Author: Cyrus

I had the chance to market Kalahari.co.ke when they launched sometime last year. I sat with the team down and told them what I sincerely didn’t like about the website. I have been an online shopper since and my main shops has been Amazon, Ebay and Expansys. I loved the way the results and user interface came out in the three and that is why it was hard for me to stomach the much primitive system of Kalahari. Today, Kalahari.Net is launching an improved UI. Through an email to subscribers, the Naspers subsidiary sent out the email lining out the…

There are many events scheduled for the first half of this year, 2011. They range from developers to tech entrepreneurs events. We wil try to highlight the few which we can spot below and if you have one which you think we might not have looked at, please email the details to tech @ techmtaa.com. Africa 2.0 – 1st April – Cambridge,  Massachusetts, USA MIT Sloan Africa Business Club has organised this event with the theme, “Africa 2.0: Achieving Growth Through Innovation”. The main idea is to bring together people who are working on ideas to change Africa in the…

According to an article appearing on Daily Nation, Essar Telecom Kenya Ltd (Yu), has terminated the contract  of the company which has been providing call centre services. Aegis Services Kenya Ltd used to have more than 70 customer care employees handling Yu Kenya call centre services. Yu is said to have immediately contracted Horizon Contact Centre. Most of the former employees of Aegis have been taken by Horizon but at half the pay they used to get at Aegis.

Apple iPad Was released in April 2010 and has been the only tablet since then. It has no known competitors but just wannabes who were more of reactions than serious innovative devices. It has sold in excess of 8 Million units and a successor, iPad 2 is expected by April. It comes in Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + 3G versions with 16Gb, 32Gb and 64Gb being some of the HDD sizes we have. The devices has not been officially launched in Kenya and only launched recently in South Africa. But Elite Kenya which is the official Apple product distributor and…

The government has finally approved the multi-million shillings project called the Konza Technology City. The Tech city is a 5,000 acre Technology park which will be located in Machakos County. The project was initially reffered to as Malili Technology Park. The government has allocated some Ksh1 billion initially for the project. It is though expected that the cost of the project will be in the trillions of Shillings. The project will entail the construction of a high-tech science and technology park, a residential estate, hotels for accomodation  and schools. The government plan to convince the GSMA organisers to host the…

This website has lots of malwares and they are blaming it on the host. I don’t think that the host has problems here. I think that this website has a lot of copied codes from various sources online and that is what is infecting the mail server. We just had the website infected with malicious code exactly one month ago, 21st January. And on the same day this month, 21st February, we have the same problem. Something is seriously wrong. Stanrdard group web guys have promised me that they are launching a redesigned version of the website very soon. With…

President of Nigeria has a very social savvy team and he is also social savvy. What with a big presence on Facebook, Twitter and now our apps store. Scouring through the many apps store, I found out that President Goodluck Jonathan is on iPhone and iPad apps store. The President has one of the most active and well updated Facebook pages among the African leaders. The President believes in interracting with the Youth and the older generations. I think that this is one of the most progressive leaders and his identity all over the net is very encouraging. I dont…

TechMtaa is growing in leaps and bounds. The blog has grown from a very personal rant box to a reliable channel for techies around East Africa to get what is happening or has happened first hand. We haven’t posted the cool HOW-TOs but this is an area which we are considering. We are also in the process of redesigning our blog. We would like to engage more with you as a reader and hear what you have to say about the blog. We will also be partnering with various social savvy friends to give you exciting giveaways like the one…

Facebook is rolling out what gay activists might find good for them. It is the gay friendly relationship status. Facebook has done this after consulting various US gay righst groups including Network Support and others. 6K9ECV72HCXJ Effective immediately, U.S. Facebookers can choose between “In a domestic partnership” and “In a civil union,” together with the usual bunch of relationship options. The updates will be rolled out to other countries soon but might not be seen in countries where Gay relationships are legal any time soon.

According to a report by Reuters, Uganda Communications Commision has ordered phone companies to intercept phone SMS with words or phrases including “Egypt”, “bullet,” and “people power” ahead of Friday’s elections. UCC sent the mail to operators and the email has been leaked to Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC). Patrick Mwesigwa who is the head of UCC has confirmed to Reuters that indeed they sent out the order and added that some other key words they want to be filtered are: “Tunisia”, “Mubarak”, “dictator”, “teargas”, “army”, “police”, “gun”, “Ben Ali” and “UPDF”. Some local language keywords are also listed as blocked.

Safaricom has launched an ambitious program to recycle phones. The scheme will be administered in partnership with Computers for Schools Kenya (CSK), which already runs a similar program for old computers. These include a handbook which is meant to sensitize Safaricom staff and customers on BTSs (Base Transceiver Stations), handsets and how they relate to personal health. Titled The Answer is in your hand: mobile phones, masts and your health, the handbook shall be a quick reference guide on such topics as radio frequency waves, guidelines for exposure, definition of a BTS, children and mobile phones, radio frequency exposure and…

An MP, Charles Kilonzo, asked the Kenyan PM a question in parliament. First things first. Safaricom was invited by the chair of the parliamentary committee on communications and broadcasting, Hon James Rege, as an operator to make a submission on what their take is on the current price wars. All operators were invited. Safaricom made its submission and all other operators made their submission. Now the mainstream media picked that and the message sent out is like Safaricom was begging for favours from the MPs. No. First Safaricom was not begging for favours and secondly, Charles Kilonzo asked the question…

Our Tanzanian brothers had a tragedy yesterday. One of the military barracks situated Gongo La Mboto in Dar es Salaam had explosions from the munition dumps. Reports in the morning said that 32 people had died. Now NTV, Citizen, K24 and KTN doesnt even have a single video on the same. Don’t these people invest in correspondents? What are these, kalongolongo media houses? I am really shocked to see this happening. We have a very incompetent media. I think that our messenger might be the problem. A media which lives in stone age is simply useless. BBC, CNN, France24 are…

Google Translate has had lots of embarrassing translations in French, German and even Filipino. But we didnt know that the mistakes could be so closer home. Some ingenious East African tweeps started checking on what “Stupidity” translates to in Swahili and all they got was “Women”. Now I know that our ladies wont like Google for this. And the trend went international and many women didn’t like it.

Eric Schmidt was at Humboldt University in Berlin where he launched Google One Pass. Google wants to have a world where publishers set their own prices, set terms for their digital content and maintain direct relationships with their customers. Through Google One Pass, Google hopes to also see publishers give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps. Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. Importantly, the service helps publishers authenticate existing subscribers so that readers don’t have to…