Author: Gugu Lourie
I’ve always been a nerd who loves technology and games. So when it emerged that virtual reality (VR) tech was becoming available to gamers, I was ecstatic. By Melissa Meyer Then something happened that gave me pause. A gamer and YouTuber named Mark Fischback, aka Markiplier, shared his experience of playing an unfinished VR demo game. VR is a technology that creates a virtual environment. It is presented to our senses so you feel like you’re actually there. A host of technologies are used to account for cognition and perception. A VR headset takes over and re-represents visual surroundings – similar…
The evolving demands of the ever-discerning consumer continue to give impetus to the private and public sector to offer customised digitisation solutions that meet their needs, David Mphelo, general manager for public sector at MTN Business, told delegates at the Public Sector ICT Forum in Johannesburg. Mphelo said that as the industry is battling with the full implementation of the IT buzzwords that were conceptualised decades ago such as Big Data and Cloud as the back-end system that supports the complete adoption of these solutions often lags behind. “The days of talking about access to mobile broadband are coming to…
The aYo micro insurance is designed by mobile phone operator MTN and insurance-based financial services group MMI Holdings as a joint venture to deliver much-needed insurance solutions. By Staff Writer The new aYo micro-insurance solution will target MTN customers across the African markets. We compiled an explainer of the aYo micro-insurance providing details you main need to know as an MTN prepaid customer. The explainer is provided by MTN and MMI. What is aYo Recharge with Care? aYo Recharge with Care provides pre-paid MTN customers with free life (MyLife) or hospital (MyHospital) cover every time they load MTN airtime Cover…
You want free and unlimited Internet access for 18 hours. Sound crazy. Fortunately, there is a new way to give you unlimited free data during ‘prime time’. That’s free, unlimited Internet usage between midnight and 6pm every day, giving you 18 hours a day. By Staff Writer It’s the first time anyone in South Africa has given you unlimited free data during ‘prime time’. This is bandwidth done right! Afrihost is offering its customers free unlimited Internet, known as Free-Time. How does Free-Time work? Quite simply all the data and GBs you use on any of Afrihost’s Capped DSL packages…
In conversations about telecommunications, moods can easily turn sour. The golden age of the first mobile networks have faded somewhat. Data, once seen as a sideline and a potential revenue channel, has exploded forth and caused havoc with voice and messaging revenues. It’s a shift in the market that cannot be reversed. Digital connectivity is not only becoming all pervasive – the world would be worse off if it didn’t. By Simon Carpenter, chief customer officer at SAP Africa This is not sweet music to an industry that saw its revenues shrink violently. Whether a telco is an incumbent or a fairly…
Apple announced its new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and Watch Series 2 today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. By David Glance iPhone 7 and 7 Plus What the event confirmed was that the leaks about the phone and the watch have gotten to the point that there were very few surprises. The new features of the phones can best be seen in Apple’s comparison chart which is interesting from the perspective of how much is the same between the 6S and the 7. For people who have an iPhone 6S, there is little in the new…
Over the past hundred years, industrial agriculture and the globalised food system have produced cheaper, longer lasting and more diverse food items. We can now enjoy tropical fruits in winter, purchase whole chickens at the price of a cup of coffee, and eat fresh bread long after it was baked. By Christopher Mayes Once celebrated as the benevolent results of food science and ingenuity of farmers, these cheap and safe foods are dismissed by critics as the tainted fruits of “Big Food” – the culinary version of Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Food is no longer simply a matter of taste…
MTN Business has earmarked the 15th September 2016 as the official launch for its new Partner Programme, which will enable a broad range of partners to become part of the fast-growing MTN Business ICT and Mobile products and solutions ecosystem. Partners, globally, now have an opportunity to become an extension of the MTN brand, through a new Partner Programme unveiled by MTN Business. “MTN, having expanded beyond telecoms and mobile with aspirations to become the ICT partner of choice, is now broadening its global ecosystem to include a wide range of partners under the new MTN Partner Programme. These selected…
While online retail still only accounts for 1% of retail revenue in South Africa, the growth rates of more than 20% year-on-year since 2000 speak volumes about the need for every business to seriously plan for an online presence. By Kyle Rozendo, CTO at SID The 2016 numbers from World Wide Worx released in April this year, not only show good growth for the year, but forecasts for 2020 show the figures doubling from their current baseline. While this is great news for the economy, there remain many obstacles for the general business community when it comes to taking the leap in…
Not only is Apple suffering from a major lack of hardware innovation but it’s also being outdone in software and online, where apps reign supreme. It quite possibly signals the company’s eventual demise. By John Rice and Nigel Martin The recent launch of Apple’s iPhone 7 was a quiet affair compared to the launch of the first iPhone a little more than nine years ago. January 2, 2007, was a revolutionary day for world telecommunications as the ailing Steve Jobs held aloft the new iPhone device to the cheers of adoring techies. Fast-forward almost a decade and not much has changed about…