Author: Tendai Marengereke
RIE 2013 First Call for Papers: Research Partnerships for Wealth Creation
The Research Intellectual Expo (RIE) is a Zimbabwean initiative by the ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, set up to showcase research and intellectual work by Zimbabweans both in the diaspora and at home.
Facebook’s Graph Search is here. What is it?
Facebook recently announced the latest addition to its social network, the social graph search engine. When introducing it on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg called it “the third pillar of the Facebook Ecosystem”.
5 tech initiatives we would love to see in Zimbabwe in 2013
Open data would enable accountability: it is difficult to conceal something if the facts are there for all to see. Not only will it result in transparency, just Data alone in the right hands is a powerful resource for our national economic and social development. It’s also an incredible opportunity for local talent to build locally relevant tech solutions, a very huge gap currently.
Aaron Swartz tragic suicide reignites the call for Open Access Publication
Aaron Swart was a brilliant programmer, Open Access fighter and internet freedom activist. At age 14, he was involved in the creation of RSS (Rich Site Summary), web feed formats used to publish frequently updated features such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and video in a standardized format, enabling millions of news sites and blogs to share their posts easily and consistently.
Learn programming APIs with Codecademy
Last year we featured an article about how the world of online learning was quickly outpacing conventional methods of learning and transforming into the main gateway for students who want to learn new subjects quickly and at their own pace.
Want to learn something new & useful? Try these innovative free online startups
Education as we know it is changing rapidly across the world, it is now easier for anyone to get the same high quality education offered by the world’s best universities such as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard.
New yellow pages site launched, & it comes with iOS & Android apps
Zimbabwe Yellow Pages have launched a stunning new ZimYellow.com website. The website serves as a portal to search for over 350,000 companies in their online database with profiles for Zimbabwean companies. You can basically search for Zimbabwe businesses on the internet; an online version of the traditional Yellow Pages concept but with maps, email addresses & and other stuff in the listings.
Thwarted in Africa, Kim Dotcom finds new home at Mega.co.nz
If you have not heard of Kim Dotcom, he is the guy behind Megaupload. It was a top 15 online file storage site that was famously shut down and the domain seized by the US Department of Justice on allegations of copyright infringement. Chances are that at one point in time you downloaded a file from the site.
Urine powered generator developed by Nigerian girls
Four girls from Nigeria showcased a urine powered generator system they developed at the Maker Faire Africa just held in Lagos.
Instagram’s new web profiles
I love taking pictures with Instagram, it’s an amazing photo sharing app available on both iOS and Android. For some time now it only had mobile profiles, but now users have dedicated web profiles to view all your friends’ pictures for the browser. Instagram recently announced the launch of web profiles, a Facebook like collage […]
A free mobile phone for everyone who catches 60 rats
South African charity Lifeline is running an initiative to get rid of festering rats in the Joburg township of Alexandra. In a modern take of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Lifeline is offering a mobile phone to any resident who manages to capture and submit 60 rodents to the organisation. According to […]
Will you buy a tablet anytime soon?
The tablet market has been growing exponentially since the 1st generation iPad came out and Apple has always had the biggest share of the 10-inch tablet market. Competitors found they could not compete with the iPad in the 10-inch market (although Samsung is certainly not giving up). Manufacturers started making 7-inch tablets starting with Amazon, […]
Mobile operators need to build online marketplaces
There are two main problems facing anyone who wants to conduct business online, namely: Payments and Distribution. The payment problem When one needs to make online transactions, they must to have a MasterCard/Visa card or PayPal, or any other method of online payment. None of these are easy to come by for the majority of internet […]
Arduino and Raspberry Pi: We need them in classrooms across the country
It is great being introduced to science and technology at a young age. Do you remember that moment you used a computer for the very first time, or the first time you played Tetris or Snake? How fascinating was that? I have fond memories of my earliest encounter with a computer, it was a 386 […]
US Lawmakers scared of Huawei and ZTE. Should we also be worried?
A U.S congressional investigation concluded that the two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei Technologies Inc., and ZTE Inc pose potential risks to their national security. The US’s worries come from the fact that the two entities receive significant funding directly from the Chinese government. The two tech firms have experienced growth, rapidly expanding worldwide especially in emerging markets, Zimbabwe […]
How a USB extension cable transformed my PowerTel experience
I have been using the PowerTel mobile broadband package for about two months now, and i am definitely blown away by the experience so far. I know there are many skeptics out there. Many of my friends have used the service and have described it as erratic and bitterly disappointing, whilst others have accused the ISP […]
Kenya to Switch Off Counterfeit Phones
Kenyan mobile operators will start switching off “fake” cell phones from their networks in accordance with a government directive. They are scheduled to begin the exercise at midnight, 30 September. The switch-off process will involve blocking a handset that bears a fake International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number from accessing a mobile operator’s network. The […]
A technological call to arms – let’s imitate to progress
What has been will be again, What has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun – Ecclesiastes 1:9 I doubt that King Solomon could have imagined the technological strides that mankind would go on to make when he wrote those words, but part of his wisdom still applies today. […]
15 must have Android apps for your daily use
Android has reached 500 million activated devices worldwide, and slowly but surely devices running the operating system are making their way into the Zimbabwe market. There are so many options to download on the Google Play Store, I decided to make a list of apps that any Android user must have. This is a list […]
Apple unveils the iPhone 5: Evolutionary rather than Revolutionary
Apple officially unveiled the latest variant of its flagship device the iPhone 5. With the launch of the iPhone 5, Apple has finally caught up with the competition. The flagship device is ultra thin(.3 inches) and features a high speed LTE connection, a larger screen (4 inches), the much talked about Retina display and a […]
Viber comes to Nokia S40, Symbian & Samsung Bada (update)
Viber, the mobile communications platform offering free voip calls, text and photo messages, announced that it has surpassed the 100 million users milestone across the multiple phone platforms that it supports. Additionally, the company unveiled that it is simultaneously releasing three new messaging versions of its application for popular phone platforms: Nokia’s Series 40 feature […]
How tech can help: The Zesa prepaid power billing
Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) has been phasing out the old power meters and replacing them with the Cash Power prepaid meters like the one on the right. Zesa recently had our power meter changed, and we have been using this meter for almost two months now, and the benefits are numerous such as: no […]
Review: Windows 8 is here, are you ready for the OS of the future?
Microsoft recently finished development of their next Operating System (OS), Windows 8. The latest addition to the Windows family ushers in a radical UI change that you will either love or hate tremendously. I love it a lot. I have been using Windows 8 on and off since the release preview came out. I began […]
Barclays’ mobile money smartphone app Pingit launched in Kenya. Zim & others to follow
Pingit, Barclays’ smartphone mobile banking app, has been extended to Africa, with the first implementation launched in Kenya. An announcement posted on the institution’s global website says the application will be launched in additional Africa markets, including Zimbabwe, in the next couple of months. It is an app much like the CABS textacash service in terms of […]