Sharon Gill's blog

After selling off Vodacom, perhaps Telkom could direct some of the proceeds into its fixed line infrastructure to enable it to provide more reliable service.

Subscribers have been obliged to tolerate Telkom's sometimes unreliable, often appalling, fixed line telephone service for years. As a state-run monopoly, Telkom could afford to be complacent about its incompetence because customers couldn't take their business elsewhere.

While Avego's driver-passenger matching service sounds like tree-hugger heaven, there are some serious buts ...

As a driver, advertising the fact that you have three empty seats on a certain route at a certain time of day tells everyone not only that you're alone in your car, but exactly where and when. 

The media had a field day last month when news leaked out that people queuing up outside shops in Poland on the day of the iPhone launch were actually paid actors.

An 80% drop in prices from ANY supplier or service provider begs the question: Has the company been fleecing its customers up to now?

A subscriber submitted the following comment:

In the absence of any earth-shattering new technology that seriously reduces the service provider's operating costs, my gut response to any announcement of such a drastic price cut is a suspicion that:

While I agree that there is a place in the market for all-in-one devices, I have a personal problem with them. 

Sure, they're convenient.  Why carry half a dozen dedicated devices around if you can have one multi-purpose device that does all those jobs just as well?

But do they?  I mean, do any of these multi-tasking devices actually do the job as well as any one piece of specialised equipment?

Of course they don't. Only women can truly multi-task, and do it properly :-)

Garmin recently announced: "Garmin Mobile for Blackberry introduces a lifetime of navigation".

Only available in North America for customers who prefer a one-off payment rather than continuous monthly payments, the one-time purchase is $99.99, as opposed to $9.99 per month.

What's the catch?

The one-time purchase plan is not transferable between BlackBerry devices.

A report on TelecomTV.com points out that just when the world agrees that talking on a handheld phone while driving is a bad idea, along comes MobiTV and UIEvolution to create on-demand streaming video and live-carTV.

Reading about WebTech's new people tracker made me wonder if such a service exists in South Africa.  It's all very well being able to track our cars, which get stolen or hijacked with alarming regularity, but  ...  what about us?

One of South Africa's mobile phone service providers, Vodacom, is pushing adverts for two new services: Look4Help and Look4me, both operated by CellFind.

First we had cellphones that branched out into photography. Then they started acting like GPS devices. 

Not to be outdone, the digital camera's job description has been expanded to include sat nav.

Altek has launched the world's first digital camera with integrated map browsing, search functions for POIs and satellite navigation features.

Leaving Microsoft standing there with cash in its hand and nothing to spend it on, Yahoo! has added insult to injury by announcing the start of a two-week trial of ad space sharing with Google.

But wait, folks, that's not all.