Category Posts: Web

How under the sun do you launch a product, one of whose main points of interface with customers is the web, without having the web platform ready?

In October 2010, Africom made a bold unprecedented move in the history of the internet in Zimbabwe. Fresh from the launch of its new red brand and mobile broadband services, the company announced the pricing of its data packages; the cost of a 1 gigabyte bundle was US $18. It was crazy. It was fantastic for the customers. We celebrated. For the first time in Zimbabwe, here was a company that understood that the internet was not a luxury for rich.

Today, 1 February 2012, is the commencement date for the southern Africa region Apps4Africa Climate Challenge. The challenge will run for 2 months to end of the 30th of March and invites African innovators to develop innovative, web-based and mobile technology solutions to local climate change challenges. According to the Apps4Africa website the challenge centers around the strategic themes that were debated and decided upon by world leaders at the 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) conference in South Africa last year. The challenge is sponsored by the US government.

A year ago, US $50 per month unlimited broadband was only offered by one internet provider, the state owned PowerTel. Many would argue doesn’t really ‘need’ to make money. It wasn’t the best internet in town, largely because of congestion issues, but PowerTel afforded many small businesses and middle income earners an opportunity to have their own internet connection for the first time. The rest of the providers had prices north of $100 for any type broadband, forget unlimited.

Alpha Media Holdings announced yesterday via a press release in one of its papers that the media group will be hosting Stafford Masie at a tech breakfast meeting to be held in Harare on the 17th of February. Alpha is holding the event in partnership with Telkom owned ISP, iWayAfrica.

Today, we attended the Econet VoIP launch we wrote about yesterday. We speculated a lot yesterday about what exactly the product is so we’re quite excited to reveal the accurate details today. Those of you that follow us on Twitter received the news in real-time as we heard it in the morning so no new stuff here for them.

About two weeks ago when Google launched Search plus Your World, we wrote an article noting that what was really worrying was not anti-trust lawsuits or the war of words that ensued between the search giant and Twitter. More worrying was Google’s betrayal of the trust that we the users have in it to deliver the best search results.

Before we moved the comments system on this site from Disqus to Facebook about a week ago, we had thought about it for a while and the decision wasn’t any easy one to make. Eventually we decided to move. And this is why:

We just got news that Zimbabwe Online (ZOL) has been acquired by the Liquid Telecommunications Group. ZOL is now officially part of the Liquid Telecom Group. From the information available to us so far, ZOL will remain an independent company in terms of branding and operations.

Having read so many comments and stories here on how you cannot access PayPayl services in restricted countries like Zimbabwe, I felt compelled to share how you can use PayPal without having access to PayPal, having no PayPal account, and without the means to create a PayPal account.

The internet is on strike today. One of the most popular website globally, Wikipedia, has blacked out in protest against SOPA and PIPA. If you visit Wikipedia today it will load you a black page with the following text:

I had a chance to see the “hot” mobile phones in Wedza in all their shapes and sizes. The Chinese made models topped the list perhaps because of their key features – dual sim support, high audio output, multimedia support (ability to play a range of audio file formats, record audio/video clips and snap JPEG photos with reasonable resolution).

We have noticed that for a while now all our internet page links to the Herald made before 2011 have not been working anymore. Links like this one (http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=20101&cat=8) which we linked to from a story on 7 December 2010. Or this one (http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=14244&cat=8 ) we linked to on 14 January 2010 from this story. There are more examples. You get the page below when you click on the links:

Another exciting year in information technologies lies ahead with a lot of promise for the continued growth of the sector. Below, we provide our thoughts on what we think 2012 holds. It would be great to know what you the reader think in the comments.

Google’s latest move to integrate Google+ with the Google search engine results page (SERP) got me worried. Google says from now on, the results you see in Google Search will include personalized Google+ data related to the search. It basically ties Google+ as a social network to Google search to produce a product that “understands not only content, but also people and relationship.” These features can be turned off but how many people make the effort? The new features are called “Search plus Your World”.