Author: Cyrus

Safaricom has renewed its sponsorship towards the Connected Kenya Summit. The communications services provider will be partnering with the Kenya ICT Board in to host the summit which will be held at the Leisure Lodge Hotel, Diani from the April 2nd to 5th, 2012. With many stakeholders questioning the achievement of Kenya ICT Board since the 2011 summit, it will be interesting to see what the response of Kenya ICT Board will be on the question. In the meantime, nothing much has been said by the ministry or the board. The main aim of the the summit is to establish…

Worried that we are still stuck with 2D display units with all these great advances in 3D sensing and display technologies, some MIT students have decided to create a 3D desktop which uses 3D spatial operating environment allowing users to directly interact with a virtual desktop. A 3D desktop user can, through this technology, reach into the projected 3D output space with his hands to directly manipulate the windows. See the video below: More on this

Safaricom is rolling up its sleeve for real competition on it revolutionary mobile money service, M-Pesa, now. The mobile services provider has today announced a major tariff review of its M-PESA service, the first since the service was launched in 2007. M-PESA customers will now be able to send and receive amounts as low as Sh10 with effect from today, against a previous limit of Sh50, with charges for transfers within this band pegged at Sh3. M-PESA customers can also now make micro-payments from as low as Sh10 to Sh49 per month. Again, Safaricom has lowered the transaction fees for…

Buoyed by the successful launch in Kenya, Bharti Airtel headed to Nigeria to launch their next 3G network. Airtel Nigeria has today announced the roll-out of 3G services across the 36 States in Nigeria including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. At the launch, Airtel Nigeria also announced up to 50% bonus offer on purchase of any of its data plan bundles; free 2GB on purchase of data dongle and a free one month subscription for BlackBerry users who activate a two-month plan. New customers on the network will enjoy a bonus N100 airtime on any recharge from N100 and above, plus…

The much anticipated launch of the next iPad is now scheduled for March 7 in San Francisco US. In the invite, Apple promises “something you really have to see. And touch”, according to journalists and bloggers who received it. The invite has a picture of an iPad and the expectations are so high. The image of the iPad on the invite looks sharp with bloggers now speculating that the iPad might come with “Retina Display” this time. The main weakness of iPad 2 is that its display makes reading unpleasant with 1024 x 768 resolution. iPad 3 is expected to have…

The Ministry of Education and KNEC is expected to release the KCSE 2011 results by 12 noon today. The Ministry is tying to use the technology in delivering the results to all stake-holders. The problems is that KNEC’s website always becomes inaccessible whenever the results are released. We do hope that it would be better this time. Just like the KCPE results, there are 3 ways in which you can get the KCSE results; SMS Index Number to 5052 to get 2011 KCSE Results on SMS Visit this link and enter the index number  (It is currently disabled) You can also…

European luxury car-maker Daimler Chrysler, plans to bring Apple’s iconic voice assisted system, Siri, to its A-Class  line of cars. The Siri system would allow drivers to control various in-built electronic systems in the car using voice commands. The in-built system, called the Drive Kit Plus will work in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz’s Digital DriveStyle App to translate the iPhone’s screen onto the in-car system screen. Drivers of the A-Class Mercedes-Benz will be able to enjoy listening to music, change radio channels, update social networks statuses, and send SMS. The Drive Kit Plus will come pre-installed with all popular apps such…

Ghetto Radio is one popular youth focused FM station in Nairobi. The FM station which broadcasts on 89.5Mhz in Nairobi has recently achieved a fete which is hard to come by in African social media circles. On their Facebook page, they put a posting promoting the Friday Night Live show and remembering a very popular fan of the station, Josphat Apewe. The post attracted more than 8,300 comments and more than 300 likes. The commenting was a record. Getting 8,000 comments on a Facebook post is not that easy in Africa.

LG has today unveiled the LG Optimus Vu smartphone. The 5″ smartphone is going to give Samsung Galaxy Note a run in the market considering the features of the Optimus Vu. The Vu utilizes a 4:3 aspect ration compared to the 16:9 ratio common in most handsets. The Optimus Vu has a capacitive pen ( meaning no pressure sensitivity) and weighs 168 grams. THe Vu runs on an Android 2.3 and now the ICS as expected. The Vu packs a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm MSM8660 Snapdragon processor, an XGA screen, and an 8 megapixel camera. LG promises the Optimus Vu will get an Ice Cream sandwich upgrade…

Huawei has today introduced the world’s fastest quad-core smartphone, the Huawei Ascend D quad. The new baby in the Huawei stable is powered by the Huawei’s K3V2 quad-core 1.2GHz/1.5GHz processor, boasting one of the compact design among 4.5-inch smartphones. The Ascend D quad comes packed with an Android 4.0 operating system and Huawei’s proprietary power management system which it claims, provides up to 30% in energy savings. At the launch in MWC in Barcelona Spain, Richard Yu, Chairman of Huawei Device said: “We’ve listened to people’s top demands from smartphones: speed, long-battery life, high quality visual and audio capabilities, and…

Angola’s Movicel has signed a commercial contract for LTE with Huawei. Under this contract, Movicel will deploy a LTE FDD 1.8 GHz network in province Cabinda, the most productive crude oil region in Angola. The network will be commercialized by the end of May this year making it Africa’s first commercial LTE FDD 1.8 GHz network. According to its futuristic network developing blueprint, Movicel will provide mobile broadband services with a downlink speed of up to 100Mb/s across Angola, starting from the high-value and dense urban areas, such as the capital Luanda. Movicel CEO, Yon Moreira da Silva Jnr, said…

Samsung Electronics East Africa has opened a fully-fledged service centre in Kisumu. Samsung is on a global expansion strategy with a similar centre opened in Nairobi less than a month ago. The newly opened Samsung state of art service centre in Kisumu is located at Swan Centre. At the launch, Samsung Regional Head of Service Ms. Koki Muia confirmed that the firm is investing heavily in its bid to rollout a sound after sales service infrastructure. The local Samsung unit is also raising its market presence through collaborative business partnerships with local retailers and technology service providers. The new Samsung service centres…

Two key data providers in Kenya, Safaricom and Zuku, have suffered massive data outage since Saturday midday due to cable cuts on the TEAMs cable. Safaricom and Zuku reported that there were “cuts on the TEAMS cable, 4.9Km off the coast of Mombasa.” Safaricom is currently re-routing it data traffic through SEACOM but full recovery might take up to 24 hours. Safaricom has a 20% stake on TEAMs Kenya LTD which in turn owns an 85% stake on the cable while Etisalat of UAE owns the remaining 15%. Wananchi Group, Zuku’s mother company, holds 5% stake on TEAMs Kenya ltd while Orange…

Airtel Kenya finally launched its 3G network officially just as we predicted. The service provider launched what it claimed to be “fastest mobile internet in Kenya” with the COO preferring that users call it “Airtel 3.75G because it is way better than the usual 3G platforms available in the country.” At the launch, Airtel showed all signs that its voice war with Safaricom might just be replicated in the data sector. The Bharti Airtel owned provider adopted the *544# code to access its data offerings which might be viewed as easing the  user experience while others might view it as…

Airtel Kenya is set to launch its long awaited 3G network tomorrow. A source which will remain anonymous for now has indicated that the telco will be launching its 3G service in the morning hours. The source has indicated that the network has deployed its 3G network beyond the usual 3 cities – Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa. A source at the telco has intimated that the value proposition the company is presenting is very innovative. We can’t say much about this but lets wait and see what Airtel Kenya will tell us about their 3G network.