Company News
Facebooks New Photo Transfer Tool Goes Global
Facebook has announced that it’s Google Photos transfer tool is officially available to all users across the globe – after first being released in the US and Canada in April. “Today, we’re releasing a tool that will enable Facebook users to transfer their Facebook photos and videos directly to other services, starting with Google Photos,” says the company in an official blog post. This tool allows users to create copies of photos and videos from their Facebook account that can be transferred to their linked Google Photos account. The company says that it believes if users share data with one service, they should also be able to move it to another. Here’s how to use the photo transfer tool in five steps: Step 1: Go to “Your Facebook information” in your Facebook settingsStep 2: Select “Tran...
Twitter Clarifies Policies on Misinformation After Labelling Trump’s Tweets
Image sourced from Mission Statement Academy Twitter has taken to social media to set the record straight regarding the platform’s new policies on misinformation. In a series of Tweets, Twitter says that it’s is not focused on flagging or labelling every piece of misinformation as it’s rather tackling the content with “the highest potential for harm”. This is, according to the company, because people have insisted that the platform “shouldn’t determine the truthfulness of tweets,” but rather “provide context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the substance of a tweet is disputed.” We are NOT attempting to address all misinformation. Instead, we prioritize based on the highest potential for harm, focusing on manipulated media, civic integrity, and COVID-19. Likelihood, se...
Ride-Hailing Businesses Begin to Recover
Sourced from Forbes. Uber Technologies Inc.’s global rides business is down 70% from this time last year, a small improvement from its rock-bottom fall during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Though slight, it is an indication that recovery is coming, albeit slowly. The decline in rides seems to be offset, if partially, by a boom in food delivery. Uber Eats’ gains have more than doubled, and they continue to accelerate, says Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, speaking at a virtual tech conference hosted by Bank of America. Bloomberg reports that the ride-hailing company intends to continue to look for opportunities in the food delivery market. Khosrowshahi declined to comment on Uber’s proposal to buy Grubhub Inc., which was first reported by Bloomberg last month. Since being so hars...
Nashua Appoints New CEO
Nashua has announced the appointment of Barry Venter as CEO – the company says this comes at a time when the challenging economic and social times we face would have many on the run. Venter’s career has mostly been within the ranks of Nashua Group. He says “Nashua forms part of my DNA as I have grown and evolved over 22 years with this business. It is an aspirational, truly South African brand and the value system and culture within the business is very important to me.” Venter started at the very bottom in Nashua – he was a contractor, worked in the warehouse, packed SIM cards and even sold second-hand phones to dealers – along the way, was exposed to great mentorship and opportunities, moving into IT to implement new technology and create a call centre before moving back onto the busines...
Slack and Amazon Join Forces to Take On Microsoft Teams
Sourced from TechSpot. Slack is partnering with Amazon in a multi-year agreement that means all Amazon employees will start to use video-conferencing and business communication platform Slack. This deal comes on the heels of Slack facing increasing competition from Microsoft’s Teams platform. The deal will also see Slack migrate its voice and video calling features over to Amazon’s Chime platform, alongside a broader adoption of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon’s roll-out of Slack to its employees is a key part of the deal, thanks to an enterprise-wide agreement. It’s not immediately clear how many of Amazon’s 840,000 employees will be using Slack, though. Up until today, Slack’s biggest customer has been IBM, which is rolling out Slack to its 350,000 employees. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_7e...
Twitter Suspends Account that Posts Exact Copies of Trump’s Tweets
Image sourced from Al Jazeera In an attempt to prove that social media giant Twitter is more than lenient when it comes to its A-list users, an account under the name ‘@SuspendThePress’ copied and posted US President Donald Trump’s tweets. This account will tweet what the President tweets. Let’s see if it gets suspended for violating twitters TOS. Follow along with this social experiment. Report any tweets that violate the rules. Thank you. — Will they suspend me? (@SuspendThePres) May 30, 2020 This experiment comes shortly after US President Donald Trump threatened to regulate or even “close down” social media platforms – after a number of his tweets were branded as containing misleading information. According to TechWeez, the owner of the account “wanted to see how long it would tak...
