Author: Cyrus

I met Mike Chege at Nyamavilla in Kayole. I was roaming the Eastlands joints and found myself at this place which has a Car Wash, Children’s playground, Beer Joint and also all kinds of meals for beer drinkers. What really made me curious about the whole establishment is how some young enterprising Kenyans are using the mobile and digital technology to make money. Mike Chege happens to be one of them. He has this very very modest camera (panasonic model) which he hangs on his neck and use it to make a living.

I have just been alerted to a post by @MosesKemibaro who is one of Kenyan bloggers. He did a post on Kenyan Facebook users reaching 1 Million, which could have been great, only that the source of his stats has very many inconsistencies. Kenyan Facebook users might be more than a million, YES. This is because many Kenyans who are living outside the country and also some in Kenya who try to be funny and list their countries like Cambodia and Bhutan just to have fun, might not have been listed as in Kenya. Tehn again what about those Kenyans…

Nation Media Group main news website cant handle even a simple surge in traffic. We witnessed this during the referendum and today when Louis Moreno Ocampo was announcing the six key suspects in the 2007/2008 violence, Nation went down again. Please NMG, do something. We have sent mails to NMG honchos and none is getting back to us. UPDATE: The website is back up again. No word from NMG

CNN has today announced its CNN App for iPad is now available on the Apple App Store. The  App looks like the Huffingtonpost NewsGlide if you have tried it. But the  CNN iPad app looks more interesting since it has more interractive UI. CNN has also announced that the iPhone and iPod touch apps will be available for free in US and the International edition will have updated ability to view breaking news in video. Focused on creating a transformative news experience for its audience, the CNN App for iPad combines stunning imagery with the most compelling reporting from CNN,…

Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry and Amazon today launched Amazon MP3 for BlackBerry® smartphones in beta in the U.S. The new app gives BlackBerry smartphone users access to Amazon’s entire music catalog of over 14 million songs for easy purchase and download.* Amazon MP3 for BlackBerry smartphones lets users discover songs, artists and albums, then lets them buy and download tracks from Amazon with just a few clicks. The app also offers delivery options to suit all data plans, so tracks can be downloaded over Wi-Fi® or cellular networks. Users are able to easily share their latest…

I always wonder why all Kenyan big mainstream media houses have to go to UNON Gigiri to get Ocampo to address them through a video link. I know that sometimes it’s the only establishment with the good facilities. I have also come to realise that in this age where we have over 3 fiber optic cables and a fourth one is expected, our media houses have some of the slowest internet connections. Standard Group, Royal Media, Nation Media and Radio Africa are simply not ready to spend on quality internet connection which can basically stream a video. Anyway, that was…

Brightstar Corp., a multi-billion dollar global services company providing solutions to manufacturers, operators, retailers, and enterprises in the telecommunications industry, today announced an expansion of its distribution agreement with Research In Motion (RIM)  into Africa. The company is set to begin distributing BlackBerry® products to seven countries in the Sub Sahara Africa region, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. Brightstar will initially distribute the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphones, in addition to BlackBerry software and accessories. The BlackBerry smartphones will be available from various network operators and retail outlets throughout Sub Sahara Africa.

Kenya ICT Board has organised a Tech Talk under the Tandaa series. This time top entrepreneurs from the US Silicon Valley will be in the house. The event will be on Tuesday 16th Dec from 15:00 to 18:00. The following honchos will be in the house; Russel Simmons: early employee/lead technical architect at Paypal, former CTO and co-founder of Yelp.com Jawed Karim: Co-founder of Youtube, early employee at Paypal and angel investor Paul Bragel: partner at i/o ventures, Co-founder of Leforum (online forums), co-founder/CEO of Meetro (location based social networking) and former CEO of Paragon Five (game development studio) Mbwana…

Samsung is continuing  to engage the local developer community more and more. We know that the company is now deeply promoting two OS for its smartphones, Bada and Android. On 16th of December, Samsung has organised a developer contest to target the best app developers in the following categories; Education/Reference Games: Arcade/Action/ Casual/Puzzle Social Networking + Lifestyle Entertainment + Media Productivity/Tools + Miscellaneous The best developers will win Samsung phones and Ksh 200,000 in each category. To learn more the Samsung Bada Developer contest, check here.

First it was Google Doodle for EAC Common market in July. Tech giant is increasing its recognition of local events and anniversaries. Today Kenya is celebrating 47 years of Jamhuri (Republic) Day. We might be seeing more and more Google Doodles

Press Release The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is deeply concerned about recent attempts by governments to limit access to online content recently published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks. APC is also troubled by actions taken by private companies such as EveryDNS.net which disabled the domain name system services for WikiLeaks.org, Amazon which repealed web hosting services and Paypal which restricted access to WikiLeaks’ account to prevent supporters from donating money. APC believes that the ability to share information and communicate freely using the internet is vital to the realisation of human rights and to efforts to use the internet to…

It is that time of the year again where Google has their yearly list, Google Zeitgeist. Interesting trending in the list. We see the obvious ones like Makmende, Daily Nation, Shakira, IIEC, and World Cup. But the suprise entries like My African Career, Mari Mar and Sortilegio and others also came up. For the region, only Kenya has the list released. Google say in the post. “Kenyans this year showed strong interest in social networking sites and virtual realities, with “2go” topping the fastest rising list, and local superhero “Makmende” coming in second. Meanwhile, the “Commonwealth Games” topped Kenya’s fastest…

Today Kenya technology professionals and enthusiasts had an inside look at the latest generation of products and services from Microsoft and its partners, at a technology event designed to improve the way various professionals  communicate at work, at home and on the go. “For over 18 years we have worked with over 20,000 commercial partners across Africa delivering a vast array of software products, services and solutions,” said Louis Otieno, General Manager Microsoft, East and Southern Africa. “However in Kenya this is the first time we have invited local technology professionals and enthusiasts to share our approach to the next…

Virtual City – a homegrown technology solutions company has bagged yet another global award for its prowess in innovation. This time – the recognition was based on one of its Mobile Applications dubbed Agrimanagr – an application that allows users to manage agricultural processes using mobile phones. The World Summit Award (WSA) on Mobile content 2010 was presented to the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, Mr. Silas Macharia in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday 8th December 2010 Speaking during the award ceremony, Mr. Macharia said: “We are happy to win this award today because it reinforces our quest to lead in providing…

Wikileaks now has supporters who have created a very good search engine to look up the various cables. I have tested the engine using keywords like Nairobi, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Kibaki and Tanzania. The results are very impressive. When you click on a result, it will not take you to a website. It will pull up the whole cable. Wikileaks supporters have also announced through their new Twitter handle @Op_Payback TARGET: WWW.AMAZON.COM LOCKED ON!!! . Twitter has been closing down the variout hacktivists accounts but they seem not to be getting tired of creating new ones.