Author: Gugu Lourie
By Ashley Dove-Jay There’s this guy that’s pretty sure the thing you’re looking at right now is one of the greatest threats to humanity. No, he’s not talking about our growing obsession with staring at sheets of digitised glass, and the unhealthy sedentary existence associated with doing so. He’s talking about the thing living inside the machine humming quietly behind that glass: artificial intelligence. It turns out that Elon Musk, one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, is plagued with existential worries. His new biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, reveals the billionaire engineer…
By Gugu Lourie For whatever reason airline passengers at airports make mental notes of the people around them. I recently observed a well-dressed ‘gentleman’ at an airport in China. He walked with an obvious swagger. For me there was nothing about him that alarmed me or suggested he could be up to no good. After all this was Beijing Capital International Airport. Perhaps he sensed that my travelling companions and I were not overtly averse to his presence. Not surprisingly the well-dressed ‘gentleman’ decided to sit next to us. He had arrived “in style” at the boarding gates for a…
“But right now is heads down, run a good business.” By Gugu Lourie A South African business – which provides secure electronic communications such as paperless bank statements – is targeting more global growth after venturing into the tough US market. Striata operates in London, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Sydney, and via partners in North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company provides paperless solutions: document delivery, electronic messaging and marketing communications. Striata recently announced that it has bought Mass Transmit – a New York based provider of email marketing tools and services – for an undisclosed amount. The US…
By Gareth van Zyl MTN says it has taken the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to the Johannesburg Labour Court for allegedly blocking entrances to the company’s offices and intimidating staff. MTN South Africa’s chief human resources officer, Themba Nyathi, told Fin24 that the company’s court interdict against the union had been heard on Friday midday. The court action comes as call centre and franchise staff have taken to the streets this week to demand that MTN hikes their annual salary increase by 10% and pays them a bonus of 16% of their annual salaries. The legal strike reached its high…
“The rise of the geek has been prolific, driven by the mainstream rise of tech and the acute relevance of previously niche skills” By Gary Newe We’ve seen the unstoppable rise of the geek over the past few years. From popular culture to big business, the geeks have inherited the Earth. They’re the billionaires, the modern day rock stars, and their many achievements have resulted in a significant change to their status in popular society. They are now often championed, given the limelight or even imitated – geek is now chic! So let’s take some time out to look at how…
By Philip Belamant and David Cooke With South African municipalities owing utilities providers in excess of R96 billion, it is clear that traditional ways of collecting money due for utilities services such as water, electricity and gas are no longer working. In fact, this level of debt is crippling the utilities, with illegal connections compounding the problem, as seen by recent power cuts due to system overload in Soweto. It’s time for utilities and municipalities to seek and implement more effective methods of revenue collection, and the model of installing smart meters that compel users to pay in advance for…
By Mpho Raborife Johannesburg – Stellenbosch University said on Friday it had terminated its contract with a lecturer who admitted to sending an alleged racist SMS to a student earlier this month. “The service contract between Stellenbosch University and Dr Anton Stander was terminated this week, after Dr Stander admitted of his own accord that he had made the said remarks,” the university said. “Stellenbosch University reaffirms its total repugnance towards comments of this nature and affirms its stance to act decisively in each such case, irrespective of its origin.” Stander asked the institution to mediate a meeting with Sikhulekile…
By Gugu Lourie Did you know the first co.za domain names to be registered in South Africa included mtn.co.za, multichoice.co.za, bmw.co.za, jse.co.za, nestle.co.za, anglo.co.za and telkom.co.za. There were 221 co.za domains registered in 1995 as the first crop of ZACR-registered domains. “These “Platinum” domains were the forerunners of what became a world-leading domain name industry that has contributed enormously to the intellectual capital of the country,” said the ZA Central Registry (ZACR). There are currently over 1 000 000 registered and active domain names ending in .ZA. “The first group of 221 co.za Platinum domain names are significant because they had…
By Gugu Lourie The South African competition commission gave its conditional approval to the R2.7 billion Telkom-Business Connexion (BCX) deal on Thursday clearing the lines for the deal that has been in the pipeline for almost a year. The competition watchdog wants conditions attached to the transaction. “We believe the proposed acquisition will assist Telkom with its strategy to grow beyond its core business of connectivity by expanding into ICT services. This will enable our business to further enhance and grow its existing offerings, while at the same time providing scale in IT services. It will also help to reinforce the…
By Staff Writer To help African enterprises prepare for the Internet of Things (IoT), MTN Group on Thursday announced a platform to control and manage the connectivity for their devices and sim cards. The new IoT platform is now live in South Africa, with other MTN operating countries set to follow over the next 12 months. MTN said the platform removes significant cost and accessibility barriers, ultimately enabling development on a broader scale, leading to the establishment of a vast ecosystem of scalable solutions addressing real-world needs. As part of the development of IoT, MTN has introduced a global Machine-to-Machine (M2M)…