Now this is a pretty novel modern twist on an old idea – the walkie talkie. Heytell enables easy to-and-fro voice messages between smartphone users, and I have to be honest, it works pretty well! Its pretty easy to understand – User A clicks on User B’s  name in the app, then clicks the “Hold to Speak” button, then the app records the message, compresses it, and fires it off to the recipient.

One of the cooler parts of the app is that it is currently available on iPhone and Android – so regardless whether the users of the two operating systems might not agree with each other, they can at least communicate with each other. I tried it out with the guys over at ZaDroid on their devices, and it worked flawlessly between iPhone and Android. On the iPhone it pops up a push notification whenever you have message waiting.

No you might ask – how is this different to Push To Talk? Well – you do not have instantly hear every message, you can listen to it whenever you want, its just waiting in your inbox. As David Perel points out in Charl’s video review of Heytell, the app is also great for quick messaging while driving. Its pretty stupid to send off an SMS, where this app is very easy to use. I can imagine it being quite popular to contact one or two favourites. You can also share your current position with the person you are talking with – think you great that is when you need to meet someone somewhere?

If there is one little bit of advice I can give to the HeyTell developers – please get it on Blackberry as soon as possible, and perhaps also Symbian. If the cross-platform integration works so well with iPhone and Android, it would be even better with Blackberry! Another small point of advice – maybe get some decent user interface specialists in – the icons and buttons have a very “quick and dirty” feel about them. But hey – I am nitpicking here!

Best part – it is free, and it just works! (But there are a few add-ons like voice changers available). You can get it in the Apple Appstore and the Android Marketplace. Next up: Charl Norman’s video review of HeyTell:

OK so you have been waiting for the iPad to be officially launched in SA, so where do you get it? Here is the official list of locations to go find it:

You can get it at Apple Premium Resellers, such as the following:

Digicape Cape Town
Project 3
iStore Waterfront
iStore Clearwater
iStore Gateway
iStore Melrose Arch
iStore Menlyn
iStore 1 Sand ton Drive
iStore Vodaworld
iStore Canalwalk

Dion Wired:
Dion Wired Bedford Sqaure
Dion Wired Gateway
Dion Wired Hyde Park
Dion Wired Somerset West
Dion Wired Woodlands
Dion Wired Woodmead
Dion Wired Fourways

Incredible Connection:

Incredible Connection Bloem
Incredible Connection Canal Walk
Incredible Connection Somerset West
Incredible Connection The Glen
Incredible Connection Woodmead
Incredible Connection Sandton
Incredible Connection Pavilion
Incredible Connection Nelspruit
Incredible Connection Menlyn
Incredible Connection Gateway
Incredible Connection Eastgate
Incredible Connection East Rand Retail Park
Incredible Connection Cresta
Incredible Connection Cavendish
Incredible Connection Centurion

If you want to find a iPad retailer closest to you, you can use this official Apple map. But should you get it?

(Update: iPad 2 has been launched in South Africa)

(Update: iPad 2 has been launched in South Africa)

If you are one of the people who have been dying to get an iPad, but somehow did not manage to get one through “unofficial” channels up until now, you are in luck. As of today you can finally buy the Apple iPad in official Apple reseller stores in South Africa. The best part is the price – where SA has traditionally always had ridiculous pricing when it came to Apple products, the iPad prices are actually surprisingly good, as you can see here (Digicape pricing):

Take into account that the cheapest iPad in the US trades for $500, this is not too bad. For way to long Core insisted on taking the US price and just multiplying it by ten. Good for them for changing that (I am not trying to get into another pricing debate here, I am actually complementing them). I still want to see what they charge for accessories as well though.

While its great to finally have the iPad available via official channels, I just have to point out something. It is today also exactly one year after the iPad has been announced in the US, so you might want to ask yourself if you so desperately need the first generation iPad now. My little bit of advice is to wait for the second generation iPad. While everything is just rumours up until now, you can expect a lot of improvements on the next generation model, and possibly even at a lower price point. If history is anything to go by – look at the jump from the first generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G… I think I will do a small experiment the weekend and ask some iStore / Incredible Connection salespeople if they recommend getting the iPad right now…

But all in all – it is wonderful news to finally have the iPad officially here in SA!

