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.
The Launcher got an update from the original launcher with a few features such as a “Say Ok Google” button near the microphone that only works when you are on the homescreen.
The Google Now Launcher gives you transparent folder backgrounds and bigger icons on your homescreen reen and most importantly Google Now is a swipe to the Left away.
Since as its not available for many devices, the launcher would have been nice for other devices considering it takes away the clatter that Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC or Huawei add to the pure Android skin. Users would definitely enjoy a better Android and Google Now experience because queries can be made on the home screen.
Users can still sideload the app just as before but now that its in the store updates will come in handy.
Previously Twitter only showed Promoted Accounts besides the tweet feed on the left or within tweets in the tweet feed of the mobile app.
However, in a move to increase its monetization, Twitter will now show Promoted Accounts in the search results for an account and the promoted accounts appear first.
This will see advertisers spending to get more followers and this will definitely increase the spending by brands so as to get more reach and Twitter will definitely get a wider smile on the way to the bank.
Facebook will be shutting down its @facebook.com email service that let users create email addresses and received emails in their Facebook inbox.
To be honest, this had to rest in peace because the number of times you probably used your username@facebook.com very few time or never at all.
So effective today, any emails sent to your Facebook email will be sent to you maim email address. However there is an opt-out option that lets you tern it off.
Unfortunately it’s easy for stalkers to figure out your Facebook email address much as Facebook only shows it to your friends and this could probably fill your primary email address with junk.
Behold The 5 is here and i don’t mean the iPhone. Samsung today launched the Samsung Galaxy S5, in an event in Barcelona based on the 5 theme that unpacked this new Galaxy. The rumors and speculations got answered as Samsung unveiled its latest flagship device.
Does it come with candy?
Not exactly but its powered by Android KitKat 4.4.2 with a slightly cleaner TouchWiz UI. Its also boosts of a 5-inch full HD (1920×1080) AMOLED screen whose body is wrapped up by the “perforated” and also a “modern glam
look.” as Samsung calls it.
Samsung gave the S5 a 16MP camera whose time between shots has been reduced to a 3rd of a second and they didn’t forget 4K recording just like the S4 had plus HDR photography, a dual LED flash and UHD recording. The back of the Samsung Galaxy S5
Their is a heart rate monitor that has been integrated with the S Health app to help users maintain healthy leaving.
Am not surprised Samsung added a fingerprint scanner that lets you unlock the device and make mobile payments.
They have even made it dust resistant and Water resistant up to 1 meter for 30 minutes.
Behind the Glass & plastic
You’ll find 2GB or RAM, a quad core 2.8Ghz snapdragon 800 processor and a 2800mAH battery that has a battery saving app that will keep your phone alive for 24 hours on standby even when the battery is less than 10%.
Samsung lets you choose between 16Gb or 32Gb and the ability to expand it up to 128Gb using a Micro SD card.
The S5 has MiMo technology that literally merges your Wifi to LTE connection so as to give you faster browsing speeds.
Samsung says that it’s sold over 200 million Galaxy S phones since the line first one was sold in 2010. We only have to wait and see whether the S5 will break sales records just like its predecessors.
The Messaging app is down and users can not send or receive messages and checking the system status shows that the App is actually not working. Checking the system status of WhatsApp shows that sorry the service is experiencing a problem as seen in the screenshot above.
Could the app be making a server transfer to Facebook infrastructure? Or is it a technical failure. Users seem to be annoyed by the fact that Facebook a company not famous for privacy. Rival apps like Telegram picked up over 500,000 new users after WhatsApp was bought. This is definitely not good news for WhatsApp and Facebook. Users are probably losing trust in the app and a few WhatsApp users might definitely ditch the app.
Update: WhatsApp was restored after about 3 hours of downtime
Yes, you read that right. Facebook entered an agreement to buy the popular Messaging app according to an SEC filing that confirmed the heavy purchase.
Facebook says that WhatsApp will continue operating as an Independent company just like Instagram did after it was bought. Facebook emphasizes it will not be part of Facebook Messenger.
Besides the $16 billion, Facebook will offer an extra $3 billion in restricted stock units that will go to WhatsApp’s founders and employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing. This bring the total to $19 billion.
WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people – Mark Zuckerberg
The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “I’ve known Jan for a long time and I’m excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected.”
The WhatsApp founder Jan Koum, had this to say, “WhatsApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We’re excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.”
Don’t Worry
WhatsApp will maintain its brand name, headquarters in Mountain View, CA and Jan Koum will be joing Zuck on the Board of Directors of Facebook.
WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger will continue to operate as totally separate Applications just like Instagram.
Facebook might have splashed a huge amount of money but this will give Facebook a wider audience considering WhatsApp had about 450 million users.
Oh wait Instagram got Ads last year lets pray WhatsApp doesn’t, I mean Facebook and Ads are a budding couple.
