Author: Brett Venter

Money’s tight for everyone. If you’re lucky enough to be working from home you’re ahead of the game but just about everyone aside from remote workers and essential services have found their livelihoods curtailed. Including, lest we forget, music artists and other performers. It’s tough to make a living when your business model relies on getting large numbers of folks into the same venue. Music app JOOX has an initiative running at the moment that hopes to help artists out a little. Called Gig 2 Earn, the program isn’t a new one. It’s been around for some time but it’s…

It’s a whole new world, and not in a cutesy, Aladdin kinda way. Meeting new people largely revolves around a) not being scared to go close to them and b) wondering what they look like under that mask. Even dating services like Tinder are having to adapt. And adaptation is coming, in the shape of in-app video calls from the dating service. Expect the feature to land in Q2 2020, so before the end of… say… June? The rise of the Johnson-Cam? At first glance, this seems like a terrible idea. A dating app, where sex is at least in…

The world continues as normal, at least for companies like Apple. New on the scene is another 13in MacBook Pro from the fruit company, to go along with the 16in model revealed in November last year. Ah, November last year…. Anyway, nostalgia for a simpler time aside, Apple’s revamped 13in MacBook Pro has one major change. A Magic keyboard, of the type found in its larger sibling, has completely displaced Apple’s ill-fated butterfly keyboard. But wait, there’s more It wouldn’t be a hardware update without more that just a freakin’ keyboard, now would it? Along with the improved typing experience…

If you’re eagerly awaiting the broader rollout of 5G in your area, you might want to consider taking up mountain climbing. Vodacom and friends will have to come up with some excellent excuses why your dorpie doesn’t have access to superfast 5G when one of the most remote places on the planet has coverage already. Yup, you can Insta at high speed on the mountain if you really wanna, thanks to Huawei. Seriously? Yeah, seriously. The project is the result of Huawei and China Mobile, which have partnered up to build the Everest dual Gigabit network. The telecoms company has constructed…

So you need a new smartphone in your life, do you? And not just any smartphone, you need a new iPhone? Roll on the middle of May, because that’s when Apple’s new iPhone SE lands in South Africa. At least, that’s the word according to Makro, which has availability and pricing up on its website. Early info While local supplier MyiStore still has a ‘Coming Soon’ for Apple’s revamped budget handset, Makro’s spilled some beans for us. Makro has all the colour variants available for pre-order at present, as well as all of the available storage sizes. The handset is…

Usually when you see a car with a 1400 at the end of the name, you’re looking at a Datsun bakkie or a ‘student’ car. You know, the type with decent fuel economy and bodywork so soft you can dent it with a thrown marshmallow. That’s… not the case with the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet 1400. But then, the first few words of the name should have been a bit of a giveaway. Thundercougarfalconbird Just like you shouldn’t ever play cards with anyone named after an American Deep South city (avoid all chaps called Tex, Dallas, Memphis, or variations thereof),…

So you’re sitting around playing video games this lockdown, feeling generally unproductive? Never fear, your spirits are about to be lifted. Call of Duty: Mobile has announced its 2020 World Championship tournament, a $1 million event that kicks off at the end of May this year. But first…

The current lockdown and cabin fever might be setting in around the country. Twitter trends in South Africa aren’t normally this ferocious. Multichoice-owned DStv is in the Twitter crosshairs as #DStvMustFall trends on the micro-blogging service. Nothing new https://twitter.com/UmalambaneZN/status/1253085551571406848 https://twitter.com/Msiyaristo/status/1253150116485238784 The complaints aren’t new at all. At fault are DStv’s subscription prices, as well as its tendency to repeat its content ad nauseam. It appears that when subscribers are all stuck at home and not headed to work for half the day, those repeats are a lot more grating. Especially when all of the sport — the main drawcard for…

There’s nothing really new on the internet but This Website Will Self Destruct, a website that will delete itself if nobody posts on it for 24 hours, may be just the thing we all needed at this moment. The concept’s an interesting one: The website has a counter — 86,400 seconds — which, if it reaches zero, will delete the entire site. All of it. Gone. Poof. The counter is reset whenever anyone posts a message in the simple form. A comment on the brief nature of life? Or an illustration of how connections keep us going? Or maybe it’s…

This Cyberpunk 2077-themed Xbox One X console is breathtaking Limited edition consoles are a weird thing to own. They tend to cost more, they're usually hard to find but, often, they look rather awesome. That's certainly the case with this Cyberpunk 2077-themed Xbox One X, unveiled by Microsoft over the weekend. It's... an Xbox One