Author: Toby Shapshak

Toby Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff, a Forbes senior contributor and a columnist for the Financial Mail and Daily Maverick. He has been writing about technology and the internet for 28 years and his TED Global talk on innovation in Africa has over 1,5-million views. He has written about Africa's tech and start-up ecosystem for Forbes, CNN and The Guardian in London. He was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian newspaper's influential young South Africans. He has been featured in the New York Times. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech... he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."

Columns

Chris Froome aims to sweep clean at Tour de France

By Toby ShapshakFebruary 22, 20130

A decade ago, Chris Froome was watching Lance Armstrong competing in the Tour de France from his boarding school, St Johns in Johannesburg, and dreamt of doing the same. “I was 17 and I was fixated on it. I was in awe of the ambience of the crowd and the mountains. I had that ‘Wow, I’d love to do that one day’ feeling. That was the pipe dream but I never really – until recently – thought it would come true,” he recently told the Guardian, about the first time he saw the much-maligned, doping scandal-tainted Tour de France. Froome,…

Columns

The day I met Steve Jobs

By Toby ShapshakOctober 7, 20110

“No, but I did touch his iPod,” I answered when someone asked if I shook Steve Jobs’ hand. It happened quite by chance. Jobs was addressing a small group of journalists at the Apple Expo in Paris in September 2005, a few weeks after he had launched the latest, thinnest iPod nano. The British journalist behind me was asking about it and Jobs nonchalantly threw it into the crowd. I was sitting in the aisle and instinctively put my hand out. Luckily, it turned out, the reporter had two left feet for hands, and it sailed right through them. I…