News

Promising Productivity through Pomodoro

A decrease in productivity has been a well-documented pandemic-era side-effect – this may have something to do with the fact that we have spent the past year living in various stages of collective trauma, having all undoubtedly been affected in different ways by COVID-19 and the impact it’s had across the board on a global scale. In an effort to counteract the drop in productivity levels, particularly in those who have had to transition from an office environment to a makeshift ‘coffice’ (coffee-shop office) or home office and all the new and inevitable distractions that tend to come with these.

So what is one to do when the when the distractions creep into view […]

Carrying out qualitative research under lockdown – Practical and ethical considerations

How can qualitative researchers collect data during social-distancing measures? Adam Jowett outlines several techniques researchers can use to collect data without face-to-face contact with participants. Bringing together a number of previous studies, he also suggests such techniques have their own methodological advantages and disadvantages and that while these techniques may appear particularly apt during the coronavirus crisis, researchers should take time to reflect on ethical issues before re-designing their studies READ MORE

Adam Jowett

April 20th, 2020  

Birdwatch has its eye on you

Misinformation is rife across social media (and the internet as a whole), and it’s something that’s arguably been exacerbated by Covid-19 and our reliance on social and digital sources of news. However, as you well know – just because it’s on social media or the internet, doesn’t mean that it’s true, accurate or factual in anyway. So how are social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram coming to the party in order to ensure that they are contributing positively to the eradication of misinformation, rather than purely providing a platform for it to flourish uninhibited?

Twitter is one of the world’s most well utilised social networking sites, defined by its ‘blow-by-blow’ […]

The ‘right to disconnect’ from your emails

E-mails have become synonymous with the workplace, with our definition of productivity, and as of late, a meaningful way to engage, communicate or collaborate with colleagues and clients alike. It has also become a metric in terms of how we quantify our levels of productivity as well as ensuring that our respective bosses are able to see ‘just how busy’ we really are. But, is this a true indication of all of these things, or is it just a way to quell any feelings of work place inadequacies, or a way to avoid the phone while still connecting with others? It’s hard to imagine a time before emails, or an […]

Paying it forward farming-app

Covid-19 necessitated rapid digital transformation worldwide with an increased reliance on most digital platforms to enable daily functionalities that used to take place face to face, including the provision of alternative means of communications and product distribution channels in order to ensure COVID compliance accommodate world-wide lockdowns and minimise the risk of spreading the virus as much as possible. Apps also became a way to creatively solve unique problems that the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic presented, some of which originated on home soil to work towards solving some of South Africa’s bigger problems.

One such platform is OneShare Farms which was first introduced in November last year and is the product of an […]

Bitcoin biting back

As we said goodbye to the historically challenging year that was 2020, we looked to 2021 with a certain sense of hope that COVID would be something that we could look to contain and perhaps even overcome through the mass global rollout of a variety of vaccines. However, as a tough 2020 drew to a close, it introduced a few, unwanted tag-a-longs in the form of new Corona virus variants, one being detected in South Africa, the other more prominent in the United Kingdom – although since then the new variants have made their way into other countries too. Now the somewhat comforting prospect of being able to combat COVID-19 through the rollout of […]

The COVID Vaccination Conundrum

As we said goodbye to the historically challenging year that was 2020, we looked to 2021 with a certain sense of hope that COVID would be something that we could look to contain and perhaps even overcome through the mass global rollout of a variety of vaccines. However, as a tough 2020 drew to a close, it introduced a few, unwanted tag-a-longs in the form of new Corona virus variants, one being detected in South Africa, the other more prominent in the United Kingdom – although since then the new variants have made their way into other countries too. Now the somewhat comforting prospect of being able to combat COVID-19 through the rollout […]

The battle of the privacy policies- Facebook Vs. Apple

Facebook and its subsidiaries have been in the news a lot lately due to their recent and somewhat ‘controversial’ updates to their respective privacy policies, predominantly around Whatsapp. The updates to Whatsapp’ s privacy and user policies came into effect in February 2021 and included changes in terms of the types of personal data that is shared with the company. While the messaging service still remains end-to-end encrypted, the amount of metadata shared has increased which in turn allows the App and the company behind it to paint a much more colourful picture of its end user across some personal details, as well as their usage statistics. The […]

Much to-do about WhatsApp

By now it’s safe to assume that most of the world has heard about the upcoming updates to WhatsApp’s privacy policy. The news has sent many into a tizzy because of the ramifications this will have in terms of access to the App as well as what the App can and is likely to do with all the additional information that it will be tracking from a user perspective. This change in WhatsApp’s terms of service and privacy policy provides users with an ultimatum – you either agree with the updated terms of service and use, or you will no longer have access to the App. This will come into effect mid-February, therefore […]

501Y.V2 – the latest COVID-19 kid on the block

Gone are the days where our referrals to ‘Mutants’ and ‘mutations’ were mostly applicable to the fiction or sci-fi film genre. Nowadays when we speak about mutations and mutants, it is unfortunately COVID related. Over the last two months, there have been a few variants of the current COVID-19 virus that have been detected across the world. The World Health Organisation is the main entity that these variations of the COVID-19 strain are reported to as they “routinely assesses if variants of SARS-CoV-2 result in changes in transmissibility, clinical presentation and severity, or if they impact on countermeasures, including diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.” One of the mutations responsible […]