If you want to get one, it is available at iStores, Dion Wired, Incredible Connection and of course the best Apple Premium Reseller – Digicape. I recommend you phone ahead if you are driving out to get one. Something tells me it will sell out fast. You can also see where to get the iPad here.

Update: our man on the ground, Seb Stent went to go test out iStore’s salesmen about the iPad. If you want to see if they know their stuff – just click play! Sorry about the dodgy sound!

Facebook today announced that users can access their site using secure HTTPS traffic. In the past only certain portions of Facebook allowed HTTPS access, with the connection quickly reverting to HTTP when it ran into problems. HTTPS allows data to be encrypted in both directions, both from the server and from your computer. The biggest benefit this gives is that data cannot be “sniffed” – for example someone intercepting your wireless signal will be unable to make sense of any of the transferring data.

If you want to enable this its pretty easy. You can go to https://www.facebook.com instead of http://www.facebook.com, but this method is not ideal, because you have to double check your browser everytime to see if it is using the correct method (but you can set a direct bookmark of course). What I would rather recommend is the following – go to Facebook, then go to Account Settings, then just tick the “Secure Browsing (https)” box, as shown below:

At the moment Facebook is still rolling this feature out to people, so if it is not available to you yet, just be patient. In the mean time you can still just by using the “https” prefix in the URL. If you do access Facebook using the new secure method, you will see the padlock on the bottom right of your browser (in Safari its on the top right). Another bit of news: Facebook also rolled out its own unique “captcha” type system. Most captcha systems use those irritating blurry, skewed text so that they can verify you are a human. Facebook uses something different – it will show you friend’s photos, then ask you to name them:

Good luck to those people who keep on adding Facebook friends they have actually forgotten in real life, or even worse, never met!

Image from Engadget

I have to be honest – I have become quite numb in reading about all the new tablets coming out, especially the Android ones. They all seem similiar, yet only one or two stand out, like the Motorola Xoom. I am much more interested to see what HP is working on. See, HP bought out Palm (one of the great names in PDAs) a while back, primarily for their beautiful operating system called WebOS. In South Africa we are not used to WebOS, seeing as the Palm Pre cellphone never officially arrived here.

You might remember a while HP announced the “slate” with Windows 7, but apparently it was not the greatest device to use. Windows 7 is not a tablet friendly operating system – for stylus use, sure. But we are all moving to finger input, and Microsoft just does not seem to get it yet, despite their “touch packs”. In fact, the “slate” was such a disaster that HP focussed the device only to its enterprise customers, and as you might have noticed, it is not available in SA.

But lets see what we can expect from the HP WebOS tablet (codenamed “Topaz”):

• 9.7 inch screen (same as iPad), XGA (1024 x 768) resolution
• 1.2 GHz Qualcomm processor
• Adreno 220 GPU
• 512MB RAM
• Dual Camera
• 16, 32 or 64 GB storage
• And of course – WebOS

And here is the leaked image if you want some more details (from Pre Central):

Cannot wait to get my hands on this. Lets hope it does better than the Palm Pre phones…

Our second Bandwidth blog interview (previously we interviewed Motribe) is with Eric Edelstein and Eran Eyal of Evly. Evly launched to much hype (by the founders account) and debate late last year. Some observers felt they launched too soon and that their product was nowhere close to being public beta ready. Others believe they are onto something big and hailed it another feather in the Silicon Cape cap.

We get into the minds of the Evly founders and ask them to back up their loud and proud ‘36 million users in 18 months’ goal, what the initial up take of Evly has been and what their future plans are, especially in terms of their product road map and venture funding.

Eric and Eran have previous experience with online startups including Springleap, a 3 year old, 25,000 user large T-Shirt community with crowd sourcing elements similar to USA pioneer Threadless. Springleap laid the groundwork for their crowd sourcing platform and served as the ultimate case study for them to derive experience from to execute on their Evly ambitions. (Although Springleap’s tech has yet to go into the Evly platform, there are plans for its implementation in the future.)

Evly’s core focus is to solve problems. Enabling Joe Public to setup a crowd sourcing tool to use the wisdom of crowds of solve any problem, raise funds and/or even create your own Springleap.

With the likes of Quora taking off in a big way, Evly has a steep mountain to climb that won’t get any easier. There is the risk that users won’t find a need to create their own crowd sourcing site if a place like Quora does it all for them already.

Even though the site is in Alpha/Beta there will need to be significant improvements in order to take on the big guys and win.

