I was, in equal measures, horrified and amazed at the accuracy of Google’s image search. For those of you that don’t know, you can upload an image to Google and search by that image! And the results are quite astounding. If it’s a common photograph online, it will show you sites that host that photograph,…
I had a chance to see the “hot” mobile phones in Wedza in all their shapes and sizes. The Chinese made models topped the list perhaps because of their key features – dual sim support, high audio output, multimedia support (ability to play a range of audio file formats, record audio/video clips and snap JPEG…
An interesting article by Fred Zindi titled “Technology killing music industry” appeared in the Herald of the 6th of December. Fred Zindi is a professor at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a musician and an author of several books on music. His case is based on the assertion that the ability by people…
Online music stores have been on the rise globally and continue to gain momentum. Selling music files on a per-song, albums and/or subscription basis at lower prices has become a phenomenon. Online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon MP3are now the biggest music retailers in the US, selling almost 25% of all music in…
Tigo Africa is a part of Millicom International Cellular S.A. The company was founded by the Swedish conglomerate, AB Kinnevik and became one of the pioneers of mobile telephony. It began setting up its first network in 1979 in Sweden and went on to become one of the founding members of Vodafone. Over the last…
A very striking similarity between Econet Broadband ads and those Allen Solly (a retail chain in India) recently came to our attention. The Econet campaign was created by Young and Rubicam Johannesburg, which since last year has listed Econet Wireless as one of its major accounts.
It’s been a bad week for Research in Motion. And the issues are not even over yet. The company’s BlackBerry platform experienced an outage on Monday that disrupted the service for users in users in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and India. Yesterday, when everyone expected the outage to be fixed, it spread to Latin…
Below, a speech at the opening of the exhibition by the Computer Society of Zimbabwe (COMSA) president, Atwell Mukusha.
The proliferation of mobile based internet access and the evolution of traditional broadband services from niched to mainstream products, is transforming developing economies and their place in the knowledge economy. In the developed world, the death of the consumer PC segment is now almost complete.
The Apple founder, Steve jobs, has died. He was 56. Jobs defined a lot of aspects in the computing we know today. Under his leadership Apple took the game to a whole different level. That’s true for PCs, music devices, smartphones, tablets and the animation industry.
We received the notification of this month’s Computer Society function and we thought we would share it with you. First because the speaker at the function, Mr. Cosmas Rashama, is one of Zimbabwe’s most known Cisco instructors, and second because he’s speaking on a topic most of you would love to discuss, Entrepreneurial Development Using…
Last month, reports came out in the local press that NetOne had secured USD 60m to help with its mobile broadband rollout. We picked up the news here too. According the reports then, the funds had been sourced from China Export-Import Bank, Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ), CBZ Bank and BancABC. We have since…
The idea of the AvisPar Visual Package was conceived by Kudzai Sadomba, a gaming developer with, according to the startup, 10 years of programming experience. Sadomba Mahari pitched the AvisPar suite of applications at the Startup Challenge in Harare on 03 August 2011, and secured a place in the 5 finalists battling it out for…
Ribe Networks is a local chat application that has set its sight on disrupting internet based messaging. It intends to do so by offering users across all mainstream mobile and pc platforms the ability to interact with peers through the lightweight and locally hosted Ribe Chat application. Users can link their Ribe account to Facebook,…
Orascom Telecom Holdings is a global telecoms operator based in Egypt and is now majority owned by Vimpelcom Group. The company is part of Orascom Holdings, Egypt’s biggest conglomerate and the commercial vehicle of Africa’s wealthiest family.
As Techzim we are obliged to promote debate and dialogue. We were surprised to read an article in this morning’s Daily News (A Zimbabwe daily) that we believe was not generous with facts. The article’s opening shot begins by describing Trustco as “a company that appears to talk very big about itself”, and proceeds to…
It’s not everyday that a startup based in Silicon Valley; the home of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and just about every significant technology platform-eagerly looks to hire local talent. Well this is not just any startup, its Zimride! According to Logan Green; the startup’s co-founder and CEO, they are currently seeking to hire talent from…
Africa’s Telecoms Titans is a series by Techzim profiling the top 20 leading mobile operators on the continent. Each segment focuses on a specific mobile operator with insights into services provided including marketing and technical competencies.
According to a press ad published in yesterday’s Sunday Mail, Econet Wireless has reduced the price of the Android powered Huawei U8100 from $249 to $200. This is a very positive move on the part of the operator. Huawei is by design a consumer brand targeted at the mass market and not the premium market.
Last week, a Harare company called William Over called us over to have a feel of the WeTab tablet, a device they just got exclusive reseller partnership for in the southern Africa region. The tablet is made by a German company called 4tiitoo. It was covered on international tech blogs like Engadget and arstechnica starting…
On the first day of this month, a local daily NewsDay called out Nhava Global for duping Zimbabweans into thinking they design and manufacture netbooks. We posted our thoughts on what is now officially the Nhava scandal. Today, the NewsDay published a follow-up on the article titled “Nhava Global saga rages on”.
We’re just from the Econet Experience Expo that’s being held in Harare. It’s an Econet only (well, and Econet partners) exhibition which started yesterday and is due to end tomorrow. I thought we’d just go through the exhibition and come back quickly. I was so wrong.
We’ve been following up some kind of response from Econet to the open letter posted here 4 days ago. We’re still to get it, the formal response anyway. But yesterday, we got something that might help clarify issues raised in the letter.
ICT geeks have attained messiah status in organizations and, resultantly, have grown to be key strategic players in organizations. Before you know it, you are the heart and pulse, the life and soul of the party.
Econet, the largest mobile operator in Zimbabwe, has started selling Android smartphones at its new concept shops in Harare. So far only the Huawei U8220 mobile phone is available. We visited the Livingstone Avenue Econet shop last week and had a feel of the phone.
TelOne, Telkom Talks The Herald on Thursday continued with the TelOne/Telkom story that’s been appearing now and again for a while now. This time TelOne spokesperson Mr Collin Wilbes, just confirmed that negotiations are still ongoing but that he couldn’t give details.
Tomorrow we have a speech/presentation by the Minister of ICT, Nelson Chamisa and the ministry’s permanent secretary. Hopefully I can post a video or audio of it here. Will also […]