Welcome back![](https://www.bizcommunity.com/b/1301/211859.jpg?1) Well, Mangaung has come and gone - as has the end of the world, the festive season and New Year, and we've survived them all and now we're back on stream with our newsletters. Taking centre stage has been the violent protests by farmworkers in the Western Cape. These protests need to be brought to an end; they're damaging Brand SA and have the potential to seriously curb exports (and hence foreign earnings) as customers overseas turn to more reliable suppliers. On the education front, the Matric pass rate increased to 73.9% but critics are asking whether a requirement of 30% to pass is enough to equip school-leavers with an adequate standard of education. Many employers reckon not - they're prepared to train new staff in the roles the new recruits will have to take up in the company - but those recruits need to be literate and enumerate to a level that will enable them to acquire and apply their new knowledge properly. If you're in business, you're in IT... perhaps not directly, but every time you use a computer, you're operating within the IT world. So what are the 23 business attitudes to IT security you should be looking at? Kaspersky Lab research has some answers for you. Finally, for all you petrol heads out there, our scorchingly good-looking motoring editor Henrie Geyser takes you for a drive in the Mercedes SL 500 and shows off his tough, rugged side with the Land Cruiser 70 double cab. Rod Baker: Content Director
Submit your company news to itnews@bizcommunity.com. Exclusive contributions may be sent to contributors-it@bizcommunity.com. Top stories
[Johan Botes] Here are some resolutions for 2013 for you that you, as an employer, may well find useful. Get them right now - and avoid any unpleasant surprises during the year. Read more >>
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: South Korea's LG Electronics started selling new generation television sets on Wednesday (2 January) that use organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) that the company hopes will give it an edge of its giant rival Samsung. Read more >>
SAN FRANCISCO, USA: LinkedIn on Wednesday (9 January) announced that more than 200m people have joined the career-focused online social network since its launch nearly a decade ago. Read more >>
[Zeenat Moorad] By global standards, the e-commerce platform in South Africa is small, but online retail sales have shown a steady increase over the past five years as the one-time timidness of shoppers takes a back seat and a growing number of time-poor and techno-savvy consumers turn to the Internet. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121407.jpg) It's reckoned that vulnerabilities in social networks and mobile devices will be the major targets of cyber-criminals in 2013 and vulnerabilities in Java and Adobe will be widely used as a point of entry to infect computers. Read more >>
OAKLAND, USA: A federal judge on Wednesday (2 January) rejected Apple's claim of false advertising after Amazon.com referred to its online shop for mobile gadget applications as an Appstore. Read more >>
[Alistair Anderson] Mobile device applications (apps) are not marketed well enough in South Africa to make substantial money for their developers or companies, according to World Wide Worx. Read more >>
[Ian Goss-Ross] If contact centres aren't preparing to embrace these six key trends, they have already fallen behind. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/122007.jpg) You are a businessman or an expert responsible for critical decisions related to IT security, but you have a tough schedule. You are hunting for any piece of information that will illuminate the latest trends and facilitate obtaining more expertise in this field, but don't have time for visiting profile events or learning new technologies. Still you have to be aware about the actual situation around cyber security. Kaspersky Lab research might help you - it reflects what other IT specialists and business leaders, probably your colleagues or partners, thought about the IT security situation in 2012. Read more >>
[Thabiso Mochiko] This year could mark the beginning of a major turning point for Telkom as if faces tough competition from mobile service providers and more people ditch their landlines. Read more >>
[Nick Hedley] JSE-listed Naspers is now less of a media company and more a diversified technology investor - becoming one of few global conglomerates to achieve this feat. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121280.jpg) Pieter Verkade has been appointed MTN's new chief commercial officer from February next year. Read more >>
The computer systems at the Marlboro licensing and testing station in Johannesburg were offline on Tuesday, (8 January) according to the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). Read more >>
[Ntsakisi Maswanganyi] Continued global uncertainty‚ coupled with internal factors such as drought and associated food shortages‚ threaten Africa's economic growth prospects‚ warns International Monetary Fund's (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde. Read more >>
Cash-strapped parents are turning to financial institutions to get study loans so that their children can go to university as the costs for tertiary education continue to rise sharply Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121880.jpg) Employment in South Africa increased by an annualised rate of 0.8% in December‚ showing there were 12‚556 new jobs according to the latest Adcorp employment index that was published on Thursday (10 January). Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121267.jpg) Offering access to magazines, news, weather, games, and movie information and trailers, Samsung Electronics has partnered with South African online publishing company OnMag Online Publications to launch onTV, exclusively for the Samsung Smart TV range. Read more >>
