Apple’s iTunes launch may have hogged the world’s headlines but there were a couple of other very significant technology announcements made recently, both of which could play a huge part in the development of the cellphone and the digital music player. In Japan JP Morgan analyst Kazuyo Katsuma confirmed this: the first phone with integrated hard disk storage was on its way.
South Africa and China signed seven agreements involving education, business and agriculture after a binational commission meeting in Pretoria, Deputy President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday. Despite a handful of protesters picketing outside, the meeting was hailed as a success by both parties.
The new Municipal Finance Management Act will boost transparency in the financial affairs of local authorities and improve service delivery, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday. To date, local councils have tended to make their own rules and draw up indecipherable budgets, making municipal oversight very difficult.
About 200 people took part in a demonstration outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre where a United Nations meeting on the Palestinian crisis was being held on Tuesday. The peaceful demonstration was held on a traffic island in Adderley Street adjoining the convention centre amid tight security.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the head of Pakistan’s ruling party and a loyal ally of the nation’s military ruler, was elected caretaker prime minister in a rubber-stamp vote in Parliament on Tuesday. Hussain is expected to stay in office only for a matter of weeks, until respected Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz assumes the premiership.
Sudanese security services have banned a demonstration planned to coincide with visits by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nationa Secretary General Kofi Annan, a government newspaper reported on Tuesday. The demonstration was to be staged primarily to protest alleged ”US and UN double standards”.
A hardy group of 181 passengers boarded a jet at Singapore airport on Monday for the world’s longest commercial flight — an inaugural non-stop service to New York designed to appeal to time-pressed Asian and American business executives. Singapore Airlines said it would knock four hours off a one-stop service and would cut down on delays.
Soon it will be possible to write an Internet address in Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages that do not use the Western alphabet. At the moment, you can write a Web page using any script you choose, but the address of that page requires at least some knowledge of the alphabet used in Western Europe, the United States and other predominantly English-speaking countries.
Nothing gets dedicated techies hotter under the collar than a discussion about Microsoft’s software monopoly. Another subject that will get them talking is open-source software. Open-source is the antithesis of what Microsoft and other companies have been pursuing over the years. Mark Shuttleworth speaks to the <i>M&G</i> about the coming software revolution.
Technology group Altron says it has made strong advances in terms of its black economic empowerment (BEE) and acquisition programmes and that much emphasis has been placed on the group meeting the anticipated requirements of the BEE charter for the information, communications and technology (ICT) sector.