Author: Brett Venter

When your tech breaks, you don’t want to wait forever to get it back. LG’s new premium service centre, launched today in Gauteng, hopes to keep that wait short. The new facility is based at the company’s relatively new Johannesburg offices in Midrand. The company’s new centre is built around speedy repairs of TVs, microwaves, washing machines, and fridges. The company says that thanks to onsite parts, it hopes to turn some repairs around in an hour or so. That appears to be more a target than a promise, but it’s still good to know that the company has speed…

If you own a recent Porsche then, first, congratulations. We hate you a little bit. But also, you owe it to yourself to check out the new TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Porsche Edition. The newest smartwatch from the iconic watchmaker has been designed with Taycan owners in mind. You don’t need to own one. But if you want your smartwatch to match… The Connected Calibre smartwatch is the result of an ongoing TAG/Porsche partnership, first undertaken last year. The first device from that team-up, the Carrera Porsche Chronograph, was a much more conventional timepiece. This one features much more…

Going to space is a remarkable achievement. Getting up there and deciding to get outside of the construction keeping you alive is another entirely. Soon, private citizens might join the ranks of those who have conducted a spacewalk. This is Polaris Dawn, a SpaceX-powered mission that will include the first commercial spacewalk. The event could take place as soon as December this year. It’ll be a world first — four private citizens launched into space, at least some of whom will get out of the capsule they’re in. It forms part of the Polaris Program, a privately-funded expedition looking to…

YouTube, modern-day babysitter, and place where people watch other people play video games, has something completely new in the works. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google’s platform is about to launch another platform. This one will act as an online store for streaming services, more or less. More specifically, the new function is internally referred to as a “channel store”, according to the report. Exactly how it’ll work hasn’t been explained, but YouTube has apparently been working on the idea for eighteen months. YouTube, NewTube The company hopes to convince potential partners to offer streaming services…

Some of you might remember the humble Beach Buggy, a converted VW Beetle with a fibreglass shell, a roll cage, and basically no way to keep drivers and passengers warm. They used to (and still do) roam South Africa’s coastline. They were also seen in all manner of places outside of SA because they were made by a company called Meyers Manx. Manx used to sell Beach Buggies to anyone who was willing to put them together. The iconic vehicle was a fun experience, but what if it was utterly terrifying? Enter the Manx 2.0, an electric Beach Buggy. Brisk…

So you wanted a future with robots, did you? Xiaomi, apparently, is about to make that happen. CyberOne is its first humanoid robot, revealed during an event yesterday. It joins the company’s existing Cyberdog, a surprisingly affordable robotic quadruped. If there’s no option to have the pair interact, Xiaomi will have failed. Unlike Tesla’s own humanoid droid, Xiaomi’s robotic person actually walked out on stage yesterday. It might not look as slickly human as Elon Musk’s concept but it’s apparently completely functional. The CyberOne robot joined Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun on stage, gave him a flower, and then posed for…

It’s almost fitting that a space station (of the ground-based variety) is patrolled by robot dogs. Drone-maker Ghost Robotics might be in line to handle that particular job if a recent Space Force demo is any indication. A recent demonstration by the US Space Force at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station points to that future. The demo took place in late July and saw Ghost Robotics’ Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicles, or Q-UGV drones, patrolling the facility. Who you gonna call? The demo was intended to demonstrate how “…manual and repetitive tasks can be automated using ground-based robots”. In other words,…

Samsung’s Galaxy Flip 4 doesn’t seem to have changed much but the same can’t be said for the Galaxy Fold 4. Unless you’re looking at it from the outside, and not under a microscope, at any rate. Which, yes, means that the design is very similar to the Galaxy Fold 3. But it’s below the surface where actual changes have been made. The company’s leaned heavily on its alterations to the Fold 4’s body. Invisible alterations, for the most part, but they still count. But there are changes throughout that make this the more attractive option for a serious tech-head.…

Samsung’s Galaxy Flip 4 smartphone might only be landing in South Africa in September this year, but we’ve already taken a brief look at it. At the close of the company’s Unpacked stream yesterday, we were given some time to muck around with Samsung’s newest foldables. So… should you drop everything and buy one? That’s not really a question we can answer, yet. But owning a Samsung-made folding smartphone is more attractive than ever, based on our brief time with the device. First impressions In terms of design, there really isn’t much changed between the Flip 3 and Flip 4.…

Last year, Netflix decided it would offer video games to subscribers in addition to mounds of movies and series of varying quality. It took several steps in the direction of mobile games, including hiring folks from EA and buying a gaming studio. So how is it going? Actually… it’s not doing that well. According to an analysis from a company called Apptopia (via CNBC), the mobile games on the streaming service’s platform have been downloaded 23.3 million times. Daily, there are about 1.7 million users playing those games. Playing games with Netflix You might be thinking, those are decent numbers.…