Category: Software Development
The Impact Hub Coding for Kids Bootcamp is back!
Impact Hub’s Coding for Kids Bootcamp has returned and is looking to give primary and high school students exposure to what can be possible through technology. This is the fourth year that the program is running and Impact Hub wants to help shape the perception of the youth through the lens of the ever-changing digital […]
Remember the Mercedes G Wagon that went too fast in reverse because they ‘forgot’ to code in speed limiters?
Would a SaaS model have helped? Car enthusiasts do not like modern cars and are terrified of what the future likely holds. I’m not in that boat, if it’s fast, looks good and is comfortable, I’m satisfied. Where I agree with car enthusiasts is that there’s too much electronics in modern cars. The leader in […]
Liquid Intelligent Technologies’ Microsoft 365 suite pitch
Liquid Intelligent Technologies is making a concerted push for its Microsoft 365 services locally. If you remember, late last year Liquid Telecom was rebranded in order to represent its new business strategy of not just being a telecoms carrier to being a full suite technology company. For those who may have forgotten, this angle isn’t […]
I’ve never wanted an iPhone more – iOS 16 looks legit
We have now had a glimpse of the version of software that the iPhone 14 will be shipping with. Apple showed us the new iOS 16 at their recently held developer conference. Although I’m probably the biggest Android fan out there, I gotta admit, it looks good. Over the years, both Android and iOS have […]
New method claims to help you read 1.5x faster, all from the click of a button
I’m that guy that watches YouTube videos at 1.5x speed and at 2x for those slow talkers. Time is a limited resource and whenever I watch a 10 minute video in 6.5 minutes, I feel like I’m gaming the system. I do the same with podcasts, I never listen at normal speed. I have been […]
16 A’s at O-Level, now this young Zimbo has built an e-learning app
Takudzwa Nhongo in 2017, went about trying to find the problem with education in Zimbabwe. In the year prior the ZIMSEC pass rate was 29.96%. To understand what was going wrong, Takudzwa applied to write 18 subjects for his O-Levels and came out of that with 16 A’s and 2 B’s. This was quite a […]
Developer salaries: Zim 4th highest in Africa according to study
Developers are the authors of the digital age because if you want anything done these days you need one or a team to execute whatever ideas you have. One thing I have been curious about is developer salaries in Zim as well as in Africa and where we rank on the continent. Luckily that question […]
Apple’s App Store now permits unlisted apps
Apple announced last week that it will allow companies and developers to distribute unlisted apps through its App Store according to a report by MacRumours. The facility is there for applications that Apple termed as “not suited for public distribution”, and they will only be discoverable via a direct link or through Apple Business Manager […]
Denmark via Mazowe built Wa-Faya’s app; Zim developers anything is possible
Takudzwa Shamhu is a local developer who works for Pleo, a Danish fintech firm that creates solutions to manage business expenses. We recently had a chat with him about his very interesting journey from working at Telco after graduating from Chinhoyi University to ending up in Europe. Oh… and how he built Wa-Faya’s app in […]
ZIMRA & HIT sign deal to develop software that will maximise tax collection
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, (ZIMRA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) that will see the latter develop software that will help the taxman further maximise revenue collection. “The prime objectives of the MoU are to provide a broad base for cooperation with the intention of mobilising domestic revenue […]
OneDrive will stop syncing files for users on Windows 7 & 8 in March 2022
Users who are still using Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 will no longer be able to sync files automatically with OneDrive starting from March next year. In order to focus resources on new technologies and operating systems, and to provide users with the most up-to-date and secure experience, beginning January 1, 2022, updates will no […]
Local startup now allows you to register a domain on WhatsApp
Late last month we reported on a local startup called Resellme that was opening the domain registration and web hosting game to anyone who felt those services aligned with their core product offering. So for instance a digital marketing company could become a Resellme agent and offer a full website service package with Resellme dealing […]
Propertybook’s quiet disruption of real estate through the cloud & other services
The property market has become something of the wild west in the last decade or so. This is in part due to the popularity of social media marketing and housing groups which have brought with them bogus agents making people pay ridiculous fees just to view properties or even downright fleecing people of their money. […]
