All - Page 88 of 96

Uganda celebrates Ada Lovelance day in a special way!

Boses Muhinda

-

Oct 15, 2013

Just in case you are wondering who Ada Lovelance is, she was an early scientist who worked on a flying machine and worked with Charles Babbage on a mechanical general-purpose computer & the Analytical Engine. Today is a day set aside to recognise her contribution to the IT sector as well as that by ‘Women in IT’.

Today Outbox and Thought Works put up an event to recognise the role of Women in IT and celebrate the life of Ada Lovelance. The meet up was rather casual but informative. Viviana Terceros talked about life as a developer and why she took on software development as a career. She told us how IT has made her grow in all ways; career-wise and emotionally.

Edith Namuganga told her story of how she studied in a male dominated class, Telecom Engineering to be precise and how she joined Thought Works to venture into something she wanted as Business analyst and writer. She also says that Parents need to find out wether girls like technology before the make girls venture into code or IT.

We also had a talk demo about Clojure, a presentation about how to use code to write musical notes. I must say using Java to write code was quite amazing.

Dr. Dorothy Okello shared her role in IT, she did engineering an runs a program to attract girls to keep in engineering, she worries that now that there are many Women in IT, they might join up and start saying that they are in a wrong place because during her time Being a female in IT was about proving a point and that encouraged them.

“There are Many Women in IT, and different challenges they face so don’t expect me to know all the problems of all women in IT, because different people have different challenges” – Dr. Dorothy Okello

Dr. Dorothy added that the biggest challenge is that much as more women are joining IT, more women are leaving IT and the biggest struggle should actually be keeping them there starting from secondary school level.

Another issue is the time women in IT need because the sector requires alot of time, “we are going to a time where women are going to delay to get married anf get children and we might even have to force the government to pay us to have babies” Dr. Dorothy added.

An issue of negative mind set of children in schools was addressed and a there is need for parents to also get involved because they sometimes discourage girls from IT or engineering so they need to have a more liberal mind about the idea.

We also had a session about the Imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome is about a negative feeling about your success, something that makes us suffer from selfdenial or luck of self esteem and feeling a fraud/fake. Imposter syndrome is affecting many women. We watched a video on the Imposter Syndrome, feel free to watch it below.

Such events in Uganda are necessary for the development of IT fraternity in Africa

MTN Uganda customers to pay More for Data bundles

GURU8 Staff

-

Oct 10, 2013

0

Just at the time when almost everything ‘tech’ seems to be reducing its price depending on how long the technology has been available, is when MTN decided to increase the prices of data bundles and for the data bundles whose price didn’t go up, the amount of data reduced.

Users will experience roughly 20% more for their internet. I was shocked when i tried loading the usual daily 50mb bundle today with 1000 ugx credit only to be told that i had insufficient credit. It was later on when i checked with the MTN Uganda website that i realised the bundle price had changed to 1200 ugx. Then the 500 ugx daily bundle now gives you 20mb unlike the usual 25mb. Bare it in mind that these are the most popular data bundles especially for mobile devices. Daily data bundles are the ones which have increased however weekly and monthly bundles haven’t changed.

Reasons for the price incremebt haven’t been communicated but customers are definitely going to grumble, because competition has bigger bundles at cheap prices and the general trend of internet costs has been going down. They probably want you to buy bundles with a longer validity period because the cost of these hasn’t changed much.

At Guru8 we believe internet is a necessity and it’s advisable to get access to it in thr most convenient way, and price and speed are the biggest considerations.

Meet the Samsung Galaxy Round: Samsung curved its screen!

Boses Muhinda

-

Oct 9, 2013

0

Samsung through its Tomorrow website announced a new sister to the Galaxy line, this time not an ordinary member of the galaxy family, she actually has ‘curves’. The Galaxy Round comes with a 5.7 inch rounded display screen that falls towards the center of the screen and the sides curve in towards the center. The screen is TFT and has a bright super-AMOLED screen. The Round weighs 154g and is 7.9mm thin. The back resembles a leather-stitch inspired finish on the Note 3 and not the usual plastic but relax its Samsung they can make cheap material to appear premium so as to keep the devices light.

You might ask yourself the importance of a curved screen? You will definitely grip the phone better since it comfortably fits in your hand with the bottom back properly fitting in the shape of your palm and the curve means the phone isn’t too wide for you hand to move around the screen, but it will keep the photos and movies appearing bigger.

You might worry that the phone might roll often as you place it on the table, however Samsung has developed a feature out of this. They have created a feature they Call the ‘Roll Effect’ Which lets you check your notifications, date, missed calls, battery and more by simply rolling the phone onto one side, when you roll the Phone back the screen automatically goes off.

http://youtu.be/UIEExKSjWi4

lets See a few pictures

It will only take time for people to know whether they love It or think its an S4 that has literally been placed in a microwave. Let us know of what you think. The Galaxy Round is now available in Korea in Luxury Brown, and more colours to be announced.

