Watch out Apple, Samsung means business with the Galaxy Tab. I wouldn’t mind owning one of these.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Tab during an electronics fair in Berlin. Instead of calling it a tablet, Samsung is calling the Galaxy Tab a smart media device.

The Galaxy Tab runs Android 2.2 with a 1Ghz Cortex A8 processor, 512MB RAM, and either 16 or 32 GB of internal memory upgradable through microSD cards.

Furthermore it features a 7″ TFT-LCD screen capable of 1024×600 resolution, 2 cameras, one a 3-megapixel with flash at the the back and the other a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera for video calling. Connectivity include WiFi and 3G.

Samsung claims that the Galaxy Tab will be capable of 7 hours battery life during movie playback, supporting a variety of formats like DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264.

The Galaxy Tab will be available from October through Vodafone in Europe, so there might just be hope for us South Africans to get our hand on this soon, perhaps before the iPad is available in South Africa.

Since Google Chrome’s first beta release two years back the browser has come a long way, holding more than 7.5% of the world browser market share. This may not sound like a lot, but if you compare it to browsers like Opera that has been in the market for more than than 10 years and only still hold 2.4%, its clear that Google Chrome is catching up on competitors.

Google Chrome version 6 marks the second anniversary of the Web Browser that is built around speed and simplicity. The new version 6 or Chrome features a built in flash plugin, minor modification to the look, form autofill, and extension and autofill syncronization across computers.

In addition, Google Chrome also kept its support for HTML 5 top notch, making it even more appealing as a browser of choice while keeping it fast, simple and secure.

A big thanks goes out to everybody that nominated iGeek for the South African Blog Awards, iGeek has been nominated in the categories of Best New Blog and Best Science and Technology Blog.

The next step before victory is claimed is for you to go and vote, voting for the South African Blog Awards will be open until the 17th of September 2010, from there the judges will also have a vote and then the winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on the 25th of September.

To vote for iGeek follow this link or simply click the South African Blog Awards badge on the right of the site. You can place a new vote every 24 hours with the same email address, so remember to place your votes every day.

Thank you very much for your loyal support.

With the relaunch of Cell C’s branding the company also announced that they will be launching a brand new 4G network capable of broadband speeds of up to 21Mbps.

Cell C is already advertising its new HSPA+ packages on its website, currently seems like there will be 2 packages available, one with a maximum speed of 7.2 Mbps and another with a maximum speed of 21.6 Mbps.

The two broadband offerings from Cell C comes in way bellow that of MTN and Vodacom working out R63 and R50 per GB respectively.

1. 7.2 Mbps capable modem with 2GB worth of data every month for 12 months at only R1499
2. 21.6 Mbps capable modem with 5GB worth of data every month for 12 months at only R2999

Availability of these new Cell C broadband packages will be made public later this week.

Microsoft will be increasing the price of their XBox Live Gold subscription fees for all members in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and United States. Chances are that if you are a South African and making use of XBox Live Gold to play online, you will be affected by the new pricing.

As of 1 November 2010 Microsoft will increase the price of certain XBox Live Gold subscription packages, US users have it worst as all subscriptions from the 1 Month to the 12 Month ones are subjected to the new pricing as detailed below.

If you make use of a UK account you will only be affected if you buy on a monthly basis, to avoid being affected by the new rates when they kick in why not upgrade your account now with a 12 month subscription at the normal price.

Another question that remains, now that South Africa will finally be getting Xbox Live soon, how will users currently making use of these overseas account transfer to the local accounts?

Some African countries like South Africa, Senegal, Ghana and Cameroon have already been making use of underwater fibre cables for Internet access since a few years back but due to the age and high bandwidth prices on the SAT3/Safe cable system these countries did not really have access to affordable high speed broadband.

Since the landing of Seacom in July 2009, African countries have been enjoying high speed Internet access at affordable rates and with numerous cables still to land in Africa, the speed of broadband in Africa is steadily on the rise while the prices are declining as the competition heats up.

