Author: Cyrus

The nerds, geeks or just entrepreneur who find or found great companies mostly wallow in wealth. Many of the founders also just cannot manage to keep the tempo and go down with the companies. It is in this regard that RetailMeNot has come up with a great infographic of the top 31 founders, their worth and the state of their companies now. Check it below

We did cover the DSTV Drifta launch and availability in South Africa. We have been following the development in Kenya. We hear that the launch is very soon. David mentioned that Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda might get the service on Wednesday (1st June). I have just confirmed from a source within DSTV Mobile Kenya and they say that the launch is not this week leave alone 1st June. DSTV Mobile Kenya are located in Upper Hill, separate from Multichoice Kenya offices which are located in Westlands. In Kenya, we have just confirmed that the Drifta dongle will be initially…

We knew that there was no way the AccessKenya was going to survive and the fact that we told the story bluntly made us marked men. Now I hear there is a marriage in the offing. Apparently KDN approached AccessKenya sometime back to see if they can work and help each other survive in the market. You remember KDN announcing last year that they were now going to be carrier of carriers? Yeah! KDN has this great infrastructure which is being totally let down by that thing called Swift Global. There is not enough intelligent people and systems to market…

Orange Tunisia is set to launch an app store specifically designed for locally relevant apps. By locally I mean Tunisia and mostly the French and Arabic speaking Africans. The launch will be on May 31st and the app store will be located at m.orange.tn. Already the developer centre is up and running where all developers will can now submit apps and 70% of the revenue will go to the developer. It will not be be the first apps store to go live in an African country as Safaricom is already running such a store but with mostly free apps. Safaricom is…

I love free things especially when we challenge the corporates using technology. With Safaricom giving you 100 Mbps home connection and Zuku also pouring broadband in Nairobi, you lack what you can do with it. Today, ManU and Barca are playing the UEFA Champions League finals and you can easily watch the match online if you are stuck in the office or somewhere with the internet only. My best source of free online live sports is MyP2P website. There you can get to watch almost any sport you can imagine. I discovered it through some USA based friends whom we…

I am not an addict of Nokia’s OVI store. My main apps like NFS Shift and other pure gaming apps cannot work well on Nokia because of the processor of the high end phones and also the accelerometer. So I am mostly left playing stupid games like SUDOKU, Treasure of Valagika or Bubbles Touch. I was looking for new apps in the store and though I created Techmtaa app, I also found eSign Ke app and RICH app. 1. Techmtaa Now this is the only app worth downloading from the ovi stores which brings you tech news from Techmtaa’s blog…

Microsoft Corp through its local arm, Microsoft East and Southern Africa has announced the official launch and availability of Windows Multipoint Server 2011 at the ongoing eLearning Africa conference in Tanzania. Windows Multipoint Server 2011 utilises shared-resource computing technology to make technology more affordable and accessible especially to educational institutions. The Multipoint Server solution is in line with this year’s theme for the conference, “Youth, Skills and Employability”, with a focus on finding more affordable and sustainable ways to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) into learning environments. Windows Multipoint Server 2011 allows one “host” computer to be shared by multiple users,…

I am not a fan of paywalls and I believe that the internet has much more information than anybody can claim. It is also true that in the pages of African newspapers are just copy-paste articles from Reuters, AP, NYT, BBC, AFP, Xinhua and CNN. Very small percentage of the stories you get in your Daily Nation, The Star, Standard or People are original materials. It is in that regard that when I get an opportunity to not pay for the newspaper, I grab it. Why should I pay for a Daily Nation article copied from BBC website while BBC…

Airtel Africa is doing other things apart from engaging Safaricom and other regional operators in a vicious Price and Clients war. The company is involved in CSR and it is targeting the young minds who are threatened with hunger. The African telecom giant announced a donation worth Kshs 16.8m towards a supplementary feeding program in Kenya that aims to target 25,000 school children from drought-stricken parts of the country, over a period of six months. With the donation, The Red Cross Society will provide Unimix – a highly nutritious corn and soya blend – to students from over 250 schools in Lamu, Ijara, Samburu, Marsabit,…

When people say that in East Africa we still don’t have bloggers who make an impact, they are living in some hole. Blogging and citizen journalism in the region is making great headways. We have bloggers and community journalists who are forcing governments to rethink their every move. While in Kenya community forums are divided in party and ethnic affiliations and mostly you will find major part of communications in vernacular, in Tanzania they are united in purpose. Jamii Forums is a community forum. Started in 2006 by Mike Mushi and Maxence Melo, the community forum has seen all. The…

Todays Google Doodle has recognised Africa Day. Africa Day is meant to celebrate the founding of Organisation of African Unity on 25th May 1963. The OAU charter was signed on that date and only Morocco has not joined the now called Africa Union. Africa Union replaced OAU in 2002. The first Google Doodle was in 1998 and it was in honor of the burning man festival. Successive Doodles have been created and with Google opening country offices and purchasing country level domains, it has been even localised. We are though not sure if the Doodles which are restricted to cTLDs…

Twitter has just added another feature to its many featured. Now you will be able to receive email alerts when you are mentioned or retweeted in the micro-blogging website. Considering that Twitter does not have as much alert instances through email as Facebook, this is a featured which someone would love but also if you want to disable some of the notifications, you can do it here. What do you think of the new features?

Kenyan Country Level domain is still young, only just over 18,000 cTLDs registered, and not even many have been registered. It is surprising what power, tactics and schemes the big players and the rich will use to make sure that a domain they don’t like does not stay active. This is what happened with the SAFARICOM.CO.KE domain. A user, we are still looking for him, registered the domain through Mambo Microsystems. The domain was registered on 15th April and is set to expired on 15th April 2012. Safaricom got wind of the domain and alleged content and within a few…

A great breakfast briefing by Wananchi Group CEO (Richard Bell) and the Chairman and other board members were present. Laid out were the past, the present and future outlook of the company. The greatest announcement out of the briefing was that Wananchi Group is launching Satellite TV in the market. First, the Group has received Ksh 5  Billion from a group of investors and this brings the total investments by various investors into the company at Ksh 14 The Wananchi Group announced on Tuesday that it would launch satellite pay-tv services in Kenya in the next thre Billion. The new…

We saw this coming. We must have people testing waters in all regards. I got some mail last week from someone alerting me of a suite against Safaricom in regards to Mobile Number Portability (MNP). The details of the suite could not be believed then because the guy could not avail the details. And today, we got a sneak preview of the civil suite details as shared. Basicaly Safaricom has been sued by; Alex Gakuru – 0722 739 100 Humphrey Atuti – 0713 636 735 Brian Kimani – 0721 346 126 Alice Njoki Muchira – 0750 712 420 Joseph Mwangi…