on the 19th January Apple has announce that they are actively working on changing education. Textbooks should move onto a more electronic version of the same textbook however this time, it has all the benefits of being run on a tablet. This means that it allows authors much more creative freedom by adding video, sound & links to make learning more fun and interactive.

Apple announced the version2 of their iBook App. Once this is downloaded and installed, it brings to life all the interactive content in the textbook.

In order to have an interactive book, you need to provide the tools for the author. Apple has therefore announces the iBook Author.  This is where authors can unleash their creative power and create books – all for free.

But wait, there is more !

In true Apple style, they have also announces iTunes University which allows student to participate in official courses from various leading education institutions. The app also allows you to submit your assignments.

Complete sense or nonsense ?

To me this makes complete sense. The way children are consuming media has changed so surely school textbooks should change too. My two kids are at school and the lug home everyday heavy books only to use a few pages from each for homework.

As we all know, kids take to technology like fish to water. They are not afraid to try things, don’t have the “if I do this it might break” adult mentality. Kids are naturally curious and so interactive books can only foster that.

In my previous post of what kids want to Christmas, I highlighted that :

Interesting to see that the e-readers for for 6- 12 year olds came in at 17% and was ranked number 3 at 18% for kids 13+ – does this mean children can still read ? Maybe e-reader has made it cool again !

By making the author software free, this will encourage traditional authors to try the new way to bring their content to live and will foster a new invigorated spirit with the children who have to plough through pages and pages and pages of text of World War 2– imagine a video showing US soldiers liberating a concentration camps vs. 500 pages of text…

From a South African point:

As the system becomes more adopted, the prices of the hardware will reduce making it affordable for all levels of schools. As with everything “Apple” related, competing products will come out further reducing cost.

I look forward to seeing this system deployed in South Africa – but unfortunately not anytime soon.

Maybe, just maybe, South Africa should be THE test country. Many Rural schools don’t have textbooks for the kids anyways, no blackboards and sometime not even classrooms – so maybe should we not just skip over these “traditional” items  and jump right to Technology ?

Imagine if these kids grow up with Tech in their hands from day 1 – what a difference that will make to South Africa’s future….

we can hope cant we ?

In 2012 you have to agree that no having a Website for your business is very detrimental. I have always maintained that a customer’s first engagement with any business starts at the Google search box. If they aren’t able to find your business, they move onto the next one.

Enter : Woza Online – an initiative by Google, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Vodacom & the Human Resources Development Council.

What is it ?

Woza Online allows anyone to create and host a FREE website. The system allows you to choose from predefined professional templates and after adding some info about your business you are ready to go live – all within minutes and with no technical ability required.

Here’s what you get:

• FREE easy-to-build professional website
• FREE sub-domain name on www.wozaonline.co.za
• FREE hosting
• FREE access to training materials and workshops
• FREE custom .co.za domain name for the first 10 000 participants for one year

Woza Online is also planning various workshops in order to help those who are afraid to take the fist step

Want more information ? go to the official website !

If you are an established business and want to help, you can become a Partner for Woza Online.

More information on becoming a Partner

When you have a wireless network, they work pretty well when you are well within range of the ADSL modem. As you tend to venture further and further away you tend to loose signal strength and the speed is reduced to the point where there is none. This is where it gets really frustrating. Sometime you get signal and a bit of internet comes flooding in and then if you move an inch, you get nothing.

I was marching around with my Galaxy Tab in hand using it as a dousing rod, waving it back and forth until I could get ANY bit of signal just to get internet connectivity.

Enough was enough !

I had three choices of how to fix this mess:

1. Get an Access Point added (hardware cost ranges from R400 – R999) – You buy an Access Point hardware & place it close to the area where you have limited signal. You then use your Tablet/ netbook to connect to that access point instead of the main ADSL modem which you can not get to. The catch: you need to have a physical network cable connected from your existing ADSL modem to the access point.

In my case, this was not an option as the distance was too great and besides that my wife would have killed me to have wires all over the house !

2. Use Cellular modem – Abandon any hope of connectivity from my ADSL modem and just buy a SIM card and use Cellular Data. This is exactly what I did however this is not practical and gets expensive very quickly.

3. A Range Extender – this is a hardware device that you place midway between the area that you do have signal and the area that you do not. The Extender extends your wireless network to cover the areas that are currently in darkness. This is the option I chose.

I purchased the Netgear universal WiFi Range Extender which I purchased from Matix Warehouse at R750 (Note: other retailers had the exact same one costing over R1000 -  rip off !)

The Hardware:

The Extender is a good looking piece of kit. It is easily disguised as part of the furniture and doesn’t stick out like an IT-eyesore-equipment.

The Extender is also a 4 port router (just like your normal ADSL modem) so this mean that you can plug into it up to 4 physical devices such as Internet TV, Gaming Console etc. as well as have your wireless devices connect to it. Very cool and practical.

