Author: Cyrus

Eight African technology start-ups have been offered a unique opportunity to pitch their business ideas to delegates, potential investors and media at this year’s Tech4Africa conference, taking place at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg on 27 and 28 October. This platform has been created by virtue of Samsung Ignite, an initiative that aims to showcase and foster local technology development, and which has been made possible by Samsung Apps store, in association with Tech4Africa. “We are extremely excited about such a platform from which local technology innovators can showcase their ideas to a broad audience, potential investors and technology entrepreneurs…

Over the last few days, many links have been spreading on Facebook which when you click hijack your account and start sending your friends all manner of links. Norton seems to have found a way of improving on the security of Facebook users. The trick is very easy and just works like what we used to have where all Yahoo downloads were scanned before you downloaded them onto your local drive. First you need to open Norton Safe Web for Facebook in your Web browser. You need to have logged into your Facebook account. 2. Facebook will want you to…

Kenya is at War! The country 5 days ago launched attack against targets in Somalia in a bid to drive back the Al-Shabaab militant group. The war has received support marginal from Kenyans everywhere, which is encouraging considering that not much of what the Kenyan  government has done recently received so much support. Missing from the whole scenario is the voice of the Somali community in Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and elsewhere. The community is not making as much noise against Al-Shabaab activities as would be expected. This is in stark contrast to when Kenya indicated that it might launch…

Safaricom is reported by Business Daily of planning to acquire Kenya’s premier IT Solutions company, Seven Seas Technologies (SST). We know that Seven Seas and Safaricom are to launch a Cloud Services partnership on Tuesday called Safaricom Cloud. BD Africa is reporting that “the two firms had agreed to a buyout plan that was scuttled by the board of the mobile telephony firm which raised concerns over the viability of the business, paving way for the two-year partnership.” It is not out of the ordinary since Safaricom has always indicated that it will acquire or partner with firms which will…

MIH seems to be running into problems as predicted in Kenya and Nigeria. It is rumoured that MIH Internet has sent out a notice of closuree of Kalahari Kenya and Nigeria to its respective employees. The reasons of the closure of the operations have not been fully revealed but there are rumours that the Kalahari business in Kenya and Nigeria have not broken even. Sources at MIH Internet Kenya though say that “Kalahari Kenya could sustain its bills thee only problem is that MIH Internet has no focus direction they want to take the business”. The source though intimated that…

This is going to be a first. Ubuntu is the world’s most popular Linux distro. Getting a netbook of laptop bundled with it has been the hardest thing in the world.  The Vodafone announced that it has launched the Vodafone Webbook which looks like an Asus Eee netbook which has been branded Vodafone and sold as “Vodafone Webbook”. South Africa is the first country to get this but we might soon see it in Tanzania or Kenya. Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system that is a free, fast, easy-to-use, and open source computer programme that was pioneered by Mark Shuttleworth. The device is…

Symantech has warned of a new highly sophisticated computer worm which has the same characteristics of the Stuxnet virus which attacked Iran’s nuclear programme. The virus has been discovered targeting various companies in Europe. Computer security experts say its code and binary is so similar to the Stuxnet worm so the authors might have had access to the original code of Stuxnet. Iran accused US of authoring the Stuxnet virus to target its nuclear network. The new threat has been named Duqu [dyü-kyü] and may have been engineered by the same people who created Stuxnet. The virus appears to have been spying…

Google+ will soon support pseudonyms and Google apps among other forms of identity, says a Google executive. The revelations were made at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco by Google’s  SVP of Social Vic Gundotra. This means that Google+ will eventually support assumed identities. Google will still only allow users to sign up if they use their real names but it will be adding features that will “support other forms of identity” in the next few months. Google has previously stood its ground on the use of real names in the network but with demand for anonymity in some…

I have just discovered this creepy but so useful feature of Google search. If you type “IP Address”, “My IP Address” or just “My IP” on to Google Search box, you will get your IP address. Most of us now use DHCP assigned IPs and not static ones whether mobile or in cyber cafes. There are, however, several network configurations that may cause Google to receive an IP address that differs from the one assigned to your computer. For example, if you have a home network or a corporate network, devices are usually assigned “internal” IP addresses by a Network…

Airtel has announced a bunch of “special offers” for its customers coinciding with the celebration of the 1st Mashujaa Day in Kenya.  The offer dubbed Weekend ya Mashujaa  contains offers like; Download the Kenya National Anthem FREE of charge A 50% bonus airtime on top ups of Kshs 50 and above through the Airtel Money platform A special introductory offer to clients to listen to their favorite music tunes on the new Airtel Ngoma platform for Kshs 1/- per minute Customers will be able to use the bonus on calls and SMS to numbers within the Airtel Kenya network for…

Google is trying to manage and run all aspects of our virtual life. The company has run our web search for a very long time and has been attempting to run our online social life though with not much of a success. Google then introduced Gmail to us and instead of letting us sign up as everybody else, the net giant partnered with Safaricom to let Kenyans open @Safaricom.com email addresses. Currently, Google is marketing Gmail for feature phones locally. We even have Google SMS for free in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania among other African countries. Google then bought the…

After giving selected students access to its training facility on Mombasa Road, Huawei has gone further. The telecommunications equipment manufacturer launched an application challenge to stir the young developer community in Kenya. The Huawei Android Application Challenge (HAAC) ends tomorrow, 19th October. The application challenge hoped to see student application developers from JKUAT, Moi and Nairobi University fight for a chance to win great prizes including Huawei IDEOS S7 tablet, Huawei IDEOS X5 and monetary rewards of upto Ksh 50,000. The app developers has to  submit their entry by tomorrow October 19th through their respective Faculty of Engineering after which…

Safaricom is rewarding all the Subscribers to Safaricom’s Blackberry seven days of free subscription following last week’s three-day outage. The bonus subscription takes effect from this Saturday 22nd at 0000HRS till Saturday 29th mid-night. The outage affected the over 13,000 BlackBerry users on Safaricom. The affected users on Safaricom network will access data and mail services free of charge. Safaricom CEO, Bob Collymore, noted that the timing of the offer towards the end of the month was deliberate. Apparently this is the time when there is normally heavy use of the BlackBerry service and the Safaricom wanted its customers to…

Microsoft is having its second annual Open Door event from today in East Africa. Kenya will host the event on Tuesday 18th October and Wednesday 19th October while Rwanda will host the event on 20th October. At the event, Microsoft East and Southern Africa announced the launch of the Microsoft Virtual Academy, a fully cloud-based learning experience leveraging Microsoft Cloud Technologies. The Microsoft Open Door is a major technology experience where Microsoft leaders, developers and partners meet and interact and Microsoft also showcases its latest generation of technologies to local tech professionals and enthusiasts. The key aim of the Microsoft…

Google has announced that Google Trader website for Kenya is live. The site has been live for “the last few weeks” after the pilot launch in Uganda and Ghana.  Google Trader in Kenya wil now have to compte with sites like Dealfish, Facebook Marketplace, Uzanunua among others. Google describes Google Trader as “a free classifieds service that allows people to buy and sell products and services, search for jobs or just about anything else they are looking for.” Google seems to have approached a few businesses to do some postings on the trader website with the hope of populating it…