Earlier this month it was reported that Facebook was in negotiations with Israeli-based crowdsourced mapping and traffic application Waze.

With negotiations having already begun over 6 months ago it was believed that Facebook was looking to acquire the startup for about $1 billion in an effort to expand its mobile presence across platforms.

While that deal was never officially confirmed Bloomberg now reports that Google Inc. is also interested, creating a possible bidding war with the social network and looks to block Facebook from becoming a competitor as a mapping service provider.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook faces the US Senate

Apple CEO, Tim Cook recently testified at a senate hearing about the company’s tax avoidance practices during which he and other experts were questioned about tax “gimmickry”.

A report about this matter has been published that details Apple’s clever strategies in avoiding paying tax. According to Business Insider, the report published by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations shows how Apple “uses a variety of offshore structures and arrangements to shift billions of dollars from the United States to Ireland” using its primary offshore holding company Apple Operations International (AOI).

A key quote from the report explains why AOI exists:

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According to The Verge there appears to be some unrest in the HTC camp.

The company’s vice president of global communications, Jason Gordon has recently called it quits, revealing the news on Twitter. Gordon is accompanied by chief product officer Kouji Kodera, who reportedly resigned last week.

Other staff to depart include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of digital marketing John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.

Employees have reportedly moved on to companies Microsoft and AT&T.

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Yesterday, photos of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, obtained by GSMArena leaked online.

In addition to the Galaxy S4 Active, reports have revealed that Samsung is planning a new 8-inch Galaxy tablet and a 4.3-inch version of the Galaxy S4.

A variant of the Galaxy S4, the Android powered S4 Active comes with a similar look and feel to the flagship, although adopting a metallic shell and bolts, rather than hard plastic, and is also dust and waterproof perhaps putting it up against the impressive Sony Xperia Z.

According to various reports, the device boasts a quad-core ARM processor at 1.9GHz, a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution and a rear facing 8MP camera.

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South Africa already has a number of great money transfer solutions. The real challenge is not getting another banking app, but rather finding locations for these applications to convert credit into cash as well as cash into credit, says Bevan Ducasse of wiGroup.

“Mobile money is growing tremendously,” says Ducasse. “Every one of the big four banks as well as Capitec has a mobile banking solution, and we have MTN and Vodacom offering money transfer services as well. The problem of how to enable people without traditional bank accounts to transfer money has been solved. If someone has a cellphone number, you can send them money.”

What does still need to be solved, says Ducasse, is the problem of how to spend money sitting in mobile accounts and wallets. “At some point you still need to be able to deposit and withdraw cash,” he says; “and everything points to the retail footprint in South Africa being the answer.”

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It’s no surprise that Yahoo has today announced the acquisition of  blogging site Tmblr for approximately $1.1 billion in cash.  The deal exceeds Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of photo sharing app Instagram.

Prior to the confirmation of the deal, news of talks between the two companies was broken by All Things D. The technology news site has also reported that Tumblr were in talks with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter earlier this year about a possible deal yet no other offers were reportedly made.

The official press release from Yahoo states that, “Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.”

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MTN has launched the first custom YouTube channel in Africa.

MTN says it has customised the look and feel of its channel to “increase brand awareness” and control its content discovery to suit the type of campaign, event or location.

In addition to various videos, the channel offers customer comments and recent blog posts.

The channel is part of MTN’s aim to deliver “a bold new digital world to it’s customers”.

MTN hopes that this new form of communication will build relationships with customers and provide valuable feedback as well.

MTN’s chief marketing officer Serame Taukobong says, “Our excitement not only stems from the fact that the MTN brand will take pole position in terms of visibility and presence, but also because we will be able to feed the hunger for fresh and current content to the bustling online community”.

By Wimpie van Rensburg, Systems Engineer, Riverbed Technology

Have you ever upgraded your bandwidth, even though you knew it wasn’t going to solve your latency problems?

If you said yes, it’s okay. Everybody has done it and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your intentions were good, and besides, it gave you a reprieve from all those user complaints. But then, after awhile, they started again, didn’t they?

And now you are right back where you started from, thinking about going back to bandwidth. Do you really think things will be different this time? Sure, there will be the honeymoon period, but eventually you will be right back where you started, broken promises and shattered dreams. I’m begging you, don’t do it, don’t go back to bandwidth!

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