Author: Cyrus

A Japanese app develpement company has been pushed to strip down the features of its application allows women to secretly track their husbands or boyfriends movement. The ‘Boyfriend Log’ app works just like the controversial app launched in Kenya in 2010. The Kenyan app which was dubbed “Juju” tracked the spouse’s movement through a secret app installed into the phone of the the spouse. Japanese firm “Manuscript” released the Boyfriend log app on August 30, and encouraged women to install it on their partner’s phone without them knowing. “Juju” app was also marketed more to women to track their boyfriends.…

Samsung is really trying to spoil the Apple party. After being blocked from selling the Galaxy SII phone in many countries by Apple, the mobile phone manufacturer is now raiding iPhone 4S queue in Sydney and offering the first 10 a new Galaxy S2 phone for just $2. This might be good for the iPhone enthusiasts because they can buy the $2 phones and sell them at a profit to later acquire the iPhone 4S. Samsung recently postponed launching their new Android based device as a honour to Steve Jobs who passed away the same week. The company rented a store…

Hard drive storage continues to at a very fast pace. The question is how much data can we squeeze into the current space and how can we increase capacity without increasing the size of the storage devices. We hate bulky stuff. TDM reported to use laser to double HD capacity. Now this is new. Would you have trusted that anyone would increase the capacity of a 3TB HD six times , to 18TB, using table salt? A Dr Joel Yang at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) has just done that. The maximum storage you get for existing Hard Drives…

Google yesterday announced that it will be shutting down a number of its products in the next few months. The two most notable are Google Buzz and Jaiku, the latter it acquired in 2007. Google will also remove social features from iGoogle but will not shut down the whole product. Google Buzz and Buzz API will be shut down so that Google can focus on Google+. Other products which Google expects to shut down are Code Search and University Research program for Google Search. Jaiku had Twitter like features and the acquisition by Google prompted rumours that maybe it was…

Airtel has announced that it will offer its BlackBerry customers a 3 day service waiver following a global outage attributed to the service provider Research in Motion. Research in Motion has now fully restored data services to its BlackBerry devices. The outage which was caused by a hardware error halted messaging and Web browsing across many parts of the world, disrupting services for 3 days. Initial disruptions were recorded in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India early in the week and later spread to North America. Mr. Shivan Bhargava, Airtel Kenya’s Chief Operating Officer stated Airtel’s concern about the…

Kenya Data Networks (KDN) has announced that its Metro Lease Circuits in Malindi Town are complete and ready for use. A Metro Lease Circuit is a dedicated point to point service provided within a town though a fiber network. Dedicated means that the connection is not re-engineered, thus there is no sharing or contention. Metro Lease Circuits was only available in Nairobi and parts of Mombasa and this has hampered internet penetration in the country. Most of the offices outside Nairobi still rely on either slow or expensive or both. With the ever increasing demand for voice and data and…

Just while we are still mourning Steve Jobs, another tech great has succumbed to illness. Dennis Ritchie who is one of those who founded UNIX has died after long illness. He was 70. Dennis Ritchie was one of the pioneers of the Unix operating system and C programming language. A great number of modern technologies have depended on the UNIX platform and C programming language since most of the early programmers used UNIX and C a lot. Ritchie might not have been more visible like Steve Jobs was but tech pundits have argued that his influence rival Steve Jobs in every…

Listed giant mobile service operator, Safaricom, has confirmed that the BlackBerry data outage which affected millions of users across the world has been resolved and services restored. On behalf of RIM, which I must say I was surprised does not talk about the outage in emerging markets, Safaricom has apologized to its BlackBerry users who were affected by the outage that lasted for more than 72 hours. During the outage, Blackberry users experienced difficulties accessing their e-mail accounts, instant messaging and browsing on the internet. Africa together with Europe, Middle East and Southern Asia were the most affected though some…

In its quest to conquer the Kenya data market, Telkom Kenya has today introduced a new GSM product which will enable customers set up Wi-Fi or wired connections within their homes and offices, without the use of a fixed line. The device called Orange Flybox is targeted at households, small and home-based offices, and premium customers. The Flybox can handle up to 10 computers which will access the internet concurrently through the newly launched Orange 3G network. Orange already has a D-Link router in the market which performs almost the same function. The difference is that the D-Link router needs…

I have been really curious to know how the telcos get their figures to CCK. I have doubted the CCK figures because they rarely reflect what is practical on the ground. So I sought answers from analysts in the ICT industry. I am being told that CCK get figures by requesting for the same from the operators. CCK rarely does independent verification and that is how we end up with the CCK quarterly report. In the CCK report, Orange is claiming to have more than 2.7 Million subscriptions as at June 2011 which is a gain for 116,000 from the…

Safaricom has today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Kenya Prisons Service looking to address the mobile phone crime being committed from the confines of the country’s prisons. The MOU deepens and provides structure to an existing partnership between the Prisons Service and Safaricom. According to the agreement, the two organizations will try to work out ways to deal with cases of mobile phone-based crime. Safaricom will consider installing mobile phone jamming equipment to block fraudulent calls and M-PESA transactions within prisons. Already Naivasha Prison has such a facility which has reduced crime being committed from the facility.…

Blackberry users across Europe, Middle East and Africa seems to have had their data services disrupted from around midday EA time. The data outage cut off BlackBerry services like email, web and instant messaging. Carriers in UK, Kuwait and Kenya reported the problem with users taking their grievances to the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to complain. Most carriers blamed Research In Motion (RIM) for the problem. RIM later confirmed the problem in a short statement. “We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa,” RIM said. “We’re investigating,…

Safaricom has had 3G for some time and Orange is marketing their “21mbps 3G link” like it is the greatest thing to have ever happened to Kenya since the arrival of the first Fibre Optic cable. I am yet to get any good result of Orange 3G anywhere in Nairobi but the CDMA based “orange 3G+” cruises at around 256+Kbps maximum. [polldaddy poll=5571392] So I really want to know from you guys, which one do you think is the REAL deal? Orange 3G or Safaricom 3G? Both claims to offer more than 21Mbps with Safaricom 21Mbps pilot link running in…

Apple co-founder and immediate former CEO, Steve Jobs has died. Steve was a real inspiration to some of us who grew up in  the village and had to struggle against all the odds just to make a living. We sometimes had to depend on listening to radio talk shows and participating in contests just to pay our way through college. As someone who went through the initial Africa Virtual University programs which were sponsored by World Bank and inspired by the likes of Steve Jobs, I must appreciate what the former CEO did to my life. I must tell you…

Airtel Kenya has responded to the move by Safaricom and probably Telkom Kenya to raise call charges by saying that they will ensure that “the cost of calling to other networks from Airtel remains lower than that of making calls within some other networks in Kenya today”. Airtel Kenya says that its calling rates remain at Kshs 3/- per minute across all networks in Kenya for both prepaid and postpaid. SMS costs remain at Kshs1/- across all networks in Kenya with International calls continuing to be charged at Kshs3/-. Safaricom recently increased its calling rates and Orange is expected to…