The Setup:

Like all WiFi networks should be, my network is Password protected. Not a problem. The Extender has step by step instructions on how to link it up to my existing protected network without any security compromise.

The Deployment:

Once I completed the set up Wizard and everything was linked up, I literally disconnected the Extender from the power supply, took it towards the dead spot area and plugged it in just to the power – no other wires.

Within seconds it was ready and the LED indicator tells you how strong or weak your signal is so you can adjust it for best performance.

The Test:

I fired up my Tablet in the area where I had NO signal previously, crossed my thumbs and lo-and-behold there was a new WiFi hotspot. I connected to it and was surfing the WEB ! OMG – first time with no fuss. Just good ‘ol internet surfing from the comfort of any office or room.

In summary:

I am a happy Techie. I can now watch YouTube video clips, read the newspaper (online obviously), check my emails and catch up on who is fighting with who on Facebook – all from the comfort of my bed or any other room in the house.

The Netgear is so simple to set up and out of the box user friendly experience. Just like all their other devices I have used in the past. On a side note: I have had my Netgear ADSL modem for over 6 years now !!

By the way: this blog comes directly from my Bedroom – yay !

Links:

Netgear: http://www.netgear.com/home/products/wireless-range-extenders/WN2000RPT.aspx

Matrix Warehouse: http://www.matrixonlineshop.co.za/

hmmmm is it real or fake ? it seems to be real as its the official Wimpy Twitter account. So off I head off to the official Wimpy web site and I see:

and also:

wow  – a very cool promotion ! (pitty I dont eat bacon of get up that early…)

Its interesting to see how a 140 character Tweet spread all over the Tweet-a-spher and how many Retweets it received from influential people in the Twitter space which help gives it credibility and spread the message.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/Free%20Wimpy%20Streaky%20Bacon%20Breakfast%20

One Techie tip to add: next time include your own HASHTAG such as #wimpyfreebreakfast  this way you have better tracking and also might set a trend.

So for those who are up and on the go already – Enjoy your breakfast and well done to Wimpy on a great campaign.

This is a BIG warning to everyone out there – you have to be SOOOO careful when downloading any app that isn’t in the official App Store or Marketplace or Samsung App store or any other official store.

Here is what happened:

On the Android phone is a notification bar and it had a link to download a Battery Manager. Since I am in the market for one, I clicked on the link.

update 19 January 2012: they are still pushing this app which is how I got these new screen shots of it:

It downloaded as usual and then once it completed installing I received the following SMS :

and then instantly I get the following 3 SMS in a row:

At no point did I SMS their number to say I want in and at no point did I subscribe to this – obviously I immediately sent the STOP SMS:

Here is what their Application looks like:

So how on earth did this happen ?

I reviewed my phone’s history and found this:

http://tracking.cornerblue.com/aff_c?offer_id=192&aff_id=1&aff_sub=textad1&source=ap&12639

Cornerblue seems to be a marketing company that was responsible for the notification in the toolbar:

I then found the evidence and the smoking gun:

http://get.batteryoptimizer.net/lp6.b/index.html?utm_source=cb&utm_campaign=2012-01-13.opt.b&utm_term=southafrica&custom_tag=en-smsmyway50-southafrica&click_key=1025757d3aac661de2b79ab#######

As you can see in the URL this app has automatically opted me IN to their scheme at R50 per month !!

This is highly illegal and goes against Consumer Protection Act and in the morning I shall be calling My Way on the 0800-999-239 number.

I am also contacting WASPA to lodge a complaint there and I emailed cornerblue.com to inform them of what their client is up to. I invited them to comment so that I can update this story – lets see what they do

AAAHHHHH !!!!!!!

Update 19 January 2012:  if you follow the discussion happening in the comment section you will notice that I was asked if the app can send SMS on your behalf without you knowing about. So I installed the application again but this time took out my SIM card and here is the screen shot that shows the exact control this application has on your phone:

Notice what it can do – You messages, Network, storage Services that cost you money, money, Phone calls, System tool – boy was I stupid to allow that to be installed.

If you click on Optimize (which is what this app is suppose to do to your battery), it brings up the next screen:

Here is where it says in tiny font about the R50 – there is no way to get out of it. You can not click anywhere to cancel this screen.

Then the next screen comes up:

It tells you it is about to AUTO-SEND the SMS for you – again with no way to cancel this.

THIS is what I am pissed about. There is no way to cancel out of it. The buttons are labelled as NEXT & DONE. They get around the South African rule of double confirmation of Opting In by having two screens – the first one does the first SMS and the second one does the second confirmation for you.

Can anyone find a CANCEL button ? Can anyone find a BACK button ?  why did they use a tiny font for the R50 catch where there is the entire screen to use ?

