As Christmas 2009 approaches, our panelists are confined to their quarters and must use Skype to converse. Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod, Jon Tullet, Simon Dingle and Toby Shapshak discuss:

• Cell C’s network expansion and upgrade.
• Telecoms.
• Intel scrapping Larrabee and possibly cosying up to Nvidia.
• Blackberry’s Storm 2.
• Integration between Twitter and search providers.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Duncan McLeod: Picks – Google Chrome for Mac.
• Brett Haggard: Picks – Dragon Dictation for iPhone.
• Jon Tullett: Pick-on – Dragon Dictation and picks – Samsung Star.
• Toby Shapshak: Picks – Blackberry Storm 2.
• Ben Kelly: Picks – Stanza.
• Simon Dingle: Picks – Tornado Outbreak for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

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Jon Tullett, Toby Shapshak, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle are your panellists in this week’s episode. They try to speak as quickly as possible, and at the same time, as they discuss:

• Microsoft’s dodgy IE8 ads.
• The Core debacle.
• How technology vendors go to market in SA, and calculate prices.
• Mobile broadband options.
• The switch to DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television).
• The RICA act in SA and its impact on prepaid cellular.

Our choice technologies of the week:

• Toby Shapshak: Sony Ericsson W995.
• Jon Tullett: Ubuntu Linux 9.04.
• Brett Haggard: G-Connect.

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The original line-up returns to the ZA Tech Show for our one year anniversary episode. Ben Kelly, Duncan McLeod, Jon Tullett, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle discuss:

• Country manager of Google in South Africa, Stafford Masie’s resignation. Who will replace him?
• Google Maps updates not showing on the API. Simon gets a little confused…
• Safari 4 breaking things left, right and centre.
• Apple’s new Macs.
• Do you need a TV license for a large monitor without a TV tuner in it?
• Stuff magazine’s top 100 games insert.
• Our top games of all time.
• Optional components in Windows 7.
• The netbook market and Android’s place in it.
• DRM in Windows 7.
• Vodacom’s LTE strategy.
• Will LTE handle voice?
• Video conferencing with Cisco TelePresence and HP Halo.

And much more…

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Thank you for the support we have received over the last year and well-wishes received via Twitter, email, et al. We do what we do because we love what we do and the reward, for us, is your listenership. We look forward to another year of the ZA Tech Show!

Some images from the recording (click for full size):

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…

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In this week’s episode we cover:

• Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s appeal against the Altech ruling being denied. Cry me a river.
• What self-provisioning will mean for telecoms in South Africa.
• We investigate the exclusion of games and podcasts from the South African iTunes store.
• The banning of Opera Mini from the iTunes App Store.
• Gears of War 2 being launched this week.
• FPS games on console versus PC.
• Crossover’s ‘Lameduck’ promotion.
• Gaming in Linux and OS X using WINE.
• MMORPGs. Bear with us.
• Firefox’s China Channel extension that simulates the Great Firewall of China.
• Google introduces service level agreements for its application services.
• OpenOffice.org extensions.
• The introduction of Windows Azure, and cloud services hosting in general.
• Windows 7 and SP2 of Vista.
• Sony recalls 100 000 batteries predominantly used in Toshiba and HP notebooks, but also Dell, Acer and Lenovo.
• Retired hardware dumping in the developing world.

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Episode 33 was recorded in Holland at Symantec Vision + Manage Fusion 2008 in The Hague. But not in its entirety, thanks to dodgy technology. So we re-recorded it in South Africa.

And apologise profusely for it being late. We discuss:

• Open document standards as the OXML committee suggests alignment and interaction with ODF.
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 is out.
• BlackBerry entering the touch-phone market with the launch of the ‘Storm’.
• The migration to mobile.
• A new directive in the EU requiring vendors to have easily removable and recyclable  batteries.
• Battery technology in general, including maximising battery times on laptops and why batteries will continue to suck for some time still.
• Nintendo’s new DSi and announcement that an HD Wii is in production.
• Console gaming in general. Why not?
• Mail Goggles and other things we’re not entirely sure about.
• Things we learned and discussed at Symantec Vision + Manage Fusion.
• Google putting in local servers… or are they?

