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Every month I am privileged enough to write the Gadgets & Gizmos column in the Airport Magazine (±20 000 distribution) The Ballito Magazine (±10 000) & The Umhlanga Magazine (±10 000)

From this month, I would like to also share this on my blog, so will be posting these here in the first week of each month. Any suggestions on upcoming products, feel free to leave a comment below !

TOMTOM 1005 WORLD
www.tomtom.com
R4000

I was recently fortunate enough to review 3 exciting new products from the guys at Dion Wired, and being a GPS fanatic, was really excited to open the latest TomTom offering, the 1005 World Edition.

The TomTom 1005 World comes in at a fairly reasonable R4000 from Dion Wired, and is well worth it for the over 60 country maps that are included on the device. This included most of Europe, USA, Australia & Southern Africa. The fully capacitive 13cm touch screen, makes browsing on the device an absolute pleasure.

The GPS also includes a years worth of TomTom live services, which means you can find any locations via Local Search with Google, Tripadvisor, Expedia and loads more. You can also even tweet your ETA of your destination !

The HD Traffic updates are another feature I really enjoyed, which meant I had real-time access to traffic incidents in the area. The GPS also comes with an Easy Click Magnetic Mount which makes docking and undocking your device a breeze.

If you looking for an all round feature rich GPS device, I would highly recommend paying the few extra Rands for the 1005 World Edition.

 

Canon SX40 Powershot
www.canon.com
R4500

The PowerShot SX40 HS is a versatile compact 12. Megapixel point-and-shoot camera that easily captures amazing photos and videos. The advanced Canon technology delivers stunning image quality with reduced noise and blur, while the colours are more vibrant and white balance is true-to-life. The 35x Optical Zoom offers incredible reach and range, allowing you to shoot any scene, near or far.

The Powershot comes ready to use out the box, and offers full 1080p HD Movie record as well. This camera is a must if you are looking for a easy, simple to use camera without all the technicalities of a DSLR camera.

 

 

 

Acer Ultrabook RSE 02.033
www.acer.com
R11000

It seems the trend at the moment in the laptop market is, the thinner & lighter your laptop is, the more expensive it gets. That said, the price tag associated with the new Acer Ultrabook RSE 02.033 is indicative of its sheer power & brilliance.

The laptop boots up in record time, and sports a Intel Core i5 processor, with 4GB of Ram standard, and a versatile 250GB hard drive, while only weighing in at a measly 1.3kg’s.

Microsoft Windows 7 is included as a default operating system as well. The machine does however lack a LAN port and a CD Rom drive, but both of these seem to be disappearing as we move into a wireless world. 2 SD Card reader, HDMI Port & 2 USB ports however makes up for these missing elements. The extra long battery life of 15 hours ensures you will never be left stranded without power.

If you in the market for a laptop that is portable, versatile & super quick, I would highly recommend looking at the range of Acer Ultrabooks.

I have been putting together of all Mobile developed apps in South Africa. This is across all platforms, including, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 & Nokia.

The list is by no means complete, and there may well be lots of apps missing. The idea of the list is to be as “open source” as possible, with the community contributing. If you see a missing app, . There aren’t any specific rules & regulations for the submissions of apps, except that the app should be developed in South Africa & should be geared for South Africans. If you have developed an international app, that would also be awesome to see.

The list has grown quite a bit since I started collecting information last week, and has some interesting stats. Firstly iOS seems to be the most developed for platform in South Africa, with around 80 apps that I have come across personally. Android has 17, and BlackBerry & WP7 minimal. Nokia has a quite a few from Simon Botes & the guys at AppCraft.
What I also noticed is that the majority of apps in South Africa are free from the stores. This again proves that the “app culture” in South Africa is still in it’s infancy, and we have a long & exciting road ahead of us.

So, to see the list of apps I have already collected, head on over to the I have put together. Eventually, I will try and put this into some sort of a directory site. One day. You can see the doc here ->

If you see an app that is missing from the list, please please add it, using this Google Docs Form ->

You can also mail me details of your apps if you wish, and I will add it. Also, please feel free to add a comment below if you want with the details.

Looking forward to the list growing in South Africa, and doing a follow up post soon with some more interesting stats.

 

 

Well, it’s been just over a month since I started with the Global Trader Blogger challenge. So far, the experience has been pretty interesting, and I have learned a whole whack about trading.Overall, I am down on my initial amount, but that’s all part of the learning. Hoping to change that this week.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the markets have been behaving rather erratically since the conflict in North Africa, and the Earthquake/Tsunami that hit Japan. When it comes to trading on the back of things like this, there has to be a “moral question” to ask yourself. So, do you trade the Yen when you know it’s going to fall after an aftershock ? We haven’t gone down this road (yet), and I suppose there comes a time, when the morality question is reached, and you can put money down on those volatile trades.

What is interesting though is to watch the graphs in the Future Trader software that you use to trade with. You can follow any stock or currency or commodity you chose, and they have some interesting graphs to show you whats happening with that particular trade. Here is the graph for the Yen/Dollar over the last couple of weeks.

The software is awesome, and has live tracking of all prices, and I have found myself sitting and watching my trades bounce up and down for hours on end. It’s pretty fascinating ;)

I also been using the awesome tool from the guys at GT, called “The Wire“. I did mention this in my previous post, but this really is a great tool. If you have a twitter account, you will know what I mean. You can see all the latest trades (called twades) taking place, live, and you can even choose to follow them. You can also see the top performing portfolios and see what they been trading, and follow suit. I have been using The Wire quite a bit on my free simulated account, and so far it has been good, and I have followed a couple of really good trades.

So far, I have really enjoyed the Global Trader experience, and am looking forward to the next month to bring that balance back into the positive. I’ll be posting a couple of updates on my twitter account, as I make the trades as well.

If you keen to get into playing around on the stock market, sign up for a free evaluation with their campaign called, Whats Stopping You ? , and then get a FREE  simulated account.

 

It’s been just over 2 weeks since I kicked things off with stock trading with the guys from Global Trader. I suppose, in theory, it was possibly the 2 worst weeks to start trading in the stock market, thanks to a rather large earthquake in Japan, and some dodgy political decisions in Libya and North Africa in general.

But, that said, I have learnt a heck of a lot in these 2 weeks. The most important…that the Euro is a very very voliatile currency, and all it takes is some dude in Spain to say some arb speech, and the Euro gets stronger, and I lose out :(

My trader, Georgie, has been awesome. From the DM’s on twitter & phone calls to let me know whats happening on that day,  to answering every question I have, I honestly have learnt so much. The only real problem with Georgie though….is that she supports the Lions :/ But thats OK actually, at least it’s not the Sharks !!

So after 2 weeks I am down about 3K from my original R10,000 that we started with. My biggest loss was thanks to the Euro sky rocketing after we sold Euros in our first trade. We currently have another Euro trade open again, which is looking okish, so will keep an eye on it during the course of the day.

I have also been using the awesome tool on Global Trader called “The Wire” which is a twitter like feed of all the trades taking place. If you sit and watch this, you get a good idea of what are some of the good trades taking place, and what some of the bad ones are. It’s really handy, and I been following that and placing trades on my simulated trading account (which is free to sign up for), and seeing how those work out. So far, actually been pretty good :)

If you keen to get into playing aruond on the stock market, sign up for a free evaluation with their campaign called, Whats Stopping You ? , and then get a simulated account. It really is interesing to see how fickle & volatile the world is that we live in :)

Related articles

• European Stocks Open Slightly Lower (online.wsj.com)
• The Euro Is Sliding, And Stocks Are Negative In First Trading Since The Portugal Vote (businessinsider.com)