Leaf, the distributor of HTC products in South Africa, has just announced via Twitter that the Paid Android Market will be available in South Africa soon.

To date South Africans only had access to all the free apps through the Android Market, but soon we will get to experience paid apps also.

The tweet by Leaf states that the paid-for Android Marketplace will be available to South Africans from the 2nd quarter of 2011. This will enable us to get the latest and greatest content on the Android Market charged straight to our credit cards.

The introduction of Paid Apps in the Android Market it not only just good news for local Android users, but this also opens up a whole new world for our local developers enabling them profit from building Android applications for the local market.

MXit has started out as a simple instant messaging platform that offered users a cheap way to communicate but since has grown into a network of 27 million users strong with messaging, gaming, media, counseling and library functionality.

Here is a nice infographic put together by Eshaam Rabaney about MXit.

Click to view larger version.

Yet another group buying website has opened up shop in South Africa, this time backed by Avusa Media who owns local titles such as The Times, Sowetan, Sunday World and Elle.

The launch of Zappon short for South African Coupon, draws on a trend that is part of a word wide phenomenon called group buying lead by Groupon. Group buying has picked up tremendously with local consumers with no less than 14 group buying sites already operating within South Africa and one of them already bought out by Groupon.

“We know we are entering an incredibly competitive market at the moment but feel this is the perfect timing for the launch of Zappon.co.za,” said Mr. Elan Lohmann, Zappon creator and GM of Avusa Media LIVE.

The fact that Zappon is owned and operated by a large media company may see them rise to the top of local group buying scene, seeing as they have instant access to to an audience of more than 2.5 million readers through their various newspapers and not to mention the radio stations they own.

With such a large media presence, Zappon will also not have a problem finding great deals to offer their clients through their contacts with Advertisers from Avusa’s range of media companies.

Zappon is however no different from the other local group buying sites, they will also offer consumers between 40-90% off luxury deals such as spa treatments and meals.

Some may say that the local group buying scene is becoming too overcrowded but for consumers this just means more and greater deals on offer and at the end of the day the site offering the best deals will cry king.

Facebook Places, the location check-in service by Facebook has for a while now been active to allot of countries with exception of South Africa.

It seems as if Facebook Places has now officially been activated for South African Facebook users, I picked up on this when Gary Meyer tweeted asking if Facebook just launched Places in South Africa and I quickly fired up my Facebook application to check.

Using the Facebook for Android application I was able to view check-ins of my friends and also it allowed me to check into places as well. Other users have also reported that its working on the Facebook iPhone app.

Whether this is a bug or the official release of Facebook Places in South Africa we will just have to wait and see, as Facebook has made no official statement on their blog yet about the roll out of Facebook Places to other countries.

Does Facebook Places work for you?

[UPDATE]
I just checked out the Facebook Touch site and it seems that Places has also been activated there.

MWEB the company that stunned the local ADSL market exactly a year ago by offering South Africans cheap uncapped ADSL is at it again and this time they are taking on expensive hosting prices.

Hosting your site locally could set you back quite a few bucks, and thus many people running sites has opted to rather host internationally than locally, but MWEB is again changing the landscape of the local Internet space.

MWEB has just announced their new uncapped local hosting offering, bringing local hosting prices in line with that of international ones. The new MWEB Uncapped Hosting will allow users to host their sites locally without any bandwidth or storage restrictions from as little as R19 per month.

The new local uncapped hosting offering is aimed at small businesses and individuals and includes a free “co.za” domain which will automatically renew every year, plus a free email address with up to 5 aliases and will operate on a shared hosting environment.

It has to be noted that although the service is uncapped there is a acceptable usage policy in place to prevent users from setting up media farms where they can download movies and share it amongst others.

Good news for MWEB ADSL subscribers is that they may make use of the Uncapped Hosting package free of charge for the first 12 months, after which the R19/month fee may apply, this excludes 1GB customers.

I for one am happy to see this change in the local hosting space as it was long overdue, now its just a matter of time before other hosting providers like WebAfrica, Afrihost and RSAWEB respond to this and we will see the whole ADSL price war all over again but this time for hosting.

SEACOM the undersea cable notorious for bringing South Africans cheap international bandwidth has broken down yet again, leaving lots of South African with limited or no international Internet connectivity at all.

