The popular open source media player that has been a desktop software over the years and has been known for its wide range of video and audio playback support has finally arrived on the windows 8 platform, you can now use the app in the metro style of windows 8 alongside other windows 8 apps without going to the desktop.
After a successfully raising £50,000 ($78,136 USD) on Kickstarter , a beta version was released for users with a Windows 8 -powered PC, laptop or tablet with an x86 or x64 processor. Being in beta the windows RT version still has issues and many users complained that the player is not working on the Microsoft Surface 2.
VLC beta for Windows 8 will play all supported formats it had in its desktop version like MPEG-1, H.265, WMV3, MKV, Ogg, MOV, and many other since it has had a reputation to play almost anything.
So if you were a fan of the modern UI in windows 8, then you have got an alternative player you can use, its clean of course and despite a few technical issues like limited support for subtitles and RT devices plus its generally slower than the desktop version.
We only have to wait until the app leaves the ‘beta’ stage to enjoy its full power, lets hope it doesn’t take as long as the Android app which is still in beta up to now.
Today, Twitter had a lot of downtime and the service was not available for most users both on the Web and on mobile clients even Tweet Deck.
Twitter is now back and is accessible on both mobile and desktop clients after outage for about an hour.
The twitter website first displayed a message saying “something went wrong” late on the website was accessible periodically and would later on go down showing an error page.
Users who had access to the service, experienced slow page load speeds and website availability websites like isup.me showed the twitter as down in most locations and later on showed that their was slow API connectivity.
Twitter later confirmed this downtime and made a minor update to its status.twitter.com blog confirming that they were working to fix the problem.
This definitely not good for the social network which has long stabilized from its early days when downtime was more common.
Twitter is not the only big internet service to have had major downtime after a previous WhatsApp outage.
Let us know what you think of such downtime for major internet services.
It’s only human to misuse things later on publish or promote pornograpy on social networks, chat apps, YouTube and generally anything that shares digital content.
The twitter own 10 second video sharing app Vine shared in an official blogpost of how it wanted to rid its community of pornographic vines.
“we don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet –– we just prefer not to be the source of it.” – Vine
Vine asked its users to report videos containing sexually provocative nudity, close up of genitals even when clothed, use of sex toys, and sexual graphic and animations like hentai are banned.
However according to an FAQ post Nudity in a documentary context e.g. videos of nude protestors, Nudity in an artistic context, e.g. nude modeling in an art class, Nudity that is not sexually provocative, e.g. a mother breastfeeding her child and Clothed sexually suggestive dancing will be allowed.
So for the Holy, the ‘Vineyard’ is a little cleaner.
Its been close to a year when Facebook rolled out a redesign of its News Feed that they claimed turned Facebook into a personalised NewsPaper. Now Facebook has rolled out changes.
Unfortunately the now old design that was new then wasn’t liked alot. The bigger photos, separated News and black bar didn’t look so nice and wasn’t easy to use. Facebook has called that version of NewsFeed as ‘Experimental’ and it didn’t roll out to every one because of negative feedback from users which took Facebook designers back to their drawing boards. The Experimental NewsFeed launched last year
Starting Today, Facebook is rolling out a cleaner News Feed and you will notice the unnecessary options on the left like groups, pages, bookmarks have been thrown to the bin and there are minimal options and a clear left hand side. The right was also cleaned up abit and Ads were reorganized. The new 'clean' NewsFeed
News Feed product manager Greg Marra said “People don’t like us moving their furniture around, because you break muscle memory,” He added that the dark-themed sidebar, which collapsed into a strip of icons depending on your screen size, was confusing for most users, he said “That’s a particular design idea that looked cool but didn’t help you get around the site,” Marra says. “You don’t need to relearn anything — that was one of our big themes.”
The new look isn’t a total overhaul and looks familiar with the old News Feed with a few changes such as a large blue bar for everyone and graph search for all Those who selected English as their language.
Am really impressed with the ‘new’ look, Thank Facebook for taking its News Feed for a shower.
Facebook said the Windows Phone version of Facebook Messenger that was previously on Android and iOS would come to Microsoft‘s mobile OS during the Mobile World Congress.
Well today, Windows Phone users could get a few a smiles as the Facebook Messenger is now the Windows Phone Store.
It comes with the ability to send both private and group chats and stickers and sharing locations just like the other apps but the Windows Phone version is still missing a few threads to become smart. No chat heads.
Last year Airtel teased us with banners asking us wether we would love free access to WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. This caused a bit of excitement on social networks, and some of us were in doubt considering internet bundles had been hiked.
However, slowly over the weekend Airtel introduced a new Internet bundle called WTF Social pack.
This bundle lets you use 100mb in WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook apps and Facebook and Twitter in your browser at 500/-.
Considering these are the probably the most used apps and an 100mb data bundle goes for 2,000/-.
This is definitely a bargain though we shall beg for more
Too bad customers will want more and would prefer unlimited access since the rate at which the Android Facebook app consumes data is high and tests we have carried out on data saving browsers like Opera mini could not access Facebook when we loaded the social pack bundle only and only your default browser might work.
How will this help you
Just in case all you do is Facebook, WhatsApp and Tweet you only need pay 500 shillings and in case you want to browse more websites you might load a smaller bundle hence saving.
How to load the bundle?
Dail *175# then select 7 which is ‘WTF social pack’
Apple today launched its new service called “CarPlay” as it previously rumored to launch this week as iOS in the car.
