After threatening to pull out of the People’s Republic following hacks on its systems, internet search giant Google is likely to make good on its warning and is preparing to shutdown its operations in China according to an insider at the company who spoke to the Wall Street Journal last week.

Google Search is one of the last major international internet services accessible in China after the government in that country banned Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and several other sites in 2009, making them inaccessible to local internet users. (more…)

It’s official – video game company Valve announced today that its Steam gaming service is coming to the Mac, along with a native version of gaming engine Source that will bring with it popular titles such as the Half Life series, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Most important is the fact that Valve is not using emulation to make this all happen, as some suspected it would. Emulation would see the original versions of the games being played on the Mac in a spoofed Windows environment. Instead the developer has created a native version of its gaming engine – built for OS X. (more…)

iBurst has made many gamers’ dreams come true with its introduction of a service that provides uncapped ADSL bandwidth for gaming traffic, levied at R99 per month. There is a catch, however – you have to play on iBurst’s servers.

The service is called iGame Unlimited and is being offered as part of iBurst’s iDSL service that is being launched this month and offers ADSL bandwidth from R49 per gigabyte. If you have an iDSL account with iGame Unlimited bolted on then any gaming traffic isolated to the iBurst network and servers will not be deducted from your quota.

iBurst says it already has servers running for Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty 4 and a range of other games and will take its lead from subscribers when deciding on what servers to add. A list of servers currently online can be found over here. iBurst also claims to be in talks with Activision and Blizzard to get a local World of Warcraft server on the network.

It is uncertain as to whether the service will be extended to console gamers – iGame Unlimited is currently limited to PC games.

iBurst has also launched a community site called iGame Online where its community of subscribers can interact.

There’s a new cult in town. You might’ve heard about it already. You may even be a member. If you haven’t, and you’d like to preserve the precious little time you have, stay away from PopCap’s new insanely addictive game – Plants vs. Zombies.

I started playing this tower-defence-type title on my Macbook and now it’s spread onto my iPhone. I can’t get enough. I may need help. (more…)

On Friday 19 February 2010 we celebrated the 100th episode of the ZA Tech Show with our first ever live broadcast. The show has been going since somewhere in early 2008 and we have consistently released an episode every week with the exception of a week or two over the festive season. Taking the show live was a big step, not just from a technology perspective, but also in making the switch from an audio-only podcast to a live video and audio netcast.

Sitting back and reflecting over the past two years makes me realise how lucky we are to have enjoyed the support that we have from our families, friends and fans. The show owes its survival to the support of a group of the most awesome people I’ve met – but more about them later. (more…)