Clients of ISPs making use of SEACOM started reporting connectivity issues from 23:30 last night. MWEB released a statement on Twitter that the cable break is in Cairo and related to a curfew in region engineers delayed to fix.

MWEB is currently running at 65% of its international capacity and in an attempt to provide customers with a pleasant browsing experience during the outages, has cut all P2P traffic. This means that service like bittorrent will not function during the outage.

Many ISP’s has raised concern with one SEACOM client saying that they must really get off this cable system as the “failure rate is ridiculous”.

What are your thoughts? Can you live with cable breaks as long as you have access to cheap Internet?

Since Google acquired publishing platform Blogger in 2003 nothing much has really changed when it comes to looks for the 11 year old blogging platform, but Google has big plans.

Blogger may be the sixth largest websites in the world but when you compare it to the likes of WordPress, the blogging platform does not stack up very well. Taking into consideration how well the adoption of WordPress has taken up with online publishers one might even argue that WordPress has overtaken Blogger.

Seems like Google is feeling the threat from WordPress and announced in a blog post that 2011 will be an exciting year for the Blogger platform with the introduction of a brand new next-generation user interface that will go live later this year.

Below is two screenshot Google shared of how the new Blogger dashboard and post editor will look.

So what do you think? I think it looks pretty cool and refreshed.

For me the XBox Kinect is one of the hotest gadgets available in the gaming market today and it seems that others tend to agree with me.

Microsoft has announced that their XBox Kinect system has officially hit the 10 million units sold mark and that is in only a few months making it the fastest selling gadget on earth. Rightfully so, the Kinect has earned its place in the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition as the fastest selling consumer electronics device.

“The sales figures here speak for themselves,” said Gaz Deaves, Gaming Editor for Guinness World Records. “According to independent research, no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.”

The Kinect has sold on average 133 333 units daily in its first 2 months of launch totaling more than 8 million units over the period.

Do you own a Kinect? Tell us what games you enjoy.

Flipboard the social magazine for the iPad has just released a new version in time for the release of the iPad 2.

The new Flipboard now features support for iPhone photo sharing service Instagram, allowing you to view and interact with your Instagram feed straight from you iPad.

In addition to Instagram support, Flipboard also added a new social search functionality, a first of its kind, that allows you to search across all your social networks and blogs straight from the Flipboard app.

Flipboard also added some speed enhancements to the app, with content now loading up twice as fast as before. They have also added a new reload button at the top of the app that allows you to reload your content when you want to.

Asked in an interview with Robert Scoble whether Flipboard are looking into other tablets, CEO of Flipboard Mike McCue responded that they are currently just focusing on the iPad and there are just so much stuff they would like to do before going to other platforms.

Go check out the new Flipboard app available in the Apple iTunes App Store.

Apple has released the long awaited iOS 4.3 a few days ahead of schedule, initially it would have been released on Friday alongside the all new iPad 2 but Apple has released it a few days earlier.

With iOS 4.3 comes the much awaited WiFi hotspot feature for iPhones enabling users to share their iPhone 4′s 3G with up to 3 other devices through WiFi.

The iOS 4,3 update includes the following new features and improvements:

• Personal Hotspot for iPhone 4
- Share iPhone 4 cellular data connection with up to 5
devices (combination of up to 3 Wi-Fi, 3 Bluetooth,
and 1 USB)
• iTunes Home Sharing
- Play music, movies and TV shows from a shared iTunes
library on a Mac or PC (requires iTunes 10.2)
• New AirPlay features for use with Apple TV
- Play videos from the Photos app including the Camera
Roll album, iTunes previews, enabled third-party apps
and websites on Apple TV
- Play slideshows from Photos on Apple TV using
transitions available on Apple TV
• Faster Safari performance with Apple Nitro JavaScript
engine
• HD video out using the Apple Digital AV Adapter for iPhone 4, iPad and iPod touch (4th generation)
- View 720p HD videos from Videos app, iPod app,
Photos, YouTube, Safari, Keynote, and enabled
third-party apps on an HDMI display
• Ping features
- Push notifications for comments and follow requests
- Post and Like songs directly from the Now Playing
screen
- Parental controls
• New Settings
- Messages setting for number of times to repeat an
alert
- iPad side switch setting to lock screen rotation or mute
audio notifications and sound effects
• Single tap conference call dialing with a pause to send
a passcode
• Bug fixes