A few weeks ago we promised you that we would follow up our review of the Cell C Speedstick with some real world speed tests, and here you go. I ran these tests during different times, and also at a few different locations. Overall the speeds are very quick, but there is a definite spike in network speed at off peak hours, a few times my connection reached above 10Mbps, which is great considering SA still has a maximum of 10Mbps of ADSL lines…

In terms of reception I was pretty lucky – I used it in quite a few areas in the Cape Town / Bellville / Stellenbosch areas, and also to a trip to Pretoria, and not once did I have reception problems. I did however once get only EDGE reception in Durbanville (or D’Urbanvale to be precise), despite Cell C’s map indicating full HSPA reception where I was standing – maybe I should tell Trevor eh?

I also found that the reception can be very sensitive – for example at work I found that connecting the modem to a laptop above my table gave me full HSPA speed, whereas connecting to a desktop below my table gave only a WCDMA connection. Maybe your experience would be different. But to be honest – in 90% of my use I had full HSPA+ speeds.

At present I am sharing a PDF file with my Speedtest.net results so far, based on connections to Johannesburg and London. Information includes download and upload speeds, and ping times. I also check how long Youtube videos had to buffer before playing (using standard definition videos). You will also find my signal strength and location info.

• You can find my Cell C Speedstick speedtest results here (PDF).

Once again I will try to keep this updated over time…

Remember we told you that Find My iPhone was a free surprise with the iOS 4.2 update (you can read the full iOS 4.2 rundown here)? It is currently free for all iPhone 4, iPad and latest iPod Touch users, but with some effort, anybody can activate in older iPhones as well. We will show you how.

If you have an iPhone 4, iPad, or latest iPod Touch:

1. Go to Settings
2. Mail, Contact, Calendars
3. Add Account
4. MobileMe
5. Type in your iTunes account details (the same account you use to buy apps)
6. After Agreeing to the Terms of Conditions and verifying, simply slide the Find my iPhone setting to “On”.

Now if you actually want to track your phone, go and download the Find my iPhone app from another iDevice, enter your Apple ID, and just like that you can track your device, make it ring, make it display a message or even remotely wipe it once you have given up hope of finding it.

You can also track your phone from any internet connected PC – fire up your browser, go to http://me.com, and log in with your Apple ID. It works remarkably well.

Now Apple gave this functionality to only the latest devices in its lineup, so how do activate it for your older iPhone? Pretty easy – get a friend’s iPhone 4, activate the Find My iPhone just as explained above, and then enter your own Apple ID. Once activated, you can go to your own older iPhone and simply enter then again use the above registration procedure. If its activated on your older iPhone, the iPhone 4 can still be switched back to another Find My iPhone account. Just remove the older MobileMe account, and start from scratch.

(Just one thing – any iPhone 4 can only register only 3 Apple ID’s, so make sure with your friend if its OK…)

Enjoy!

Boy, this is going to be unpopular. Microsoft is dropping its Drive Extender technology in the next release of Windows Home Server (“Vail”), which is one of the most fundamental parts of the personal server operating system. Drive extender is a pretty great flexible storage system that gives you the redundancy of a RAID setup, but with the flexibility of adding hard drives with different sizes, interfaces and speeds. It really works well – simply open your home server case, connect another drive, reboot and then just “add” the disk to storage pool, no mess, no fuss. In fact you dont know where any specific file is necessarily stored, you just know  its safe.

For example, in my Windows Home Server I have a few different hard drives which give a total of 5TB of storage over 4 disks, to which all my machines backup to. This actually adds up to around 3TB, because I have the choice to have certain folders duplicated over more than one hard drive. For example, documents and photos are duplicated, but movies are not. If any one drive fails, you can be assured the files you value would be somewhere else in your storage pool.

So why did Microsoft drop it?

Microsoft gives the excuse that hard drives have grown so big that such a solution is not necessary anymore. That is ridiculous – in fact, with the bigger sizes of hard drives, I would think that some sort of redundancy becomes even more important. If I now lose a 1TB drive, that is an awful lot of data to lose if it is not duplicated somehow.

Paul Thurrott also revealed that one of the reasons of Drive Extender is that it struggles under heavy server loads, which is not exactly relevant to a home server. This is a concern for Microsoft because DE is going to be used in the upcoming Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Microsoft wanted to share this with the platform of Windows Home Server v2 (“Vail”). It really is beyond me why MS would want to unify these two operating systems.

So if you want to switch to WHS version 2 when it comes out, you might have to set up scheduled backups to extra hard drives… How boring. Bad move Microsoft. Vail better have great features when it arrives. Personally I want better power management, Apple Time Machine support, and built in video transcoding support (so that Xbox 360 can finally play any video file). Give me those features, and I might consider upgrading.

