There has been an amazing renewed commitment by the stakeholders to headline at this year’s DEMO Africa, an affiliate of the global DEMO conference that is first being held in Africa, and more specifically Nairobi which is Kenya’s capital. DEMO is a platform that seeks to connect innovative startups with growth and venture capitalist funds to allow them an opportunity to pitch for growth capital and strategic partnerships to the tune of a total of 66 Million USD.

The following stakeholders in Kenya’s Information and Communication Technology sector have reinforced their commitment in working together with African governments in a bid to hasten the growth of the continent’s vibrant Read more »

Microsoft Corp. recently (20^th September 2012) announced a new global initiative that they choose to call the Microsoft YouthSpark. This is a program that aims to create opportunities in over 100 countries across the world for over 300 Million young people from 2012 to sometime in 2016.  This initiative is part of what Microsoft calls their citizenship programme.

It is basically a drive to empower youth with educational tools both in and out of the classroom as this ultimately helps them reach their full potential as leaders of tomorrow in the employment industry and more importantly in entrepreneurship. The main of YouthSpark will see Microsoft dedicate the majority of its cash contributions to nonprofits and not-for-profit organizations that serve the youth population around the world. Further, Microsoft YouthSpark plans to include Microsoft Office365 for education, free technology tools for all teachers and students to power learning and collaboration, and Skype (you will remember that Microsoft bought out Skype a few months ago) in the classroom, a free global community for teachers to connect their students with others around the world.  Read more »

Ok. So I’m a live stream guy. And I have been a live stream guy for quite a while. Truth is, I was a live stream guy before live streaming was cool; Before it was Mainstream. You know? Before all media houses in Kenya adopted it. Back then, only one Kenyan media house dominated that space. With them, we live streamed some cool events like Alykhan Satchu’s mindspeak with Museveni, judges vetting with CJ Mutunga at 20^th Floor Anniversary Towers, possibly every Centum Investor briefing since mid-2010 with James Mworia, a Coke HYPE event in the bunduz along Lang’ata Road and WordCamp 2011 in Naivasha organized by @raidarmax in November 2011. Oh! Even a small part of Rhino Charge 2011 Gauntlet Challenge; well partly anyway because our Indigo C-Band 1.8 meter dish was severely affected by a Sun Outage deep in the heart of Baringo’s Marigat ‘desert’. Bottom line, you name it (and pay for it) we live streamed it. Read more »

“The product has to be new, it has to bring in new innovation on how a company runs its operations.” says Brian Longwe. This was during outreach launch of the DEMO Africa (innovation tour), a launch pad for emerging technology and trends that will run in October 2012. Brian briefed interested parties gathered at Strathmore University’s iLab, who are one of the collaborators of this event.

Harry Hare, the producer of DEMO Africa says unlike other start ups, DEMO Africa is not a competition for money; it is more than that. It is meant to be a competition for markets and for developers to come up with a compelling, bankable product that will attract investors into investing in it for long-term gain. He says DEMO will be big; the event will be looking for business ready products that will disrupt the tech scene, a unique product that will push investors to turn Read more »

Last week, Microsoft Corporation CEO Steve Ballmer did well to unveil a customer preview of the new Microsoft Office. This new release has some amazing features that include much-intuitive design features that work well with integrated touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard across new and existing Windows devices (including tablets). This new Office is highly social and does much to unlock modern scenarios in reading, note-taking, meetings and communications and will be delivered to subscribers through a cloud service that is always up to date. Looks like Microsoft took quite the cue from the Kindle, competitor tablets like the iPad, mobile phones and devices and cloud-reliant OS to package an all-in-one product and do better that the rest.