With all these underwater cables landing in Africa, who cries king in terms of the fastest broadband speeds in Africa? According to tests conducted by users of African countries on Speedtest.net here is a list of the top 5 broadband countries in Africa:

Compared to the top rated broadband countries in the World, Africa still has a long way to go to catch up to avg. speeds of 34 or 24 Mbps, but its good to see that Africa’s top 5 countries has at least broken the 2 Mbps mark for average download speeds.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar Screenplay: Alejandro Amenábar, Mateo Gil Cast: Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Rupert Evans Time: 126min Age Restriction: 13VP

Genre:
Drama/Historical

Summary Review:
Agora will engage your intellect and educate you on ancient philosophy, all while taking you through an action-packed fight for a great city.

Synopsis:
Agora is set in Alexandria, Egypt in the 4th century A.D. The city’s people are a clashing mixture of pagans, who worship the ancient gods, Jews and Christians.

The pagan dignitaries at the Library of Alexandria become weary of the band of zealous Christians evangelising to “their” citizens and so they attack a group of Christians in the street. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ has spread like fire and there are more converts than they had expected.

The Christians soon overpower the pagans and eventually destroy their library.

Rachel Weisz plays Hypatia, the most renowned Egyptian philosopher of her time. She is a teacher at the Library and Agora focuses on the intellectual battle her and her students face in reconciling all that they know of science, astronomy and philosophy with the pagan religion of their ancestors and the new gospel of the Christians.

Hypatia has devoted her life to philosophy and it is in her nature to question theories and arrive at an understanding through logic and thought, while all around her chaos reigns as the Christians act out of passion for their faith, the Jews retaliate out of pride and revenge and the pagans fight blindly in fear of losing their tradition.

Agora has good casting, dialogue, settings, costumes and action sequences, but none of those factors are significantly better than other period pieces that we’ve seen.

What sets Agora apart, however, is the philosophical, religious and intellectual themes that are woven through the story at the heart of the fight for the city of Alexandria.

While it delivers on the prerequisites set for action, romance and character-crises, engaging your mind is Agora‘s greatest accomplishment and makes it unlike anything else you’re going to see at the cinema this year.

Agora will inspire many intense debates and discussions as people leave the cinema.

Since yesterday however Piggs Peak has shut down all operations issuing the following statement

Saturday, 28 Aug 2010

As you are aware we lost our application in the Pretoria High Court regarding the legality of South Africans playing on our Swaziland licensed internet casino which has serious implications for South African players. We are in the process of applying for leave to appeal the judgement and felt that we could continue operating in the interim. We have since been advised that we should stop operating for South African players until the matter has been resolved.

In your interests we have taken a decision to stop operating from midnight Saturday August 28 until application for leave to appeal has been heard and decided upon, which we feel should take no longer than a week or two.  All remaining player balances, will be held safely at Piggs Peak Casino Swaziland. You can cash in any balance by e-mailing support@piggspeak.com and your request will be processed.

Yours Sincerely,

Lew Saul Koor
Operations Director
Piggs Peak Casino

At the time of publishing this post, the Piggs Peak online casino website has been shut down only displaying the notice above on the homepage. Silversands is however still operational.

Maybe this is really the end of online poker and gambling in South Africa, whats your thoughts? Will you be withdrawing your funds ASAP?

The four NYU students have been coding away the past couple of months and at the beginning of last month put up a short demo of what they have been working. Now in a new blog post by the team they have set the date to release the code to public on 15 September 2010 by issuing the following statement: ”We have been coding. We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.”

Will the team of NYU students continue to improve on Diaspora after they open source the code on 15 September? The short answer is yes. In the blog post they also stated “We aren’t going to stop working after we release. Ilya and Raphael are taking leave from NYU, and we will continue to develop and maintain Diaspora as a long term project. We have shifted our development timeline accordingly, and the first release will be the beginning of something great, not a finished summer project.”

If Diaspora is anything to go by from what I have seen on their demo videos they may just have a success on their hands. Whether Diaspora is a “Facebook Killer” we will just have to wait and see, chances of users moving to another social network are slim unless you can convince you friends to move along, who knows maybe Diaspora can achieve this.

Will you make use of Diaspora once they release their code to the public?