Independent Apple resellers Digicape and Project 3 last week announced their plans to merge and form a single, premium provider of Apple products to the South African market.

Digicape itself is the product of a merger that took place back in 2001, when two small Apple resellers teamed up to take on the market. Digicape director, Robin Olivier, says, “We see the merger with Project 3 as being a natural progression of the strategy, but now rather than just looking for scale, we are looking to benefit from the significant combined strengths of each business to create an unsurpassed Apple experience for our customers.”

Although Digicape and Project 3 compete in a number of markets, each has its own particular strengths: Digicape dominates in the tertiary education, photographic and visual markets, while Project 3 is stronger in the primary and secondary education sector, and has captured a large share of the audio and video market.

Alan Goldberg, director at Project 3 says, “By pooling our resources we can ensure that all our customers get exactly what they need, with additional services readily on tap. We can offer a total package of market insight, basic to advanced training, excellent customer service and a depth of technical expertise through our Apple service centres.”

It seems that integration will take place slowly rather than suddenly. Olivier says that they plan to ensure that no-one – whether staff member, supplier or customer – is left behind in the process.

During the first phase of the merger the two companies will work together at a management level to find ways to play to the strengths of each business. So for instance, if you buy a product from the Digicape store you might be offered training at Project 3, while if you’re searching for a product on the Project 3 website you may be pointed to Digicape’s online store instead.

Digicape has stores in both Johannesburg and Cape Town, while Project 3 is based exclusively in Cape Town.

MWEB recently made an unexpected – but very welcome – move towards cheaper internet access for South Africans, when they pulled the wrappers off their new uncapped ADSL offering.

Although broadband prices have dropped in the past, two things make it a little different this time: firstly, this is the first time an ISP has offered significantly reduced prices on uncapped ADSL, and secondly, MWEB is arguably the best-known ISP to the average South African – which could mean that we’re about to witness a shift in the way ordinary, non-technical people use the web. Or put differently: it’s only a matter of time before your gran starts downloading torrents.

MWEB’s new data-only packages are as follows:

384Kbps shaped – R219
512Kbps shaped – R299
4Mbps shaped – R539
384Kbps unshaped – R499
512Kbps unshaped – R699
4Mbps unshaped – R1,999

The company is also offering six all-inclusive packages, where the ADSL line rental cost is included in the price:

384Kbps shaped – R349
512Kbps shaped – R599
4Mbps shaped – R899
384Kbps unshaped – R629
512Kbps unshaped – R999
4Mbps unshaped – R2,359

Over the past week, a few other ISPs have scrambled to follow suit, having apparently been caught somewhat off-guard by MWEB’s announcement. None of the new packages produced so far differ significantly from MWEB’s pricing, though.

Gigabyte have signed up The Parlotones, purveyors extraordinairé of mediocre radio rock, to sell their latest line of notebooks. You’ll see Kahn, Glenn, Paul and Neil* staring into different directions and looking suitably unimpressed in the latest NAG, punting the new M1305 series lappy. For diehard Parlotones fans, there will also be a “limited edition” version available with the band’s logo gloriously spread out on the top.

A Rectron sales agent confirmed that the Special Edition laptop comes in two versions, retailing at around R7 000 and R8 600 respectively, and sales of the branded compooters are coming on nicely. To each his own, we suppose, to each his own.

Comes with Bluetooth, Windows 7 and the most depro CPU on the market.

* Doesn’t have the same ring as John, Paul, George and Ringo, now does it?

Web Africa is busy working up its new network, and the South African company has just announced a trial for its new tier 1 ADSL network. The company is inviting anyone with an ADSL line and a router to take part in the trial and is offering a 10 GB free bandwidth to those who accept.

Clearly, the offer will have a number of people interested — since everyone loves free bandwidth — so they have capped the number of free accounts to 5,000.

The company says that the new network will allow it to offer better services to its customers, as Web Africa will no more be required to adjust with the requirements of other providers. Also, this free trial will help the company to fine tune the network and ensure that they don’t run into any problems when the service officially rolls out.

“The decision to launch our own ADSL network has been made specifically with our customers in mind,” says Matthew Tagg, CEO of Web Africa. “Not only will we now have more freedom to offer new products and services to our users, we will be able to offer the very best service at an affordable price. Our goal is to optimise our network according to what our customers need for their various internet usages.”

Their plan is to make the shift to the new network as smooth as possible, once the trials are over, existing customers will be moved to the new network, without any change in services offered, subscriptions, and/or the pre-paid costs.

Have you made it to the 5,000. How is it?

Google has announced that street view’s latest destination will be South Africa. Soon, Toyota Prius models mounted with cameras will start their journey across cities of South Africa, taking pictures along the way. Cities to be included in the Google Maps Street View are Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and Durban.

Google’s Street View is a very popular service that currently includes a number of major metropolitan areas across the globe, where cars fit with directional cameras did the job of capturing the 360 degrees view from the street. In some locations, Google also used a trike to capture images, though it is not immediately clear if they will be used in South Africa as well.

Where available, Street View can be accessed by zooming-in to the lowest level, or by using the “Pegman” icon on a highlighted street. Also, roaming about in the environmentally friendly hybrid Prius helps to give Google’s image a boost, while bringing good PR for the Prius as well. Once the images have been collected, they go through a process of being “stitched” together, and may only be available on street view after several months.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Google and supplying our fuel efficient and environmental friendly Prius for this groundbreaking project in South Africa. South Africans and international visitors alike will benefit tremendously from Street View, which is both fun and practical. We hope that people across South Africa’s major cities keep their eyes peeled for the Street View cars, and feel part of a major new initiative,” said Toyota’s Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing, Andrew Kirby.

There’s been a lot of rumors and speculation surrounding the 3G iPhone coming to the shores of Africa. As many naysayers have annouced, “Even South Africa has no iTunes Music Store and the Apple presence in South Africa is meager”. All this deliberation has been proven inaccurate as Vodacom announced they’ll be offering the 3G iphone to their customers by the 20th of July 2008, this is part of the ten-country deal that Vodafone has signed with Apple to supply the iPhone to the continent.

It is expected that the new iPhone will come in a variety of colours and with 3G connectivity, integrated GPS and other new exciting features. South Africa will undoubtedly receive this version of the device.