When announcements are made late on a Friday, it is usually because the company in question wants to mitigate the damage done to its share price. But the shock announcement last week was different, and unexpected, in many ways. First, it came from the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) and, second, is very good news for consumers, while ostensibly chastising the big cellphone operators for years of high-margin call rates. The shares of Vodacom and MTN still fell on Monday morning as Icasa published draft regulations that will radically cut termination costs for mobile calls, but this is vastly…
Author: Toby Shapshak
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."
It doesn’t matter how obvious it is, people will still miss sarcasm or irony on Twitter. This is the newly minted Shapshak’s First Rule of Mistaken Sarcasm, though this tragic phenomenon has been widely observed before. It’s true of almost any written communication, for that matter. Sarcasm – the highest form of wit, at least since irony – is so easily misunderstood, especially when there are none of the obvious visual clues on a person’s face. Sarcasm, in the real world, is hard at the best of times. Add a dry sense of humour and most of what you say…
He flew combat missions in the Vietnam War, was the pilot of the first shuttle flight after the 1986 Challenger accident and deployed the Hubble telescope into space. Now Charles Bolden, 65, is trying to send a human to Mars.
“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 at the aisle and instinctively put my hand out. Luckily it turned out, as the reporters had two left feet for hands and it sailed right through them.…
Last week, I stood where the Berlin Wall was. My hotel was built in mine-infested no-man’s land. Call me sentimental, but I was blown away by that.
One of my favourite gadgets is an all-in-one CD player from Muji – that brandless brand from Japan. Beautifully designed with striking simplicity, it is not much bigger than the CD itself and has the speakers built into the casing. A thin wire, which hangs down from its centre, is both the power cable and on-off switch. It hangs on the side of my fridge, and I play mostly jazz when I’m cooking or reading at my kitchen counter. As much as I love the styling and simplicity, it reaffirms two of my unassailable truths about consumer electronics: it is…