(Update: if you want to know how to set this up on your Apple device, simply read our Find my iPhone how-to guide)

So apparently iOS 4.2.1 is rolling out today, and it is finally giving iPad users all that multitasking goodness that us iPhone users have had for a while. Folders are also welcome on the iPad, as well as a few small changes (you can read the full iOS 4.2 rundown here). But one part thats really nice is that Apple is finally offering “Find My iPhone” as a free feature now.

In the past you had to pay $99 a year to get Mobile Me, which was the only way to get hold of Find My iPhone. Find my iPhone is really handy, and was a major reason why I got MobileMe in the past. Users can track any device that is registered to their username, so you add quite a few devices to the same user account. You can actually see the device on a map with remarkable accuracy, provided its outdoors and within cellular data range.

If you cannot seem to find your phone inside your house, you can also ask the phone to make a noise, even if it is in silent mode. Good for those times you lose your phone in between the couch cushions! Finally you can also lock the phone, let the phone display a message (e.g. Please phone xxx xxx xxxx, reward if found!), and then finally once you give up hope, remotely wipe the device.

Find my iPhone will be available for iPhone 4, iPad and the latest iPod Touch (and to older iPhones with some effort), and will be rolling out tonight as part of iOS 4.2.1, which will go live at around 7 o’clock. I would recommend you download iTunes 10.1 beforehand (you need it). Expect the servers to be hammered tonight, it will be a very popular update!

For more info on 4.2, read our review, or go look at Apple’s info page.

Pirated computer software is currently costing legal resellers and the local computer industry millions of rands a month through lost revenues – and leaving thousands of unsuspecting computer owners up the creek without support.

Microsoft South Africa’s Charl Everton says her company alone is currently busy investigating more than 60 computer dealers suspected of selling fake or illegally licensed software – and that’s “just the tip of the iceberg,” she says.

Overall, the trade in counterfeit goods is costing South Africa millions of rands annually in lost revenues, says Mandla Mnyatheli, chief director of company and IP enforcement with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

“The exact impact of counterfeiting is hard to quantify, but there’s no doubt this trend has been increasing. We have an urgent challenge in South Africa to stem this tide,” said Mnyatheli.

The Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Tobias-Pokolo, is spearheading a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the scourges of piracy and counterfeiting, says Mnyatheli. All relevant enforcement agencies and government departments in the security cluster will be part of this campaign.

The biggest problem with piracy, though, says Ms Everton, is that there is growing evidence that many local criminal organisations are now involved in counterfeiting to some degree – which effectively means that people who buy pirated goods are funding organised crime.

“All indications are that local criminal syndicates are following the global trend of branching out into counterfeit software as a low-risk, high-profit sideline to other activities like hijacking and drug trafficking,” she said.

Ms Everton was speaking as part of Microsoft’s worldwide ‘Consumer Action Day’ – a drive across 70 countries to protect consumers and increase awareness of the risks of counterfeit software.

She says that every year, thousands of consumers and businesses buy counterfeit products that either don’t work or actually harm the users by opening the door to online spam, virus and fraud networks. Microsoft’s tests of software on some popular sites have shown that up to 35 percent of counterfeit software contains harmful code.

Globally, Microsoft has had more than 300 000 voluntary reports in the past two years from people who unknowingly purchased counterfeit software that was often riddled with viruses or malware. Victims risk losing personal information, having their identities stolen, and wasting valuable time and money.

“Consumers everywhere are coming to us with complaints about counterfeit software,” said Dale Waterman, Microsoft’s Corporate Attorney for Anti-Piracy for the Middle East and Africa region. “They’re asking what they can do to protect themselves. They want facts. And they want industry and government to stand up and take action. Our commitment is to do everything we can to help them.”

According to data released by Microsoft this week,  based on the results of a broad consumer survey which asked more than 38,000 men and women in 20 countries around the world about their perceptions of counterfeit software, 80 percent of consumers polled worldwide have a range of concerns about the risks of using counterfeit software, and 70 percent said they believe genuine software is more secure, more stable and is easier to keep up-to-date.

But the presence of high-quality fakes in the market today makes distinguishing counterfeit from genuine a continuing challenge for consumers. The majority of those polled — 73 percent — say they would choose genuine software given the choice, and more than two-thirds believe that consumers in general have to be on the lookout or they could mistakenly buy counterfeit software.

As part of its awareness activities, Microsoft this month launched its “Don’t Fake It” campaign, which drives people to the www.dontfakeit.co.za website. There, they get to be part of a music video with popular local band Prime Circle.

There has been no shortage of anti-piracy action by authorities this year. In the past month alone, there have been more than 20 enforcement actions involving the SA Police Services, the DTi or Microsoft’s attorneys against resellers offering pirated software in Bloemfontein and Gauteng. Numerous hard drives used to make counterfeit copies of popular software suites were seized in the raids.

