Author: Cyrus

Three app developers, one each from Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, have been selected to pitch live for Best App of the Year at the 6th Annual Mobile Premier Awards on February 27th, in Barcelona –  coinciding with the Mobile World Congress. Two Kenyans, Christine Ampaire and Anne Githuku-Shongwe are among the 3 app developers selected to pitch at the premier event. All the 3 are among the top 20 global apps submitted for the AppCircus 2011 World Tour. Each finalist was selected by an international jury of mobile industry heavyweights, including experts from Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla out of 47 other…

Samsung has today launched its second Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy in Africa . The academy which is based  Nairobi, Kenya came into being as a result of Samsung’s core vision to fast-track the entry of African youths into the electronics job market. The  Engineering Academy program has an initial short-term goal to develop 10 000 Electronics Engineers across the continent by 2015, and align to the vision of various continent’s government key being, to encourage entrepreneurship and self-employment initiatives. For a start, the first 120 students for the Engineering Academy will be selected from Samsung E-learning Centers located at PC…

Airtel Kenya has today launched a promotion where its customers will get up to 100 SMSs daily. The offer is available to prepaid customers for one month starting today till the 29 February 2012. Customers only need to send the first 3 paid for SMS to any Airtel number to qualify. Each of the first 3 SMS are charged Kshs1/ per SMS making it only KSh3/- for 100 SMSs daily.  The Free SMS are valid for one day for Airtel-Airtel SMS only. The customers will enjoy the SM’S automatically after sending the 3 SMS. The offer is open to all…

Intel has indicated that it will be unveiling “A New Era in Computing” into the East Africa market – with the launch of various Ultrabooks. Intel East Africa General Manager, Danie Steyn says Intel’s vision for the Ultrabook is to deliver a no-compromise, complete, satisfying and securer computing experience in one device. Ultrabooks are some of the thinnest and lightest PCs. Intel east Africa promises to deliver some Ultrabooks which will be going for as low as under $1,000 (Kshs.85,000) in the local market. The only available Ultrabooks in the Kenyan market currently are the Samsung Series 9 and Apple…

I have been a blogger for sometime now and I both love and enjoy it. It is not easy doing this because sometime you have to go out of your way and research on what you think people might love to hear. Writing it great but not easy especially with the grammar nazis, most being language failures who appease their spirits by criticising others grammar. But all in all, let me make it very clear,You need not be a great writer to be a great blogger. It is just the same as you needing not being a great crammer to…

The CEO of Essar Kenya (yuMobile) has called on Safaricom to open up its M-Pesa platform to other network operators. Speaking on NTV’s PM Live, Madhur Taneja, said that yu is willing to pay Safaricom royalties if it were to allow it to also offer its clients the M-Pesa service. Mr Taneja said; “We cannot have a situation where someone with an account in Equity Bank cannot transfer to someone in StanChart. I am calling on Safaricom to please open up M-Pesa. We will pay you royalty. Let us do e-commerce. Do they want a royalty of  2.3 million customers? We are…

Safaricom has launched daily and monthly unlimited data plans for BlackBerry users. Through the offer, Safaricom BlackBerry services users will be able to choose a daily unlimited bundle rate of Ksh 20 or monthly rate of Ksh 499. To access the service, clients would have to dial *210# to activate the unlimited bundles. Through the bundle, you will get; Unlimited Internet Access Unlimited Facebook and Twitter Access Unlimited chat Access to BlackBerry App World 2 Email Accounts Excluded in the offer is online video streaming. The daily bundle will also be auto-renewed.

Thailand has taken up the option for Twitter to have tweets being viewed from the country censored. Authorities in the country publicly endorsed Twitter Censorship with the ICT Permanent Secretary, Jeerawan Boonperm, telling the Bangkok Post that it was a ”welcome development”. The government also confirmed that it is getting  ”good cooperation” from Facebook and Google but it will soon be contacting Twitter to begin collaborating on the new feature. Thailand’s lèse-majesté law bans criticism of the country’s royal family. The law gained popularity because of of the blockage of YouTube in 2006 till when the offending videos were removed from the site was YouTube access allowed…

Google has reportedly fired its Country Lead in Kenya, Olga Arara-Kimani, according to Nairobi Tech. The action is said to have been taken as a measure to assure those who read the Mocality saga. Not much detail is available but Google’s VP for EMEA, Nelson Mattos, indicated on Friday on his Google+  page that action had been taken in Kenya regarding to Mocality data scraping saga. He wrote; We’ve concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality’s website in Kenya. We’re very sorry this happened. We’ve taken appropriate action with the people involved and made…

I am doing this post here because it is all about hate speech on social media. First let me quote Maya Angelou; “We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.” On her column on The Star, radio presenter Caroline Mutoko bitterly attacks Kenyans on social networks regarding hate speech. Mutoko refers to most Kenyans using social media as “myopic and with little else”. He writings is full of all manner of negative adjectives she uses to describe Kenyans on…

Cellulant , a Kenyan mobile commerce services provider, has signed a deal to provide digital services to Barclays Africa. The company already powers mobile banking for more than 32 banks in Africa and is reported to have an approximated growing transactions worth around Kshs 10 billion (US $120 Million). Cellulant will be providing the services to Barclays Africa as part of its ‘One Africa’ strategy”. Through the strategy, Barclays Africa looks to make its customer digital experience – mobile and internet banking as well as ATMs -more convenient for customers across its 12 African countries. Cellulant will help Barclays Africa deploy a…

On Thursdaylast week, Twitter announced that it plans to censor tweets as per demands in certain countries. The community on Twitter is not asleep. So on Friday, guys had started sharing how to bypass the Twitter censorship. And even without the help from the online community, Twitter’s own Help Center actually reveals how you can bypass the censorship. How it all works. The tweets are going to be blocked on a country-by-country basis. First Twitter will have to identify the country from which you’re accessing the tweets. Twitter will be using your IP address meaning that there are ways that the country can…

Ding Dong! We have won the first round and it is a battle which we must keep pushing on. Orange has apparently adjusted its speed caps on unlimited bundles to 256kbps. The move has been prompted by this blog post. We still don’t find it encouraging or pleasing that Orange should cap its data speeds at 256kbps. They are not even going to be that competitive considering that Safaricom caps at 512 kbps and Airtel does not cap there yet to be announced 3G services.

According to Wall Street Journal, Facebook could file papers for its IPO as early as Wednesday next week. The timing is still being discussed and Morgan Stanley is close to being chosen

Zantel Tanzania has re-branded its Z-Pesa service. The service is now known as Ezy Pesa, has been upgraded and comes with a new  bill payment module. Bundled on the Ezy Pesa service is a micro insurance option allowing users to buy daily or monthly insurance premiums. Daily premiums start at KSh150 and a monthly premium of KSh4,500 giving a policy holder cover for up to TSh3 million. The insurance service on Ezy Pesa is  known as Farijika insurance and is provided in partnership with the National Insurance Corporation Tanzania Limited. The menu options on Ezy Pesa also gives users who…