, or you lead a very solitary existence. Which is fine, but you’d like ’em of you went out more. Just sayin’. But, for a certain sort of person, instant cameras aren’t perfect. This is where the Instax Link Wide, and other products like it, come in. A boring box The Instax Link Wide is, in a nutshell, an instant camera that’s missing the camera bit. Another way to describe it is as a very specialised Bluetooth printer. But that doesn’t sound nearly as sexy,…