Several of the dealers have been served with ‘cease and desist’ letters by Microsoft’s attorney’s around the sale of counterfeit software and PCs loaded with illegal software.

One of the men netted in the swoop, a prominent Bloemfontein IT consultant, has been charged with offences under the Copyright Goods Act after being caught selling high-quality counterfeit software and product keys on a popular online site.

Microsoft is muscling into the business communications space with the launch this week of Lync, a new piece of communications software that it says will ultimately replace corporate phone systems.

The software combines voice calling, instant messaging, video conferencing and Web conferencing in a single package – and Microsoft founder Bill Gates has hailed it as “the most important thing to happen to the office worker since the PC came along.”

Lync is the latest version of Office Communications Server, which has been one of the fastest growing solutions at Microsoft, experiencing double-digit growth over the past three years.

“Businesses have been eagerly awaiting a communications solution that brings together a consistent and familiar user experience, and easy administration, authentication and storage for all the different communication channels – including voice and video communications, email, instant messaging, co-authoring, conference calling and presence,” said Microsoft South Africa’s Danie Gordon.

“IT departments are already looking at how Lync enables them evolve their infrastructure to enhance or eliminate their traditional PBX systems with Lync.”

Gordon says Lync meets the toughest enterprise standards, but was built with the way people like to communicate in mind. “Any interaction can now feel like a face-to-face conversation, because it can include video- and audioconferencing, application and desktop sharing, instant messaging and presence, and telephony. Lync works with the applications people already use, so it’s easy to become comfortable with the technology.”

One of the early adopters of Lync in South Africa is Standard Bank, which is evaluating the solution to change the way it communicates, and transform the businesses while saving money.

“Lync 2010 client was very easy to install and was up and running in seconds.  We especially like that it’s a central rich application for all communication needs that follows you regardless of your location,” said Blessing Sibanyoni, Product Manager, Standard Bank of South Africa. “This promises to be an efficiency booster for Standard Bank.”

Standard Bank is in good company: globally, companies like Nikon have experienced a 30% increase in productivity, and plans to bring Lync to all 26 000 of its employees across the world. In addition, Nikon expects to reduce its expenses for hosted audio solutions by more than 50%.

“We want to move away from relying on a specific communication tools, like email,” said Yoshiyasu Iizuka, General Manager of the Information Systems Department at Nikon Corporation. “We need capabilities that free people from the constraints of time and place. Our employees should be able to choose the best communications tools for each scenario they face.”-

Early research by Forrester Consulting suggests significant potential savings in areas like travel costs and improved worker productivity. Gartner has been equally enthusiastic, with Bern Elliot, vice president of research, suggesting the release is “an important step” toward clarifying what the next generation of communication will look like.

Starting today, anyone can download a free trial version of Lync at www.lync.com, and business customers can purchase Lync from December 1.

This map by XKCD might look like a child made it, but it is in fact based on actual traffic to these sites. Here is the description:

Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health.  This updated map uses sizes to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing or other socializing happens there.  This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.

Do yourself a favour and look at the large version of this file, it is pretty expansive. A few things took me by surprise – look at the size of QQ and Farmville. But these communities are not a patch compared to Email and the cellular cash cow called SMS.

Another very cool map was recently created for Web 2.0 Summit, called the Points of Control Map, which integrates a few other players, not only online communities. This map is actually interactive – so I recommend you go view the full version.

This is the very same map that recently came under criticism from Mark Zuckerburg, in which he mentioned that there is one missing part – “uncharted territory“…  This is probably where innovative products like Facebook’s new messaging system would want to explore.

Source: xkcd

Despite Google‘s announcement that they are looking into nearfield communication to “Tap to Pay” with your cellphone, there are still some people who prefer to use standard credit cards. The problem is, credit cards are very insecure. A person can steal your credit card and easily go on a shopping spree, be it online or in actual shops.

This where Dynamics’s amazing new PoweredCards come in:

“Card 2.0™ is a paper-thin, flexible computer platform in a payment card form factor. The device is designed to be as thin, flexible, and durable as a traditional payment card and last over three years on a single battery charge. The card  includes a number of peripheral management circuits that are directed to power management, timing, and control. “

While the desciption might not say much, you have to see this video – the guy demos two different cards, one with loyalty payment system, but look at the secure card version. The user enters a password on the card itself, which enables the numbers to be displayed on a small display. The magnetic strip is also rewritten every time a user activates a card. A card which can switch between multiple accounts is also shown off.

Battery life lasts for multiple years, the card is flexible like a normal credit card, and its waterproof…

Look at this:

Source: TomsGuide