Google today teamed up with World Bank, UNOSAT, and RCMRD to bring together more than 100 Sudanese in the diaspora to map Southern Sudan, ahead of the country’s July 9th independence day .

The event is the second of a series of mapping sessions which have been organised to enable NGOs and the Sudanese diaspora community to create comprehensive maps of the region using Google Map Maker technology.

Speaking at the iHub during the event, Google.org Program Manager, Dr. France Lamy, said that the exercise would help put Southern Sudan on the world map faster, and opening it up to global opportunities. Read more »

According to Shop Mag, 28billion pounds are lost annually to counterfeit products.

According to Daily Finance, the worst affected industries are footwear with a value of 99.8million USD followed by Consumer Electronics coming in at 31.8million USD value.

Many of these electronics are Television sets, radios and sound systems and even the prestigious home theatres that are coveted by many who are out looking for a good appliance to use in their homes.

The other biggest culprit is mobile phones.

The Kenyan government has been losing KES3bilion every year due to evasion of tax by bringin in counterfeits to the country. Additionally, counterfeits cost giant phone maker and distributor Nokia-Kenya USD 361million in their last financial year. Read more »

Users of Skype may have to go yet another day without their trusted client for calling across continents and seamless chat-messaging for a few hours today.

This is attributed to a failure in the overall Skype system that has disabled logging in and consequently inhibited communication between users all over the World.

An Official message from the official Skype twitter account said “A small number of you may have problems signing in to Skype. We’re investigating the cause, and hope to have more details to share soon.” at 1400 HRS EastAfrican Time today 7^th June 2011.

More details coming.

Users of Skype today 26^th May 2011 experienced an unfamiliar phenomenon when Skype crashed on their computers and all attempts to re-launch the application failed miserably allowing the user to login only to crash again and again.

Users have been ranting on twitter for the past 2 hours since the crashes became more rampant.

This comes amid recent news that Microsoft bought out the company for 8.5Million US dollars earlier this month.

Some say this is what is in store for Skype users henceforth but we can only wait and see the outcome.

Speculation drives to conclusion that someone is trying to scare the masses by failing an application that many have come to enjoy as free and bug-free in most instances.

Some even joked that the crash came as a sign that Skype is now officially a Microsoft product. (low blow)

Keep it juuchini for updates.

Read more »

Global handsets maker advises users not to respond to dubious messages.

World’s leading handsets maker, Nokia, has warned mobile phone users over the re-emergence of a scam suggesting that people have won money or mobile phones, which in reality, is an attempt to get private information from people who reply to the messages.

The hoaxers previously used to send to the dubious information to email addresses telling people they had won a Nokia device. This scam has now moved on and is being sent out to mobiles phones via SMS, with the message suggesting people have won a free Nokia, and just need to provide their bank details to claim the free phone.

“We have been receiving a number of reports recently that scam artists are sending out hoax SMS and emails, purportedly from Nokia, that offer some sort of money if one were to respond in a similar way that lotteries are run. We would like to clarify that, those messages are not coming from Nokia and that we do not do money lotteries. We are asking people to beware and know that this ‘lottery’ is a scam,” said Kenneth Oyolla, Nokia, General Manager, East and Southern Africa.

“Our advice is that if you do receive something dubious like this, DO NOT reply to these messages or pass them on. The thing to do is to delete the message without responding. You might also consider contacting the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to report such hoax messages,” said Mr Oyolla.

Read more »

Research In Motion (RIM) will soon be launching the gold release of the BlackBerry Theme Studio 6, a free and powerful device personalization suite of tools that includes the Theme Builder for creating themes, and the BlackBerry Composer for creating animations and graphics to use in themes.

This new release of Theme Studio makes it even easier for users and professional designers to customize virtually everything, including backgrounds, sound effects and ringtones, icons and menus, and fonts. You can even add animations and screen transitions.

This comes amid a more recent revelation that Blackberry developers would be able to download the SDK’s for completing the APIs related to the device enabling many developers to become ambitious and creative on the programming front. Read more »

Well, I am a techie, and a connectivity junkie. I don’t need to tell you that this requires me to have access to my emails, my social networks, my blog and all within reach, even in the deadest of the night.

Searching for a good phone much like searching for a good woman, is normally a daunting task as we all have our strong point while looking. Some go for sleek design, light weight, camera functionality, durable body types and/or ability to live on the phone on the go.

Having said this, I recently met an auspiciously different kind of woman. Yes; she is sleek and yes; she is a killer on the body. Albeit a bit heavy, she caught my eye. Sliding up from different positions encouraging me to feel her cool glossy texture, she indeed made my evening.

Read more »

The regional finals for the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition, a competition aimed at getting students to bring out their best in terms of innovation and creativity as far as software design is concerned, were held yesterday, 9^th May, at Strathmore University. The team that clinched the top spot is Team QuestO from Uganda’s Makerere University.

Most teams comprised of students who are in university with many giving good presentations but the winning presentation was made by team QuestO who showcased a desktop, mobile and web based system, dubbed CRIMEX that focuses on crime pattern analysis in developing countries. Read more »

There has been a lot of discussion in the public domain about a new device called the Poken. It is a small device that is set to replace the need for business cards say in the next year or so by consolidating a user’s contacts in its small microchip and enabling on to transmit information on themselves in a fun and cool way.

1. Poken User meets other Poken User

2. User “’high four’s” his or her Poken with that of the other user. This is essentially holding them against each other (such that the       coils inside the token are more or less aligned).

3. The two Pokens flash green to signal that a bond was made. If red light appears, please try again as this means that the devices have not yet connected.

4. On a computer at home or anywhere, the User plugs in his or her token into the USB port. Read more »