Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Payments giant Mastercard has agreed to acquire blockchain analytics start-up CipherTrace, a leading cryptocurrency intelligence company with insight into more than 900 cryptocurrencies, in the latest sign of how major companies are warming to cryptocurrencies. Mastercard said Thursday it entered into an agreement to buy CipherTrace for an undisclosed amount. As digital assets, including…

In the nearly a decade since, many tech companies including Amazon, Bose, and Snap have tried to truly popularize the idea of smart eyewear but have all missed the spot. But Thursday, Facebook Inc. became the latest to offer an attempt for public consumption: the long-awaited smart glasses called Ray-Ban Stories, in partnership…

Tesla Inc. has been granted a patent for its laser system that will be used to clean vehicle windscreens and other glass surfaces. Filed in 2019, the patent to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) titled “Pulsed Laser Cleaning of Debris Accumulated on Glass Articles in Vehicles and Photovoltaic Assemblies”…

Twitter is testing a feature that will allow users to express how a particular post or tweet made them feel, though in the meantime the company is testing tweet reactions in Turkey, promising that it could expand the feature to other regions soon. Currently, Twitter users click on a heart icon…

Google has released a new teaser trailer for its upcoming Pixel 6 that includes several shots of the smartphone being used in the real world. The footage comes a little over a month after Google released its first official images of the upcoming device, which were limited to renders rather than actual…

Telecoms Telkom has unveiled a new artificial intelligence platform izwe.ai, in collaboration with a South African data-labeling startup Enlabeler, which translates speech into text from English and local languages. The platform has a unique ability to interpret South African accents. According to the company, the platform could have a far-reaching…

The City of Cape Town and Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative (CiTi) Africa’s oldest tech incubator which works with government, academia, business and society in a bid to promote the inclusive growth of the digital economy has put out a call for female entrepreneurs to apply for the Women in…

Tech giant Microsoft on Thursday announced that it has entered a “multi-year strategic alliance” with Oyo to work with the Indian startup to co-develop “next-generation” travel and hospitality products and tech since as of late Microsoft has been exploring ways to provide its technologies to the Indian startup, which is…

REvil, a so-called “ransomware-as-a-service” provider blamed for some of the year’s biggest cyberattacks, has reemerged online nearly two months since abruptly vanishing from the web. “Happy Blog,” a darknet website run by REvil, has recently become reachable once again, several keen observers noted on social media Tuesday. It remained accessible…

Chinese autonomous driving start-up WeRide has partnered with a top carmaker and delivery company to launch a self-driving cargo van. The strategic partnership between WeRide, automaker Jiangling Motors (JMC), and delivery firm ZTO Express, aims to commercialize and mass-produce the “Robovan” for urban logistics. Nissan-backed WeRide makes autonomous driving systems for various vehicles.…

PayPal Holdings Inc. the US online payments company said it will acquire the Japanese upstart Paidy Inc. for 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion) as it seeks to deepen a push into buy-now-pay-later products. The acquisition will be “minimally dilutive” to adjusted earnings per share in 2022, PayPal said Tuesday in a statement. The…

Japanese car giant Toyota said on Tuesday that it would invest $13.6 billion into batteries for electric and hybrid cars by 2030, as the world’s biggest automaker pushes to make its production carbon-neutral. And that includes a $9 billion investment in production, as it attempts to electrify its vehicle lineup, The…

According to Weibo noted tipster Digital Chat Station, Xiaomi’s Galaxy S22 challenger will come equipped with a 200MP camera. In addition to the 200MP sensor, the phone will apparently have a 50MP “main” sensor as well. While the leak doesn’t specify the name of the device, it will likely be part of the…

Adobe announced it is acquiring Frame.io, a video review and collaboration platform used by over a million customers, for $1.275 billion in cash. Founded in 2014 by post-production company owner Emery Wells and technologist John Traver, New York-based Frame.io was created to solve the workflows challenges filmmakers faced in their daily lives.  Today,…

Microsoft Corp on Tuesday announced that it has acquired Clipchamp, a browser-based video editing tool, and is hinting that it will be a great fit for Windows though terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Founded in 2013, Clipchamp lets people create and edit videos in a browser and utilize the…

If you open Twitter on your iPhone today, you might notice a new design for the timeline that puts the focus on photos, videos, and GIFs. Twitter has now finally confirmed that it’s testing edge-to-edge media in tweets on iOS, creating a more full-screen, almost Instagram-like experience for the photos and videos in…

Former Tesla and Head of Apple Inc’s car project, Doug Field, is going to work for Ford Motor Co to lead the automaker’s advanced technology and embedded systems efforts, a key focus for the automaker under its new Ford+ turnaround plan and a hiring coup for Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley. Field — who…

Twitter has begun testing the first of its proposed suite of new privacy tools; a new feature that allows users to remove followers without unfollowing them with the aim to make it easier to manage the follower list. The remove follower feature is currently being tested on the web and seems to…

Microsoft Corp on Tuesday rolled out a personalized news feed called Microsoft Start, which will be available both as a website and a mobile app, in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser. The feed will combine content from…

Samsung has finally unveiled the long-awaited ISOCELL HP1, the industry’s first 200-megapixel (MP) image sensor with 0.64im pixels intended for smartphone cameras, by some distance the highest resolution phone camera sensor ever made, and ISOCELL GN5, the first image sensor to adopt all-directional focusing Dual Pixel Pro technology with two…