Author: Max Milella

With recycling, it really is the little things that count sometimes. Anyone who’s saved up a load of bottlecaps or bread tags because they get their own recycling channels knows that. Apparently, so does Vodacom. The mobile carrier is launching its new Eco-SIM cards, made entirely out of recycled plastic. Vodaconservation The new SIM launch is a part of the company’s green initiative that seeks to halve its own greenhouse emissions by 2025. “At Vodacom South Africa, we have always maintained that business success should not come at the cost to the planet,” reads a statement from Vodacom SA MD…

Google’s coming out with a new layer of app transparency in the form of a new information section for apps in the Play Store. Called the ‘Data Safety Section’, it’s intended to help users better protect their personal information by letting them know how an app plans to use it before you download it. Google spills the beans In essence, the Data Safety Section will provide users with relevant information on what apps will ask permission for once you’ve downloaded them, why they need it, and what they plan to do with it once you’ve opted. Now you can finally…

As the year chugs along, so too do Instagram’s updates. The Facebook-owned visual-centric social media platform is adding a solid handful of new features to both its main Feed and short-form video platform, Reels. With regards to the former, users will soon be able to post into their main feed directly from the desktop browser version of the platform. This is something users have been clamouring about for a while. Until now, the only way one could post something via their desktop was through Chrome’s developer tools, which you could use to access the mobile interface in-browser.  Instagram gets a…

Facebook and Instagram already have a decent amount of common ground, as you’d expect them to with the former owning the latter. In fact, one could even go as far as to say that Zuckerberg might be trying to blend them, along with WhatsApp, into one big social media clump. Facebook and Instagram are about to get even more connected than they already are, with the social media conglomerate now testing a feature to let users cross-post their Facebook Feed photos and videos to Instagram. Facebook and Instagram sitting in a tree… Aside from the aforementioned Cronenberg-ing of Facebook and…

In case you didn’t know, the city of Johannesburg has a new online system with which residents can look over their municipal bills, making it easy to bring up invoices for electricity, water, property taxes and more online. In theory, it makes a rather dull and often obtuse process a lot simpler and more efficient.  However, there’s one con, and it’s a big one: the system’s site lets just about anyone find personal information on just about anyone else. Johannesburg has more to shore up than its roads The online system’s security vulnerabilities aren’t obscure backdoors or something along those…

Seacom launched the first undersea internet cable in South Africa back in 2009, back when 5Mbps was the internet equivalent to breaking the sound barrier. Since then, it has upgraded its offerings substantially, as have most internet providers. As of today, the company has upgraded its equipment to provide 100 gigabit ethernet speeds, providing swifter internet for its clients.  Seacom speeds up Currently, Seacom’s 100Gbps offering are only available to clients and prospective clients in South Africa, but should reach other African markets in the next few months.  Upgraded speed is a boon for service providers in a time when…

Like we mentioned in our last wireless earbuds review, the quality of Anker’s kit tends to oscillate between shockingly capable and pretty disappointing, which has us eying its new products through a lens of cautious curiosity most of the time. Fortunately,  despite having a mouthful of a name, the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pros have far more hits than misses, and that’s not just because they’re endorsed by 10 Grammy-winning artists, and smack of quality without hitting your wallet too. What’s in the box? Right from the get-go, you can tell Anker’s gone out of its way to impress…

Like most social media platforms, Twitter’s been under increased scrutiny of late, from both its own investors and international governments.  Now US-based human rights activist Ali Al-Ahmed is taking aim at the microblogging site, alleging that it allowed Saudi Arabian government spies to access his personal information. Twitter tattlers In a 39-page lawsuit filed on Friday (via The Verge), Al-Ahmed alleges that Twitter hired a pair of new employees who spied on him on the behalf of the Saudi Arabian government. Due to their positions at the company, they were allegedly granted access to Al-Ahmed’s personal information. The two men…

Like we’ve mentioned before, WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption has long been one of its main selling points, but it’s been sorely lacking on the backup end of things thus far. The Facebook-owned social media platform began testing end-to-end encrypted backups back in July, and the feature is now making its way to the masses. WhatsApp backups with no backdoors The feature is rolling out to iOS and Android users through its latest update, so if you’re keen on using it ASAP head over to your respective app store. With end-to-end backup encryption, you can secure your backups with either a password…

Clubhouse (and its myriad lookalikes) is the place to be right now, with audio-based social media platforms having set the world on fire for some time now. Naturally, an audio-based platform lends itself to certain modes of entertainment, in this instance, music. Clubhouse recognises this, and so is adding a ‘Music Mode’ to let online musicians take their performances to the next level. Club house in the Clubhouse “Calling all musicians! Today we’re introducing Music Mode, a new setting that helps you sound your best when performing on Clubhouse,” reads an official announcement. The announcement explains that Music Mode optimises…