Amidst the madness of the iPhone 4 launching in South Africa, Simon Dingle, Brett Haggard, Candice Jones and Steven Ambrose gather to discuss:

• The SA launch of the iPhone 4 from MTN and Vodacom.
• How touch-phone competitors are stacking up against Apple.
• Terrestrial broadband provisioning.
• The Pirate Bay’s indestructibly.
• Digital photography.
• And much more…

Our technology picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Brett Haggard: Picks Appshopper and the Capdase iPad Portfolio case.
• Candice Jones: Picks the Canon 550D and The Digital Photography School.
• Steven Ambrose: Picks the WolframAlpha app for iPad.
• Simon Dingle: Picks Nikon Learn & Explore.

Direct file download (32MB)

Special guest Dwayne Bailey from Translate.org.za adds his voice to the show this week along with Duncan McLeod, Brett Haggard, Simon Dingle and later Samantha Perry. We discuss:

• Translation work in software.
• Changes in Microsoft’s Office strategy.
• Open source.
• Patents on XML use in document formats.
• Microsoft and Nokia’s alliance.
• Nokia vs. Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Google vs. Blackberry.

And much more…

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Duncan McLeod – Pick – GSM short codes.
• Samantha Perry – likes her new Mac (pick).
• Dwayne Bailey – Pick: FishMS.
• Brett Haggard – Pick: Mobile Air mouse.
• Simon Dingle – Picks: iDisk and Keynote Remote apps for iPhone.

Direct file download (31MB).

Ivo Vegter makes his debut appearance on the ZA Tech Show this week, by popular demand. He joins Simon Dingle, Duncan McLeod, Brett Haggard, Toby Shapshak and Ben Kelly for a chat about:

• Walled gardens, open systems and whether or not we should care.
• “Evil” technology companies and market perceptions.
• Google and Microsoft’s game of tit-for-tat.
• Google Chrome OS.
• New HD channels coming to DSTV.
• The move to digital terrestrial television (DTT) and MNET’s advantage.

And much more…

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Toby Shapshak – Pick: VLC, which has now reached version 1.0.
• Brett Haggard – Picks: the Monkey Island revival and Linux Mint.
• Ivo Vegter – Pick-on: The R6 million 2010 Durban website.
• Ben Kelly – Pick: Travian (yes, yes. Jon has picked it before).
• Ducan McLeod – Pick: Grooveshark.
• Simon Dingle – Pick: Simple CSS (which he confused with another app. Wrong description in the show, but check it out anyway)

Direct file download (27MB)

Three geeks gather amidst public holidays to discuss:

• Mobile broadband and then some.
• The power of Chinese manufacturing.
• Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems. What would this mean for MySQL?
• Windows 7 RC1 leaked.
• Netbooks, nettops and the operating systems that make them work.
• Chips. Again.
• Adobe pens deal to have Flash embedded in hardware.
• Symantec announces detection of a Mac botnet.
• Pirate Bay founders found guilty.
• The new Nintendo DSi is apparently selling like hotcakes.

And more…

Our choice technologies of the week:

• Brett Haggard: Live streaming IPL cricket.
• Simon Dingle: Nambu – a Twitter client.
• Jon Tullett: Nothing really, but sort of Travian.

Direct file download (31MB)

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).

The company made the announcement at the Adobe MAX Japan trade show, at which it also said that its Adobe Flash Player 10 had been installed on more than 55% of computers worldwide in the first two months since its release. Adobe said it expected the installation base to grow to 80% by the second quarter of 2009.

The growing list of global brands using AIR includes the BBC and The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc.  Adobe says OEMs including Sony Japan are beginning to pre-install Adobe AIR on shipping computers, giving customers immediate access to the software.

Flash Player 10 has proven equally popular with well-known giants such as Comedy Central, MySpace, Toyota Motor Corporation and AOL Games.

In the past 12 months, there have been more than 1-million downloads of the AIR software development kit (SDK), the free open source Flex framework and Adobe Flex Builder.

Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player 10 are available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems as free downloads in 15 languages.

Apparently the answer is Atari.

Megarom Interactive earlier this week announced that Atari has added Ghostbusters: The Video Game to its 2009 release schedule and that the release date of the game next year will coincide with the 25th anniversary celebration of the film’s original theatrical release.

While we’re generally not that keen on games based on movies, it turns out that this title could be the exception.

For starters, it has as completely new story line that was penned by original Ghostbusters writers Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd. It furthermore also reunites members of the original cast for the first time in 20 years – Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson lend their voices and in-game likenesses to the original story set two years after Ghostbusters II, with Manhattan once again overrun by ghosts and supernatural forces.

Atari will be making the game available for PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows PCs at the outset and then make its way onto PS2, Wii and Nintendo DS a little later.

The whole gang is back together for Episode 35. We discuss:

• Tech stocks plummeting and the prospect of buying into the market. Yet. Telkom or MTN? Which stocks should you be looking at – or is this really not the time to be buying?
• The coming barrage of acquisitions. Potentially. Will Sun be bought? Will Microsoft buy RIM? What will happen to Facebook and Twitter in the current market?
• Microsoft has a big announcement coming this week. We speculate about what this announcement, concerning a cloud operating system, could be.
• Cloud computing in general.
• Apple’s reaction to Microsoft’s recent (and very expensive) ad campaign. 
• Will Microsoft stop producing Office for Mac?
• Mail and PIM applications and services.
• An urgent security patch for Windows.
• Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex is in final testing and is being launched at the end of this month.
• What Linux needs… and what it doesn’t.
• The netbook space, and the smartphone market’s impact on it.
• More on the iTunes App Store and Apple’s curious exclusion of content from the South African store.
• Mobile application distribution.
• The source code for Android being released as open source. Watch out for versions coming for just about every phone out there… and with Symbian and Android being open source, what will the future hold for Windows Mobile?
• Neotel’s new voice tariffs and other offerings on the way.

And more…

Direct file download (35MB)

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…

Direct download (24MB)

We gather in an overcast Johannesburg this week, sans Ben Kelly, to discuss the following:

• Open document formats and the SABS appealing ISO’s ratification of OOXML.
• The ultra-portable and sub-notebook market and who’s doing what in the space.
• Microsoft’s strategy for Windows on portables.
• Online operating systems, ala Jooce.
• Privacy online and why people trust Google.
• Mashing-up social networks and examples of applications that do this, like Flock.
• Instant messaging.
• Red Hat’s Mugshot.
• Vodacom’s WirelessG, iPass and other innovative wireless offerings, like Skyrove.
• Utility bandwidth.
• Final confirmation of Neotel’s consumer offerings, including uncapped solutions.

Direct file download.