Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Following a crackdown on gaming by Chinese authorities, ByteDance is introducing new youth controls for Douyin, its TikTok-equivalent app in China, Bloomberg has reported. Any users confirmed to be under 14 will enter a new “youth mode” limited to 40 minutes of usage per day. At the same time, it unveiled a new app called Xiao…

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos participated in a $87 million Series B funding for Indonesian startup Ula, marking his first-ever investment in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce space. Bezos’ interest in Ula, which operates a business-to-business e-commerce platform, comes at a time when Amazon has either not entered most Southeast Asian nations — or maintains…

Rivian Automotive, an electric truck maker backed by Amazon and Ford Motor, recently revealed huge losses and a voracious need for cash as it headed into one of the most anticipated initial public offerings of the year. The company filed its IPO confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August, and…

Former US President Donald Trump has asked a court to mandate that Twitter restore his social media account. In a filing late Friday, Trump asked a federal district judge for a preliminary injunction enabling his return to Twitter while his lawsuit against the social media giant continues. “Plaintiff Donald J.…

The South African legal Technology Network aims to usher in technology into the legal sector in South Africa and act as a ‘voice’ for local legal tech startups. Founded by Catherine-Jane Paulse and Yusha Davidson, the SALT Network was born out of the growing number of South African legal tech…

Hackers stole cryptocurrencies from at least 6,000 customers of the Nasdaq-listed digital asset exchange Coinbase by exploiting a flaw in its two-factor authentication (2FA) system. The news, first reported by Bleeping Computer, comes just a week after the company had to drop its plans to launch a new lending product following the…

Microsoft is launching Office 2021 on October 5th, and the company has finally detailed the features and pricing today. Office 2021 will be the next standalone version of Microsoft’s Office suite, designed for businesses and consumers who want to avoid the subscription version of Office. Office Home and Student 2021 will…

Google is scrapping its plans to offer banking services directly to users. The shift comes nearly two years after the company first announced its banking plans and several months after a key executive leading the project departed. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the scrapped plans Friday, stating a series of…

Google is so successful that it’s the most searched for term on Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search engine, the company lawyers revealed while making their appeal against a $5bn fine levied against it by the EU for anticompetitive ”illegal practices” relating to its Android operating system. The tech giant has asked EU judges to…

Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that owns analytics vendor Tibco, acquired robotic process automation vendor Blue Prism for $1.5 billion and plans to combine Tibco and Blue Prism once the acquisition closes. Blue Prism, which specializes in software robots that automate repetitive tasks, said Vista would pay each shareholder £11.25…

Microsoft has begun testing cloud gaming on the Xbox consoles. It’s currently only available for randomly selected members of the Xbox Insider programme, but in an Xbox Wire blog post, Microsoft says it plans to expand to more Insiders over time. Xbox Cloud Gaming is designed to let players have the Xbox experience whether they’re…

ABB has launched the world’s fastest electric car charger, the Swiss engineering company said on Thursday, to plug into the booming demand for electric cars made by Tesla, Hyundai, and other automakers. The company is launching the new Terra 360 modular charger as it presses ahead with plans to float its electric…

Five9 Inc shareholders voted down the call center software firm’s $14.7 billion sale to Zoom Video Communications Inc on Thursday, a major blow to Zoom’s plan to expand its offerings following its pandemic boom. Zoom said in July that it was acquiring Five9 in an all-stock purchase for $14.7 billion, its…

Chinese automaker Geely Holding which owns Volvo is jumping into the smartphone business after its founder set up a new company. Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology Co. Ltd, founded by Eric Li, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, to make mobile phones, according to Geely. The company…

Facebook’s plan to unify its messaging apps is beginning to take shape. The company announced Thursday that it will now let you start cross-app group chats between Messenger and Instagram. The update is a big step forward in Facebook’s ambitions to make its apps work better with each other. To be able to…

While everyone was paying attention to Amazon’s marathon announcement of new holiday gadgets earlier this week, the company already had a new hit on its hands. Amazon Game Studios, the video game development arm of Amazon, released a new computer game called “New World” Tuesday that captivated the PC gaming world this week.…

Apple and Alphabet’s Google have been asked to turn in by mid-October compliance plans for a new South Korean law that bans major app store operators from forcing software developers to use their payment systems, a regulatory official said on Wednesday. South Korea’s Korea Communications Commission is all set to roll out…

Microsoft Corp has announced that it will allow Epic Games Inc, Amazon.com Inc and other firms to integrate their app stores into the technology giant’s marketplace, giving more options to third-party developers. The technology giant says it wants to “promote innovation” and will not take a cut from app developers’ revenue if…

You’ll see a lot of YouTube videos when searching for artists (or, indeed, most topics) on Google. What you won’t see are TikTok and Instagram videos, but this may be changing soon, according to The Information. Google is negotiating deals with Instagram and TikTok to index their content in search results,…

YouTube on Wednesday announced it is banning “harmful vaccine content” from the platform, a long-awaited shift that vastly expands its existing policy on medical misinformation. The new rules explicitly ban content that makes false claims about any “currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective” by…