Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Samsung in collaboration with Sami Miró has announced six limited edition watch bands for Android-based Galaxy Watch 4 made of recyclable and eco-friendly materials including apple peel. The woman and POC-owned sustainable fashion brand was founded in 2016 by influencer and designer Sami Miró whose previous collections have made use of upcycled…

This is some good news for Dark Mode fanatics like myself, so after about a year of testing, Google is finally rolling out dark mode for Search on the web over the next few weeks to save our eyes from excruciating blinding white light later in the evenings. This feature…

Just a few days after the ProPublica bombshell report that revealed that Facebook pays teams of contractors around the world to read through WhatsApp messages and moderate the content therein — reading and moderating their supposedly private messages, the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp announced Friday that it will now let its more…

Apple on Thursday fired Ashley Gjøvik, a senior engineering program manager who’s been outspoken about her experiences working for the tech giant. The reason for her dismissal was for allegedly violating the company’s policies on leaking private corporate information, because for months, Gjøvik has been tweeting openly about allegations of harassment, surveillance,…

Abuja-based startup OurPass, an e-commerce solutions provider offering the fastest one-click checkout technology for digital commerce in Africa and describes itself as the “Fast for Africa”, has also closed a $1 million pre-seed round to scale across the country. The round was led by Tekedia Capital and angel investors from Fortune…

Twitter is beginning to roll out labels for automated accounts (or bot accounts), the company announced Thursday and it also said the update was based on research that found that people wanted more context about non-human accounts. The company gives several examples of “good bots” including accounts that share vaccination…

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,…