Author: Cyrus

Social Media was nowhere as important to Kenyan politicians in 2007 as it is now. None of them took it seriously though both Raila and Kibaki had minimal presence in both. Now with 2012 elections on the horizon, all the key presidential candidates are fighting for a slice of the IT, Web and Mobile Savvy class of voters. On Social Media you have it all. It is like having the whole of Lang’ata Consituency with Karen on one side and Kibera on the other and seeing the definite clash. Social media is just the same. You have the ninja hustlers…

Airtel Uganda is not taking its dispute with UTL over the Ush 10 Billion Interconnect debt lying down. Airtel Uganda gave UTL a notice that if they don’t get their money by September 5th, then all calls to UTL and from UTL will not be let through.  Then Mr. Ruhakana Rugunda the Minister of Information and Communication Technology summoned Airtel Uganda MD, V.G Somasekhar, to solve the simmering dispute. The two operators terminated their interconnect agreement on August 15th and on that basis, Airtel Uganda gave UTL 3 weeks to pay up or be permanently disconnected. Airtel Uganda also went to court…

India’s computer maker, Mercury, has launched a third Indian made tablet. The Mercury mTab is 7 inch, runs on Android 2.3 with a 1.2 GHz A8 processor and 512 MB RAM. The screen is capacitive offering a resolution of 800×480 pixels.  It will retail at around Rs. 9,499 ($206) which is lower than the two tablets (Reliance 3G Tablet and the Beetel Magiq). It has a battery capacity of 4000 mAh with an optional 3G slot is offered. Other specs of the Mercury mTab Android Tablet details a micro-SD memory card support, 4GB HDD, 512 MB RAM, Wi-Fi b/g support, G-sensor screen rotation, and a…

SEACOM has today announced the appointment of Mark Simpson as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with effect 5 September 2011. Brian Herlihy, the current CEO, will remain with the company as a member of the Board and take on the new role of Executive Director where he will focus on strategic projects essential for SEACOM’s continued success. An industry veteran with more than 25 years’ experience in the telecommunications industry, Mark Simpson has held a number of senior international executive positions during his career, most recently as President and CEO of Pacific Crossing, a company operating a trans-Pacific cable system between the…

Now they are not selling their kidneys opening copy-cat Apple shops. This Chinese man has just gone further and made an iPad imitation straight from scratch and he has filmed the whole process. I think that this is better than going the Shanzhai way. I just hope that someone would see his potential and partner with him on this. [youtube width=”620″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6TAguL2nFU[/youtube] Part 2 Part 3

When you send an email, it is never anonymous until when you make it anonymous. And making it so is not easy fort the majority of the email users. Your IP address as well as the address of every server the email hops on are recorded and hidden in the header. The headers will actually make it easy to locate who sent the particular email. For those using dongles, you periodically get assigned IP addresses by the DHCP and in this case the Domain Name Server (DNS) will be able to identify where you are sending the email from and…

LG Electronics (LG) has unveiled its new Optimus Black Android Smartphone in the Kenyan market. According to George Mudhune, LG Regional Marketing Manager, East and Central Africa the P970 LG OPTIMUS Black is now trading at Ksh.40, 000, and available in all major shopping outlets across Kenya. The handset has been coming for sometime and was initially known under the codename “B”. It is slim, measuring only 9.2 mm, coupled with the 4-inch IPS display capable of generating 700 nits of brightness. The NOVA display on LG Optimus Black is said to also radically reduces power consumption by 50 percent during general…

I have had the Huawei IDEOS Slim S7 tab for the last five days and I must say that I am impressed. I have been using the iPad one before and when I got my hand on the slim S7, I don’t even know where my iPad One is. I am used to carrying a laptop for heavy work and also the iPad in-case I need computing on the go. The Slim S7 is lighter, slimmer and more easy to work with. The fact that it uses the normal SIM and not the micro-SIM also makes it have an advantage…

Airtel a bonus of 25% to all its clients loading with Ksh 100 and more in a six day promotion starting today. The bonus is valid for on-net calls and SMS and must be used within three days. The promotion is also only valid to pre-paid clients. All top ups from 100/- through Airtel money and electronic voucher system will also enjoy the 25% bonus air time. Customers may dial 1331# to check bonus airtime balance..

I hear that 8 Nokia executives were in Nairobi “to listen to African consumer’. They were also here to launch the two phones, Nokia 100/101, which are single and dual-sim respectively. The last time Nokia executives were here was sometime in June 2010 when they ended up even launching an innovation which they stole for some smart young Kenyans. So today the 8 wolves came back and this time they claimed that the “Nokia 101 & X1-01 were conceptualized in Nokia research centre in Nairobi”. So? We are suppose to celebrate for that? They should have been manufactured here then.…

Orange called a Press Conference for today morning saying that it was to lay out their business strategy and was to be headlined by Eddy Njoroge the chairman. So I thought that it was going to be the usual mumbo jumbo and decided to stay at home. 6am and I got to receive an SMS from someone that it was actually going to be a 3G launch. First getting info about the launch was very hard. No one was tweeting nor keeping the social media crowd abreast with what was happening. I was going to meet some business partners at…

Zuku TV has today announced that it was ramping up its roll out in Uganda with the acquisition of broadcast rights for a hugely popular Ugandan TV Drama series, Hostel. Richard Bell, Chief Executive Officer of Wananchi Group (Zuku TV holding company ) confirmed that the Zuku TV has secured broadcast rights for airing the national football match between Uganda Cranes and the Iraqi national team. Both teams are set to play a friendly match in preparations for their FIFA World Cup qualifiers. The match will be exclusively aired under the Zuku Sports menu on Friday August 26th at 9.30 pm East African…

Ok slept for some few hours before finding myself awake. I could not manage a sleep. I have programmed my body to wake up always by 6.30am but this one was unique. I found myself up by 6am despite sleeping almost at 5am. I freshened up then went up (4th floor) to take my breakfast ready for the day. Up on the fourth floor I found Allan Kassuja with Mr and Mrs Aly Khan already taking their breakfast. You know EA food don’t differ much but our brothers and sisters in Rwanda loves beans and so you would expect lots…

CCK has written to the four Kenyan mobile phone operators to switch off the un-recognised devices in their network. The devices whose IMEI cant be registered by the network are mostly fake devices but some are also real but with duplicate IMEI. The duplicate IMEIs comes mostly from the gray market phones or the phones which are stolen and then their IMEIs flashed by the criminals so that they could not be tracked. The CCK directive is set to come to effect on September 9th. The four mobile phone operators are said to be very reluctant to disconnect the over…

Samsung has today unveiled a range of new Android-powered Galaxy smartphones as it looks to up its competition on the Android device range. The company has also detailed a new naming convention for its device portfolio. All of the devices launched run on the 2.3 Gingerbread version of the Android platform and follows a new naming convention which divides them into five different classes: Super Smart (S), Royal/Refined (R), Wonder (W), Magical (M) and Young (Y). Phone names ending with “Pro” would mean that the devices has a physical QWERTY keypad while “Plus” means an upgraded existing model and LTE stands…