Author: Brett Venter

Google acquired smart-device maker Nest a short while ago and now Nest is adding a few more feathers by doing some acquiring of their own. According to a post on the Nest website, the company is busy acquiring an outfit called DropCam, which specialises in home monitoring gear. No specifics are available are available concerning what Nest (and, by extension, Google) wants with DropCam. DropCam makes and sells hardware which allows people to keep an eye on what is going on at home while in other locations, with night-vision and two-way radio over Wifi being features of their products. According…

You might recall that Apple announced an new entry-level iMac configuration for the world at large last week, with availability starting immediately in most places. In very short order, South African distributor Core has announced local pricing and availability for the 21.5-inch Apple desktop and the cost… isn’t bad at all. As from “early July”, with a more specific date probably being made known closer to the time, South African Apple fans will be able to get their hands on the 1.4GHz iMac setup starting from R15,000. Keep in mind that this is the recommended price from Core so you…

What a funny-looking set of headphones. And made by Parrot no less, the company that gave the world the AR.drone. This is the Parrot Zik, a name that we’re still not wholly sure how to pronounce without something dirty in another language, and the Zik (stop giggling) is a set of wireless Bluetooth headphones that need to be worn in order to truly experience them. Wear and tear The reason you need to wear them is because first impressions are probably not accurate. Looking at Parrot’s cans in their box, you get the idea that all that metal and the…

BlackBerry is going to be giving the world a new QWERTY keyboard smartphone in September this year, at an event in London. This is according to BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen, who stated that the event would go forward during a recent conference call discussing the company’s financial results. The details of the phone, which was known under the Windermere codename before being labeled the Passport, are fairly mysterious at the moment but the dimensions are known and that’s what is a bit weird. BlackBerry is reportedly opting for a square 4.5-inch (with a 1,440 x 1,440 resolution). It’s probably going to…

Facebook has added another new fruit to their tree, announcing the acquisition of a company called SnappyTV. The company, which is based in San Francisco, specialises in video editing for upload to social networks and Twitter intends to use the company to “…make it easy for TV broadcasters, businesses, and event producers to share high-quality videos”. The result is that you might see more video clips popping up in your Twitter feed in future, in whatever form Twitter deems appropriate. In the past, it’s been used to post highlights from sports games and news so we’re not really looking at…

[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymCDdrMKPrY”] Cutesy (but awesome) game-creation tool and general platform game LittleBigPlanet’s third instalment was announced at this year’s E3 conference in Los Angeles but, at the time, it was only confirmed for the PlayStation 4. Now it seems as though the folks at Sumo Digital and Sony were hiding something from us. A recent tweet, from LittleBigPlanet community manager Steven Isbell, as outed a PlayStation 3 version of LittleBigPlanet 3 which has yet to be officially announced. https://twitter.com/StevenIsbell/statuses/476405948609998848 Which is good news for fans who aren’t planning to get their hands on Sony’s new console hardware. We’re expecting the PS3…

It’s been a very, very long time in coming but now you don’t need to own an iPhone in order to make use of Nike’s Fuelband. The sporting goods and gear company has finally unveiled an app for Android that will allow Fuelband owners to take something a little different along while they’re breaking their own records. The Fuelband 1.0 is not supported by the new Android app, which we were not even sure we were getting up till now, but that’s about all that it doesn’t do. The Android app will let users track and upload NikeFuel data to…

Apple has announced that nearly everyone will be able to get their hands on an iMac desktop machine in the near future, with a new, stripped down stationary computer from the company now being available. The 21.5-inch iMac will start off with a dual-core Core i5 CPU (1.4GHz to 2.7GHz with Turbo Boost) and 8GB of RAM. Standard are Intel’s HD 5000 graphics and a 500GB hard drive while each until will ship with 802.11ac WiFi, four USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt ports. iLife and iWork will be launched free with the machines and there are a couple of…

[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTNNLvs_q-Y”] Infamous: Second Son’s Fetch must have proved quite popular with gamers when the third Infamous game launched on the PlayStation 4, given that Sony and Sucker Punch have elected to make her the subject of the prequel DLC (downloadable content) that is due to launch on the PS4 soon. Here you can check out the teaser video for Infamous: First Light, which takes place before the events that led Second Son protagonist Delsin to go on a superpowered spraypainting rampage through Seattle. While the earlier release covered some of Fetch’s backstory, as see through Delsin’s eyes, First Light…

[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MmZN1qEx2M”] A group of students and lecturers from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) have come up with an electric scooter that has been designed to “alleviate inner city congestion and to bring back the fun in our daily commute”. The WATT, as it is known, uses a skateboard-like design with an external power source and brushless motors to get itself wherever it needs to be. So what is the WATT capable of? It has a top speed to 22km/h and should last you 25km of travel on a single charge. Once depleted, the battery should be able…