A car is a big purchase. The Audi I bought when I wrote my mum’s car off was one of those ouch moments. So now that I am looking for a car it is interesting the things you come across.

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A 175-year-old newspaper, New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, will cut down to three weekly editions instead of publishing every day. This move makes New Orleans the largest US city without a daily newspaper.

The change will be effected to reduce costs and adapt to the digital era, where readers are increasingly turning to the Internet, as print ad revenues and subscribers wane.

Gone are the days of newspaper boys and picking up the paper from your driveway every morning. No more typical images of sitting at the breakfast table, reading the broadsheet while sipping on a cup of hot coffee.

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Truth, objectivity, public interest, fair comment, accuracy. Some of the most basic and essential media ethics that have been breached time and time again.

The media undergoes numerous stresses such as financial pressures, looming deadlines, lack of public confidence, and external censorship. It’s inevitable that organisation defects will rear their ugly heads now and then.

Print publications, radio stations, television programmes and websites are not stand-alone entities; people are the driving force behind them. And as some are fond of repeating, “Mistakes are part of being human” – this is what distinguishes us from robots.

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“To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.”  -Kenko Yoshida-

The UK Publisher’s Association released its statistics in early May: consumer e-book sales increased by 366% in 2011. Overall digital sales grew by 54%.

The Pew Research Center found that 21% of Americans have read an e-book, and the average digital reader has read more books than non-e-book consumers.

At such an expansion rate, what hope is left for regular books?

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Undoubtedly, Earth is in danger. One is constantly reminded of climate change and environmental degradation. With hardly any watertight solution, it seems that the planet is running out of time. The last option might be to turn to an unlikely source of help.

Nature and the digital revolution appear to be worlds apart, but there is a way to bridge this gap through the use of ICTs.

More than a year ago, The Economist published a story on 3D printing.  This is a manufacturing technology which transforms the blueprint on your screen into a solid thing on your desk.

It sounded amazing regardless of the fact that it could take away the employment of factory workers.

But skip ahead into the present day and it’s not so wonderful when there’s the prospect of losing your own job to a computer. Instead of the looming death of print, there’s a new monster on journalism’s horizon:
the algorithm.

The announcement of South African home-grown developer Wise Tablets Wise Touch 1’s official release has stirred excitement in the local mobile industry. The low cost tablet was designed with the localised South African market in mind to suite the nation’s consumer, business and educational needs.

"our freedom is incomplete without the liberation of the Palestinian people" - Nelson Mandela

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As more phone-hacking incidents come to light, the UK media is bearing the brunt of the mounting number of lawsuits.

News24 reported that as of 20 April, the cases brought against News of the World has now amounted to a staggering 100.

Another UK organisation, British broadcaster Sky News, has admitted to hacking emails, but justifies this decision as ‘public interest’. Sky News is a part of BSkyB – of which 39% is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

I...

When Aunty Helen made that comment about people from the Eastern Cape you sort of pissed off many former Eastern Capers living elsewhere. Everyone believes that Helen is full of dog dudu and that she should be kept away from the social media network.

It has all the ingredients of a hit music video: scenes featuring several sexy girls in string bikinis catching some rays on a sun-soaked beach, or showing off shapely legs in teeny tiny shorts, occasionally pausing whatever it is they are doing and leaning in to cosy up to the star.

There is no company that deserves a R3.5bn fine more than Telkom. This bloated monopoly has crippled the South African economy for years and held us back as the rest of the world has launched into the digital age. It's only due to ISP's, new international cables, ICASA, the big telecoms (MTN, Vodacom, etc) and other activists that we have seen this beast slowly being prodded out of its incompetent slumber.

Bad service has become something we all know and love in South Africa. How many times have you gone out and tried to get help with your computer only to be blitzed with buzzwords from a computer sales consultant. Or gone to the motor mechanic and when you don't know what that one bit in your engine is called he grunts, looks at you like you're a retard, fails to fix your car and charges you double. Or waiters at a restaurant take forever to serve you and just seem to laze about.

I heard someone on the radio on Saturday sying that on the 14th February 1961 was when South Africa moved off the UK's Lsd (Pounds, shillings and pence) system to the decimal currency that we know today. The person worked in a bank at the time and all banks were closed over the weekend to effect the changes to the bank records.

So, after many months of callously ignoring begging sms's from Vodacom to register my SIM card. I decided to finally walk the distance to a suitable shop and get it done.

After a lengthy queue and a slow typing helper, I managed to get my proof of residence, ID number and sim number down. Just to be told that my SIM was not available on the network.

As I had just used it a few hours before attempting to register it, I was rather surprised at this strange report. I walked to a nearby MTN store and asked why my RICA might not work, and they told me that the service was down.

"DOWN?!" I hear you cry in surprise. I know, I was also confused.

However, tt is fitting that two days prior to the final deadline, the service experiences load problems, but you'd think that they'd have planned for this? That perhaps a large amount of people that procrastinated doing so a year ago, would choose now or tomorrow to register their phones so that they are not cut off? So not only did I walk there for no reason, I now have a unRICA'd phone and a very annoyed state of mind.

Good job to the South African telecommunications network structure. Pity the same attention afforded to the distant-memory that was our FIFA world cup wasn't used to prepare for the mass exodus of registration attempts to conform to the police-state requirements.

(I'm looking for a way to feel like a spy. I'm considering giving them my old residential address, so if the government agents ever coming looking for me, I have some warning. Yes, I play a lot of computer games. No, I am not in any way required to have a medical professional with me in public. Thank you for your concern).

As I wrote back on the 11th, Escapist Magazine has put together a short video trying to inspire and explain some gamification concepts within the education field. 

My previous article explained some incentives and bonuses that this approach could garner, with teamwork bringing about class bonuses, and even modifiers to your "experience points" (essentially a less punitive gauge of course perf0rmance).

Before I continue with this however, I thought it might be interesting to mention that several leading Game Designers despise gamification totally, believing that subverting

Alright. I'm new to this so bear with me (and forgive me if I seem a bit rigid, I'm far too used to academic writing!)

Port Elizabeth. Why wouldn’t they? I think it’s because there are South Africans who overlook Port Elizabeth. Well let me explain why I say this.