Adobe’s PDF Editor is finally available as a Chrome extension
Dealing with PDFs can be a hassle sometimes especially if you want to make a quick correction or copy text. The established way of doing it was by downloading the document and then opening Adobe’s Acrobat to make the amendment. Well, it looks like after what seems like an age, calls for this feature (and […]
How to install the latest npm on Ubuntu 20.04
Not so long ago the only thing I needed to learn in order to create plugins for my blogs was PHP. I could farm out the JavaScript and CSS parts of development to freelancers. With the recent versions of WordPress however, more and more code is in JavaScript so I decided to learn JavaScript deeply. […]
Gwinyai Nyatsoka: CTO for a US tech firm who wants to teach local devs how to do the same remotely
Gwinyai Nyatsoka is a Zimbabwean developer who made it big teaching on Udemy a few years back. When he shared his earnings, the total came to around US$20K, since that time he has become the Chief Technical Officer at Cobbles, a US-based software development firm. I recently had a conversation with Gwinyai Nyastoka about his […]
Local startup creates a platform that allows anyone to start a domain registry & web hosting business
More and more businesses are making their services available beyond physical stores and social media to the wider internet because of the pandemic. No one wants to be left behind and more importantly, businesses don’t want their domain to be taken by someone else. Buying a domain (and web hosting) is relatively easy in Zimbabwe […]
Google is bringing a privacy feature from Android 11 to older versions
One of the really cool things that came on Android 11 was a feature that automatically reset app permissions. The feature works by revoking or auto-resetting the permissions of apps that haven’t been used in a while. When you use that app again, it will then need to ask you to authorise access to various […]
Android 12 might be coming in October
Various versions of Android 12’s beta have been available since the mobile operating system was announced back in May. The final version of the OS, however, has taken far longer to come out than those that have come before it. There is some news to a release date, according to Mishaal Rahman, Editor-in-Chief of XDA, […]
Google search on desktop finally adds dark mode, what took so long?
I don’t know what it is, but light text on a dark background just does it for me. As the dark mode fever has really reached fever pitch in the past couple of years, I’ve been one happy bunny. Sometimes called night mode, this option of displaying content on a screen is my go to […]
This awesome new tool will soon turn everyone into a programmer
Generally, if you want computers to do something useful you have to create a computer program. This typically means learning one of the many computing languages out there. These range from low-level languages such as assembling code to high-level languages such as Python and JavaScript. Now you can add a new language to that continually […]
WordPress 5.8 is out and it comes with WebP and more
Recently the folks behind WordPress released this year’s second major release of WordPress for this year – WordPress 5.8. And it comes with an awesome surprise that I gushed about a few weeks ago. This release now natively supports WebP. As I said in the earlier article this is huge. Just to recap WebP is […]
Google is ditching the APK format for apps on the Play Store
Google has announced that it is moving away from the popular APK format on the Play Store starting August this year. The new format will be App Bundles (.aab) which the company rolled out a couple of years ago. “Since we launched the Android App Bundle in May 2018, we’ve seen our developer community embrace this new […]
Windows 11: The good, the bad and the meh…
Microsoft is launching the next generation of the Windows (11) operating system, tomorrow the 24th of June 2021. We browsed the internet to see what was being said about it and here are our thoughts. You can play or download the podcast with the link below: NB: Techzim is now zero-rated for text-based content. However, for embedded […]
The upcoming version of WordPress will support WebP
I don’t often write about WordPress, the popular CMS (content management system) that powers both Techzim and all the sites I work with but today I decided to make an exception as I couldn’t contain my excitement. The next coming version of WordPress, version 5.8 which is coming out on 20 July, will have native […]
Setting up the perfect web-development environment using docker and ZOL
I have to admit I am as far from winning the world’s best web-developer as it gets, but I give it my best. And also I mostly develop for myself apart from the very rare and little WordPress PHP snippets I have shared with my even more technologically inept friends. Recently though I found myself […]
I have been running an eLearning site for six years, here are the lessons I have learned
Here are some lessons about venturing into the elearning space a developer or someone who is looking to start a service over the many platforms available.