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Gadgets to help you up your game NEVER SAY DIE WITH A RECHARGE STATION BORN IN THE RSA

These days when cellphone batteries die, people become miserable, and you don’t need that kind of negativity in your establishment! But help is at hand. The Mini Station from RiCharge is a great way to keep your patrons happy and generate income too. You don’t have to take responsibility for the phone because the owners keep them on them. It works like this: first, the patron asks for a charging tablet; then you take their ID, car keys, or a cash deposit as a security deposit; the patron can then recharge with his device at his side and once done, the patron returns the charging tablet and gets the deposit back. It’s up to you whether you offer this service free or charge for it. Each station comes with six power banks. Each unit holds up to 5000mAh on a full charge. Included are eight cables: two iPhone 4 cables, two iPhone 5/6 cables, Four Samsung/ Black Berry/ Nokia cables.

www.richarge.co.za

South Africans love their sport and there is no better way to watch it than relaxing with friends in front of a big-screen TV. Now Hisense is manufacturing the the 84-inch UltraHD TV, which features LED backlighting and a native resolution of 3840 x 2160. It’s just as good as anything else out there, but it has a distinct price advantage. That’s because it’s built in South Africa – lower taxes on locally-produced products mean the Hisense unit is cheaper than its competitors. The LCD panels are imported from the Hisense manufacturing plant in China but everything else, including circuit boards, is assembled in South Africa.

The 84-inch XT900 has a recommended retail price of R170 000, while the next-cheapest competitor is LG’s 84-inch LM9600, for R190 000. Similar performance models by Sony and Samsung go for R250 000 and R380 000.

CONNECT YOUR PATRONS WITH A WIRELESS ROUTER

Everybody wants WiFi these days, so why not make your patrons happy by providing it for them? All you need is a wireless router to connect other devices to your wireless local area network (WLAN). The Linksys WRT1900AC Wireless Router is one of the the most powerful routers on the market to date. It is very easy to use – you can set it up yourself in less than 10 minutes after taking it out of the box. It has remote access and management. Most importantly, it has a very powerful CPU promoting simultaneous high speed connections. Its high speed data processing allows the device to handle multiple users, which means your patrons are going to be overjoyed.

Specs:

• Bands: 2.4+5 GHz Dualband • Top Wi-Fi speed: 1300Mbps • Wired Ports: four (excluding WAN) • Antennas: four external (high performance) • WIFI router price : R4,067.00

www.linksys.com/za

GROW YOUR WEALTH WITH STOKFELLA

The Stokfella app is a world-class mobile solution that enables stokvels to organise, manage, communicate, visualise and be more efficient in growing their wealth. All stokvel payments, claims and meetings can be managed from your phone. Outstanding payments are recorded and notification messages are sent. You can also view your stokvel’s finances, goals and membership growth.

See more at www.stokfella.com

THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

If you are looking for a high-performance smartphone that costs under R8 000, you might want to look at at Xiaomi’s Mi 5. The Mi 5 comes equipped with Qualcomm’s current-fastest Snapdragon 820 chipset, which runs at 2.15GHz on the 64GB and 128GB iterations and a lower 1.8GHz on the 32GB version. The 128GB has a ceramic body which is reportedly harder to crack, while the 32GB and 64GB variants have a curved glass body. Both versions also house a fingerprint scanner in the “Home” button. The Mi 5 boasts 4GB of RAM, and the 128GB model is fitted with a 3 000mAh battery, which has delivered outstanding performance in tests.

The smartphone is available at Dion Wired, Makro, Incredible Connection, Takealot, hi-online.co.za and selected Foschini Group stores for R7 999, and can also be ordered through the official mia.africa.com/za portal.

ICAM HELPS PROTECT AND MONITOR FLEETS ACCOUNTING WITHOUT TEARS

One of the most stressful aspects of running a small business can be the process of keeping the books. Fortunately QuickBooks accounting software has been designed with the needs of the small business owner in mind. It’s all about saving time without adding to stress levels, and you can access it online, even on your phone. QuickBooks automates your tasks, from recurring invoices and bill payments to syncing data across bank and credit card transactions. Expenses can be reconciled and categorised automatically, so you don’t have to suffer through the tedious, time-consuming task of doing this for every single transaction by hand. QuickBooks can also save you from creating financial reports from scratch with the software’s wide collection of built-in reports. The online dashboard has a convenient top navigation bar and side menu for easy navigation. It gives information like income, overdue and paid invoices, expenses, profits and losses so you can have a snapshot of the health of your business. You can test QuickBooks with a free, 30-day trial.

For more information, visit http://quickbooks. intuit.co.za.

If you have a fleet of vehicles, monitoring them is a must. The iCAM 852 from iCAM Video Telematic sallows fleet owners to stream live videos from multiple vehicles and from multiple cameras. It is a four-camera mobile CCTV system and is manufactured locally. The iCAM 852 provides video solutions with combined vehicle tracking and fleet management capabilities. It will not only ensure reduced time to settle insurance claims, but fleet owners can now increase driver productivity, reduce fuel theft and increase load frequency with reduced turnaround times. Fleet owners can set auto record, time record, event record and manual record. All of this is done on top of the live tracking offered by normal tracking systems. It includes video and image verification, driver behaviour monitoring for risk reduction, goods monitoring for theft prevention and full fleet video telematics for monitoring and event management with traditional live tracking. With up to four cameras including the option of infra-red, the iCAM 852 now also offers live video streaming and continuous video recording while the vehicle ignition is turned on and for up to four hours after ignition is turned off. GPS is embedded into all recorded video data with GPS + Map trip playbacks.

For more information, contact iCAM on 08611 58527 or visit www.icamvideo.co.za.