CarPlay let’s you use CarPlay Siri voice control for driving scenarios and CarPlay lets you use your car’s controls, knobs, buttons, and if the car maker included a touchscreen you will be able to use it. Some cars will let you activate Siri by using a button on your steeeing wheel.
Apple brags thay they have specially made for the car and they won’t distract you and you will keep your eyes where they should be.
That should be true considering your texts will be read out loud for you and you can dictate texts, recieve calls and get turn by turn directions from Apple Maps without touching your iPhone.
The Best iPhone experience on four wheels – Apple
Don’t expect this in your Vitz though, CarPlay will be available to Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo for now and it will soon be available in cars by Nissan, Jaguar, General Motors, Peugeot , and BMW soon.
More to that, CarPlay comes as an iOS 7 update which unfortunately only supports iPhones with lightning connectivity such as the 5, 5S and 5C for now.
Besides a Siri button that lets you interact with your car and iPhone, Apple has added support for some apps like Beats Radio, Spotify, iHeartBeat, Stiticher and Podcasts.
There you have it, iOS in the car. We’ll have to wait to see how it rivals Google’s projected.
During the Oscar awards last night celebrity talk show Host Ellen DeGeneres pulled out her Samsung Galaxy along with Hollywood big names like Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Spacey, Jared Leto, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Brad Pitt and award winners like Lupita Nyong’o to take a ‘selfie’.
There were lots of applications at the COCIS Open Day unfortunately they were too many to list, and these were the app we find worth mentioning. These are the apps were loved and felt that they were relevant to you in no particular order.
WinSenga
This is a diagnosis app for pregnant mothers that can measure the bitrate of pregnant mothers and enhances the functionality of the pinnard horn used in hospitals
RimaVend
Is an automated vending machine that gets you commodities after inserting coins in the denominations of 100, 200, and 500 Ugx. RimaVend - automated vending machine
The machine will automatically detect the coin inserted and will tell you the balance required to make the full purchase. We had a chance to demo the machine which dropped a PK when we inserted 500 shillings.
Matibabu
This app diagnoses malaria without the use of injections and costly Malaria test and their application uses a Windows phone together with ‘a scanner like’ device where you place your finger and through use of light and template matching returns malaria results.
Tech 4 Farmers
This is a web application that connects farmers by showing the prices of agricultural produce and provides market for their produce
e-Agriculture
This solution is an intergration of hardware and software and it automatically detects the heat in a chicken or poultry house and will turn off the lights according to the conditions.
You will see the traditional laboratory circuit board with chips and a box as a demo house for now but with some good funding you will get full scale agricultural technology that will make a difference. It also alerts farmers using a modem that sends a message once water for feeding runa out and when the heat of poulty is low.
JustGO Bus service
Much as it’s a prototype and isn’t on the Windows Phone Store, the app lets users register and book for bus tickets using mobile money. The app requires a user to feed in his or her particulars and connect with their mobile money accounts so as to pay for a bus ticket. This would be very helpful in the future.
Plerola
This is a web based IT education service that tracks your child’s education and will tell you which school the child has been posted to based on your grades, it also tracks performance based on gender.
Sight 4 Ever (E-liiso)
This a health app that diagonises sight and will help you find out where you are color blind, visually impaired through a series of tests similar to those at your opticians clinic. This application is already on the Google Play store and you can test your sight. Phew! Thanks to the developers I know eyes are Ok.
Easy Park
In a busy city with tonnes of taxis, motorcycles, cars and narrow roads you definitely need to find parking. Considering that the number of cars is and will increase, finding parking spots in Kampala will be a little hard and this app helps you find appropriate parking spots in the city
There are lots of applications and IT based solutions, unfortunately we didn’t find any games at the time we made a survey. Now before you blah blah about how solution apps are relevant to Africa remember that Flappy birds used to make $50,000 a day and the most downloaded app made in Uganda is a game ‘Matatu’.
The annual IT Open day at Uganda’s arguably best Information Technology School is under away at the College of Computing and Information Sciences Makerere. Makerere COCIS open day is an event where students showcase their IT innovations and solutions to cater for problems in Agriculture, Health, Finance, education, IT itself and a lot more. This is made Possible through a joint venture by Makerere University, UNICEF, US Embassy, Resilient Africa Network, and ACIA.
Exhibitors showcased their apps and physical hardware for the exhibition to share their prototypes and apps to the world. I must say most of the apps weren’t production apps as most were either not on the store or still on “localhost”. The few production application apps were amazing and I must even the prototypes had a lot of potential because they solve real life problems.
I spoke to one of the supporting exhibitors who said events like these connect developers to potential investors and previous years have seen many applications actually gain funding.
Exhibitors also get ‘free’ marketing of their apps at the Open Day because the size of crowds flocking in is really large because fellow students, high school students, business men and investors flocked the crowded tents to catch a glimpse of Innovation and arguably
the closest thing to CES in Uganda.
Apps and solutions showcased were grouped in categories of target markets such as e-Agriculture, e-Mobile, e-Health, e-security, e-trade, e-climate.
You will be able to catch apps like Tech 4 Farmers, Agro-market day, Kika, namawulire, RimaVend and automated vending machine I was impressed by, Tunda Africa, Plerola a web based IT education app, Askari, EasyPark , Online Malaria Manager, Win Senga, Immunization Reminder.
You’ll also be able to interact with the developers and quiz them and get your queries answered.
