The Information Stuper-Highway
I know you were probably thinking that the biggest tech news of the week was Apple's unveiling of the new "refreshed" iPods, but that's because you don't live in South Africa. Of course, if you lived in South Africa, you wouldn't likely know about the the new iPods, because the internet is so slow over there that you are better off sending information by carrier pigeon.
To drive home the point about how bad broadband service is in the country, a local call center business called The Unlimited took 4GB of data on a memory stick, tied it to leg of a carrier pigeon named Winston, and sent him off on the 50 mile journey from Howick in South Africa’s Kwazulu-Natal province to Durban, while attempting to download an equally sized file at the same time.
Any guesses who won?Including the time it took download the information onto and then off off the memory stick, Winston got the job done in just over two hours, the same time it took for the computer to complete just 4% of the download.
Sadly for South Africans, none of the new iPod's features include straps that allow the mini music players to be easily affixed to Winston's leg.
