By Lilian van Zyl, design and Stefan de Klerk, research.

BlackBerrys are extremely popular in South Africa and have provided many with their first access to the Internet. As a result there has been much hype around the arrival of the new BlackBerry Z10 (watch the BWB TV video review), now available on all major South African cellular networks.

When trying to decide which cellphone contract offers the best deal, it’s always a good idea to compare offers from different providers. This is why the moneysmart team, known for their comparative infographics, went through the exercise of comparing BlackBerry Z10 contracts from the four big networks.

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On the 28^th of April 2013, Apple will celebrate 10 years of iTunes. Since the humble beginnings of this online music concept,  iTunes has blossomed into the first successful commercial online music store with its 99cents a song deal. Its success was intrinsically linked to the then new Apple iPod. Today it remains the biggest online music store, a full 10 years later.

The Onion news took a bit of a satirical view on the 10 years of iTunes:

• Nov. 4, 2002: The iTunes Store is first conceived of when the revolutionary idea “I would like more money” strikes Apple CEO Steve Jobs out of the blue.
• Apr. 28, 2003: The iTunes Store launches with the Bay Area band Steve and the Jobtones as its featured artist.
• Jan. 5, 2004: iTunes briefly adds new and used automotive parts to its store. (more…)

Mxit is celebrating one year of open APIs and the launch of its mobi portal in April 2012 with an infographic.

Since its launch a total of 126 developers have launched 219 apps.

The 2012 to 2013 growth saw between five to 35 apps published each month, taking the total number of apps on the platform from 209 in March 2012 to 428 in March 2013.

In terms of categories, entertainment leads the way with 23% and strategy games leads the games category with 19%.

Of the platform’s in-app advertising where developers can receive a 70%  share of the profits generated Mxit’s Sarah Rice said that “Mxit launched in-app advertising in June 2012. Since then we have seen that the split between revenue coming from in-app spending (Moola) and advertising has settled into a 60/40 split. 60% Moola and 40% advertising across all our applications. “

Check out the infographic below:

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Google Glass: futuristic and applicable or fun toy? The debate is still raging and until the normal citizen can get their hands on it, we won’t know for sure. Before it does, though, people were starting to ask how it actually works, and many questions arose. From simple questions like: “Where is the processor?” and “Where is the ON switch?” to more difficult ones to answer like: “How does the augmented reality work?”

Luckily for us, a techie artist called Martin Missfeldt created an infographic that explains the wonders of technology behind Google’s technologically-enhanced Glass. The prism inside Glass projects a layer over the light generated by the environment around you. Meanwhile, the prism focuses the image directly on your retina.
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Demand for the HTC One is very high – higher than expected. Some people are struggling to get their hands on one, but HTC has released a teaser infographic to those people who are still waiting for theirs.

HTC is showing you how you might want to use the features of its newest flagship device on a day to day basis. We are just as eager as many folks out there are to get our hands on them, and will report back once we do. So check back soon.

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More than 25,430,000 articles in 284 languages and edited more than 1,541,390,000 times since its launch in January 2001 are just some of the astonishing facts and figures from Wikipedia, the collaboratively edited free encyclopedia.

You can find out more in the infographic, compiled by website-monitoring.com, below:

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The infographic below, created by Zing Broadband showcases how the US is far from the world leader in internet speed and generates the second most traffic on the Internet.

Much of this has to do with the control of high speed access by a few very large companies in the US.

It includes data on both internet speeds and access in the US in comparison to some other leading countries in the world including South Korea, China and The United Kingdom.

Susan Crawford, Harvard Professor and former Special Assistant on Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy for President Obama saw the infographic and impressed by it, tweeted: “Pictures say a thousand words: infographic on US hig-speed internet access.”

Take a look for yourself after the jump:

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There are over 121,000 libraries in the U.S. used by 69% of Americans. Citizens rely on libraries for everything from books and magazines to digital media and internet access.

We recently reported on the opening of the first entirely digital public library in the U.S. The bookless library called BiblioTech located in San Antonio, Texas is the first of many that will soon open across the entire county of Bexar and possibly across the country.

However, 67% of libraries already offer downloadable e-books and 28% lend out e-readers and mobile devices.

Open-site.org published the infographic below that looks at the hi-tech challenges facing libraries today and how they are responding to new hi-tech demands.

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