Author: Tshepo Chauke

Big news for Comic Con Africa, as this year’s edition has been brought forward by a month. Organisers of the event say it’s because of an upcoming international event that has yet to be announced. The unnamed event, along with extensive renovations to the Joburg Expo Centre, mean this year’s con will be held in August instead of the usual September timeslot. Comic Con Africa 2025 is happening sooner This international event (any guesses?) will necessitate renovations that will take considerable time, leaving the Comic Con Africa organisers with no choice but to bring the con forward by a month,…

City of Joburg officials celebrated the culmination of a free WiFi project rollout across all Rea Vaya stations in the city. The project was completed by the Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC) and is a move towards Joburg revamping its digital culture. Take this development with a healthy grain of salt, of course, since the Rea Vaya project remains financially precarious and has previously lost internet access on all stations. Rea Vaya logs back in MTC says it plans to track network performance and user feedback in a bid to ensure the project’s success. All 35 of Rea Vaya’s BRT stations…

MTN, two weeks into celebrating its “Today We Make Moves” rebrand, has released full price plans for its 5G and fibre offerings, rejigged for better affordability so more people can get access. The affordable Shesha plan, as well as a two-month special on its fibre plan, should ease the cost of home internet access for middle-class and low-income households. MTN turns down the price pressure The Shesha plan breaks down into two tiers: Shesha 200 gives users 100GB of data at 5G speeds (at best), plus another 100GB for 10Mbps for R330 monthly. For R400 a month, Shesha 600 gives…

Hisense is ready to roll out its 2025 lineup of premium ULED televisions. ULED, which it calls its “favourite child,” is the company’s interpretation of OLED technology, with claimed improvements to local dimming, resolution, and frame rate. The U-series televisions come in four models: the U6, U7, U8, and U9. All U-series TVs will include HDMI eARC support, Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, and compatibility with AI voice agents like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Homekit. Hisense a disturbance in the market Starting with the 144Hz U6, which brings MiniLED technology to lower-end models. MiniLED is made of smaller and more…

MTN South Africa, in partnership with low Earth-orbit satellite network company Lynk Global, says it has concluded a successful trial of voice calling through satellite-to-phone technology. The mobile network provider hopes this can help its push to get more rural South Africans connected. MTN nibbles at StarLink’s lunch The two companies successfully carried out Africa’s first satellite-to-phone call from Vryburg, in the North West province. The companies leveraged LEO satellites, which generally orbit Earth at altitudes of 160km and 2000km, resulting in orbital periods between 90 minutes and a few hours. This means that the technology is best suited for…

Canon is releasing an updated version of its entry-level mirrorless camera, the EOS R50. With great video quality, but still lacking in functionality, stabilisation, and other cinematic features, the EOS R50 V is a decent mid-ranger made for smaller videographers like vloggers and content creators. Add it to the Canon Key improvements from the EOS R50 include 4K video at 60fps (up from 30fps), and a lighter body. However, it lacks an electronic viewfinder and built-in flash, relying solely on a 3-inch articulating touchscreen for framing. The camera shares the 24.2MP APS-C sensor and Dual Pixel AF II system with…

Despite recent price hikes (or maybe because of them) overseas, YouTube continues to tinker with perks for subscribers to its Premium service. This time, the video sharing company is testing out a new feature, allowing Premium users to send ad-free links to their non-Premium friends. YouTube lets plebs taste la vida Premium YouTube clearly hopes to lure more people into its Premium tier with this move, giving regular users a taste of what it’s like where the grass is greener (and devoid of ads). Premium senders get a quota of up to ten ‘Premium’ links per month, and there does not…

Amazon is big. Not just the forest, but the website too. Navigating the site can be a time-consuming mess, and some virtual vertigo can set in from information overload. The online retailing giant is using AI to help customers with something it calls Interests, an assistant that takes shoppers’ questions and requests, and helps them find and track certain products with greater ease than ever. Amazon takes charge of your Interests The boringly-named (yet fitting for Amazon) Interests can be accessed through the Amazon shopping app’s ‘Me’ tab. For users who already have access, “Your Interests” should be among the…

Lego has graced us with yet another Lord of the Rings set—because clearly, what a true fan of the series needs is a 2,017-piece diorama of The Shire to gather dust in the guest room. This set comes with nine minifigures – who wouldn’t want to own tiny plastic versions of Farmer Proudfoot and his wife? It depicts the scenes of Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday party, featuring Bag End, Bilbo and Frodo’s Hobbit hole, and a few other vignettes from the scene. Lego all the way to The Shire Attendees to Bilbo’s party include Frodo, Samwise, the Proudfoots, Merry, Pippin,…

YouTube, continuing to add to its ever-spinning slate of experimental features for Premium subscribers, is looking for even more ways to convince customers that a R72/m subscription is worth it. Rather than hope to entice users with higher quality audio or the likes, it’s now turned its attention to video discovery. Announced in a recent blog post, the update offers viewers recommended videos right within their current watch queue, negating the need to go back to the home page to find something else to watch. Oh, the horror! As ever, it’s all about YouTube hogging viewers’ eyeballs for a couple…