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Mobile telecommunications giant- MTN has announced the launch of
its 3.5 G service in Ghana.

The service, which uses high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology, was announced at an impressive ceremony at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons in Accra.

Speaking at the launching themed
“Go Beyond, Experience our better life today”, Chief Executive Officer, MTN Ghana, Brett Goshen said, “We are very pleased with the significant progress we have made in building an extensive 3.5G network and making it available to a large number of our valued customers”.

“We are launching our 3.5G network with more than 7 times the number of 3.5G base stations than the next competitor. In addition, we are launching with the widest and best connection in Accra, Tema and Kumasi and will be expanding aggressively to all major cities in the months to come.”

MTN currently has the largest market share in the Ghanaian mobile communications industry, and just as chief marketing officer, George Kojo Andah said in an earlier announcement in February;

this new 3.5G service is meant to enhance the overall network experience for its customers, and provide more efficient systems for the transmission of existing voice, text and data services.

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The development will pitch MTN against rival Zain, which launched its 3.5 service in December 2008 and both operators will also soon face competition from Globacom, which bought a 3G licence for Ghana in mid-2008, and is expected to start services soon.

The HSDPA based 3G service, offers several advantages over the existing circuit-switched techniques used for carrying mobile voice, and utilizes a number of techniques in parallel to increase the efficiency and reduce the latency.

This allows higher call volumes and support for new and exciting multimedia data applications such as broadband access to the internet, emailing, mobile TV, video telephony and video conferencing from a mobile phone, PDA, or laptop.

The company also plans to host a carnival and demo fair in Kumasi, on saturday, 9th may, which is meant to further expose its customers to the service.

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Okay, I have seen (and heard) a lot of weird stuff lately, but this definitely tops the list….. completely hilarious! Twitter seems to be at the top of the web agenda lately, and even the celebrities are Twittering away. But ever wondered what “Twittering in real life” would be like?

Apparently someone has, and he decided to put it to the test. Watch Dan take his Tweets to the streets….. Sweet!!

Enjoy;

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The Tramigo T22- a Personal Asset Tracking Device is set for its official launch in Ghana later today. Tramigo T22 is “the world’s first truly plug and play portable tracking device available for all the GSM markets”.

Tramigo T22 can be used for hundreds of different purposes and in as many ways; when ever you need to know where your loved ones or your assets are and what is their current status.

According to Mr. High K. Aryee, Chief Executive Officer of Proffworld Link Consult (PLC)- local partners of Tramigo 22;

Tramigo T22, the best selling GSM/GPS tracker in the world, would assist security agencies, corporate bodies and individuals in protecting their life and property.

The T22 can be used with text messaging, and has inbuilt map of your area with thousands of landmarks- allowing you to add your own landmarks such as home, office and friends. You can simply check the location of your important assets and loved ones with user-friendly SMS commands.

How It Works

Tramigo T22 car tracking device combines the GPS (Global Positioning System), GSM (mobile network) and geographical information (TLD Tramigo Landmark Data) into one device.

Furthermore, Tramigo T22 needs only a normal SIM card (prepaid or postpaid) of any operator and is ready for use, there are NO other charges than the text messages sent or calls made from Tramigo T22 to your phones.::

It uses the GPS satellites to position itself getting very accurate positioning, then it finds the closest TLD landmark to that point from its internal memory and sends the information across to any authorized mobile phone as a text message using the GSM network.

Tramigo is commanded with simple text message commands; sending word Find or letter F to your Tramigo T22 you will get the actual location of your Tramigo tracking device back to your phone as a message. Simple, intelligent and very secure.

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Tramigo Landmark Data (TLD)

TLD includes commonly known local landmarks that are carefully selected and updated to provide best possible local understanding for T22 use.

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T22 TLD Landmarks- Image from Tramigo.net

It includes: All cities, towns and villages + plenty of information-rich points of interest data, such as hotels, schools, hospitals, post offices, churches, shopping malls, passenger terminals, major interchanges, gasoline stations, government services, tourist attractions, toll gates, sport arenas, etc.

T22 user can also add own landmarks, up to 500 points, to complete TLD for best possible personal and community usage.

The introduction of the T22 into the Ghanaian market is expected to curb the crime rate and reduce the spate of accidents in the country. “At this time when crime has become so sophisticated and the increase of accidents on our roads, the introduction of the Tramigo T22 therefore into the Ghanaian market is timely,” Mr Aryee added.

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Web applications or web-based software systems generally require a web browser to render them executable.  As a web developer, you were previously restricted to creating applications which only run from within a web browser.

Not any more! New technology developed by Adobe® changes  all that, offering a platform that provides a new environment for creating powerful Web software that can run without a browser.

The Adobe® AIR™ runtime, introduced last year, lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

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How AIR Works

You are most likely already familiar with Adobe Flash- the browser plug-in responsible for powering much of the Internet’s multimedia content–from YouTube videos and Flickr slideshows to addictive Web-based video games. Flash applications are however limited by the fact that they require a host application, most often a web browser.

AIR covers for this limitation, creating “stand-alone” applications that run from your desktop just like any other application. AIR apps are developed in much the same way that Flash applications are, providing developers with a new environment for creating powerful Web software that can run without a browser.

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Business Benefits

With the Adobe® AIR™ runtime, you can deliver branded rich Internet applications outside the browser that give you a closer connection to your customer.

Adobe AIR uses the same proven, cost-effective technologies used to build web applications, so development and deployment is rapid and low risk. You can use your existing web development resources to create engaging, branded applications that run on all major desktop operating systems.

With Adobe AIR, you can:

• Establish a more persistent connection with existing customers
• Deliver fully branded experiences with desktop functionality
• Leverage existing personnel, processes, and infrastructure
• Develop and deliver RIAs efficiently using proven Adobe technology
• Increase the ROI of your web investments

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As an AJAX developer myself, you can only imagine my excitement.  AIR applications run across operating systems on the WebKit HTML engine and are easily delivered using a single installer file. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can “use their existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web”.

I just downloaded and installed the latest version of AIR, and SDK (Software Development Kit), and am already impressed with the capabilities so far.

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In what is probably the “biggest” news in the month of April, Facebook has officially opened up its activity stream to developers through the launch of the new
Facebook Open Stream API.

So what’s the big deal?

Apparently, the new API would allow developers build applications which would enable users “read and interact with their stream”. According to Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing, “the entire feed will be available through a single API call”- meaning a developer could recreate the entire Facebook home page if he wanted to or take parts of the feed and remix it to make something more interesting.

The move is in line with Facebook’s  “steps toward greater openness” as it looks to bolster its efforts in this regards. In a post on the Facebook developers blog, it said- “we believe users must have full control and choice and that’s exactly how we’ve designed Facebook Platform and the Open Stream API”.

One can only imagine the numerous possibilities this platform provides- quite endless really. But of course, there are certain limitations. According to Erick Schonfeld, Facebook still only allows developers to cache data for 24 hours, so an application such as a search engine for instance would only be able to return search results for a day.

I however felt uncomfortable with one particular statement in the post covering this new development on the Facebook blog;

“…With these new methods, you can access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience.”

Maybe I don’t get the full import of this statement, but shouldn’t this raise some security (not to mention privacy) concerns. Whatever be the case, this surely provides the network a perfect opportunity to provide a richer user experience for its 200 million users.

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“I see dead people …..”

New technology currently being researched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group is set to revolutionize the way we work with information and connect with one another.

“Sixth Sense”, as it is called, is the brainchild of Pranav Mistry, a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. The device is “a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

Sixth Sense “projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets us interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or our interaction with the object itself.”

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This demo by Pattie Maes, a leading researcher at the MIT Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group, shows the huge potential of this futuristic device which provides you with “relevant information about whatever is in front of you”.

Imaging walking into a supermarket, picking up a product, and getting complete information about that product, picking up a book in a bookstore and getting additional information about the book: readers/critic comments, etc. or (my personal favourite) picking up a newspaper, and seeing video adaptations of the headlines you are reading.

The possibilities of the Sixth Sense are endless….. but the most valuable no doubt;

“seamless access to relevant information we come across.”

Best of all, the device is expected to cost just about the same as your average mobile phone- pegged at $350, well within reach of the average person. There is a lot of excitement at the moment surrounding the sixth sense, but not everyone shares this excitement;

“I just don’t like the way she fantasizes this technology. This is nothing new compared to what Johnny Lee has done a few years ago and his Wii projects that have been widely spread over the web. Don’t try too hard to cash out. I don’t think wearing a projector is a cool idea. Besides, the problem with a projector? The short life span of the light bulb.”

“I know what toilet paper to buy before I shop. Amazon gave “Freakonomics” an excellent rating . I thooght the book was a waste of time. If I want to know about someone I’ll ask them. My flight’s going to be 20 minutes late ? So what I still have to get through security. “Oh this little thing on my chest officer .. ..why it’s a wall projector…. er .. no sir I’m not on medication. I know many people will like and BUY this “thingy” but I wont…… This is the kind of “synthetic” menhancement (or womenhancement) that makes people less human .. but THEY don’t know it……”

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Well…… what do you have to say?

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If you logged in to your Facebook account this morning, you would no doubt have noticed the glaring “Terms of Use Update” which read;

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Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new
terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have
decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the
issues that people have raised..... 

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Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on the Facebook blog, said;

This move comes 2 days after (not implying any connection whatsoever) Independent filmmaker Luis Moro and his wife, producer and actress Bobbi Miller-Moro accused Facebook of Censorship. The couple initially accused the 175 million strong Social Network of deleting Luis’s account for “political reasons”, a claim which Facebook said was absurd.

According to the couple;

“All he was doing was posting about ‘The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act’ in Cuba-related groups, and to friends with the same interest,”.

“When I posted on my status ‘My husband’s account was deleted by Facebook’ it was erased 3 times from the main wall! I could not believe it.” Mrs Moro added. She went on to say that her husband’s account was deleted Monday evening after Luis sent out word about the proposed Cuban travel bill.

In Facebook’s defence, Barry Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook categorically stated;

“That system is designed to keep spammers and potential harassers from abusing Facebook.  It is triggered by a user sending too many messages or friending too many people who ignore their requests.  In this case, the user ignored at least one of the warnings when he was spamming people with messages and friend requests to promote his cause and was automatically disabled.  The suggestion that our automated system has been programmed with a certain political agenda is absurd.”

“In the press release the user acknowledges receiving warnings from our automated system,” he further added.

Though Luis’s account was restored and an E-mail apology issued, Mrs Moro wasn’t “so sure her husband wasn’t targeted”, citing Facebook’s alleged history of censorship involving words and phrases like “anti-war,” “Gaza,” and “Palestine,” as well as the much publicized row with breastfeeding mothers.

Anyway, returning to the changes, Facebook says “we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.”

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I made an astounding discovery today. I never knew it was possible to send Postal letters through the Internet.

What! Postal letters? Yeah postal letters. You know;

• write your letter,
• insert it into an envelope,
• rush to the nearest post office,
• buy some postage stamps and drop the letter in a post box.

That kind.

I was glancing through this blog I recently fell in love with, when I came across a post titled;

“Send Postal Letters Anywhere in the World Through Internet – Email to Snail Mail”

A title like that would no doubt spark up interest so naturally, I read through the post and what I found left me astonished. Though (technically speaking)  it obviously isn’t possible to send Postal Letter through the Internet, there are a couple of online services which allow you do just that.

The postal service may not be as important as it used to with the advent of Email, but there are still a couple of reasons why you may want to use the service. This is particularly true with regards to our beloved “Mama Africa”. Let’s recount a couple shall we:

1. Some of your relatives live in remote villages where they don’t have computers let alone access to Internet.
2. Your grandparents know computers (or not) but they’ll probably feel more happy if you could send them emails and photographs in paper form that they can read in the lawn outside.
3. You are trying to reach someone who already gets a few hundred email messages per day. Your email may get lost in the clutter but if you take the snail mail approach, chances are high that he or she will at least read your message if not respond to it.

Whatever the case may be, should you need to send a Postal Letter, and would like to avoid the hassle, there are web based letter printing and dispatching services that “work more or less the same way”.

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You send then an email or upload the document as Word or PDF on to their servers, make the payment online and they’ll send the letter via regular postal mail to the specified physical address.

I have taken the liberty of compiling a list of some web based letter printing and dispatching service companies, according to the nature of their service;

Country-Specific

These companies provide their services to clients within a specific country;

• Via Post (for the UK)
• Pixel Letter (for the European Union)
• Snail Mail Me (for Canada), and
• India Post (for residents of India)

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Non Country-Specific

• Postal Methods
• Mail a Letter
• Postful
• EZGram
• L-Mail
• Click 2 Mail
• Email 2 Postal
• PC 2 Paper

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tags

The long debated issue of the “digital divide” between the rich and the poor was brought to the fore once again with news coming in from different sections of the global media of plans to release “a low cost” Laptop computer, which would be the centerpiece of India’s National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technologies.

Early reports of this incredibly cheap laptop- fondly referred to as India’s “answer to American One Laptop per Child project” which set out to produce a computer for $100 (£68)- indicated that the laptop had initially been pegged at an amazing 500 rupees (just around $10), but according to the BBC;

“… this could be a mistranslation, because transcripts of the speech, in which it was unveiled, mentioned it costing $10 (£7) but this was later corrected to $100 (£70)”

Fine! Let’s assume it may have been a mistranslation, and that the actual price really is going to be just around a 100 USD, the question still remains;

Just how feasible is this, Really?

Though not much is know about the rudimentary laptop (which has been in the making for almost 3 years), it is believed that it would have on board memory of up to 2GB, as well as wireless capabilities.

The price of computer components makes it is even more difficult to envisage developing such a low cost laptop. It is a known fact that previous attempts at developing cheaper laptops intended for the developing world ended up exceeding the estimate budgets. Even the One Laptop Per Child’s XO machine, went well over the $100 mark, soaking up a surplus of around $88-

“… That high-profile venture led by the scientist Nicholas Negroponte ran into problems after several companies, including the chip manufacturer Intel, refused to cooperate”

Most experts have even referred to India’s plans for an even cheaper machine as “Unrealistic”. The Times Online reports that Analysts at the financial management company Merrill Lynch, estimated that “the Negroponte laptop screen alone cost about £20″, which leaves one wondering if the so-called $10 laptop will ever become a reality.

It is worth noting also, that Intel’s Convertible Classmate netbook which was released on the 12th of January 2009, hit the shelves for $549. Specs on the second-generation Classmate (aka the convertible) are as follows:

• Atom N270 (1.6GHz)
• Intel 945GSE chipset
• 8.9″ at 1024×600
• Up to 16GB of flash storage
• Water-resistant keyboard
• VGA port output

In the end, and just as the analysts at Merrill Lynch put it, maybe;

“India’s $10 price hopes appear to be nothing more than pure fantasy”.

This may well be the case; however, let’s not be too hasty in judging, we just cannot forget the “100,000-rupee (£1,450) Tata Nano car and a no-frills mobile telephone that costs less than 800 rupees”.

Regarding the feasibility or otherwise of India’s $10 laptop, we would just have to wait and see. Reports have it that “Plans to cut the price to the bone appear to hinge on domestic technology that uses low levels of power.”

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Friday, 30th January marked the end of a revolution. Like most unsuccessful revolutions, this one lasted for only a short while, and was abruptly ended by a much more powerful force.

Julian McIntyre tried to make it as an investment banker, but fell in love with Africa instead. He worked at Deutsche Bank in his early twenties and, in his words, quickly came to hate it, leaving at 25 when “I got my first bonus”.

The Briton, who had developed a great affection for Africa while travelling, hooked up with a friend, Peter Gbedemah, to set up a telecoms business, providing infrastructure to mobile-phone companies south of the Sahara.

Eight years later, Mr McIntyre’s company is now GTV, a pan-African pay-TV company. The telecoms business, Gateway Communications, was sold in the summer to Vodacom in South Africa for $700 million (£474.8 million). GTV is what is left – a pay-TV operator aimed at a continent where pay-TV has barely existed, a “test case for African business”, as Mr McIntyre, 33, puts it……….

=> A brief chronological account of the company, as published by Times Online.

The rise of GTV started a Pay-TV revolution in Africa, rekindling interest in Paid TV, as many an average person could now watch their favourite satellite TV programs at low costs. In June 2007 for instance, the company offered a one month’s FREE subscription to “all who join the GTV revolution” – enabling access to programming every day in July without paying a cent.

The GTV Pay-TV revolution enjoyed widespread support from the populace, as it provided “premium international programming not just to a few people but to literally thousands of people who have never before been able to access to pay-TV.”

This perhaps led to the suggestions that MultiChoice DSTV’s dominance on the continent had finally come to an end, more so when results from a study conducted by Balancing Act- a London-based consultancy and research firm, indicated that;

“consumer demand for GTV and its services has resulted in his company becoming Africa’s fastest growing pay-television service.”

The study also reported that GTV took “five out of every seven new subscribers” who chose satellite TV in Africa over the past nine months.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. The GTV revolution, was abruptly ended by a force which attained global enormousness in 2008- as it succumbed to the global economic crisis. The company became the most recent casualty of the global recession.

According to a Press Statement issued by Gateway Broadcast Services- the suppliers of the GTV service to subscribers across Africa;

“The current financial and global crisis has severely interrupted the company’s ability to secure further funding for the continued operation of the business.”

“Increased instability in global markets interrupted our ability to secure funding on an acceptable timescale and have left us no choice but to cease operations,”

“We realise the negative impact this has had on our loyal customers, creditors and staff, all of who have believed in GTV and the revolution in pay TV it had created. We have tried every possible step to keep the company going but we are all the unfortunate victims of the current global economic crisis.”

The collapse of the company will no doubt have devastating effects on Pay-TV viewers across the African continent, many of whom relished the new opportunity GTV presented them, in terms of International TV programmes, not to mention staff of the company-

Permanent employees lost their jobs instantly, not to mention the hundreds of dealers and business partners, thousands of subscribers and the tens of thousands of English Premiership viewers who will miss their favourite weekend sit-outs.

This is indeed an unfortunate end for a company whose Africa-wide GTV service had “an estimated 100,000 subscribers across Africa and has over the last two years invested a total of $200 million and created jobs and competition in 22 markets”.