SAN FRANCISCO, USA: US readers are increasingly opting for digital books instead of ink-and-paper editions, according to a Pew Research Center study released at the end of December Read more >>
NEW YORK - Apple has agreed to drop its patent claims against Samsung's Galaxy S III Mini after the South Korean rival said it would not sell the gadget in the United States, according to a court filing lodged last week. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/122060.jpg) RESTON, US: comScore, Inc has released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the US search marketplace. Google Sites led the explicit core search market in December with 66.7% of search queries conducted. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/122058.jpg) RESTON, US: comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 182 million US Internet users watched 38.7 billion online content videos in December, while video ad views totaled 11.3 billion. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/122018.jpg) SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: Samsung Electronics said on Monday (14 January) that global sales of its flagship Galaxy S smartphones had topped 100m since the first model debuted in 2010, cementing its dominant position over US rival Apple. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121916.jpg) LAS VEGAS, USA: It can talk to your car, your refrigerator, water your plants and help you stay fit and healthy: the smartphone is become the consumer's remote control for life. Read more >>
WASHINGTON, USA: Aaron Swartz, an Internet genius who helped deliver new Web content to users by co-developing Reddit and RSS before later becoming a digital activist, has committed suicide. He was 26. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121861.jpg) SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Reports echoing online on Tuesday (8 January) fuelled speculation that Apple is tailoring a low-price version of the iPhone for China and other emerging markets. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121857.jpg) BERLIN, GERMANY: The Digital Innovators' Summit 2013 conference is coming and here are more details about the programme. Conference sessions include: Read more >>
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM: In a bid to seize the initiative from increasingly sophisticated online criminals, the European Union unveiled a new cybercrime centre on Wednesday (9 January). Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121768.jpg) NEW YORK, US: The final 2012 Awards deadline has been extended to 15 January. Don't miss this final opportunity to enter the 2012 awards. There are only 6 days left. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121691.jpg) SAN FRANCISCO, US: Registration is now open for the Open Business Conference - OSBC 2013! Sign up today and receive reduced admission - US$595 (regularly US$895) Read more >>
SAN FRANCISCO, US: Apple and Google extended their dominance in the US smartphone market as 2012 neared its close, industry tracker comScore has said. Read more >>
LAS VEGAS, USA: Videogames are moving further into the Internet cloud with new devices and services unveiled at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121681.jpg) LAS VEGAS, US: Giles Cottle, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media comments from CES in Las Vegas and says Samsung and Sony are a tale of two panel makers. Read more >>
[Subhash Chandra] NOIDA (UP), INDIA: Unlike the traditional forms of marketing such as advertising, wherein almost everything has been said and done, search marketing is still dynamically growing and best practices are invented day in and day out. Every year, search engine marketers get filled with anticipation wondering what would emerge as the "next big thing" in search marketing. Read more >>
LAS VEGAS, USA: The global technology industry has become a tale of two sectors, with mobile devices surging at the expense of older electronics that are struggling, a forecast shows. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121509.jpg) RESTON, US: comScore, Inc has released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the US mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending November 2012. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1301/121457.jpg) MOSCOW, RUSSIA: Kaspersky Lab's experts have outlined key security trends of 2012 and presented their views on the core threats of 2013. The most notable predictions for the next year include the continued rise of targeted attacks, cyber-espionage, and nation-state cyber-attacks, the evolving role of hacktivism, the development of controversial "legal" surveillance tools, and the increase in cybercriminal attacks targeting cloud-based services. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121433.jpg) LONDON, UK: The introduction of analytics to Google+ pages and communities will be key in ensuring that brands continue to invest time and resource into the social network, according to integrated PR, search and social media agency Punch Communications. Read more >>
[Veronica Clyde] SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, US: VPN services, while not pricey, can be perceived as an inconvenient expense. You may wonder if it's worth buying a VPN package when you can just use anonymity services for free... Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121392.jpg) LONDON, UK: According to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media, almost two-thirds of the handsets sold in China this year are powered by the Android OS: China is its largest single market, a third of the Android devices sold in 2012 were sold in China. Read more >>
![](https://biz-file.com/c/1212/121339.jpg) LONDON, UK: Informa Telecoms & Media today revealed its Top 10 trends for 2013 for the telecoms and media sectors. Five of the predictions relate directly to telecoms operators and the other five cover the TV, digital media and OTT communications sector. Read more >> More International...
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