Author: Nic Boerma

Wikipedia, arguably the greatest depository of human knowledge online, has announced that it is planning to store and make voice recordings of famous people available on its site. The concept behind the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project (WikiVIP) is to let future browsers be able to hear the person in question’s voice while you read about his or her life. Stephen Fry was the first famous person to join WikiVIP, by allowing a sample of his speech to be made available on his page entry. In true Wikipedia style, you can help out by asking people you might know who do…

Long gone are the days where only someone with a Blackberry could revel in the joys of instant online messaging. We won’t say luckily, but luckily those days are over, and there is little doubt that WhatsApp is now the reigning king when it comes to mobile messaging apps. The messaging service has become so popular, in fact, that WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum announced earlier this week that his app can now boast of 430 million active users, more than double the amount of WhatsApp users in April 2013. The amount of messages sent via the app have also seen…

We’ve caught up on some rumours doing the rounds on the interwebs about what might be the successor of the Xperia Z1. Codenamed Sirius, or D6503, and running on Android KitKat, the phone’s most notable feature will be the ability to capture videos at an eye-caressing 4K resolution, perhaps giving us all a better reason to buy a 4K TV. The Sirius has some other features that, if they are included in the final product, look to be very interesting, such as stereo speakers, a built-in answering machine and smart backlight control. A feature similar to LG’s Knock is supposedly…

There’s a lot (mostly bad) that can be said about South Africa and internet speeds, which are far below the speeds that areas of Europe and North America have at their disposal. But, just when things were looking up, along comes South Korea and smokes the rest of the competition. Yes, the world leader in internet speed has always been Asia, and this week South Korean wireless carriers SK Telecom LG U+ have decided to show us what real speed looks like. The speed that the telecoms hope to deploy is 300Mbps, using LTE-Advanced 3-band carrier aggregation technology. Simply put,…

The smartgadget world is decidedly buttonless, if you don’t agree, think Blackberry. Either way, supposedly camera enthusiasts just love their buttons on cameras, and it’s for these consumers that Fujifilm’s next offering is aiming. This camera, rumoured to be named the X-T1, will have dials for pretty much everything a camera can have dials for: exposure, shutters speed, ISO and if the pictures that have apparently leaked are scrutinized further, there are dials within dials on the X-T1. So in a word, dial-ception. Other featers supposedly include an articulated screen, 16 megapixel APS-C sensor, and, what promises to be an…

A long time ago, in a year far, far away we saw a 3D printer from Choc Edge that could 3D print chocolate deliciousness. It turned out that whilst one could speculate on the deliciousness of the chocolate being printed it didn’t really matter because, at the time, you couldn’t eat it. Enter Hershey’s, a well-known American chocolate producer, and 3D Systems, a company specialising in all things 3D printed, to make our day a little bit better. According to a report on CNN, the two companies have teamed up with the objective of creating a 3D printer that supposedly…

A couple of weeks ago we heard about Valve’s proposed implementation for VR controls, and some more news on the near sci-fi tech has surfaced that is certainly making us excited about what the future may hold. According to a talk by Valve’s Michael Abrash, given during the Steam Developer Days event, the popular gaming company is committing to virtual reality research and development and believe that working, consumer friendly VR in gaming is just a couple of years away. You can read the full transcript of Abrash’s talk here (PDF). If you can’t read the transcript, the highlights include…

Today seems to be the day for smart contact lenses. Our earlier post showcased Google’s take on the tech, and we recently wrote about iOptik’s project as well. So these smart lenses were developed by scientists at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university. The scientists have developed a circuit that is extremely flexible and transparent, using a polymer called parylene. A lengthy process is used to create a circuit from parylene, which winds up being thinner than a human hair, and these ultra-thin circuits have a collection of possible uses. One such application is contact lenses. At the moment the folks…

HP have announced their plans to launch a pair of ‘small’ tablets, the HP Slate6 VoiceTab and the HP Slate7 VoiceTab, which can, as we’re sure you’ve gathered from their names, also make phone calls. These 3G Android phablets will, according to HP, be designed with users who want to combine their phone and tablet into one product in mind. Both tablets will run Android 4.2 and have as-yet unspecified quad-core processors, 16GB storage, microSD slots, HD front and rear cameras, dual SIM slots and stereo speakers. The 6-inch version will feature a 720p display, its larger sibling will have…

During CES 2014 Alienware gave the world a sneak peak of the Steam Machine they were making, and yesterday during Valve’s first Steam Dev Days Conference Alienware announced that their little creation will hit shelves in September. Or, at least, that’s the plan. So far no real details are available, other than that it will house a Haswell processor and that Alienware supposedly stated that their Steam Machine will perform at the same levels as a gaming laptop. Dell is also looking to introduce the device across several sections of the market so odds are that users will be able…