“We are taking bold steps at Microsoft. The new, modern Office will deliver unparalleled productivity and flexibility for both consumers and business customers. It is a cloud service and will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8.” Steve Ballmer said at the press conference in San Francisco. Read more »

If you own either an Asha 302 or an Asha 303, Nokia have got some pretty exciting news for you. You can now get Mail for Exchange (principle for push email, calendar and contact data synchronization between compatible Microsoft Exchange email servers and your phone) via Nokia’s OviStore for free. This is what Microsoft originally called Microsoft ActiveSync when they ran it exclusively on Windows Phones. This protocol-based app for business communication purposes is now available on Asha devices costing right under 10,000 KES in the Kenyan market. This is Nokia’s way of bringing business opportunity to entrepreneurs and businesses in high growth economies around the world.

“Nokia Asha phones blur the lines between feature phones and smart-phones, and Mail for Exchange on the Asha 302 and Asha 303 represents a significant step forward in connecting the next billion people to more critical information around them,” said Dieter May, Senior VP, Mobile Phones Services. Read more »

Anyone who’s installed the Beta version of Windows 8 (Consumer Preview) has definitely played with it by now. They’ll attest to existence of multiple functionality most of which looks very cool and metro-styled. This means we have had a chance to see what Microsoft has in its pipeline to blow our minds hopefully before the end of 2012 (most probably between Q3 and Q4 2012). We also expect the OS to run light on even the simplest of devices. There has been rumour mills on possibility of Microsoft running Windows 8 or ARM Chips meaning that Windows 8 will have the capacity to compete favourably with the IOS and Android versions of Tablet OS.

There is still massive speculation on Win8 capabilities though. The recent build and subsequent release of the Dev Preview has also answered quite a number (unfortunately not all) questions surrounding Win8.

Some of the noted features include;

Read more »

Science HackDay organised by Morris Mwanga, nerd, CTO at P2PCash and an MSc. student in Applied Computer Science at Kennesaw State University (he also tutors Calculus at the Kennesaw) USA, at the 88MPH space above BrewBistro on Ngong Road. For those of you who are techies, you probably know and have been to the place.

It was a good event. Main sponsorship came from Microsoft and Safaricom. Other sponsorships came from the Linux Institute of Professionals, GitHUB Social Coding, and ofcourse 88MPH whose space was being used for the sleepover 3-day Hackathon.

Host was Larry Madowo of NTV and www.larrymadowo.co.ke. Follow him here on Twitter.

Event started on Friday at 4pm and ended at around 6pm on Sunday. Winners in the different categories were as follows:

Read more »

Hello mates. Here’s a little tweak I came across while playing with my home computer. I did a bit of research and found that 6 in 10 friends still run Windows XP on their computers. Of this 60%, 75% have a very slow machine in terms of boot-up.

This tweak will only apply to those who only have a single hard drive on their primary IDE channel. This probably locks out peeps with Serial ata (SATA) drives (not confirmed yet). Make sure there’s nothing else on device 0 or 1 and all other ROMs are connected on the secondary IDE channel.

Each time you boot XP, there’s an updated file called NTOSBOOT-*.pf which appears in prefetch folder directory. Fortunately, there’s no need to erase any other files as this new prefetch in XP significantly improves loading time of installed programs. This solution is meant to force XP to boot faster and not compromise on performance. Read more »

When I thought of writing this post the first time, I really thought that it would have no real local audience. Local audience in this case meaning readership. But then I did a small survey and realized that RIM is quickly gaining ground in Kenya, East Africa and Africa as a whole.

Looking at the numbers, I can confidently say that there is a good percentage of Kenyans who own BlackBerry devices. The difference between that number and the ones that use the device as the super-user tool it is meant to be is somewhat large though.

First off, the BlackBerry requires that data be enabled to enjoy the full experience. Kenya’s main Telcos charge between 2,000KES and 500KES for this service depending on different plans you may be interested in.

Here is a basic guide that will help use your BlackBerry Desktop Software easier.

If you are unable to install the new BlackBerry Desktop software (Version 6.0) due to the “Windows Installer not found error” consider doing the following: Read more »