At least six people have reportedly died as a result of tropical storm Irina, which struck the KwaZulu-Natal coast over the weekend. Rescue teams, emergency workers, and the police worked continuously yesterday to help KwaZulu-Natal residents through the worst of the storm. Durban surfers, however, enjoyed themselves.
Tricycles are pretty lame, and Tokyo Drift was a terrible movie, so it makes sense that bringing the two concepts together produces something unbelievably awesome. Click through to watch a montage of grown men drifting through the streets of New Zealand on customized trikes.
Kathryne Fuller, 29, will be returning home to South Africa. She was charged with possession of cocaine in Uganda after she took the contaminated substance with Amazing Race producer, Jeff Rice, last month. Rice died, and Fuller was left paralysed on the right side of her body. She pleaded guilty to the charge, and paid a $420 fine to avoid imprisonment.
Google’s new privacy policy – the one allowing the company to combine data from all of its sites into a single profile – officially takes effect today. The new policy collapses 70 separate policy documents from various Google services into a single unit – which also happens to make it easier for Google to know things about you.
The Hout Bay Residents’ Association will apply for a court interdict to stop construction on the Chapman’s Peak toll plaza in Cape Town, it has been confirmed. Construction has begun at the site, and lawyers representing the movement have been drawing up the interdict to halt the R54 million project.
That’s right, dying just got even easier, if you live in the Netherlands. The Levenseindekliniek, or Life-end clinic, has launched the country’s first mobile euthanasia unit that will come to you if you have been given approval to die.
The music video for “DoYaThing” — the new collaboration between the Gorillaz, Andre 3000 and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy – dropped yesterday, as part of Converse’s ongoing “3 Artists, 1 Song” campaign. The promo track was released along with the limited edition Chuck Taylor All Star Gorillaz Collection, which is on sale now.
Pending the outcome of investigations into claims of staff receiving kickbacks for preferential treatment, Absa, Nedbank, First National Bank and Investec have all stopped doing business with Auction Alliance. The latest development comes after news broke earlier in the week, that Auction Alliance CEO, Rael Levitt, had relinquished his post.
The internet’s under attack again! This time by a United Nations treaty aimed at online regulation. Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, warned strongly against the suggested measures: “Do not give that up easily. You will regret it. You will hate it, because all that freedom, all that flexibility, you’ll find it shipped away.”
Instagram addicts, it’s time to have a good look at your new competition: the Nokia Lumia 808. On Monday, we introduced you to one of the most talked about gadgets to come out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Without further ado, here’s a glimpse of what the Nokia Lumia 808 PureView, and its 41-megapixel camera, is capable of.
25 people have been arrested for alleged ties to hacktivist movement Anonymous in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain in the joint ‘Operation Unmask,’ which I’m sure has nothing to do with the INTERPOL website being taken down yesterday and everything to do with attacks against websites in Columbia and Chile dating from the middle of 2011.
It’s difficult to act surprised at the announcement from SANParks this morning, stating that four Kruger National Park wildlife officials were arrested yesterday in connection with rhino poaching activities. There are such large amounts of money involved with the rhino poaching syndicates, and just too many closely related coincidences, for there not to have been someone involved on the inside.
Apple’s iOS has been under fire for allowing third-party apps to access users’ location data and contacts without permission – and now it looks like photos and videos have been compromised too. The New York Times used a test app to prove that the security software had a giant loophole in its privacy settings.
For the first time ever, researchers will now be able to access extensive historical Twitter data. Previously, only the preceding 30 days of tweets were available for companies to search. The new move means that trend analysts and companies looking for specific insight will now be able to access tweets dating back two years.
Capetonians: on Janssens Road, in Tableview, near the bike shop, this traffic light is sporting a new “green” signal. Apparently, this isn’t the first traffic light that’s been sporting this kind of “green” signal either.
