Stafford Masie returns to the show this week, joining Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod and Simon Dingle to discuss:

• WayTag, one of Stafford’s new projects.
• The role of content in telecoms.
• Predictions for Apple’s WWDC event.
• The realities surrounding cloud computing.
• Computational biology, quantum computing, the singularity and a general chat on scary computing futures.
• The evolution of storage.
• Discussions at the recent D Conference.
• Taking social media to corporate.
• Spectrum auctions in SA and Skyrove entering the fray.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Brett Haggard – Picks: DownStorm.
• Ben Kelly – Picks: Twitter for iPhone.
• Stafford Masie – Picks: Huddle.
• Duncan McLeod – Picks: Marca’s World Cup calendar.
• Simon Dingle – Picks and Picks-on: Multichoice’s new DStv HD PVR 2P decoder.

Direct file download (45MB)

Jon Tullett is your host this week with Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard and later Duncan McLeod on the panel. We discuss:

• Seacom’s outage and its impact on connectivity in SA.
• HP’s acquisition of Palm.
• The launch of TopTv and DStv Lite.
• Delays in Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) migration.
• The launch of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS.
• Online shopping.
• The Apple vs. Adobe debacle.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Duncan McLeod: Picks – Garmin FM Traffic, coming soon to SA.
• Ben Kelly: Picks – iFixit.
• Brett Haggard: Picks – Air Video for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
• Jon Tullett: Picks – MakroShop.

Direct file download (37MB)

We’re in our new studio space this week, echoes, unpainted walls and all. Brett Haggard, Don Packett, Duncan McLeod and Simon Dingle are your panel this week. We discuss:

• The future of Cell C.
• Improving PC sales and analysts’ expectations for tablet computers.
• Microsoft Mix and the prospects for Windows Phone.
• Sony’s 8001050F error on the PS3.
• Apple vs. HTC in patent dispute.
• In-flight WiFi coming to Mango.
• HP’s Pavilion DM1 netbook.
• Dropped calls on Vodacom and the smartphones that apparently cause them.
• iBurst’s new iDSL service with unlimited bandwidth for gaming.
• Telkom bumping up speed on ADSL lines.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Duncan McLeod – Picks: Skype for Symbian.
• Brett Haggard – Picks: The Macheist nanoBundle 2.
• Don Packett – Picks: Mi-World and the Mi-Bar for geeks.

Direct file download…

Steven Ambrose from WWW Strategy makes his first appearance on the ZA Tech Show this week, joining Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod and Simon Dingle to discuss:

• Internet access stats for South Africa.
• The Apple iPad launch.
• The online services drought in South Africa.
• Progress in Android and Chrome OS.
• Microsoft falling behind in mobile.
• Cell C’s “4G” network rollout.
• Cellular networks’ data congestion problems.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Brett Haggard – Picks: the iPad (we didn’t see that one coming) and Interarchy FTP client.
• Duncan McLeod – Picks: the Zap ‘em Dead electrified fly-swatter and picks-on: Jason Calacanis for his pre-iPad launch tweets.
• Steven Ambrose – Picks: The BlackBerry Bold 9700.
• Simon Dingle – Picks: The HTC Tattoo and SkypeIn with South African numbers.

Direct file download (31.3MB)

The ZA Tech Show covers a remarkable variety of topics this week as Brett Haggard, Toby Shapshak, Jon Tullett, Duncan McLeod, Simon Dingle and Candice Jones discuss:

• Winston the Pigeon.
• Apple’s September announcements.
• The Beatles: Rock Band.
• Blackberry 8520.
• New Intel chip announcements.
• Interconnect rates.

Our picks and pick-ons this week:

• Candice Jones: Pick – Mini java games.
• Brett Haggard: Pick – Samsung DualView TL220.
• Simon Dingle: Pick – The Levelator.
• Jon Tullet: Pick-on – Winston the pigeon.

Direct file download (28MB)

This week Duncan McLeod, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle discuss:

• Interconnect and other prices.
• Feedback from Nokia World.
• Snow Leopard.
• Google Street View.
• Sony.
• Hosted Blackberry BES.
• Apple’s September announcement.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Brett Haggard – an early version of Blackberry Desktop Manager for Mac that he found on the net.
• Duncan McLeod – Panasonic’s SDR-H80 Camcorder.
• Simon Dingle – Nokia’s ultra rad BH-905 headset.