Image and Video Source: Samsung Tomorrow

Adobe hacked, millions of records and data stolen

Joel Mwanja

-

Oct 4, 2013

0

In a rather unfortunate series of events, Adobe, one of the leaders in software technology has discovered that there has been malicious activity on their network and guess what, they were right. Illegal activity has been noted on Adobe servers but they have also discovered that millions of records on product purchases and other related data has been stolen. Still not getting it? Still surprised? Well, here is the inside scoop

Millions of records including customer IDs, passwords, credit card and debit card numbers. That is just the beginning of the story. Away from the normal data, also source code of most Adobe products was also stolen and the extent is not known. Adobe has vowed to hunt down the hackers who gained access to their servers. Adobe says that only encypted credit card and debit card numbers were taken so that only means there are some unencypted credit card numbers stored on their servers, so why would a company store unencrypted credit and debit card details?

The source code for Adobe products was also stolen and this puts Adobe in a tight spot because the hackers might use it for malicious purposes or might use it for creating cracked Adobe applications. Adobe is taking measures to curb the situation, so if you have an Adobe account, you might receive an email from Adobe requesting you to reset your password, but, be careful, some people might pose to be Adobe, so cross check the official Adobe email so that you do not land in trouble.

Kipochi lets you use Bitcoin in Uganda, & elsewhere

Boses Muhinda

-

Oct 4, 2013

1

I just stumbled upon this amazing feature called ‘Kipochi.’ Kipochi which stands for wallet in Swahili lets you make transactions using Bitcoin, some of you might ask yourself what the heck Bitcoin is? Bitcoin is a virtual currency that you can use to buy and sell stuff on the internet. Bitcoin is non-government managed, secure, transparent and is volatile however its not affected by inflation. However if you are making global transactions or want to send money without being tracked feel free to use bitcoin.

Kipochi is a Bitcoin Wallet, its basically an internet service that works on all internet enabled mobile phones, so you can make transactions using Uganda shilling, Kenyan shilling, USD and the website will use your geolocation or a drop down menu to select your country between Kenya, Uganda or select English, French or Spanish version. It will require you to verify your email address and mobile phone number.

kipochi phone

Kipochi shows you the current exchange rate of the Bitcoin with the Ksh or Ugx or US dollar, at the moment the milliBitcoin was worth 311.26 Ushs, the MilliBitcoin is the preferred primary transaction unit because it is easy to manage. A milliBitcoin is about 0.001 of a Bitcoin.

Kipochi however limits the number of Bitcoin transactions to 1 Bitcoin a day. Dont get worried if you think Kipochi is bank, its an open organisation/wallet that lets you use Bitcoins . Kipochi doesn’t charge you to actually use the service however Bitcoin charges you about 155.63 USh in transaction fees.

1 Bitcoin is currently worth 311,264.87 USh. This is way to much to use for normal day to day transactions. The bitcoin currency supports transactions down to 0.00000001 Bitcoin. The Bitcoin community has decided that MilliBit or 0.001 is the most useful unit in the immediate future.

So what can you use a Bitcoin for in Uganda? Well you can exchange it for Uganda shilling, send and recieve money globally, you can also invest in Bitcoin as it fluctuates. Kipochi allows you to send money from M-Pesa to Airtel to Orange to Yo if you are in Kneya. You can actually buy Bitcoin using M-pesa and send Bitcoins using phone numbers. Yeah Bitcoin IDS can be a struggle.

Facebook Home adds content from Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest & Tumblr

GURU8 Staff

-

Oct 3, 2013

0

Facebook’s launcher app they call Facebook home has now added feed from other social media sources unlike before where users only got feeds in form of photos, status updates, and messages from facebook. A feature that some liked however the app wasn’t very successful and at one point had the highest number of ‘uninstallations’.

Facebook has decided to give users more freedom by adding non-Facebook content to the homescreen alongside feed from Facebook. Users can now add feed from Facebook-owned Instagram, tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr and the same gestures from facebook feeds on home like tap to like a photo will still work for the other services. The app also shows the seen feature for the third party apps.

This news of feature was announce on Thursday and it has been availed to Facebook home android Beta, the release of the feature is higly limited but will soon be available to all. Facebook also plans to add more services to the facebook home app. According to Cnet, Facebook is also testing a feature that will brong the launcher feature in home to the ordinary Facebook application.
Lets just keep calm and wait till we can get our Instagram, Pinterest, flickr, tumblr and possibly more feed on our lockscreens.
Source : CNET

FBI shuts down ‘Silk Road’ an online drug marketplace website

Boses Muhinda

-

Oct 2, 2013

0

A few days ago, a drug marketplace hidden deep on the Tor network where it seemed anonymous, existed a drug marketplace on the internet called ‘SilkRoad’. Silkroad was an anonymous website for drug users to sell and buy illegal drugs without exposing their identies, all because they paid using an anonymous and lowly-tracked currency called Bit coin, Since Bitcoin is a virtual, tracing the drug dealers was quite a difficult process.

However this has come to an end, FBI shut down the website and displayed a message showing that the website had been seized. Those who know how to use the Tor network can access the blocked site using the URL http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/. The Battle with the Feds started with a criminal complaint against Mr. Ross William Ulbricht, a.k.a. “Dread Pirate Roberts,” a.k.a. “DPR,” a.k.a. “Silk Road.”

