Our BlackBerry app for The Hiive has received a 4-star review in Rolling Stone magazine. We’d like to congratulate Hiive and the team of developers who created this application. Rolling Stone describes the super-app as a ‘digital nightlife community’, its available for download from thehiive.com or the BlackBerry App World.

Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style ‘walled gardens’

The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It’s scary.”

Read the full article here.

The tech world is wondering why Facebook forked out $1 billion for a company with 12 employees and no revenue. It’s not like Instagram was a real threat to the social network behemoth.

The guys over at Bandwidth Blog have some good theories as to why Facebook forked out so much money. Read all about it here.

We’ve all seen those drop tests where people drop thier phones from varying heights to see how durable they are. This test takes it one step further. See what happens when you shoot your iPad with an assault rifle.

Watch the rather pointless, but very entertaining video here.

Infographics might be a dime a dozen these days, but we still love the good ones. And why not? We get some pertinent info in easy to digest bite-sized chunks.  And most of them are incredibly interesting. For example did you know more iPhones are sold in a day than babies are born?

22million hours worth of old movies and TV shows are watched in a single day.

Find out what else happens on the internet in a single day – click here.

We all love constantly improved gadgets, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves why? Is bigger necessarily better?
Take, for example, Nokia’s new phone with a 41mp camera. That’s right a 41 megapixel camera on a phone.
Not even professional SLR camera’s  have that type of resolution.

I don’t know what Nokia is thinking, but I think they should be concentrating on getting their Windows OS to market rather than worrying about a camera that could never be as good as it sounds.

Read the full article on Forbes here.

Halliburton, based out of Houston, Texas, is one of the largest energy services companies in the world. It has operations in more than 70 countries and employs over 60,000 people.

Given that information, you can see why it’s such a big deal that the company has recently announced its intentions to ditch RIM’s BlackBerry platform in favor of the iPhone and iOS…

Read the full article here.

Even though many people thought that Google’s stand against SOPA was a little soft (all they did in protest was blackout their name), they still managed to collect an impressive 4.5 million signatures.

“Google generally gets in hot water when it is thought to be abusing its pole position in the search industry. But it’s no use denying that while some moves skirt the edges of abusing monopoly, others are more than welcome. During natural disasters, for instance, Google has provided helpful links and resources for people who want to donate or volunteer. And their logo doodles pay homage to personages and events many people would otherwise have overlooked.”
Read the full TechCrunch rticle here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/google-collected-4-5-million-anti-sopa-signatures-today/

You gotta love great infographics. The provide a wealth of (mostly) relevant information in an easy-to-digest usually humorous fashion. The latest from memeburn is no exception.

“Traditionally most people don’t like being called geeks or nerds, but the derogatory connotations associated with these words are being cast away like sand in the hourglass these days.”
See full article and infographic here: http://memeburn.com/2012/01/geek-or-nerd/

Pam Golding recently deployed a customized version of Fontera’s Mobile Classifieds platform in South Africa. Potential buyers are now able to search for properties that are on show in a specific area by texting the name of the suburb to 34440. The service replies with an SMS containing a link to a mobisite that displays pics and details of the properties on show in that area.

Give it a try SMS SHOW and the name of your area to 34440.