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Are women afraid of venturing into ICTs
We came across a lively young lady after yesterday’s Breakfast Briefing on Cloud Computing. While the event was a success, this young lady touched on a few details that could make such events even better. The highlight of her feedback was that there were only four women in attendance at the event and that promoting…
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BlackBerry services returning to normal says Research in Motion
Research in Motion assured users around the world today that BlackBerry services are returning to normal now. The service has experienced partial outage on 4 continents since Monday afternoon.
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Day 4 of BlackBerry issues. We’re letting you down, says RIM executive
It is day 4 and the BlackBerry issues are not over for some customers. In fact, as the day ended yesterday, reports started coming out that the outage was spreading to the US. For its part, Research in Motion explained at a press conference that the actual initial problems had been fixed, but a message…
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Dark week for BlackBerry Internet Services. RIM explains outage.
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…
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eTXT service gets ForgetMeNot Africa an AfricaCom award nomination
ForgetMeNot Africa, the developers of the technology powering Econet’s eTXT service, have been nominated for an AfricaCom award in the Best New Service category. The FMNA’s technology is called Message Optimiser and has been deployed by a total of 6 operators across Africa. Message Optimiser also powers the Dasuba service also available locally and across…
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Zimbabwe ICT Africa 2011 exhibition in pictures
ICT Africa has come and gone. For those that didn’t get a chance to visit the exhibition, we tried as much as possible to take pictures of almost every stand, the outside of the venue, visitors, the official opening, notable figures speaking and just about every other thing that caught our attention.
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On second thoughts, Africa’s tablet computing boom is inevitable
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.
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Day 1 of Zimbabwe ICT Africa 2011 (Pictures)
We’re just from the first day of ICT Africa 2011. The first day is dedicated to business and invited guests, though really no one is prevented from attending. We spent most of the day going around the stands and speaking to people about the stuff their tech companies are doing.
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Crossing the line: G-Tide building a database of phone numbers
If you’re a civil servant in Zimbabwe, and one day you receive an SMS from G-Tide that you never subscribing for, you’re going to wonder how they got your number. Here’s how:
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The Daily News website goes offline
The website of one of Zimbabwe’s most read daily newspapers, The Daily News, is down. We’re told by a reader that the website has been this way since at least yesterday morning. Currently, opening the www.dailynews.co.zw address loads a ‘403 Forbidden’ page served by the web hosting company.
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A critique of the Start-up Challenge
The depth of talent showcased at The Start-up challenge gave me renewed optimism for Zimbabwe. I wish to congratulate the deserving finalists and the organisers for putting on a fantastic show. Although some projects didn’t end up making the finals, most had strong concepts and I hope the entrepreneurs are not discouraged but continue to…
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ZOL Startup Challenge: Predict and win competition!
As you probably know, tomorrow is the big day; Five finalists in the ZOL Start-up Challenge will battle it out for the top prize at the finals. The top start-up will be awarded US $5,000 cash and US $5,000 worth of internet services from ZOL. Two runner-ups will each get US $2,500 cash and US…
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Africa’s Telecoms Titans: France Telecom-Orange
Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, the world’s 5th largest mobile operator by subscribers. France Telecom is a converged communications provider with a large presence in the mobile space and diverse fixed line, content, infrastructure, venture capital and value added services. The operator’s roots stretch back to the 18th century. It has evolved…
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ZOL Startup Challenge Finalists: Ribe Networks
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,…
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Startups: The International Telecoms Union is waiting for your pitch
Two weeks ago, ITU (the International Telecoms Union) launched a global competition that seeks to give 60 Young Innovators and Digital Innovators the chance to travel to its flagship event, ITU Telecoms World in Geneva (October 24-27). Entrants will be able to pitch their ground-breaking ideas to leaders of the world’s ICT industry. Techzim would…
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Bridging the digital divide with eTXT. Killing SMS one innovation at a time
When eTXT launched in March this year we wrote “Econet launches eTXT, erases line between SMS and the Internet”. We wrote this because the application was another knife in the side for SMS. Yes, we want SMS to die. It’s super expensive for subscribers and belongs to a different era altogether.
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FBC Bank introduces MasterCard Prepaid services
FBC Bank has begun offering a MasterCard Prepaid service that enables locals to shop online across various platforms worldwide. In a campaign dubbed ‘Load & Go’ the bank initially introduced the campaign through the endorsement of local music icon; Oliver Mtukudzi, advertising the service’s access to leading merchants around the world.
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Zimride: Silicon Valley Startup scouting for Zim talent
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…
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Zimride: The Silicon Valley Start-up inspired by Zimbabwe
In 2005 Zimbabwe was halfway through it’s nearly decade long economic crunch. Hyper inflation was well on its way to breaking records in an experience few would want to relive. If the timely adage that necessity is the mother of all invention holds true, then the following story is a perfect indicator of the ‘greatness’…
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Price of an eTXT SMS down to 5 cents
When Econet launched eTXT in March this year, we praised the service for innovation in a space that no other provider is playing; linking basic mobile phones to internet services like Email, Facebook and instant messaging. With a mobile phone just capable of SMS and voice calls, subscribers could now effectively send emails, respond to…
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Global weekly roundup: Google Plus, Kenya Open Data and more
On 7 July, Kenya became the first Africa country to launch the Open Data initiative. Kenya will make some government data available online through a platform called Socrata, which allows users to view different data at national, county and constituency levels. Users can manipulate the views of the data in various ways and can even…
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Interview with Big Law CEO. Company pioneering investor relations websites in Zimbabwe
We contacted the Big Law CEO, Rob Strangroom, to get some information about the company and the work they do. Big Law is one of the few companies working on a problem that is widespread in Zim and other similar countries. The problem is that companies, listed or not, don’t seem to see the power…