Author: Trent Meikle

Money is tight. Christmas gifts, petrol, New Years parties, and the incessant noise of your children asking to be fed. After that, what money is there left over for yourself? You can’t just go out and purchase the latest iPad – unless you’ve got R25,000 (on a good day) sitting idle in your wallet. If you do, this article probably isn’t for you. Our tablet entries here lean more towards the ‘budget’ end of the equation. We’ve compiled a list of the best little budget busters we could find. We’ve excluded any that need to travel via boat or plane…

We know that South Africa’s network operators are struggling to keep customers happy under the constant threat of load shedding. What we don’t often hear about is the farmers of the country – specifically chicken ones – and how load shedding affects their output. The problem isn’t a lack of chickens. It’s quite the opposite. Farmers are stuck with too many chickens. What’s wrong McFly? No Chicken? When load shedding strikes, these factories must stop production, sometimes for half a workday, stopping the slaughtering of the chickens. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. But constant rolling blackouts have created a backlog that…

We can’t say we’ve been eagerly awaiting Sony’s first entry in the world of mobile gaming but we’ve been aware of the company’s plans since August last year when it first opened the Sony Studios Mobile Division. Since then, it’s been quiet on the mobile front, until it released Ultimate Sackboy – an auto-running game centred around a character that first turned up on the PlayStation 3. And what’s stranger, this project hasn’t even come from Sony’s own studio. It partnered with Exient – a studio you may know from (but probably don’t) games like Lemmings and Planet 53. We’re…

So, you’ve stuck with your New Year’s resolution for this long. Or your local gym conned you into a yearly subscription that you can’t seem to get out of. Either way, you need some better tech to get those gains going. Counting your heartrate beat-by-beat just isn’t cutting it anymore. And rocking up to the gym in flip-flops certainly won’t help the funny looks coming your way. Just stick with us – we’ll sort you out. If running is more your thing, we can help you out with that too. Plug up those earholes The most important piece of gear…

After Cyril Ramaphosa’s Necom announced new plans to banish load shedding, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said that South Africa’s “plan” to be rid of load shedding should start paying dividends within the next 12 to 18 months. “Eventually in the next 12-18 months we will be able to say load-shedding is a thing of the past. That is the target,” Godongwana told Reuters at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, which our president so kindly decided to skip in order to… deal with the energy crisis? Goodbye to Stage 6 load shedding (maybe) Godongwana went on to say that…

You’ve heard of load shedding, right? The thing that Eskom started nearly fifteen years ago to help it take back control of South Africa’s grid. Since then, we’ve been putting up with more, and more and… you get the idea. Load shedding isn’t cool. The worst part? It’s only going to get worse — unless Necom’s new laws actually manage to pull us out of this sinking hole. Most of us have accepted our fate and begun investing in generators, solar panels and batteries. We’re simple beings. Leave us with a phone and an internet connection and we’re happy. We’d…

We’re dashing your hopes early – load shedding isn’t gone, far from it. But it may soon ease, according to South Africa’s National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom). It believes that the addition of a new law, aimed at fast-tracking plant development, could help pull us from the hellscape that is load shedding. Yesterday afternoon, Monday 16 January, Necom – which consists of several cabinet leaders in Cyril Ramaphosa’s office, spoke with business and labour leaders, claiming that a number of interventions have been made to try and ease load shedding. Unfortunately, the interventions have arrived at a time when South…

You’ve probably never heard of the ColoVu C1 Plus 4K, right? That’s a real shame because it’s one of the best TV boxes on the market. Well, it’s the best Android streamer on the shelves. Apple still holds the title for best streaming box in general, but the ColoVu does its best to be mentioned in the same breath as the Apple TV. It’s hard to go wrong with a streaming box, especially in South Africa. For some inexplicable reason, the country seems to go crazy for these things. It makes sense. You want a place to watch Netflix, Showmax…

It’s official. HBO’s The Last of Us is the best live-action adaptation of a videogame to date. There can be no argument on this one. Just watch it. Before that, the title belonged to… Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children? Wow. The bar really was low, huh? Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have taken much for The Last of Us to be considered the best of a bad bunch. Just throw in the basic plot, get an alright performance from the two leads and call it a day. HBO didn’t do that. Instead, it went a step further, not just making The Last…

Apple wants in on the English Premier League Apple made its debut in the world of live sports streaming last year, signing deals to premiere Major League Baseball and the MLS right on the platform. It tried its hardest to land a deal for the rights to the NFL, though it lost that battle to YouTube. That’s not stopping Apple’s streaming rampage, now entering the race to host the English Premier League on its service. The deal, should it come to fruition, would cost the trillion-dollar company $250m per year. That number could have been far larger for the domestic…