Zoom Denies End-to-End Encryption to Free Users
Videoconferencing company Zoom confirmed this week that it won’t enable its end-to-end encryption for free calls because it wants to allow law enforcement access to these calls if necessary. Zoom’s statement about the policy reads: “Zoom does not proactively monitor meeting content, and we do not share information with law enforcement except in circumstances like child sex abuse. We do not have backdoors where participants can enter meetings without being visible to others. None of this will change,” says a spokesperson. “Zoom’s end-to-end encryption plan balances the privacy of its users with the safety of vulnerable groups, including children and potential victims of hate crimes. We plan to provide end-to-end encryption to users for whom we can verify identity, thereby limiting harm to t...
YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Pledge Support for Blackout Tuesday
Image by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images YouTube Music, Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music have all pledged in support of Blackout Tuesday – a campaign calling for the music industry to put normal day-to-day operations on ‘pause’ and “and instead spend time reflecting on how to support the black community.” According to The Verge, this movement is “aimed at protesting police violence and racism as well as honouring George Floyd, whose death at the hands of police has sparked universal outcry and demonstrations in US cities and around the world.” The global music streaming platforms have each attempted to do just this through social media blackouts, specially dedicated and curated playlists as well as moments of silence. “June 2nd is Black Out Tuesday, a day of collective disconnect from w...
Telenor, Sony and Ericsson Join Forces to Develop Smart IoT Healthcare Devices
Sourced from Getty Images. Ericsson, Sony and Telenor have announced that they are teaming up to make it easy to connect people and things with intelligent tracking and monitoring solutions. Ranging from cargo to IoT healthcare devices for patients, tracking increases mobility and improves reliability and efficiency. Using Telenor’s network, Ericsson’s IoT Accelerator for global connectivity, and Sony Network Communications Europe’s smart IoT services, the three partners are collaborating to enhance real-time location and tracking solutions for different sectors. Ericsson IoT Accelerator is the Ericsson’s IoT connectivity and device management platform, providing enterprises with a unified solution that manages IoT operations of any scale, using worldwide mobile network infrastructure. Mor...
StorMagic Acquires Encryption Key Management Company, KeyNexus
Sourced from CSO. Drive Control Corporation (DCC), exclusive StorMagic distributor for the SA and SADC region, has announced StorMagic’s acquisition of KeyNexus, an innovator and designer of encryption key management solutions. StorMagic now extends its portfolio to the channel, meeting organisations’ datacentre and cloud security requirements. The KeyNexus acquisition sees StorMagic bringing the edge and the core closer together, delivering a robust enterprise key management offering. To this end, StorMagic has announced the immediate availability SvKMS, the company’s first enterprise-grade virtualised key management solution for any application that requires encryption in any location, be it the edge, datacentre or the cloud. “StorMagic SvKMS is an affordable, efficient and robust centra...
SA Government Could Bail Out National Airline to the Tune of $1.2-Billion
Sourced from Shutterstock. The administrator’s running South Africa’s embattled national airlines SAA propositioned the government to provide a R21-billion ($1.2-billion) bailout to help repay debt and resume operations after COVID-19 travel bans are lifted. This new plan includes about R17-billion that will go into repaying South African Airways creditors, according to Bloomberg. Afterwards, as much as R2-billion will be provided for working capital to get operations back and running. The draft plan “is for discussion purposes only and we await comment from the affected persons,” a spokeswoman for the administrators says, adding that the team has until 8 June to finalize a rescue proposal. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_91e.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_91e.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 ...
South African Start-up Goes Global Despite Worldwide Lockdowns
Since launching in South Africa in October 2019, myFanPark has been connecting heroes – ranging from TV personalities, movie stars and musicians, to sporting greats, DJs, comedians and social influencers – with their fans through personalised, video-recorded messages. Now, fans in Germany, Switzerland and Austria are connecting with their favourite celebrities through the platform and soon, fans in India and West Africa will get to do so too. Not only was myFanPark the first of its kind in South Africa, but it was also named as one of the top five most exciting startups in the country by Heavy Chef. To date, traffic to the South African website has grown by 492%, orders have increased by 959% and the number of celebs who have signed up has by 172%, bringing the amount of South African cele...
