Samsung Galaxy Edge is a funky futuristic looking phone
Well you must be already wondering why Samsung used such a weird name. The Galaxy Edge is practically a Galaxy note 4 spec-wise with a curved screen, screen-wise.
Announced yesterday with the Note 4, the Edge changed the way we perceived Smartphone Screens.It’s a thin beautiful phone that has a curved screen along its right Edge, the “ticker”.
The Edge is practically 2 screens in one this gives this beast the 3D kinda feel when using it. It has an identical Quad HD display identical to the Note 4 and a thin strip having icons and widgets.
In the hands, this device feels good to use. It has accurate detection so it’s really hard to accidentally activate it with stray fingertips.
The Edge by default harbours the go-to column of frequently used apps like Ruler, stop watch and weather; when in the app, the column fades away and can be brought back by a simple swipe with the thumb. The curved screen makes moving through Photos and Apps really cool plus the Animation effects that add Icing to the cake.
The camera controls are all on the curved Edge while the main Menu only has images. The curved screen also comes in handy with a black and white night-clock. This is really convenient as you can tell the time from your bed as the phone lies on the table.
Lefties don’t even wait for the Samsung release of the left-handed version. This beast can be flipped upside down triggering a 180 degrees rotation. Definitely the home button will be up but what the hell you can still use it anyway.
It also has a Stylus, heart-rate monitor, fingerprint scanner and almost whatever the Note 4 has. However, this amazing device will not have a Gear VR, not even the one for the Note 4 is compatible. The 5.6” screen phablet is powered by a 3,000mAh battery.
Besides being somewhat uncomfortable to grip, other specs are practically similar to the Note 4.
There you have it. The SDK will be out pretty soon for developers to put that curved screen to good use.
This genius piece of equipment will be available in your Samsung store in black and white very soon
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Unveiled
Early Wednesday, Samsung introduced two new beasts; the Note 4 and the Note Edge. Well here is all you need to know about the Note 4.
The note 4 phablet has a 5.7 inch Super AMOLED display; it also has a metal band wrapping its side pretty much like the Galaxy Alpha. It also has a virtual-reality headset known as the Gear VR which will be sold as a companion to the Note 4 but won’t work with other Galaxy devices. It still has its old school faux-leather style back but all these slight changes go a long way to making it a better phone than its predecessors. Samsung is in the bid to keep up with its design strategy pacing up with Apple that is rumoured to launch a 5.5 inch beast a week from now.
This bad boy is pretty much designed to attract Gamers. It also features an improved pen stylus with double the pressure sensitivity of the Note 3 and related software as a handwriting alternative to typing with the keypad.
Multitasking is much easier on this device taking advantage of its massive screen. There’s also this feature of shrinking an app into a smaller window that can hover over top of another running app. Apps can also be put in a two-app split-screen view which is really exciting.
Although this amazing phone is packed with cool new features and the latest hardware specs, there is almost nothing in the Note 4 that will excite old users, many mobile phone analysts suggest.
Samsung is in a bid to recover from the 2 year decline in the market share. This is majorly due to the Galaxy S5 that was released in April which caused massive disappointment to highly anticipated users. Research puts it that the older flagship, iPhone 5S out sold the Galaxy S5; a failure to deliver major improvements from its predecessor. Samsung however reveals that it will focus on a narrower set of products and also get more aggressive on pricing to recover from the decline.
Taking a closer look at the specs, we have a 5.7” Super AMOLED Capacitative screen protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It’s packed with an expandable 32 GB of internal memory and an amazing 3 GB of RAM.
Internet speeds of 40 Mbps up to 300 Mbps depending on your Service provider. A 16MP camera with simultaneous HD video recording. Also having a secondary Camera with 3.7MP
It has a heart-rate monitor as earlier Galaxies from this year and a fingerprint sensor as well running on Android v4.4.4 Kitkat.
The SM-N910S model has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset and the Exynos 5433 for the SM-910C powered by a 3220 mAh battery.
Well, as said earlier, there’s nothing mind blowing about the Note 4 that its bigger brothers haven’t done already.
It will be available at your trusted Samsung outlet in black, white, pink and bronze.
Good Bye Google Authorship, We’ll miss you
You might have seen profile photos of writers in your Google Search result recently, or perhaps a name of the author of a new story in Google Search results. That’s what Google Authorship is. As a blogger, Google Authorship has been an awesome link between authentic authors and Google search results, it gave authors, bloggers and writers this pride when users looked up their content on the web. In fact one was able to see the count of all posts a particular author had writer.
Setting it up wasn’t a piece of cake either since you had to edit meta data and link accounts, Today the service was silently killed, because your results won’t show up in the search results anymore, and John Mueller a webmaster and Trends analyst at Google shared a post on his Google Plus explaining that leaving the code in your head won’t be harmful and Google will treat just like any other meta-data in your website.
[quote_box_center](If you’re curious — in our tests, removing authorship generally does not seem to reduce traffic to sites. Nor does it increase clicks on ads. We make these kinds of changes to improve our users’ experience.) – John Mueller – Google [/quote_box_center]
Google also claims that they carried out varies experiments which proved that removing Google Authorship from search results didn’t reduce traffic to website and neither did it increase AD clicks.
Most publishers will probably raise their virtual candles to the death of a feature we loved
You’ll worry about Africa when you see this ‘All Devices on the Internet Pinged’ Photo
The Internet is one global handshake that connects most of us, It the biggest way of connectivity today. But we have to ask our selves, where is the the internet? On what device does it reside? These are questions John Matherly answers using his company Shodan. Shodan was able to create an image visualization of the location of all devices on the internet pinged.
You will then notice that the biggest concentration is in Developed countries and Africa is almost dark, with some countries only showing a mere-small dot. The connected devices in Africa are mostly located in the capitals and big cities.
[quote_box_center]This leaves many wondering what steps Africa needs to take because grumbling about our problems won’t solve them, rather innovations from start ups, Telecoms and governments are required to extend internet access to more people in Africa. In Uganda, Google Fibre is being laid and companies like Facebook are working with ISPs to bring the dark world to the light of the Internet. [/quote_box_center]
There is however doubt it whether the proclaimed “Internet of things Search Engine” (Shodan) was able to ping all devices since its technically not possible since some devices are hidden under NAT restrictions and some configurations on some networks do not allow external pinging.Some tweet users questioned him about Canada which appeared dark but its figures show large Internet activity.
However this image still gives us a bigger picture of the location of most internet enabled devices.
Airtel offers Mbarara Business Owners training in enterprise solutions
Airtel Uganda has today hosted an Enterprise Expo in Mbarara district, Western Uganda, as part of efforts to provide practical and modern business solutions to its High Value Customers. The Enterprise Expo took place at the Mbarara Lake View Hotel with Airtel’s customers and other business owners receiving training to support their organizations’ communication needs.
Already a market leader in Enterprise Business Telecommunication Solutions, Airtel Enterprise Business supports Businesses, Enterprises and Organisations with telecommunication solutions that are customised to meet the ever increasing demand for Information Technology.
Speaking at the expo, Mr. Tom Gutjahr, Airtel Uganda’s Managing Director noted that the Telecom Company provides a host of business-oriented services which, “…we believe, have enabled our customers to fully realize the potential of their enterprises.”
“Our office package is made up of several high-end products and services that are both data and product based,” Gutjahr added.
Speaking at the same function, the Enterprise Director, Airtel Uganda, Mr. Oladapo P. Sorinolu said “We provide internet solutions that for instance, allow our customers to communicate via email and make Voice over Protocol calls. This is in addition to offering Leased Lines,Hosting or Co-location services, E1 Voice and PABX Services as well as APN (Access Point Name) Solutions for our clients whose needs consume less data.”
He went on to point out the wide range of customers for these services who include, Government institutions, financial service providers, NGOs, manufacturing and energy institutions. Oladapo also praised Airtel’s countrywide and global presence which allows clients to access the business solutions from anywhere in the country and in any of Airtel’s operative countries world-wide. “This makes it easy to work on the move and access data and information remotely.”
Oladapo concluded by reiterating Airtel Uganda’s commitment to creating innovative products and services that serve the needs of the modern client.
The Airtel Uganda Enterprise Expo will be held in other locations across the country where the Company will continue to showcase its product range.
The Samsung Gear S can always be online without a phone
Samsung Just unveiled a new smart watch dubbed the Samsung Gear S. The Gear S isn’t an mere upgrade to the Gear 2, but rather a 3G enabled smart watch. The 3G connectivity brings at twist to smart watches because the Gear 2 doesn’t entirely rely on your smartphone’s wireless or Bluetooth to keep online. In fact you can still recieve or send texts and make calls even outside the range of your smartphone’s WiFi or Bluetooth.
Samsung however didn’t use Android Wear in this watch but rather used Tizen OS to power the Samsung Gear S. The watch has a 2-inch AMOLED screen, a rather powerful dual-core 1GHz CPU, GPS, motion sensors, and heart rate which are all powered by a 300mAh battery which Samsung claims can last up to two days of normal usage.
Well Samsung usually equips its gadgets with tonnes of feature and the Gear S wasn’t left out this time. The Gear S comes with features like pedestrian navigation from Nokia’s HERE, support for Facebook, 24-hour news and views service from The Financial Times ‘fastFT’, works together with advanced-reading technology from Spritz, and fitness apps like Nike +.
The Gear S was unveiled together with the the Gear Circle, a headset that reads notifications to users who have paired it with their smartphone.
Below are the Tech Specs for the Gear S
|
Network |
900/2100 or 850/1900 (3G) |
|---|---|
|
Display |
2.0” Super AMOLED (360 x 480) |
|
AP |
Dual core 1.0 GHz |
|
OS |
Tizen based wearable platform |
|
Audio |
Codec: MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ |
|
Features |
Communications: |
|
Health & Fitness: |
|
|
Information: |
|
|
Media: |
|
|
Others: |
|
|
IP67 Certified Dust and Water Resistant |
|
|
Samsung Services |
Samsung Gear Apps |
|
Connectivity |
WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n, A-GPS/Glonass |
|
Sensor |
Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Heart Rate, Ambient Light, UV, Barometer |
|
Memory |
RAM: 512MB |
|
Dimension |
39.8 x 58.3 x 12.5T |
|
Battery |
300mAh Li-ion |
WhatsApp hits 600 million active Users
WhatsApp which was bought by Facebook 6 months ago has had an increase in the number of active monthly users by a whooping 150 million active Users. Koum was proud to share these figures in a Tweet.
Now serving 600,000,000 monthly active users. Yes, active and registered are very different types of numbers…
— jan koum (@jankoum) August 25, 2014
You must know that active users are different from registered users. This makes the statistic quite relevant in Facebook’s conquest to extend its 1.23 billion user reach. However we may state that some users are registered on both platforms but they definitely use one a little more than the other.
This growth of active monthly users defies the odds and claims by privacy advocates for advocated for other apps like Telegram which I must say is slowly disappearing in terms of activity.
Behold the Samsung Galaxy Alpha!
There has been a lot of crying and whining about the cheap feel of all major Samsung flagships. The Samsung boys have come out to sooth the long cry. Without further ado, I bring you the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Rocking a rich and yet sexy Aluminium and glass look, It’s going to be the slimmest Smartphone from the Samsung camp ever. The Alpha will focus on optimising portability with a 4.7” screen so don’t except a Phablet kinda device. It will be packed with an Exynos chipset rather than Snapdragon, 12MP Camera sensor, An Octa-core processor which is precisely a 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 and 1.8GHz Cortex-A15, 2GB RAM, Fingerprint Scanner, Heart-rate Monitor, Motion and gesture Control plus an 1860mAh Battery.
This is a device that will probably give the iPhone 6 a beating it requires. This awesome device will definitely add more nuclear to the bloody Smartphone war already in place.
Samsung has registered a decline selling hand devices of late particularly in the last few months. Well this is yet another trick in the box after the revolutionary Galaxy gear and the Fit. Hope they pull this off.
The Alpha is still undergoing manufacturing. It is rumoured to hit the Russian market on 12th this September and then other markets shortly after.
How embracing IT will cut down corruption in Uganda
I love in a country where i ‘need’ to pay someone to have my police statement taken at most police stations, even filling out forms and getting things done quickly. (‘quickly’ in reference to the actual time the process should and was planned to take). Many people attempt to stop one of the world’s oldest vices through many ways including ways that actually promote it. Unfortunately corruption in Uganda is still high!
I always find IT and technology in General as a solution to everything, IT should be used to get rid of corruption and that starting point shouldn’t be any sector or ministry, we need to start with IT itself. I utter this basing on the fact that am among the few people in this country with a truly genuine version of Windows 8, In fact even my university doesn’t have genuine licenses on a very big number of its computers.
We need to weed out the corruption and evil in IT before we even start drawing a blueprint on using online systems to to kill the vice. We need more open software and systems not systems that work like ‘forces from the village’ (call it witchcraft) but systems and solutions that people understand and are aware of how they actually run. Talk about APIs.
The government needs to get rid of cash payment and embrace automated Payment systems like EFT, mobile money, Online banking etc. The problem with cash is you need to have a son or daughter of evil and they are liable to temptations and sin. Online systems on the other hand are automatic and reliable since a transaction will not complete until all necessary conditions are met. Kudos to URA for embracing this!
What my dear country needs is IT that has public logs to payments made by and to the government that way media houses can follow, concerned citizens can track and notice which contractor was paid and for what purpose. Take a look at the Bitcoin transaction log for example, its brief and real-time embracing an online portal with such details would streamline some processes.
Reporting platforms
Our country needs powerful platforms which can be used by any Ugandan free of charge and any ISP should grant free access so that any one can report that traffic officer and the name would show up on a website or mobile app. U report tried but we need to have a bigger platform that is endorsed by the government and managed by a private entity, anything the government controls is likely to crash, ask yourself how many ministry websites are updated as frequently as every 2 months.
Updated content on government portals
This regime whose reign is longer than the years I have lived still believes in print, a technology that is dying, slow, and poorly available. The ministry needs to utilize the bandwidth it pays for and post newsletters and job advertisements on its websites. Remember most jobs are only advertised on staff notice boards at the ministry meaning only a few people see them and chances of nepotism are likely. Availability of such information creates an almost fair ground for the ethic to rid our government of corruption.
Hey URA, please share a dedicated sub domain for tax rates and don’t hide where only robots can find it. Remember if the public is unaware of the right amount of taxes, they are likely to be cheated by someone who thinks he or she loves money more than any of us.
Unavailability of information causes ignorance and trust me ignorance is a very big blanket that warms corruption
Online tracking
Taxpayers lose lots of money on things like fuel, some fuel that is guzzled by non government cars. Tracking government automobiles puts a check on mileage and some systems go as far as tracking fuel consumption, using such will check on the exaggerated fuel budgets by civil servants.
We need an Online education Information System
Sometimes the president recommends people for ministerial positions and yet the people don’t have the right qualifications because the proof of qualification is personal and never available to the masses.
Imagine a website where you can access and view results of any person by entering a registration number or student number to view their transcript. A system that picks its data through an API of the actual education results systems (for security). That way we would reduce on the number of unqualified people leading us. Trust me such people are the most corrupt.
The police needs some Tech
Papers are the reason some cases disappear, I am not sure whether they practice black magic but you know this happens often in this landlocked country. The ladies and gentlemen still write stuff on paper meaning making copies is very lengthy and hectic, much as they need to dump about 90% of the entire force to be able to get IT savvy officers who can enter reported cases into a system. That way we won’t need to make photocopies of cases application forms, and some of this technology can be used for things the privacy advocates wouldn’t love but they would make solving corruption related cases simpler.
Well those are the few ways Uganda could use to curb corruption but from the look of things, we still have a long way to go. Its possible though,
Please share your views below, and we shall share your views in a dedicated post for what our Dear audience has to say. I
