Author: Contributor

Car insurance is definitely one of those expenses that we hate to love. The type that when it comes off our account each month we ask ourselves “do we actually need this?”. However, nine times out of ten this insurance saves us a ton of money when we least expect it. With the number of road accident fatalities on the rise, there is an increased need for car insurance. However this ultimately equates to: Increase in crashes + Increased car insurance claims = higher car insurance premiums for all of us. We decided to break down the five best car insurance…

Huawei South Africa has hosted its second Information and Communication Technology (ICT) job fair for Huawei ICT academy graduates, simultaneously boosting the country’s tech skills and helping to create youth employment for the fourth-industrial-revolution – as prioritised by the national government. The ICT talent shortage is an international challenge, and initiatives like the job fair are part of the Huawei ICT Talent Ecosystem, which aims to address this. The global programme sees Huawei collaborate with education and training institutions, industry associations and partners to build a platform for sustainable ICT skills development to bridge the digital divide and unleash society’s…

TerraPay, a mobile-first international payment network, today announced that it has partnered with UBA Group, a leading pan-African financial services group headquartered in Nigeria, to facilitate real-time money transfer services to its customers in 20 countries across Africa. The service which is currently live in five countries within UBA’s network including Ghana, Cote d’ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Cameroon, will be rolled out to the Bank’s other subsidiaries in Chad, Liberia, Senegal, Uganda, Congo Brazzaville, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Mali, Zambia, Congo DRC, Gabon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Benin Republic soon. Sampson Aneke, Group Head, Transaction and Electronic Banking, UBA Group, noted that…

by Rozita Dara A few short years ago, personal digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant sounded futuristic. Now, the future is here and this future is embedded, augmented and ubiquitous. Digital assistants can be found in your office, home, car, hotel, phone and many other places. They have recently undergone massive transformation and run on operating systems that are fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI). They observe and collect data in real-time and have the capability to pull information from different sources such as smart devices and cloud services and put the information into context using AI…

by Basebone In 2014, Apple quietly discontinued the iPod classic. https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/9/4715274/ipod-classic-discontinued-a-visual-history The company issued a short press release, and that was it. Over 13 years the iPod had changed the world. Suddenly it was gone. How long before Apple confirms calls time on the iPhone? It’s almost impossible to imagine today. Apple sells more than 200 million iPhones a year. The mobile industry as a whole sells around 1.5 billion smartphones every 12 months. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ The smartphone is so dominant, and the industry is so huge, that we think it will be here forever. But it won’t. If tech history…

by Basebone What time is it? Time for something interesting to happen in the smartwatch market. Yes, just a few days ago Google bought the smartwatch and fitness tracker maker, Fitbit. This was very unexpected news. Why? Because most people thought Google had given up on the wearables market. The company’s operating system – Wear OS – had been a flop. Google hardly ever talked about the platform any more. But here it was, spending a huge $2.1 billion on the world’s second biggest wearables company. https://blog.google/products/hardware/agreement-with-fitbit What’s going on? Before we dig into that, let’s re-cap how the wearables…

Openserve, a network and infrastructure provider owned by Telkom, reported a major incident of cable theft in Eisleben Road, Portland in the Mitchells Plain area, Cape Town. On Thursday, 12 December 2019, multiple cables of varying lengths were cut and stolen. This incident is impacting the surrounding communities that are connected to Openserve’s network via 20 different street distribution cabinets (SDC`s). Currently, 903 faults have been reported by customers, but it is estimated that approximately 1726 services have been impacted leaving customers, largely residential with Voice and ADSL lines in the Portland, Westridge and Rocklands suburbs, without connectivity. Openserve said…

by Dalene Deale FinTech start-ups have transformed the market for consumer lending in the United States and other mature credit markets, by giving people an alternative way of borrowing money without having to go through a bank or a traditional lending institution. We see a similar trend happening in South Africa, however, some of the drivers and market dynamics are very different to other markets. FinTech lenders provide a platform for investors to lend money directly to consumers and businesses. The application and approval processes are quick, as risk is assessed almost instantly using data and technology. As with most…

Just 20 years ago, only 4.1% of the world’s population had access to the internet. In 2019, there are over 4.5 billion active internet users, which makes up 58.8% of people on Earth. The pivotal role of internet in modern life is emphasized by the United Nations which issued a resolution claiming that access to the internet is one of the basic human rights and calling on the Member States to prevent the digital divide. How expensive is the internet nowadays? Where is surfing the net the cheapest? In which countries is super-fast internet easy accessible? And is the internet in…

by Sean Flynn The Office of the US Trade Representative has announced a review of South Africa’s eligibility for Generalised System of Preferences benefits. The office took the step after it was petitioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a private sector coalition representing large US entertainment companies. At issue is South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill, which has been waiting for the South African president’s signature for eight months. Charl Blignaut asked Professor Sean Flynn and lawyer Jonathan Band to explain the issues. What is the Generalised System of Preferences and how does it work? These programmes give extra tariff…