Author: Cyrus

South Africa has got a new mobile phone operator. According to Tech Central Live Blog, the announcement was made at Lanceria Airport by Telkom South Africa. TC says the rates expected to be announced by the new operator might shake the South African voice and data market. Upto today, Vodacom, Cell C and MTN were the only three mobile phone oprators in SA with Vodacom being the market leader. It is said that the introduction of number portability as well as the arrival in 2006 of Virgin Mobile, a virtual network service provider that operates in partnership with Cell C,…

You know that the 5th season of Big Brother Africa All Stars is currently underway. So Kenya is represented by Sheila Kwamboka and Lerato represents South Africa while Mwisho represents Tanzania. The two ladies, Sheila and Lerato were giving Mwisho some lessons on Twitter. Sheila called the micro-blogging site, “the 21st century” and ended up tutoring Mwisho on the “whatever whatever” layout composition of Twitter. The video is short but actually shows you how even the twitter users still cant explain it much. Watch below Please leave your comments below..

Xerox through the specialist ICT and customer interaction solutions company XRX Technologies introduced an innovative new software service that is designed to enhance cost and operational management locally. The service , Xerox Docushare, is an internet based electronic filing and storage solution and is expected to replace the traditional manual filing systems and transform the exchange and storage of business documents. Xerox Docushare system will work together with NetApp, an hardware storage solution  to bring together all of an organisation’s sources of knowledge- email communications, paper documents, online documents, images and videos plus everything else that  can be stored as…

When Orange Kenya announced the launch of iPhone 4 yesterday, for a moment I thought of what impact it will have in the smartphone market in Kenya and also how it will affect the performance of Nokia N8 expected to launch locally on 20th October. All factors constant, Nokia N8 is going to beat iPhone 4 hands down in the battle for the market. I say this because first, Orange Kenya marketing team rushed to announce the availability of the iPhone in the market just after receiving the shippment. They were so much anxious to get the news out that…

Demonstrating its commitment to the OpenOffice.org community further, Oracle yesterday announced that it is participating in the ODF Plugfest, being held in Brussels, October 14-15. Speaking on the fifth anniversary of the Open Document Format (ODF) becoming an International Standard, Oracle applauds the community and OASIS for its efforts and renews its commitment to the ODF-based OpenOffice.org productivity suite. Oracle’s growing team of developers, QA engineers, and user experience personnel will continue developing, improving, and supporting OpenOffice.org as open source, building on the 7.5 million lines of code already contributed to the community.

Another contest for budding or seasoned application developers has been launched by the Bretton Woods institution, World Bank. The “Apps for Development” Competition contest is geared towards bringing together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data. The Competition invites all participants to develop software applications related to either one or more of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Submissions to the contest may be for the web, a personal computer, a mobile handheld device, console, SMS, or any other  software platform broadly available to the public. The…

We broke the story regionally in February and this time again, the contest is back. The University of Texas at Austin and Dell are running the Dell Innovation Competition to search for student social entrepreneurs who can dream up ingenious ideas to change the world for the better. The contest is open to College students worldwide and all have a chance to win $50,000 to turn their ideas into new business or nonprofit.

CIO East Africa, an online and print premier ICT magazine, has announced that it recieved more than 350 applications  CIO 100 competition. This is a regiuonal competition which will include East Africa’s most successful organizations like Equity Bank, Kenya Airways, DHL, Kenya Power And Lighting Company, Kenya’s Ministry of Lands, Bidco Oil Refineries, Management Insurance Uganda, Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Uganda Finance Trust, Tanzania Telecommunication Company Ltd, Zanzibar Telecommunications Company Limited, Stanbic Bank  Tanzania, Tanzania Bureau of Standards, Tanzania Electricity Supply Company,  KOBIL Tanzania and Muhimbili National Hospital among others The CIO 100 Awards is meant to honor 100 companies…

Barclays Bank of Kenya has today joined the M-Pesa bandwagon instead of innovating. The bank is expected to offer various services under the M-Pesa platform. Barclays account holders who are individuals will be able to deposit and withdraw directly from their phones while Safaricom M-PESA agents who bank with Barclays will be able to buy the e-float for their daily operations. Adan Mohamed, Regional Managing Director quipped, “Customers are at the heart of everything we do.  We are deeply committed to growing our presence in East and West Africa; we therefore continue to respond to and cater for diverse customer…

Just like we mentioned, Orange has  just made our promise come true by launching the new iPhone 4. The new iPhone, manufactured by Apple, will retail exclusively at Orange Customer Experience Centres and dealer outlets in the 16GB and 32GB variations. Orange Chief Executive Officer Mickael Ghossein said the decision to launch the iPhone 4 in Kenya was informed by the increased thirst for data and entertainment based mobile phones among the company’s customers and the dynamic mobile telephony market. “Consumers on the other hand, are more sophisticated, demanding more data offerings as opposed to the voice services that have…

The US military is not happy with the new game from EA Games, Medal of Honour. The new game comes out today, but it’s already mirred in controversy. Unlike other shooter war games that take place in past or fictional wars, this game is set in present-day real war in Afghanistan. Players choose to be American fighters facing off against a Taliban-like faction. The makers of the game already has changed the name of the group opposing American forces from Taliban to “Opposing Force.” See more Game Videos at EA.com. UK’s Dr Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary,  called for retailers…

The family of Akuku Ogwella “Danger” are using Facebook to connect and organise meetings before his burial on 4th December. The famous polygamist is said to have not less than 210 children and many many grandchildren spread throughout the globe and all would like to be involved in the burial of their Dad. AKuku is getting a good mention in Twitter and his family has a Facebook page running.

It has been confirmed by a senior source from Nokia Middle East and Africa office. The much touted Nokia N8 is coming to Kenya by 20th October which is Wednesday next week. The first batch of the devices  left the factories in Finland and China 11 days ago. Nokia N8 is a Symbian^3 smartphone. Nokia N8 has a 3.5-inch, 640×360 pixel capacitive touchscreen, 16 GB of in-built storage memory, as well as a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeis optics, Xenon flash and Full HD capability.

There are millions of websites and blogs across Africa. This content transforms the web for the benefit of users. Google AdSense helps content publishers grow their online business by helping them with monetization. AdSense is a programme that enables publishers to display relevant ads on their websites and earn revenue. It’s free to use, quick to set up and now even easier to get paid. Google say they are excited to announce the launch of Western Union Quick Cash® payments for Google AdSense in three countries in Africa! If you’re a Google AdSense publisher, you can now select Western Union Quick Cash…

Vodacom SA has this week launched the VF 247 low-cost solar-powered cellphone, developed by ZTE through Vodafone to enable users to charge it using the Solar energy. The phone The VF 247 , launched in UK in July, has an solar panel intergrated in the body  with built-in Sun Boost software which makes the phone to charge without having it in direct sunlight all the time.The phone charges for an hour or two and if the battery runs on a cloudy day, the phone can be charged using a traditional power charger. The handset features a high-temperature battery that can…