It must be surprising that Ross William Ulbricht was a heavy user of social media, he had a Facebook, Google +, and his Linkedin profile describes him as an “investment advisor and entrepreneur” .

SilkRoad generated revenue worth 9.5 million Bitcoins and received commissions from over 600,000 Bitcoins. The site worth is estimated to have made $1.2billion in sales and $80 million in commisions

Ulbrict’s is going to face trial in the United States.

Source: The Verge

Apple is now the most Valuable Company!

Boses Muhinda

-

Sep 30, 2013

0

According to an annual report from InterBrand, this is a corporate identity and brand consulting company owned by Omnicom Group. Since 2000, InterBrand has been compiling an annual report it calls the ‘Best Global Brands Report’. A report which has ranked Apple as the Most valuable brand of 2013, a position previously held by Coca-Cola which has slid down to the third position.

Apple has really achieved a lot by being in first place because this is the first year Coca-Cola hasn’t been Number 1. Interbrand’s Chief Executive Jez Frampton was quoted to have said, “What is it they say, ‘Long live the king?” he then said “This year, the King is Apple.” Interbrand’s Frampton said that it was a matter of time, for Apple to reach the top spot in an earlier interview with NYT. Let’s remember that Apple was in the 2nd spot after climbing from the 8th position in 2011.

The report estimated the value of Apple’s brand at $98.3 billion which is a 12% increment from last year, it also shows an increase in Coca-Cola’s brand by 2% which however wasn’t enough to keep its place as the ‘king’ of the most valuable brands, Coca-Cola was in fact the 3rd most valuable brand with Google rising to the 2nd position. Tech business giant IBM is now the 4th most valuable brand.

Frampton had this to say about Apple’s being ranked number 1. “Coca-Cola is an efficient, outstanding brand marketer, no doubt about it,” Frampton said “Apple and other leading technology brands has become very much the poster child of the marketing community.”
Much as Apple and Coca-Cola were the main talk of the report, let’s look at how other ‘Popular’ Tech brands faired. Microsoft remained in the 5th position just like last year, Samsung rose to the 8th and took up Intel’s previous position which was 8th last year, and Intel is now in the 9th position. Struggling Blackberry has disappeared from the list a drop from her 93 position last year. Yeah, the list ranks the top 100 Best Brand companies; Nokia was the ‘biggest faller’ after dropping down 38places to the 57thposition.

There you have it, the list of the most Valuable Global brands. Apple needs to pop the champagne after unseating Coca-Cola from her top position. Google also has a big reason to celebrate

Source: NYT, InterBrand

Hey! Its now possible to edit your Post on Facebook!

Boses Muhinda

-

Sep 26, 2013

0

Previously, Facebook only let us edit our comments, a service that has been running for about a year now, however when you update your status and it happens to have a mistake, or error the only way solution was to get rid of the post by deleting it. However just like comment editing your friends will be able to see all the edits you have made to your status, i must say its better than having a status you can not change.

This update has been seen in android, those with developer preview accounts for the Facebook app were able to experience this, Now the Google Play update changelog has shown the feature. Now every android user should be able to get this update.

Lets remember that most of facebook’s updates roll out gradually to all users just like Timeline, Newsfeed and GraphSearch. Its now on Android, web users might wait but iOS may definately get the update soon.

Post Updated at: 23:54pm

Google Improves Search as it turns 15

Boses Muhinda

-

Sep 26, 2013

0

The ‘teen old’ search engine whose capabilities are higher than its age, if Google was a person, they would be celebrating their 15th birthday which is a time most teenagers are at a confused time of their life.

However Google is quite amazing today, Google is celebrating 15 years of amazing services, with the oldest being its Search engine. Someone needs to sing them a birthday song. Google has decided to share its cake with us by realising a improved Search algorithm. It has given us a card UI for search results. Google has promised to roll out improvements as it stated in a tweet

Google turns 15 on 9/27. Today we’re announcing some of the latest improvements to #googlesearch. Stay tuned for updates! #google15

— A Googler (@google) September 26, 2013

In the latest version of the Google Search App for iOS and Android, not only can you say your question out loud, but your search app can speak your answer right back to you. And, using Google’s Knowledge Graph, your search app gives you smarter answers loud and clear.

Google is attempting to keep pace with the evolution of Internet usage because search queries are getting more complicated & traditional “Boolean” or keyword-based systems have begun deteriorating because of the need to match concepts and meanings in addition to words. Google has introduced ‘Hummingbird’, “Hummingbird” is the company’s effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the Internet, said Singhal from the Menlo Park garage where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceived their now-ubiquitous search engine.

“You should not be spending your time searching, you should be spending your time living,” said Singhal.

Google also announced an improved search app on iOS that brings card UI from events and apps from searches. Google has also given us a feel of its first search engine in 1998. You can experience search results as they appeared in the year Google was founded.

We shall keep you posted on Google’s improvements throughout its BirthDay!