Author: Marcé

This couldn’t have come at a worse time for the popular load shedding notification app EskomSePush (ESP), considering South Africa is currently stuck in an ongoing bout of blackouts, sitting at Stage 2 until Wednesday. ESP was suspended from the Google Play Store this weekend for a variety of fairly vague reasons.  Soesh, EskomSePush  On Sunday, Herman Maritz, co-founder of the app, tweeted a screenshot of an email from Google, mentioning the app’s suspension and an attempt at the reasoning behind it. According to Maritz’s tweet, Google’s reasoning wasn’t at all clear, and it took some digging to find out…

Twitter suspended people for tweeting 'the M-word' In a bizarre series of events, Twitter has started banning users who tweet the word Memphis. Now, we don't know what folks over tin the United States have been up to in the second-largest city in Tennessee, but Twitter's moderators aren't having any of it. Users on the

Sharing streaming sites’ passwords is like being in Fight Club. Some people know it exists, but we just don’t talk about it. Unfortunately, Netflix is painfully aware of all the password sharing happening amongst its users, and is ready to clamp down on ‘illegal’ password sharing situations with a new feature.  It makes sense to try and force adjacent platform users to shell out and pay for their own accounts. It means more money in Netflix’s pockets, and increased security. According to reports, the feature the company has in testing will detect when someone other than the owner of an…

Youtubers outside of the United States will now face a double whammy of tax deductions if a portion of their viewers are based in the US. This is true of many South African content creators who tend to make English videos because… well… they’re English.  According to a video published by YouTube this week, the company is shaking up its taxation rules to comply with Chapter 3 of the US Internal Revenue Code. Under this code, its got a responsibility to collect tax information, withhold taxes and report non-compliance to the IRS when a creator earns royalties from US-based viewers. …

Apple has decided to begin the commercial assembly of the iPhone 12 in India. The US-based tech conglomerate has been threatening to shift the production of its hardware out of China for a few years, and that day has finally come. Of course, this move was sped up thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, pushing Apple to look into other ways to put its phones together.  The iPhone’s new base According to recent reports, Apple has contracted Foxconn in India to produce its base iPhone 12 smartphones. This sounds like a ‘test’ of sorts, as there’s no indication…

When it comes to WiFi, there’s really only one thing users expect: to be connected everywhere in their home/office spaces. Virtual dead-zones in the bathroom and that one corner in the bedroom take away from the connected experience. Or even worse, complete dead zones in multiple rooms, forcing spouses and siblings into the same room at any given time, is something that should be avoided at all cost during a pandemic.  If the above scenario hits home, you’re going to have to invest in a home mesh network. It sounds daunting, but fairly complex networking equipment has become easy to…

There’s no doubt Sonos makes some of the best consumer audio tech available. Especially in South Africa where our selection of high-quality audio kit is… kind of sad. But for a while it’s felt like Sonos hasn’t invested much in developing portable sound blasters, mainly sticking to cabled options. Until now.  Late last night, Sonos announced the Roam — an ‘ultraportable’ smart speaker. From the initial press images, it’s clear that this is the smallest speaker ever produced by the audiomaker, and we’re exceptionally keen to get our hands on it.  Pack up and Roam Even though wired kit like…

Depending on who you ask, a password manager is probably the last thing you want breached. Others may be more inclined to keep their physical valuables safe, but digital accounts hold personal and financial information you really don’t want in the wrong hands. Ever. So when it became clear that LastPass had a potential vulnerability related to trackers in the app, people were quick to find an easy-to-implement patch.  A few weeks ago, LastPass announced some changes to its free tier that now limits users to only one platform — either mobile or desktop. The bad news didn’t end there,…

UPDATE 06/04/2021: Everyshop announced that its eCommerce platform is now official. “During the month of March the Everyshop website has been available in a testing environment to the public, consumers were welcome to explore and purchase during this period with some initial promotions… It is finally here! The much-anticipated launch of Everyshop, South Africa’s latest and most exciting e-Commerce platform,” a press statement reads. Most of the time, having healthy competition in the marketplace encourages a healthier economy. Just look at Facebook — it’s become an uncontrollable monster because it lacks competition. Now, South Africa’s eCommerce market’s looking at a…

Remember Clubhouse? The voice-based forum exploded in popularity in recent months, following which many social networks summarily began their own versions of the app. Most recently, Twitter announced Spaces, and now Instagram is testing its version of voice-based interactions through its messaging platform.  Instagram has one major upper hand, and that’s Clubhouse’s limitation to only iOS devices. It already natively runs on most platforms, including web. If you think about it, it should be a go-to for many users when messaging their friends and starting conversations. We’re afraid it’s not reached that point yet.  https://twitter.com/alex193a/status/1368198173081108480 The recent tests will allow…