It is still very much early days for the project and we wanted to know what, when and how.

Since the intention of Evly is to crowd source opinions. We would love to hear yours in the comments. Tell us what you think! Press play below.

Previous interviews - Motribe founders Vincent Maher and Nic Haralambous

In a short period of 10 years, Wikipedia has become one of the most important websites on the internet today. It is still considered the definitive source of information on the internet, despite the fact that it can be edited by anyone (who would have thunk??!). The folks at JESS3 (who typically make the “state of” videos) made this infographic and video to explain what a great achievement Wikipedia really is.  Click the image to enlarge:

I highly recommend you watch the video (narrated by Jimmy Wales) as well – Wikipedia’s management goes a lot deeper than I imagined:

Source: The State of Wikipedia

Guest Post: Albert is a developer, gadget geek, and all-round nice guy. He’s passionate about Android, and writes for ZADroid, a new blog that covers Android in South Africa. However, anything shiny and sufficiently technologically advanced puts a smile on his face. Above and beyond that, Albert loves the web and the technologies that drive it, good design, and original ideas.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is somewhat hard to get hold of, but we’ve managed to get our grubby paws on not one, but two of these nifty little devices (not official Samsung review units, though, seems they’re quite attached to it). Both Philip and I have had the opportunity to spend some time with the Tab.

The Galaxy Tab is a seven-inch (~18cm) Tablet device, which measures 190.1×120.6×12.0mm.

You would think that using a Galaxy Tab right after the deluge of Honeycomb and Android Tablet news from CES would detract somewhat from the experience, and after the first few minutes with my unit I thought it was going to be a bit of a “meh” review, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. You’ve probably heard people saying it’s like a giant Galaxy S. That’s both spot on, and way off the mark. Let’s get into the details, and you’ll see what I mean.

Physical Features

The Galaxy Tab is a seven-inch (~18cm) Tablet device, which measures 190.1×120.6×12.0mm. It’s a bit thicker than I expected, but that being said, it’s still pretty thin. It’s difficult to differentiate these all-screen devices, but Samsung have pulled it off with the interesting white plastic back (which holds up pretty well to scratches and dirt). The unit is lighter than expected, a bit plasticky, but quite solidly built and quite durable. Unfortunately, the Tab has Samsung’s standard 4 capacitive buttons right beneath the display. With a device like this it’s even easier to accidentally brush against these with undesired effects following. On top of the device is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, on the left sits the microphone, on the right is the power switch, a very nice volume rocker, and nicely concealed SIM card and SD Card slots. On the bottom is the dock connector and speaker ports. It’s a pity that the 30-pin connector is non-standard (it almost looks like a flipped-over Apple connector), which means you’re shit out of luck if you lose your cable.

It’s difficult to differentiate these all-screen devices, but Samsung have pulled it off with the interesting white plastic back.

All in all, the seven-inch form factor turned out to perfect for prolonged, yet comfortable use, quickly stuffing in an average-sized pocket, and leaving on the nightstand for a charge.

Display

The Super TFT LCD on the Tab is a better-than-average display. Running at a resolution of 1024×768, with a pixel density of 169ppi, text is sharp, colours are bright and vivid, and graphical elements just look better than usual. It even performs surprisingly well in direct sunlight, with a little bit of wash-out, but not to an unusable degree. The Galaxy Tab’s display is covered by a sheet of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, which makes it the ideal toss-it-in-the-bag tablet.

It’s no Super AMOLED, but it’s good enough, and a damn sight better than some other tablet displays out there.

Other Bits and Pieces

The Galaxy Tab has the usual array of extras: 3G and WiFi connectivity, aGPS, and Bluetooth, as well as an ambient light sensor. Nothing out of the ordinary here, and they all work as expected. It’s curious that Samsung has decided that the GSM functionality shouldn’t be limited to data on a Tablet device. You can actually make phone calls if the included headset is used, or on the built-in speaker if private conversations aren’t your thing. A nice extra.

For those intending to use the Tab without a SIM card, the Tab offers a Flight Mode toggle, which will disable the GSM/3G and Bluetooth radios, but leaves WiFi as an option to enable. Be aware, however, that for some reason the Samsung Apps application that is pre-installed on the device will refuse to start if a SIM card is not present. The annoying thing about this is the fact that, even if it knows very well that it won’t run without a SIM, it will still present you with a notification that you can download application updates using it.

