[tech junkie]

Vodacom wants to rob you

Whilst making coffee at the office this morning I was informed that Vodacom have finally enabled the Visual Voicemail feature for the iPhone on their network. This feature has been available on the handset since the launch of the original iPhone 2G some 3 years ago. I always understood that the feature wouldn't be available on the Vodacom network as they would have to build some kind of additional functionality into their existing voicemail platform. This didn't really bother me and I made pe...

Watch classic movies for free

I thought this was pretty awesome when I stumbled upon it a few days ago. What the site has done is provide a smart interface to a library of classic movies that no longer have any copyright issues and are available on Google Video. You can search for specific titles or browse through a genre. The old school movie posters are a laugh and they feature a different set of movies based on the time of year or season. So whether you're in the mood for some classic animation or some really ba...

International Domain Names Are Coming in 2010

This really is quite big. For the first time people other than those that use the 26 letter english alphabet will be able to use a character set they are used to on a keyboard they are used to. DNS servers all over the world will need to be patched or updated to handle all of these characters, so I suspect there will be some migration and adoption pain, but in the end it will be good for everyone. The short video from the Mashable article below lays it out pretty well. The face of the Interne...

Top 5 (almost) local tech podcasts

OK, so only two out of the five are local. Over the past few weeks I've been searching for the best local and international technology podcasts. I'm tired of listening to the same fools drone on on our local radio stations. Cape Talk isn't bad and some of the presenters are pretty sharp, but they hardly cover technology at all. Their 3 minute "Hard Drive" slot every afternoon is pretty useless, but I understand that it may appeal to their less tech savvy listeners. For my trip into work and ho...

O’Reilly continues awesomeness

I have a number of O’Reilly books myself and I must admit, when their spines are all nicely lined up, they look awesome on my bookshelf. They are now running a promotion that allows you to download an electronic version of any of the paper books that you own for only $4.99 each. I will almost always want to own the paper version of these books, but having a portable version that is searchable makes access to the information I need extremely convenient. Promotion ends at the end of October, so...

Windows 7 looks expensive and confusing

I just finished reading an article on MyBroadband where they have listed local pricing for the different Windows 7 options from a variety of brick and mortar and e-tailers. Firstly, I had no idea that there were so many options to choose from, again. Did M$ learn nothing with Vista ? There is no way the man in the street is going to have any idea what the difference between the different options are. You'll realise that you are getting more when you buy the "Ultimate" version, but witho...

Toshiba Dynario fuel-cell: the battery revolution

I must have missed the initial announcement of this technology so I actually did a bit of a double take and few searches to make sure that someone wasn't trying to pull a fast one. It's legit. Basically you can recharge any device that makes use of USB for that function. I guess you could power it directly as well. When your cell (we call them batteries) starts running low, just whip out a little bottle of concentrated methanol and fill the 14ml fuel tank to keep on going. Basically like r...

[techjunkie] to get a new look

Later today [techjunkie] will start making using of a new theme. As much as I enjoy the current theme, I'm running into a few limitations that appear to be taken care of automatically in other themes. Please let me know if you don't like the new theme once it's up. If you love it, feel free to let me know as well. So don't be surprised the next time you visit the site.

Google maps now has SA direction information

Anyone that regularly uses Google Maps or Google Earth would have noticed that the level of detail and the correctness of the detail for South Africa has been improving significantly over the past few months. The first thing I noticed in Google Earth was the addition of some 3D buildings to the Cape Town CBD area. Shortly afterwards there was a marked improvement on the amount of street level data that was available. I've also seen the Google Streetview car driving around Cape Town a numbe...