If  the application pre-populate an SMS with the Opt-in text and then opened up the SMS facility and waited for me to press SEND then I would understand. By taking the control away from me and not allowing me to cancel it, this is why I am saying this is a scam.

There has been a lot of talk/ tweet/ post/ discussion about SOPA & PIPA especially when Wikipedia made a public announcement that it would shut down its services in protest. All of a sudden people outside the US started to look into what is going on more carefully.

So lets start at the beginning : what is SOPA ?

It is an anti-piracy bill working its way through the US Congress. It stands for  Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA)

So what does this actually mean ?

This act gives intellectual property owners for example: musicians, movie studios, poets, writers (basically anyone) the ability to stop any websites that has any of their copy write material on it.

By way of an example: If Paramount Pictures claims that a website in London is downloading or hosting an illegal copy of one of its movies, Paramount can use this ACT to :

• Instruct Google to remove this site from its system
• Instruct Google to stop sending it ads
• Instruct Godaddy to deregister their domain
• US based merchant services such as PayPal must no longer accept business from that site
• Ebay or other US auction sites must not be accept good to auction from that site.
• The hosting Service Provider must no longer send any visitors to that site

As the US has no jurisdiction outside its borders, the ACT is aimed at the traffic (visitor who go to that site) coming from the US to the offending website rather than attacking the site itself.

More scary bits: if someone is seen as being proactive in shutting down offending websites, they receive immunity. So what is stopping someone like Google to simply “being proactive” and remove all competing Ad serving websites or Video streaming sties ?

Scary bit continue:If you are seen as having anything to do with trying to get around the ACT then you could be shut down & your provider could be shut down too – no “circumventing”. So basically, if ANYONE tweets that there is a workaround, it means that Twitter will be shut down. Same for Facebook. Same for WordPress. Same for Blogger.

Think of it in another way: if you are contantly uploading content such as family pictures to sites such as Flickr and Flicker is told to shut down – there goes your digital images ie your digital life ! poof !

In their open letter to the government  many high-profile companies such as Netscape, Flickr, Yahoo, Alexa, PayPal, Ebay, Wikipedia, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and LinkedIN expressed their concern as follows:

How does this SOPA affect South Africa ?

Major sites will not be available or available but with reduced functionality

Big concern among the Tech media in SA is that government will follow suit and implement these kind of ACTs here. Coupled with the Freedom Of Information Bill we might as well go back to post-it notes !

So what now ?

Various major sites such as Wikipedia, WordPress, will “go dark” on the 18th.

The Huffington Post reporting:

“a community comprised of more than 19,000 technology enthusiasts, is planning a large rally for Wednesday afternoon to protest the anti-piracy legislation proposed by SOPA and PIPA.”

We watch and see what will happen – not sure if WordPress will be available so even TheTechieGuy might go onto “silence mode”….

This sums it up rather nicely from http://theoatmeal.com/sopa :

Rumours has it that RIM is going to be bought by Samsung. This has been circulating around the Tech circles for a while now. When RIM shares suddenly started to climb again, it seemed like this was confirmed.

However, today Samsung confirmed it was not interested in buying Research In Motion nor is it interested in licensing its operating system.

"We haven’t considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in (buying RIM)," Samsung spokesman James Chung said.

Chung also said Samsung had not been approached by the Canadian firm for a takeover and was not interested in licensing RIM’s mobile platform.

After this announcement, RIM shares fell back 5.3 % after their stock price rose by 11.1%

So if Samsung are not keen, could HTC be interested ? that seems to make some sense. If HTC is able to purchase every Blackberry RIM device out there at a reasonable price, it would lessen their dependency on Android and give them instant access to millions of customers.

RIM needs to make tough decision at a board level…

ahhhh !!!! If I get this one more time I am going to explode !!!!

WhatsApp is going to cost us money soon. The only way that it will stay free is if you are a frequent user i.e. you have at least 10 people you are chatting with. To become a frequent user send this message to 10 people who receive it (2 ticks) and your WhatsApp logo should turn Red to indicate a frequent user.

or the other message doing its rounds:

Whatsapp is shutting down on 28th jan Message from Jim Balsamic (CEO of Whatsapp) we have had an over usage of user names on whatsapp Messenger. We are requesting all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, we will take it as your account is invalid and it will be deleted within the next 48 hours. Please DO NOT ignore this message or whatsapp will no longer recognise your activation. If you wish to re-activate your account after it has been deleted, a charge of 25.00 will be added to your monthly bill. We are also aware of the issue involving the pictures updates not showing. We are working diligently at fixing this problem and it will be up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation from the Whatsapp team

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls – please and pretty please, do NOT send the WhatsApp message to your entire contract list. It is a HOAX. There is no truth to this.

These are coming in fast and furious multiple times and even in multiple languages!