Performance & Battery Life

The 1 GHz Hummingbird processor (an ARM processor featuring package-on-package construction) is the same that can be found in the Galaxy S Phone. Samsung takes advantage of the Package-on-Package architecture by embedding 8Gb of MLC Flex OneNAND, 1 Gb of OneDRAM and 3Gb of Mobile DDR into the processor. We already know this makes for a snappy experience, but it felt even quicker on the Tab. It may be down to software tweaks and optimizations. Whatever it is, the Tab is blazingly fast, even with multiple applications running. You also get 16 or 32 GB of internal storage capacity (depending on the model), which can be expanded with a microSD card. The Galaxy Tab also packs 512 MB of DDR RAM, which is less than expected, but it doesn’t seem to hamper performance.

The Galaxy Tab feeds off a massive 3.7V/4000mAh Li-Ion battery, and Samsung claims up to 7 hours of video playback. We didn’t get quite those numbers, but the battery lasted a little bit more than a day and half with regular use. The battery isn’t user-replaceable, but at the pace gadgets are becoming obsolete these days, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Camera(s)

The Tab has two cameras: 3.2 MP rear facing camera and 1.3 MP front facing camera.

The Tab has two cameras: 3.2 MP rear facing camera and 1.3 MP front facing camera. You’d expect a camera packing slightly more mega-pixels from Samsung, whose cellphone cameras are generally very good. So, the main camera isn’t wonderful, but it does the job. The front-facing camera couldn’t be tested with video calls, but the pictures it produced in self-shot mode were useless. That being said, the Camera application almost redeems the lackluster hardware. It has a few very nice features like an auto-stitching panorama mode, and smile detection.

Software

Up to the Galaxy Tab, Android just wasn’t meant for screen sizes large than 5 inches. Samsung worked with Google to bring a modified version of 2.2 (Froyo) to the Tab, which scales correctly, and has a few display tweaks such as larger fonts and buttons (and a different, quite pleasant colour scheme). Samsung has also pre-installed a few applications specifically created for the Galaxy Tab and its form factor. Among these are e-mail, calendar, a media player, and one or two other bits and bobs, like a calculator. It is evident that a lot of thought and care was put into the development of these applications, as they are a joy to use. Also included is Samsung Applications, an extra software repository with Tab-specific extras.

The Galaxy Tab also boasts Adobe Flash 10.1 support, but this is something of a mixed bag, as some Flash content will completely ruin your browsing experience. As an example, the Flash content on Rockstar’s Social Club website caused the Browser application to eat CPU cycles so badly that the operating system made it go away with nary a peep or a notification. Another huge annoyance caused by the Flash support was that one block of Flash content on a page managed to obscure the Browser toolbar at the top of the screen, rendering one unable to perform almost any kind of useful navigation. It eventually got so bad that we set plug-ins to load on demand, instead of automatically.

Admittedly, these issues may well be the fault of the Flash content creator, but the plug-in should at least ensure that the tablet’s user interface isn’t affected by content it’s displaying.

From a usability perspective, using an operating system I’ve gotten used to on a small screen all blown up like this was strange at first. Every now and then it’s evident that the Android we all know and love just wasn’t meant for Tablets, but for those of us familiar with the ins and outs of the OS, using it is a breeze, and, on the Tab, a joy – as there is little to no lagging. Downloading and installing applications from the Android market happened so fast sometimes, that I missed it.

So yes, this tweaked version of Android works on the Galaxy Tab, but only because it is so familiar. Hopefully the Tab is in line for an upgrade to Honeycomb, so it can run Android as Google intends it to be run on this form factor.

Conclusion

I was prepared to be wholly underwhelmed by the Galaxy Tab. I thought that I was going to brush it off as Samsung’s attempt to get a foot in the door before everyone else. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised. Samsung has managed to make a software and hardware pairing that was never intended to be work quite well. It’s a pretty device that is fun to use, and it’s just the right size and weight. Would I buy one off-contract? Probably not. Would I get one on contract? I’d seriously consider it.

Now to see how, and if, Samsung catches up to Motorola, LG, and all the other players that will be releasing very powerful hardware coupled with a flavor of Android intended for Tablets.

Build Quality: 4/5

Performance and Responsiveness: 4/5

Aesthetics: 4/5

Display: 4.5/5

Score: 4/5