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…
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’…
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…
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…
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…
Valley Technologies, one of Zimbabwe’s 15 licensed IAPs, has started an ad campaign to launch its 4G internet services. A local teaser ad titled “What would you expect from a […]
Having woken up at 3am to make the trip to Chisumbanje and Middle Sabi, we arrived at about 10am courtesy of our host- Lilian Muungani (Green Fuel’s communications manager) who led the way in her bakkie. After snaking through numerous twists and turns (including ‘crossing’ the historic Birchenough Bridge) we eventually descended on an endless…
The big news this week is obviously Google Plus, Google’s new social networking service. It generally seems to be liked so far. Using it for a just a few hours, our first impression is that the service is a serious competitor and performs way better than Facebook on many fronts, especially on sharing stuff with…
Nokia releases N9 On 21 June, Nokia released its latest MeeGo-based smartphone, the N9. The N9 is Nokia’s first pure touch smartphone and it runs on Meego 1.2. The phone spots a curved glass 3.9 inch AMOLED display, a 8megapixel camera and comes with storage capacities of 16GB and 64GB.
How would you like using the internet to send free SMSs that have adverts appended? Something like “How are you Sumba? – Send money to Zimbabwe with ABC Zim Ltd,www.abczimltd.com”. Really, we would love to know, please comment below. In the meantime, here’s more about the this new service.
Part of our objective as Techzim is to provide our readers with relevant local and regional tech information. We believe this is what sets us apart as an information source. In addition, we have decided to start providing a summary of global tech news once at the end of each week. Starting today, we will…
Our eagle eye focus and objective coverage of Zimbabwe’s ICT sector enables the company to provide unrivaled research services. We sift through telecoms and tech data on a daily basis, […]
Today, the reasons behind the Econet and Trustco fallout have started to come out. Econet chairman Tawanda Nyambirai says Econet approached Trustco with complaints of breach of the contract between the two companies. Trustco apparently then threatened to terminate the agreement believing it could use its technical leverage to have its way.
A few days ago we visited Dariro, a new startup building what we can describe as a ‘local pages’ web platform. The website is still in beta and it’s live on Dariro.com. The website also provides a platform for developers to build their own applications. The Dariro founder is Richwell Phinias, an internet marketing entrepreneur.
I believe that Zimbabwe and Kenya are similar in many ways albeit Kenya’s coastal advantage with regards to bandwidth access. As such the future is almost predictable provided the local infrastructure shapes up. We have a much higher literacy rate than Kenya with their only difference being that they have embraced tech in a huge…
There is an Nokia Advert that I loved and the tagline was something to the effect that the “new internet” was being created by hand, alluding to the fact that the social media phenomenon was contingent on a plethora of user submitted content experiences, be they YouTube videos or location service meta-data.
We had an exclusive interview with ForgetMeNot Africa’s Chief Operating Officer, Jeremy George. We discussed the Message Optimiser (MO), the company’s flagship product. We also discussed its implementation on mobile networks in Africa and the SMS traffic the system processes. At the end of the interview, George give us his opinion on mobile solution trends…
There’s a growing reappearance of value added services (VAS) on the local mobile networks. Entrepreneurs are seeing this and you can see the increasing number of adverts in the local press like the current itllusion mobiplay one which reads:
Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, according to Google Insights for Search, are searching for the term “Libya” a lot more than other search terms on Google. Google Insights for Search is a tool to analyse the search trends on Google domains world over. The tool computes the number of searches done for given search terms relative to…
Google has announced through its Google Africa blog that it has launched Gmail SMS in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi. In Uganda Google is working with MTN, Uganda Telecom and Orange, in Tanzania with Vodacom and in Malawi with Airtel and TNM. Gmail SMS has been around for some time in Africa. The service is currently…
We first heard about Luke Madzedze at the Research and Intellectual Expo at the University of Zimbabwe some 4 weeks ago. At the expo, we saw some desktop and Java mobile applications whose development was attributed to the young man. We arranged to meet Madzedze and finally did last week in Harare.
The Telecel Zimbabwe website was taken down in early February last year, and yesterday, more than a year later, the website has been brought back online. This is good; it makes it so much easier to find information about the company; tariffs, services on offer, recent developments, contact information, coverage and other such important stuff.
Two weeks ago, Techzim got the opportunity to test the PowerTel mobile broadband service. We’ve been using the connection as a primary for one of our laptops at the office, taking it through the paces and below is what we think about it.
About 4 weeks ago, we moved Techzim from our local web host to South Africa. The moving process wasn’t painless. It lasted some 4 days and we faced a lot of non-technical hitches that come with moving a .co.zw domain from Zimbabwe.
We list below, a few bandwidth saving tips. We know some readers have even more tips. If you’re such a reader, please add in your tips in the comments. We’re going to assume you use a Windows machine here because that’s what most people use, and also because if you’re on a Linux box, chances…
Just a little over 5 months ago, Zimbabwe’s leading lifestyle, arts and culture blog, Zimbo Jam, celebrated reaching a million page views in a single month. The site’s readership has kept growing since.