If you thought owning your own private jet was the ultimate luxury, imagine having your very airport at which to take-off and land.

Well Google’s executives will be doing just that with the construction of their own airport in San Jose, California. The top three – Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page reportedly already own about 12 planes between them so it’s understandable that they require somewhere to hold and maintain them.

Signature Flight Support and Blue City Holdings, the company that represents Google’s fleet of personal aircraft, are likely to be awarded the 50 year lease on the West side of San Jose International Airport where the construction will take place.

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BlackBerry has opened its third Apps Lab in SA following two already located at Bandwidth Barn in Woodstock, Cape Town and the University of Pretoria’s Information Technology Department.

The Apps Lab now open at the JoziHub, joins those in Cape Town and Pretoria to boost the development of mobile applications in SA as well as create new job opportunities in the local mobile space with its available resources for students, developers and entrepreneurs.

Annie Lopes, community manager at JoziHub, said, “We look forward to working with BlackBerry to mobilise our resident developer community, including students, researchers and faculties adjacent to our premises, the universities of Johannesburg and Witwatersrand.”

As part of the smartphone maker’s extensive developer program more than 1,600 individuals have already benefited to date.

Source: HumanIPO

There are many flavours out there for people who want to change the keyboard on their Android device. Most of the proper ones, however, aren’t free. Not anymore, as Google has just made its stock Android keyboard available in the Google Play store. Its initial rollout includes a multitude of countries, with the rest to follow soon.

There are many people that aren’t crazy about their OEM’s typing experience (nudge, nudge, Samsung), so this is the perfect opportunity to check out another option. (more…)

Samsung has today announced the previously rumoured (during which time a video of the device was released by Mobile Tech Review), but expected Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, a more robust version of its counterpart.

According to Samsung, the device is aimed at the more adventurous of users who can use their device anywhere without “fear of damage from the elements”.

CEO and President of IT & Mobile Communications Division JK Shin said that “Samsung has taken the innovative features of the GALAXY S4 and added breakthrough protective design elements to create a device that thrives in an active environment and is built for a lifestyle of travel and exploration.”

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Local social innovation startup, HumanWrit.es has recently delivered on its promise by handing over 20, 000 exercise books to underprivileged children.

Launched in June 2012 by its founders Adrian Myburgh, Jason Bagley and Richard Mulholland, HumanWrit.es designed and launched its very own 192 page hard cover notebook called a Writable. For every one that is sold, the company donates 10 exercise books to classrooms of school children in need.

The give-away exercise books include tools for reading and writing in both Xhosa and English, drawing and colouring-in, some basic maths and dotted pages for free thinking, writing and drawing.

The most recent donation of 20, 000 exercise books were delivered to over 200 pre-schools that form part of the Ithemba Labantwana community forum, operated under the umbrella of Ikamva Labantu, HumanWrit.es’s partner organization.

Watch the handover in the video below:

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While there are many channels of communication between friends these days, the most common is obviously Facebook. So it would make sense to allow friends to share more than their ‘selfies’ and mundane thoughts.

Enter Pipe, the Facebook app that lets you transfer files in real-time to other users. The homepage brings back some fond memories, with a Super Mario Brothers theme (hence the green pipe you would enter in the game). While in beta (invitation only) a secure locker-like feature has been added to take into account those who aren’t online to receive the file at the time that it was sent, which is a nice feature. Also, relay technology has been added to help the server bypass corporate firewalls. (more…)

Going green is still all the buzz around the world of sustainable business. Not only is it ‘cool’ and considered the right thing to do among large businesses, you also receive several tax benefits when using green power.

Google have secured the electric output of an entire 72 MW wind farm in Maevaara, Sweden. According to the official blog, they will buy this electricity for the next ten years to run their data centre in Finland. The deal was brokered through the multinational insurer Allianz, which bought the farm, and will begin selling electricity to Google by 2015. (more…)

This morning marked Bandwidth Blog’s first television insert to be featured on the popular breakfast show Dagbreek on KykNet.

Jacobus Kriel, our partner at JaC Productions that produces our video reviews for Bandwidth Blog TV, will be the face of Bandwidth Blog and will showcase gadget reviews and trending technologies.

You can watch this morning’s feature on KykNET’s website here. 

Catch Bandwidth Blog every Tuesday morning on Dagbreek at 07:14 am during the month of June.