And more…

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We’re all about mobile and gaming this week as the ZA Tech Show crew is scaled down to three, plus some input from Trevor van de Ven of ZA Car Show fame. Under discussion:

• The new Microsoft Ad featuring Eva Longoria, Deepak Chopra and others. Jerry Seinfeld is nowhere in sight.
• Apple’s arrogance and walled approach to the iTunes Music and App store.
• Nokia lining up its next range of phones, hot on the heels of recent releases from the vendor. Clearly the competitive landscape is hotting up.
• The Apple iPhone arrives in South Africa this week, on 23 September.
• Other browsers are getting Chrome-like javascript support with SquirrelFish.
• And Chrome has been third-party ported to Mac and Linux.
• Warhammer Online is finally available as yet another attempt at competing with World of Warcraft.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released this week, with major media attention.
• More gaming news with the release of Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS, Acer’s Predator range of PC gaming hardware, the launch of ‘Life with Playstation’ for the PS3, and the approach of Guitar Hero: World Tour to compete with Rock Band.
• Twitter has a new interface, and Jon still doesn’t have an account.
• Our esteemed minister of communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has decided to appeal the recent Altech ruling in the high court.

And more…

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In episode 29 of ZA Tech Show Alastair Otter from Tectonic drops by and lends us his insights into the Linux environment. Lots of technology news on the cards this week and we discuss:

• Duncan spoke to Dark Fibre Africa and gives us the low-down on capacity, clients and why your car’s rims are being destroyed in the name of bandwidth.
• MTN is taking on Telkom in the consumer broadband space with the launch of an HSPA router.
• Google partnering with O3B to bring more satellite bandwidth to South Africa. Will it amount to anything?
• Mark Shuttleworth is ploughing resources into changing desktop environments on Linux.
• Simon spoke to the Google project manager of Chrome and provides more information on where Google is going in the browser space.
• Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, Microsoft Silverlight, Flash and other technologies impacting on your experience of the Web.
• The second Microsoft advertisement featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.
• Apple’s September announcements including new iPods and iTunes 8 with the Genius feature.
• Much anticipated game Spore has been released, but tight DRM is harming online sentiment.
• Piracy as a distribution model. Steal This Movie and other players are investigating the space.
• A Facebook movie is being made.
• HP has a new notebook in the form of the EliteBook 6930p it claims will deliver 24 hours of battery life off a single charge.
• Lenovo and Acer are pulling back on their offerings of laptops with Linux.
• More about the Acer Aspire One and our hacking thereof.

And more…

Direct file download (33MB)

In this episode:

• We get our hands on the Acer Aspire One, both in Linux and Windows.
• The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.
• Apple’s September 9 announcement and the possibility of an Apple netbook-slash-tablet.
• Sony’s massive Vaio recall.
• Google’s Chrome browser.
• Where operating systems are going.
• The first Microsoft ad with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is here. And weird.
• The big Xbox 360 price cut.
• Cross-platform gaming, online console services and how better bandwidth will bring it all home.
• The new deal signed by MTN, Vodacom, Neotel, Telkom and Infraco to get going on the west coast cable.

And more…

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In this episode of ZA Tech Show we discuss:

• The 3G iPhone along with educated guesses as to when we will see it in SA, and at what price.
• The launch of Apple’s MobileMe service.
• The Ace Aspire One sub-notebook and Eee PC killer.
• Acer’s other market movements, including its launch of a gaming division.
• Desktop Linux.
• Red Hat’s patent achievements.
• Impi Linux, enterprise Linux and competition in the open source space.
• The launch of Firefox 3.
• Plurk.
• Adium X – now with Facebook Chat support.
• Updates on the Apple IMC grey-import saga and Apple’s seeming disregard for developing markets.
• The poo-flinging between Altech and IS.

And more! We’ll also soon be moving ZA Tech Show onto local bandwidth, so watch this space

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