The same thing went around after the Blackberry outage last year:

This message is to inform all of our users, that our servers have recently been really full, so we are asking for your help to fix this problem. We need our active users to re-send this message to everyone on your contact list in order to confirm our active users that use BlackBerry Messenger, if you do not send this message to all your BlackBerry Messenger contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts

Again, this is a HOAX.

Companies such as these, who have millions of users who use their system on a minute by minute basis – will never rely of their users to “pass on” information. They would make their own announcements via the traditional routes (Own website, Blog, Twitter, Facebook, press releases etc.) and ensure that their customers are informed.

Please go to Snopes or Hoax-slayer and check it out BEFORE you forward anything to your entire contact list, address book or mailing list.

…more information on how to check if an email (or any message) is legit or not

2012 is clearly the year of the Ultrabook – the light, thin, fast, long lasting laptops.

Samsung has released their latest offering the Series 5 ULTRA which is powered by a 2^nd generation Intel Core i5 processor; combined with ExpressCache system by Diskeeper and a powerful AMD Radeon HD graphics card, it delivers incredible experiences packed in a thin and light form factor.

“Based on in-depth market research and consumer surveys, we propose a new type of Ultrabook which will change the perception of Ultrabooks among users. Our findings strongly indicate that consumers demand more than just thin and light devices, hoping for a satisfactory level of daily performance and storage, as digital files become larger. The Samsung Series 5 ULTRA will be the first to answer these needs,” said David Song, Senior Vice President, IT Solutions Business at Samsung Electronics. “The latest Samsung knowhow  has been applied  – our Series 5 ULTRA positions the device for today’s fast changing media environment by adding greater value for consumers through a more balanced product concept.”

The cool factor is that it is FAST ! how fast ?

The Series 5 ULTRA is able to fast boot in just 20 seconds, wake up in two seconds, whilst web browsing is twice as fast as the previous generation notebook PCs.

So what’s inside this beast ?

The Series 5 ULTRA 13” model has:

• 14~17.6mm thin
• 1.38kg light.
• The Intel Core i5 processor
• up to 8GB memory
• up to 500GB storage
• 16GB iSSD with ExpressCache ensures that mobility is not compromised.
• Choose from a 128GB SSD or 258GB SSD as their preferred storage
• full-size HDMI port
• one USB 3.0
• two USB 2.0
• 4-in-1 multi SD card slot
• Ethernet
• webcam

The Series 5 ULTRA 14” model has:

• 20.9mm thin
• 1.84kg light chassis.
• Intel Core i5 processor
• up to 8GB memory
• up to 1TB storage
• 16GB iSSD with ExpressCache system offers exceptional performance.
• AMD Radeon HD7550M 1GB graphics card.
• An integrated Optical Disc Drive
• full-size HDMI
• VGA
• two USB 3.0
• one USB 2.0
• 4-in-1 multi SD card slot
• Ethernet
• webcam

Both models carry Samsung’s superior LCD technology with 300nit HD LED SuperBright screen, Image Enhancer technology and anti-reflective screen, enabling consumers an ultra viewing experience no matter where the user is.

Up to 6.4 hours of battery life on a single charge and since the battery retains 80% of its charge during the discharge/ recharge cycle, it means that the battery should last up to 1,500 charging cycles / three years which is around five times longer than other notebooks.

Pricing and Availability

The Samsung Series 5 ULTRA will be available locally in February at an approximate recommended retail price of R10 199 for the 13’’ and R10 299 for the 14’’.

For more product information and multimedia content, please see www.samsung.com or www.facebook.com/samsungnotebook

This is pretty cool – Samsung & CAR Magazine have put together a local Android App which is available for free from the Samsung SA App store. (note: its not in the Market place)

Says Adrian Lee, Mobile Content Lead at Samsung SA; “Having identified a local and unique consumer segment – South African car lovers – we, in conjunction with CAR Magazine, have developed this application that will allow car fans to have access to the best and finest in content from full articles, live blogs, the latest car news, driving impressions and road tests at the tip of their fingers, on their Samsung smartphone or tablet device.”

The app has pretty cool features such :

• Media Gallery which allows you to pick the various wallpapers, videos and tones for the newest vehicles on the market.
• Accelerator where you can record and measure the different aspects for a car trip,
• Research a Car function where you can compare up to three cars and the tech specs for a particular car model can be viewed

Says Wendy Lucas, Digital Marketing Manager at Ramsay Media; “We are proud to be associated with Samsung for this first of its kind Android app. It has allowed us to further meet the needs of our readers by bringing these enthusiasts even more motoring news. Further to this, we are also proud to invest behind the fastest growing smartphone segment in the country.”

I have a feeling we will be seeing more from Adrian Lee and his team at Samsung SA and as Adrian likes to say:”watch this space !”

screenshots of the app: