Author: Nick Cowen

Believe it or not, every so often a good story emerges about Facebook. The social media giant has had its trials and tribulations this year, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a positive force in the world for a time. A great example of this is the fact that the Facebook Journalism Project and news service Reuters have launched a free e-learning program. Dubbed the Reuters Digital Journalism Course, this initiative aims not only to support journalists in eight countries across Africa, the Asia Pacific and India, but also to build a strong foundation in digital reporting and editing.…

If you’ve been casting an eye-out in the gaming press recently, you’ll probably have noticed mentions of a game called Knockout City doing the rounds. It’s the sort of coverage that developers and publishers enjoy the most; not only is the game reviewing pretty well – it’s currently sitting at an overall score of 8.0 (consoles) on Metacritic – it’s become the subject of think-pieces, previews, review diaries and the like. Lots of people have lots of positive things to say about it. So, what’s all the fuss about? Knockout City’s Day-Glo Dodgeball Everyone remembers dodgeball, right? You know, it…

1 June isn’t usually associated with much other than the mercury dropping in SA, but if you’re a Watch Dogs: Legion player, it just became ‘Zombie Day’. Or ‘Undead Day’. Or ‘Day Of The Dead.’ Yeah, that’s a good one – no one’s used that before. From today the legions of the undead will arrive in the game’s London map as part of the latest update Ubisoft is rolling out. Dubbed Watch Dogs: Legion of the Dead, the new update will see up to three players team up and fight through hordes of zombies to reach an extraction point, according…

Need For Speed games have been a bit of a mixed bag over the last few years. Players have seen some decent entries and some spirit-crushing lows. It’s a testament to how wobbly the quality of this franchise has become that the best recent release was a remaster of an entry originally released two generations ago. Talk to many NFS fans, and they’ll probably agree that a lot of the best games in this series dropped before the Xbox One/PS4 era. Which is why the news we have to report today is so bad. Need For Speed: Retired According to…

Twitter may be bringing aspects of its experience closer to that of Facebook’s after reports have emerged it plans to introduce a new series of reactions users to use on tweets. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who initially reported the news that the social media platform was planning a paid-for subscription service, has now revealed it’s working on a series of reactions including ‘Cheer’, ‘Hmm’ and ‘Sad’. https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1398359547731841024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1398359547731841024%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techradar.com%2Fnews%2Ftwitter-is-working-on-tweet-reactions-so-it-can-be-more-like-facebook There’s no word as to when these features will arrive or whether they’ll be available for all users, but Wong’s track-record is pretty solid so far, so we’d bet even money they’re…

Instagram is reportedly making changes to its platform’s algorithm after it was accused by Palestinians of censoring their posts. According to an article in The Financial Times (subscription required), the Facebook-owned social media platform is changing its algorithm to rank res-hared posts in Stories on an equal level to originals following the above criticisms. Facebook, for its part, spoke to Engadget saying that (big surprise) there was no intentional effort to censor the posts. Instead, they said there were problems with the reach of re-shared posts and these weren’t limited to posts from Palestinians. “We want to be really clear— this…

Last week, Twitter regulars who had never had the chance to obtain the all-important blue tick of verification received some good news. The social media platform announced it was taking verification submissions for the first time since they were suspended back in 2017. In a blog post, the micro-blogging site said it would roll out the application process over the next few weeks. That was last Monday and here we are today learning that Twitter has now temporarily suspended the verification process once again. But why? Everyone wants a Twitter Blue Tick Before anyone loses their minds, it’s important to…

Dying Light 2, the sequel to Techland’s open world zombie action game, will launch this year on 7th December 2021. The developer made the announcement during a livestream reveal yesterday called Dying 2 Know, saying the game will be available on Xbox, PlayStation and PCs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G19cpgVRxO8 This will be great news to fans of the first game, since Dying Light 2 Stay Human (to give it its full title) has been in development hell for years – it was first announced at Xbox’s E3 showcase back in 2018. Dying Light 2: zombies for the holiday season The game is set…

Last night Sony showed off the forthcoming Horizon Forbidden West on its official channel as a State Of Play reveal. If you are an ardent fan of this series, you may have stayed up at 10pm last night, which is when the reveal got going locally, in which case, move on, you’ve already seen this. For the rest of you, feast your eyes on the player below. Horizon Forbidden West builds on Zero Dawn Looking at the reveal, it seems that Guerrilla Games has doubled down on the foundations of Zero Dawn, offering players more mechs, more mechanics, more weapons,…

Last week , tweets by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, revealed that Twitter was planning a paid service. This would be a monthly subscription on the micro-blogging service offering extra features on the app for a monthly fee of $2.99 (about R45, depending on our local currency’s fluctuations). Now, a listing for the new service has appeared on app stores, positing probably the clearest sign that this paid service is indeed a thing. Twitter Blue listed According to a report on the BBC, “Twitter Blue” is listed as an in-app purchase, priced at £2.49 in the UK and $2.99 in the…