Author: Trent Meikle

In case you needed reminding, South Africa’s unemployment rate isn’t so hot. Among the country’s youth, 44% are in dire need of a job. That’s why the University of Limpopo has put together a ‘Digital Innovation Lab’, and why Microsoft and Vodacom are partnering up. You know, to “address the urgent need for relevant skills in the modern job market.” How? By providing free access to Microsoft’s Mzansi Digital Learning platform — a free resource that’s being taken advantage of today. As for where Vodacom comes into this — it’ll be hosting Mzansi Digital Learning on the network’s new NXT…

Through a collaboration with Samsung, the University of Limpopo has launched what it calls a ‘Digital Innovation Lab’ (DIL) — where the whole idea is to help build up the province’s skills in software development and ultimately enhance “the prospects of employment or entrepreneurship in the region.” Limpopo’s stepping up The lab, officially unveiled yesterday at the University by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma — the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities and the University’s Chancellor — features a curriculum catering towards coding, programming fundamentals and “digital social innovation.” According to an abstract from a…

The time is ripe for a new era of Microsoft’s Surface devices. South Africa might have been late to the party where the Surface Pro 9 was concerned in 2023, but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the world. Globally, Microsoft skipped entering double-digits for the Surface Pro line-up last year — but that’s set to change later this month according to a new report from Windows Central.  If Central’s (unnamed) sources are correct, the OS King is hooking the world up with a new, kitted-out Surface Pro 10 later this month, joined by a new Surface Laptop 6. Both…

Is it just us, or has Google Search been slacking lately? Its usefulness is waning and we think it may have something to do with this AI-ridden era of the internet. “…Spammy, low-quality content,” as Google calls it, is plugging up Search and taking the spotlight off the ‘useful’ results. Google wants to do something about it. The search giant just announced “key changes” to “improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results.” Room for refining One of the ways it’ll be doing so is by “refining some of [its] core ranking systems” to get a better…

Remember that time Kusile Power Station failed so terribly that much of its generation capacity was out for months? We sure do. Because it was never fixed. Eskom managed to right its wrongs somewhat in June 2023 when it sought permission from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment to bypass the country’s Minimum Emission Standards (MES) policy. Now, however, Eskom has published an update to the Kusile repairs, noting that its temporary measure — allowing it to “operate units 1, 2, and 3 [at Kusile] without utilising the Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) plant,” until 31 March 2025 has so…

Oculus is dead. Long live Meta. Blah blah blah. The Facebook owner is finally killing off the Oculus branding, and it wants you to migrate that account to its own account system before the end of the month. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of your account and everything tied to it, so you’d best get moving. Now would be great. Oculus’ demise isn’t news. At least, it isn’t new news. Facebook, as it was known then, has been attempting to rid itself of the Oculus branding since 2020 by attempting to convert customers to Facebook accounts.…

It’s been a lively couple of months for South Africa’s largest broadcaster, MultiChoice. Not only did it recently helm the relaunch of Showmax following a partnership that saw the broadcaster come together with Sky and NBCUniversal, but it’s also been fending off a buyout attempt from French media group Canal+ for the past month. After it brushed off Canal+’s initial R105/share buyout offer at the beginning of February, MultiChoice said that it felt the group had severely undervalued it. We’ve got to admit, it’s got a point what with the sports stranglehold it currently has. Canal+ has since returned, according…

Acer reckons “owning a laptop isn’t just a convenience – it’s a necessity.” Of course Acer would say that, it’s just launched a brand-new laptop and they aren’t going to buy themselves. But it does also have a point — owning a laptop has become a necessary crutch for most students and “young professionals” as Acer calls ’em to get by in this world. Considering the heavy marketing towards the country’s younger demographic, it makes sense that this thing is cheap. Or, let’s say, cheap for Acer. The company has organized a partnership with Game to sell the devices exclusively…

iPads, iPads, get your iPads here! This might be a little difficult to believe, but Apple is foregoing the dramatics and plans to launch a slate of new products “in the next several weeks” via a regular old press release on its website, with no event on the horizon. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and his ‘Power On’ newsletter, those products are the refreshed iPad Pros, 12.9in iPad Air, Apple Pencils and some Magic Keyboards for those iPads. And we haven’t even gotten to the Macs, yet. As for those, we will see the new 13- and 15in MacBook Airs…

If you’ve been paying attention to the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) latest run of petrol price predictions for March 2204, you haven’t turned up expecting good news. For the naive few who had any hopes of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy blessing the country with a decrease in fuel prices… we’d wisen up before continuing to soften the disappointment below. But that’s just us. Yup. The Department just published March’s official petrol, diesel and illuminating paraffin prices and… they’re not pretty. It’s not all bad news, however. The increases promised won’t be coming into effect until midnight on…