Direct file download (30MB)

Jon, Ben, Simon and Duncan hop on Skype for a chat about:

• The launch of the Nokia Music Store in South Africa.
• More on the Pirate Bay court case.
• What are the real issues regarding copyright?
• The death of GeoCities.
• More on Telkom Mobi.
• Altech’s remarkable results. Who will it buy next?

Our choice technologies of the week:

• Ben Kelly – The Nokia Music Store and EASEUS partition manager.
• Jon Tullett – Unlocker.
• Duncan McLeod – Twitter Grader.
• Simon Dingle – Magical Jellybean Keyfinder and the LNX-BBC bootable business card.

Direct file download (23MB)

In this episode Jon Tullett, Duncan McLeod, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle discuss:

• Gmail’s downtime.
• South African updates to Google Maps.
• Safari 4 beta.
• Amazon’s Kindle 2 hits the market.
• Yourtunes.co.za.
• Penguin Club – the MMORPG for kids that’s taking the world by storm.
• NASA’s space exploration MMORPG.
• MTN’s impressive performance.
• Our picks including Jam Legend, Last.fm and other awesomeness.
• Do you really need an elaborate word processor?

And more…

Direct download (22MB).

Well, wandering around Mobile World Conference in Barcelona this week, it was clear Apple is that Elephant in the corner of a room filled with other handset vendors – the only difference is, everyone in the handset game is talking about the fruit company.

If we look at Apple’s market share with iPhone it’s no great shakes – the company has less than 1% of the handset space today. The aura that surrounds this novelty handset, its downloadable apps and other niceties would however have you believe it’s a far bigger force to be reckoned with.

Take the panel discussion cum-keynote from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Nokia’s Olli-Pekka Kalasvuo and AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega that was chaired by Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg.

While the individual speeches delivered by these gentlemen centred on openness (something which it seems Ballmer perpetually misses the full point of), the moment the session headed into the territory of being a panel discussion, Apple’s name popped up.

And it wouldn’t go away either – the company’s approach to its application store, its approach to openness (or lack thereof) and the ecosystem its built to create applications and accessories around the iPhone became one of the main topics of discussion.

Keynotes and talks aside though, the vast majority of the handsets launched and device centric announcements follow in the iPhone’s footsteps.

New devices are touch centric and from an interface perspective, very close to the iPhone (with a couple of cosmetic differences of course). Those which touch devices out there already have moved onto stage two and have begun launching application and media stores a la iTunes.

Microsoft itself, with its launch of version 6.5 of its mobile operating system (now referred to as Windows Phone) seems to have produced a platform that bears a very strong resemblance to the iPhone’s – complete with gestures that require the sliding of one’s fingers across the screen.

As if this wasn’t enough Microsoft (to great fanfare, I might add), trumpeted its creation of ‘MyPhone’ a feature that backs one’s phone data (contacts, calendars etc.) up in the cloud.

At the time, all I could think was: “That’s very much like Apple’s MobileMe.”

The clincher is last week’s announcement about an application store from Microsoft hitting the mainstream.

The originality is gone… The innovation is gone… Every vendor is playing catch up.

Should Apple be worried? And more importantly, shouldn’t it be here if everyone is talking about them?

To be honest I think the simple answer is no – Apple should be pleased with the situation. Not only did it save a bundle on marketing (a presence at GSMA doesn’t come cheap) it’s got its competitors exactly where it wants them – scared, confused and reactionary.

Here’s the thing though – even though I’m an Apple fanboy, I find the whole situation disappointing. This market needs some reinvention. It needs some fire. It needs some innovation.

After all, in tough times like these it’s one of the few ways tech companies will survive.

Simon Dingle, Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod and Candice Jones from ITWeb feature in this week’s episode, discussing:

• MacOS X on netbooks.
• The Gears of War DRM lock-out.
• DRM fueling piracy.
• The BlackBerry Storm, launched recently in South Africa.
• Will Apple’s multi-touch patents stop the Pre?
• Laying fiber in the Johannesburg rain.
• Solar-powered traffic lights.
• Improvements in Telkom ADSL performance.
• Neotel versus Telkom.
• Mobile data prices and the possibility of price-cuts.
• The Faritec fall and Intel posting losses.
• Brett’s Nehalem platform and the processor market.
• Acer getting into the smartphone market.
• Nokia launching music service locally.
• When will the likes of Apple get real and recognise the SA market?
• The ‘Obama Worm’.
• Some of our panelists’ favourite new thingies.

And more…

Direct file download (31MB)