Small to Middle sized businesses are soon going to be the backbone of the Kenyan economy. We need these small and medium sized business to support the economy and contribute to the GDP and most of these are Start-Ups. With the vibrant Start-Up scene in Kenya, Microsoft wants to provide help for people who are building the future!

The Microsoft developer evangelists team would like to invite developers and business development managers  in Start-Ups to meet at the iHub on the 24th of January, where they will spend their day answering questions and demoing the latest technologies Microsoft is working on.

You will get a chance to meet our Audience Marketing Manager who will show you the Microsoft support programs for Start-Ups. Read more »

Image Courtesy; BerryView

As you’ve likely heard, BlackBerry AppWorld is now accepting app submissions for BlackBerry 10! This means that apps submitted to the store starting October 2012 will be guaranteed to be reviewed and ready for launch.  This is a huge opportunity to be the first into the store and to capitalize on the app-hungry market.

The sooner you get your app into the store, the sooner it can be tested for the Built for BlackBerry program; and if it’s tested and is certified you then qualify for the 10k Developer Commitment.  And to top it off; they’re going to give you preferred carousel placements as a thank you to devs who get their apps into App World in October and November. How can anyone beat that?  Read more »

image courtesy, Crackberry

Samsung recently toppled Nokia as the best seller on the planet and word on the street is that this surprise attack and win has been fueled by Samsung’s rigorous marketing campaign and evident cutting edge technology. With the new Galaxy, Samsung could have potentially set another benchmark. They are huge on community which is a crucial driving force behind a successful product. Essentially, if you don’t have the numbers, you have nothing.

Well, what about BlackBerry? Blackberry could potentially be onto something new with BlackBerry 10.

Many are saying that this is BBs last great hope (lol). Others keep at it that BlackBerry is deader than alive (Even more LOL although I doubt that Grammar makes any sense). Point is, they couldn’t be more wrong. Developers and top brands alike are already beginning to commit to BB 10 platform for their (MAB) Mobile Application Development. Recently at BlackBerry World, RIM  revealed relevant endorsements who have already confirmed their excitement for the upcoming launch of the BlackBerry 10 platform. Read more »

Are you a HTML code-guru? Here is a chance to win a great deal of money and possibly a trip to San Francisco to meet some of the world’s greatest game developers.

The New Year brings with it some good tidings in the name of a Pokki developer contest.

A participant stands a chance to win a cool 30 thousand US Dollars and an all expenses paid trip to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next in 2012.

All you have to do is build a new game in HTML5 and other Web technologies (but not using any Flash) and have it approved at the Pokki store before the end of the day February 20, 2012. Games will be judged by a panel of game development managers on gameplay, appeal, polish and overall graphics and sound.

Read more »

BlackBerry has not had a great time this past month. The device manufacturer faced quite the truck load of criticism and down-right discredit for their recent service outage that spanned across major regions of NorthAmerica, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Aside from that, today marks Day 2 of BlackBerry Developer Conference Americas. The event is being held in San Fransisco in the USA and has attracted developers interested in the BB OS platform that currently runs the BlackBerry smart phones as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook, a tablet produced by their device manufacturer RIM.

BlackBerry developers and enthusiasts will now get to interact with a new mobile platform announced today called the BBX which is a mixture of the BlackBerry OS and QNX, a commercial Unix-like realtime operating system primarily used in embedded systems.

QNX is said to assist in combining the best of both worlds to give a full-on experience for users on the BlackBerry service as well as the devices aligned with RIM. Read more »

It’s official.

Tomorrow, 29^th September 2011, will see the first ever developer’s mini conference in sub Saharan Africa.

The event is scheduled to be hosted at the Laico Regency Hotel.

This particular meet-up, a first in the region, will be attended by Waldi Wepener, Head of RIM (Research in Motion) for East, Central and Southern Africa, who is speak on the new Operating System (BB OS 7) among other key points during the event.

The rest of the RIM Team, Colin Abouchabki who heads business development in Africa, and Michael Weitzel, Technical manager will talk about the BlackBerry OS and fundamentals of developing for BlackBerry and tackle any questions you may have on their devices and systems.

Colin is here to train developers on how to code for BlackBerry and its App World platform.

The event starts promptly at 8:30 to 5:30.

Meals will be catered for during the event so plan to attend.

NB: Registration is on a ‘first come first serve’ basis and the team has already received numerous registration requests which have ended confirmed attendance RSVP with Mukami Muriuki on 20-2396898 or email Mukami from Africa Practice to book a slot.

Nokia shut down the developer forum after a recent hack that compromised user details in the forum. The company comes to reassure developer forum users that the level of information breach should not be necessarily alarming. Read the message below.

“During our ongoing investigation of the incident we have discovered that a database table containing developer forum members’ email addresses has been accessed, by exploiting a vulnerability in the bulletin board software that allowed an SQL Injection attack. Initially we believed that only a small number of these forum member records had been accessed, but further investigation has identified that the number is significantly larger.
The database table records includes members’ email addresses and, for fewer than 7% who chose to include them in their public profile, either birth dates, homepage URL or usernames for AIM, ICQ, MSN, Skype or Yahoo. However, they do not contain sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details and so we do not believe the security of forum members’ accounts is at risk. Other Nokia accounts are not affected. Read more »

According to the Google Developer Team, in the past year alone, Google guys have met with over 10,000 developers and techies across Sub Saharan Africa and are continually impressed by the ingenuity and enthusiasm of this community in solving real problems with technology.

From applications that crowd-source traffic info to mobile registration of local businesses, handheld devices have taken center stage for consumers and developers in Africa. With a number of countries in the region hovering around 80-90% mobile penetration, mobile is the screen size for the web and the communication experience.

And now that mass is all talking about Google and the Android Development.

Read more »

BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) Social Platform officially goes into public beta.

This means that the BlackBerry developer community can now take advantage of the powerful social aspects of the ultra popular BBM service (an active user base of over 35 million). The BBM Social Platform was first announced at the BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 (http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=4555).

Enhanced Developer Experience – Empowering features

With this beta release, Java developers have access to APIs and features that allow them to build important functions into their applications. They are user permission based and include accessing and updating fields in the user’s profile, creating custom areas within the user’s profile, initiating and embedding chats with friends, initiating file transfers, sharing applications virally with friends in their contact list. Read more »