Author: Nick Cowen

Whether foldable display tech turns out to be a neat gimmick or something that consumers are prepared to invest in remains unclear at this time, but Samsung is pressing ahead with its plans to go large with it, as indicated in a patent it registered back in April. The South Korean company recently showed off a range of OLED panels as part of Display Week (which runs through until this Friday) and part of the showcase was the multi-foldable mobile display. Samsung folds into the future Spotted by SamMobile, the Samsung Display’s S-Foldable (as it is called) is a foldable…

The Competition Commission (Comp Comm) has the likes of Takealot, Airbnb, Uber Eats and Google Play in its sights, as it’s preparing to launch its Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry (OIPMI) tomorrow (18th May 2021). According to a report on Business Tech, the Competition Commission says that its investigation will cover online markets in which the sales of goods and services are transacted between businesses and consumers. This essentially means that e-commerce marketplaces, in which consumers can buy anything from food, to software, to accommodation, to travel (on ride-sharing apps, for example) will be under the spotlight. The Competition Commission lays out…

South African start-ups and entrepreneurs take note: you can win big money and feel great about yourself at the same time if you enter the Hack The Planet challenge, which is aimed at tackling climate change. Recently launched by Satellite Applications Catapult and the Commonwealth Secretariat, this competition is open for all participants in Commonwealth countries. The idea is that innovative folk pitch their ideas facing communities around the world, linked to ocean degradation and the climate crisis. Oh and there’s £10,000 in prize money up for grabs for the winners. Hack The Planet… but in a good way According…

Facebook briefly blocked a hashtag calling for the resignation of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, over his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indian users took to Twitter to vent their dissatisfaction with the social media platform, which reportedly blocked over 12,000 posts bearing the hashtag #ResignModi. https://twitter.com/srinivasaiims/status/1387472195316711426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1387472195316711426%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2021%2Fapr%2F28%2Ffacebook-blocked-resignmodi-hashtag-india-coronavirus Anyone searching for the hashtag was greeted with a missive stating that such posts were “temporarily hidden here” because “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards”. Access to posts was later restored with a mea culpa from the social media giant, saying that they had been blocked by mistake. “We temporarily…

South Africa’s Information Regulator (IR) has fired a shot across Facebook’s boughs, saying it is considering litigation over WhatsApp’s new Privacy Policy. Users had until the 15th of May this year to either accept the new policy or opt-out, a move that would cause user experience on the app to degrade significantly until it eventually ceases to function altogether. Facebook had planned to introduce the new policy earlier this year, but delayed the move after a substantial backlash from users, which in turn, resulted in downloads of Telegram and Signal going through the roof. The IR is demanding that Facebook offer…

Back in February, the Democratic Alliance (DA) called on Facebook to appear before parliament to answer questions about misinformation on its platform. To be honest, not many people thought much would come of this. While DA MP Phumzile Van Damme was optimistic that representatives from the social media platform would make an appearance, the social media platform’s statement at the time didn’t sound too promising. Facebook to face the music The DA’s invitation for a meeting with the social media giant has been formally confirmed by the Communications and Digital Technologies Committee — and that meeting will take place this month…

As South Africa inches closer to half-time in 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact has not stopped being felt. Businesses have closed down, the economy has taken a massive hit and more and more enterprises have started to learn that office space is an unnecessary requirement. Where once experts told us all in 2020 that the pandemic was bringing in a ‘new normal’ format of working, this year we’ve realised that the ‘new normal’ is now ‘normal’. In a lot of instances, the pandemic has accelerated working practices that were probably in the pipeline anyway. In others, it’s amplified requirements that…

If you’ve always wanted a smart TV and you haven’t had the requisite cash lying around, the Mediabox Maverick should be on your radar. It’s essentially a device that turns a non-smart TV into a smart one, or if you have a smart TV, a less fiddly option than setting up streaming services in your TV’s onboard menu. It’s also less technically challenging than setting up Plex and you don’t need a tablet on-hand to operate it like Google’s Chromecast. “Switch on. Login. Binge”. That’s the slogan that’s literally stamped on the box and to be frank, it isn’t lying.…

So, it finally happened. After reading the news about the ongoing battle between Apple and Facebook over user data tracking, I finally updated my iOS devices to version 14.5. Just as I had gleaned from all the coverage on the internet, the moment I opened the social media app on my iPhone, I was greeted with a missive about data collection. In case you’ve been in the dark about any of this, the message you are sent  you reads thus: This version of iOS requires us to ask permission to track activity received from apps and websites that you visit…

Another week, another side-step from Silicon Valley. This time coming from Twitter, as reported in The Independent, who appeared before a Parliamentary committee in the UK this week to answer questions about the moderation used on its platform. In response to this question, Twitter’s head of UK policy Katy Minshall stated that the social media platform reflects society and so should not be expected to be a wholly positive or nice place. “Twitter gives everyone the right to speak publicly”, said Minshall, “and that’s been a huge societal shift over ten, 15 years”. “As Twitter reflects a mirror on society,…