Author: Brett Venter

If you know Samsung (and we do), you’d know that there was an Unpacked scheduled for about this time this year. That’s now official, with a date and time set for Samsung’s event. Unusually, it’ll take place sooner in the day than we were expecting. The date is 26 July and the official time is 07h00 ET (Eastern Time). The American timing is odd because the event is taking place in Seoul for the very first time. Here in South Africa, the event will kick off at 13h00 on the day. Generally, these things happen in the evening but we’re…

Basically anybody could have told you, once Apple revealed the pricing for its Vision Pro augmented reality headset, that the brand would have a hard time shifting units. $3,500 is a steep purchase even for American buyers. But a R70,000 price tag here at home puts it almost beyond reach — even for Apple’s die-hard fans. That news has filtered down to Apple HQ, according to a report by the Financial Times. Apple is said to be scaling back its ambitions from about a million Vision Pro headsets to somewhere in the region of about 400,000. Happily, depending on your…

It’s certainly taken long enough to get to this point but Virgin Galactic has finally sent some of its paying customers to space. The company has yet to start chipping away at the list of paid tickets sold from 2012, however. Perhaps it was the company’s hesitancy to risk a civilian who wasn’t Richard Branson (who volunteered for his trip) but Virgin Galactic took a batch of Italian military crew (we assume Italy paid for the tickets) and some 13 scientific experiments on the company’s inaugural commercial trip. Virgin Galactic flies (at last) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-bnaq9BKio Based on the flight’s stream –…

If you were paying attention last year, you would have noticed that Samsung didn’t release a more affordable version of its flagship smartphone. That could change, with a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE heading to market according to a (very reliable) leaker. We’re not sure what prompted the return to the afforda-phone, or why an S22 FE wasn’t launched last year, but @OnLeaks reckons it’s coming. When it comes to insider Samsung info, he tends to be super reliable. But while the look of the thing is apparently known — renders are available on a website called SmartPrix — less is…

TikTok, the time-sink app slowly destroying your kid’s long-term concentration ability, has decided to turn its disruption skills onto the workforce. Specifically, that section of the workforce that might have handled public relations for a brand. Best of all (for the brand), it won’t cost much at all. Relatively speaking. The app has done this by unveiling what it calls the TikTok Creative Challenge. It’s framed as “a new in-app feature that allows creators to submit video ads to brand challenges and receive rewards based on video performance”. In reality, it’s one of the scummier corporate practices rebranded for a…

This is why companies don’t like to announce things until they’re almost ready. Project Iris, the internal name for a Google experiment with augmented reality glasses, is apparently dead. Kinda. A Business Insider report claims, citing three sources “familiar with the matter”, that Google has yanked the plug on the project, at least internally. The concept had evolved from the highly cyberpunk/Dragon Ball Z single floating display idea that gave the world Glassholes a decade ago. You know, kinda like Apple’s Vision Pro design but meant to be worn outside? “I don’t want the world to see me” Instead, the search…

It’s a common meme that any time a science fiction writer creates some terrible object of doom, a venture capitalist will see it, miss the cautionary tale entirely, and attempt to build it. NASA, despite having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, seems bent on making a human-machine interface that sounds eerily similar to the movie’s main ‘villain’, HAL 9000. But the buzzwords this time don’t have much to do with a film from the 1960s. Instead, America’s space agency is taking its cues from the modern day, artificial intelligence, and ChatGPT. But with its own spin on the tech, of…

Changes are afoot at Netflix. Against conventional logic, the streamer’s password crackdown is working as a means to make extra money for the platform. So now it’s time for another experiment. Happily, the experiment is confined to Canada for the moment. But if it catches on… The Winnipeg Free Press, a Canadian publication, reports that Netflix is phasing out its Basic Tier in the country, replacing it with that lovely little Basic with Ads option. Basic with Ads recently underwent a slight upgrade, perhaps for just such an occasion. A taste of things to come Netflix Canada has removed the…

If you’re after an attractive-yet-familiar-looking smartphone and you’re working on a very specific budget, then the Vivo V27 5G would appreciate it if you looked in its direction. This handset retails for R17,000, about R6,000 below your typical Samsung flagship. If you’re planning on venturing into Ultra territory, you probably have the R30,000 budget required to grab the Korean company’s headliner. In that case, you probably stopped reading this two sentences ago. If you’re still here, you’re probably hoping to spend less than R20,000 on your handset. In that case, the Vivo V27 5G fits the bill. The Chinese brand…

The PDF (which stands for Portable Document Format) is an undeniably powerful file format. But as anyone who has tried to work with one will tell you, they can be a massive pain in the rectum. Chrome, according to a recent announcement from Google, may take at least some of the sting out of your tail with an upcoming update. The fact remains that most folks with vision impairment struggle to use technology in general and the internet in particular. That means web browsers, desktops, and documents are often a struggle to access. Chrome, using the magic of artificial intelligence…