[Thanks, Jake R]
Hoof. The legal battle waged by the the Occupy London camp to keep their place at St Paul’s Cathedral was lost last night – and within about five minutes of the injunction being ordered, the camp was evacuated by bailiffs and officers from the City of London Police.
Did you know that Shrien Dewani’s lawyer used the previous advert to try and convince a court that South African jails were dangerous and that he shouldn’t be extradited from Britain to face trial for allegedly killing his wife Anni? The sequel, which aired last night for the first time, is bound to instil yet more fear in drunken drivers’ minds.
Alex Rawlings is a 20-year-old student at Oxford University. He recently won a search by Harper Collins Publishers to identify the most multilingual student in the United Kingdom. This boss is able to speak 11 languages, ranging from English to Catalan. And…wait for it…Afrikaans! See him speak all of them fluently – after the jump.
Hey, future. Mercedes-Benz unveiled plans yesterday to use Siri – the virtual assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S – to power its new A-class electronics system, called “Drive Kit Plus,” which will allow drivers to access their iPhone apps using voice commands. In case you ever feel like updating your Twitter status while driving something sexy.
WikiLeaks is doing stuff that doesn’t involve Julian Assange’s career as a television personality – in this case leaking a cache of over 5 million internal emails from Stratfor, a “global intelligence” company. They reveal secret intelligence services provided to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, among others.
There is no error in that headline – Nokia has really just unveiled the PureView 41-megapixel-sensor camera in one of its new smartphones – the Lumia 808. Additionally, the device has extremely good sound recording capabilities and will also allow the user to capture video content in full HD.
So it was the Oscars last night, where we got to watch Billy Crystal act smug about being considered relavent by somebody. Also Christopher Plummer finally won something. Also there was this – the Cirque du Soleil’s incredible, film-themed performance – which works out well, thematically. Take a look.
Contract archaeologist, Katie Smuts, said on Friday that she estimated the foundations were constructed between 1830 and 1850, and that archaeologists were trying to determine their significance. Smuts jokingly compared that the styles revealed on the porcelain artefacts they found helped determine their age because it was similar to comparing the styles that hipsters wore on their clothes in the year 2012.
At first we thought this was some kind of burlesque joke, maybe even a mashup of sorts, but we’re afraid it isn’t. Paris has actually recorded this as a music video. And it’s meant to be her “latest” single. It’s a techno collaboration with the house music production duo, Manufactured Superstars.
Jean-Paul Reid was an unemployed Cape Town accountant, until he came up with the idea that people might like it if their domestic worker worked in the nude. He’d sold off pretty much everything he owned in his flat, except his laptop and 3G device. Then he created a website for his concept, and struck gold.
Google Street View is pretty great! It lets me see rural villages, the National Gallery in London, post-crisis Fukushima, and your house. And soon, in collaboration with the Catlin Seaview Survey, it’ll be letting people explore Great Barrier Reef as part of the expanding ‘Seaview’ project.
The universe as we know it is safe for now, and so is Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Physicists who shocked the scientific world by claiming particles could move faster than the speed of light have admitted they made a mistake. Their reasoning: a faulty fiber-optic cable in a GPS receiver.
Google’s new unified privacy policy takes effect on March 1st, allowing Google to share users’ data among all of its products. This means that your entire Google Web History – everything you’ve searched for on Google, and every site you’ve visited while signed in to a Google account – will be pooled together.
Microsoft has launched a fascinating attack on Google Apps. In this instalment, Microsoft uses the American television series, Moonlighting, which aired during the mid 1980’s, to give us the spoof: Googlighting. Microsoft asks: “What happens when the world’s largest ad sales business tries to sell productivity software on the side?” It’s Microsoft Office versus Google Apps.
Do you remember when Jeb Corliss was jumping off Table Mountain in his wingsuit in January, and one of his jumps didn’t go as well as he’d planned? Well, he’s just released the footage showing the accident from his point of view, filmed from his GoPro cameras, as well as various angles from the other cameramen that were filming at the time.