Your panel of tech pundits this week includes Brett Haggard, Candice Jones and Duncan McLeod who join Simon Dingle to discuss:

Our technology picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Simon Dingle – Picks: Samsung Galaxy S and Tungle.me.
• Duncan McLeod – Picks: HTC Desire and Zimbra.
• Candice Jones – Picks: Nintendo 3DS.
• Brett Haggard – Picks: VMWare Fusion 3.1 and GOG.com.

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With just 10 episodes to go before our 100th show, Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle discuss:

• Looming fines and other pain for Telkom.
• Mobile virtual network operators and the difference they could make.
• iBurst’s 20Mbps ADSL2+  service.
• New Navigon GPS products and whether they stand a chance against Google.
• NDrive for iPhone.
• Depeche Mode, World of Warcraft and depression.
• Foursquare and other social networking games.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Simon Dingle: Pick – Torchlight. Play it, buy it.
• Ben Kelly: Pick – mobile cases with fabric speakers from GTech.
• Brett Haggard: Pick – Whatsapp, the iPhone-to-iPhone messenger.

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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.

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Our gathering of geeks this week includes Jon Tullett, Duncan McLeod, Toby Shapshak, Ben Kelly, Brett Haggard and your host, Simon Dingle. We discuss:

• Spectrum allocation, the Icasa way.
• Seacom going live. We plug in and test.
• The problem(s) with Telkom.
• Windows 7 released to manufacturing.
• New Google Calendar labs features.

Our picks and pick-ons of the week:

• Simon: Pick - The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition for iPhone and the HTC Magic Android phone.
• Duncan: Pick – Infraco’s cable between Mtunzini and Johannesburg.
• Toby: Pick-on – Web Africa.
• Ben: Pick – World of Warcraft Armory for iPhone.
• Brett: Pick – Microsoft Arc Mouse and hack to make any trackpad multi-touch.

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BS abounds in tech news this week and Jon Tullett, Brett Haggard and Simon Dingle sift through it. We discuss:

• The unlikeliness of World of Warcraft for mobiles.
• Retro gaming. Again.
• Windows 7 gets ‘XP Mode’
• What is the ultimate upgrade cycle for operating systems?
• Twitter’s attrition rate.
• The power of email.
• A new PSP rumour.
• AMD shuts down its SA offices.
• Apple getting in the chip business? No, of course not. It’s BS.

Our technology choices of the week:

• Brett Haggard: a shameful punt for Connect magazine.
• Simon Dingle: Gatorpeeps micro-blog platform.

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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):

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…

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The big four-oh! This week we are joined by Tiana Alswang, editor of G.E.A.R. magazine, and Athena Twin, along with members of her PMS Clan of professional female gamers from the USA and Canada. We cover:

• Girls in gaming and the Plugg event recently held in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the PMS Clan took on a top team of local dudes in Counterstrike.
• Gaming in South Africa and the growth thereof.
• Some of the best new titles on the block. What are the PMS Clan playing?
• The addiction of World of Warcraft, and why it is banned for many professional gamers.
• Multiplayer gaming – it’s more social than you think.
• Local servers, bandwidth and the other bits and pieces we need to improve the gaming scene in South Africa.
• Alienware is still around and kicking arse.
• Intel’s Core i7 ‘Nehalem’ processor has landed. And Brett has benchmarked it – he even has some memory tips.
• Why Halo 3 didn’t quite cut it.
• Rock Band versus Guitar Hero – the competition gets thick with Guitar Hero: World Tour.
• Kids and games. Can you really keep them away from violent games they may be too young for?
• The big game titles to look out for this Christmas.
• Console versus PC gaming.
• A review of Duncan’s panel discussion on telecommunications that took place at the MyBroadband conference 2008.
• The promise of WiMAX, and whether or not it can deliver thereon.

A big congratulations to Duncan McLeod for winning MyBroadband’s SA IT Journalist of the Year award. Well deserved!

By the way… the SA guys beat the PMS Clan at the Plugg event…

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Gartner Analyst Will Hahn joins the gang on this week’s episode as part of his visit to South Africa – you don’t want to miss this one. We discuss:

• Will’s take on the South African telecommunication’s space. What is the state of play of our market and what are his predictions for the future?
• The maturity of the technology market in South Africa and trends that are shaping the way we do things down here.
• The move to IP telephony and market expectations in this regard.
• We review Neotel NeoFlex Data as Brett and Duncan have been putting the offering through its paces. How fast is it? What latency are they seeing? Can you stay connected in a power outage? All answers within…
• Jerry Yang stepping down as CEO of Yahoo!
• PC Magazine halting print and going online only. What is happening to print publishing?
• Net Neutrality in the USA, the Obama government and how the landscape is changing state-side.
• Is email dead?
• Gmail introduces themes.
• Duncan has a Nokia 5800. It’s poop.
• If you think the 5800 sucks, wait until you use a Samsung Omnia. We discuss the touch phone market. It’s all iPhone for now.
• News on the arrival of a local Google data centre.
• Our predictions surrounding Google Maps – and some general GPS discussion.
• Guitar Hero: World Tour is now available in South Africa.
• How off-line games make the transition to online.
• Wrath of the Lich King breaks a record. We’re not sure which one exactly.
• Microsoft South Africa says it is lobbying for a local Xbox Live service.
• Afrigator has a new revenue scheme for bloggers.

And more…

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Topics under discussion this week include:

• Nintendo launches Wii Party website and an online gaming store in South Africa.
• The question of why only Playstation has an online presence in SA. Why can’t Microsoft or Nintendo do it?
• Comparing ADSL service providers – Axxess versus Plugg more specifically.
• All-girl gaming team, the PMS Clan is on its way to South Africa. We’ll be there. 
• The second expansion pack for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King has been launched.
• Guitar Hero: World Tour is being launched next week.
• Google Video Chat.
• Skype – and why it should have an open API.
• Telkom’s ADSL issues.
• Neotel’s data-only product.
• Duncan has the new Macbook. We play.
• Alienware’s new laptop – the M17.
• The new Windows Live social network.
• Microsoft strategy.
• BlackBerry Storm is being launched on November 21 in the US.
• Dimension Data posts annual results.

And more…

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