Its not every Day that a company shows you how they make something or how their data centres look like, but when they do you will definately love it, remember Googles tour of their data centre? Well the making of this ‘beast’ At a price of $2999 you will definately need to be a pro to enjoy these features. See how Apple makes the Mac Pro, from the circular shape and more.
We had to share this video to our Apple fans!
Some Users today are facing outage of Facebook on their mobile devices and desktop versions. The Desktop version has had the biggest issues. Just in case you were not able to update your status, comment or couldn’t upload a photo today, then you are not alone, the site was facing several issues though logging in and viewing posts and photos was possible. Even websites that ping websites that ping for server down time like Is is it down or Just me were confirming downtime of facebook.
Facebook Payments are also down, Well there has not been any confirmation on why Facebook was partially unavailable since the social network hasn’t had any official comments on the downtime. However some users are able to login and update their statuses, let us know in the comments what you have experienced.
Its such a busy Expo from Orange this year, from the gadgets, to the promos, and crazy sales. What caught our attention this year is the ‘Future’ section at the Orange Expo 2013. The future has all innovations from partners of Orange and orange itself, from gadgets to apps or software. The exhibition stands showcased the most Bizarre gadgets as seen below:
Sony Smart Watch
Don’t be mistaken this watch doesn’t wear Louis Vuitton or Gucci, its smart because it can connect and sync with your phone and it lets you touch its screen like you would to any ordinary touch phone. It displays notifications from some apps such as Facebook, Twitter and is kind enough to let you like a status update. At the moment the number of apps are limited but lets not forget its the future and we can’t put a price tag to that. This smart watch will vibrate when you get a phone, by the way you can answer the phone call from your watch however you will have to get you smartphone out of your pocket onto your ear. Orange didn’t put a price tag to this device because it s coming in the future.
Nekomimi
Nekomini is a gadget that detects your brain waves and turns to your mood, it basically uses magnetic waves from a sensor that is placed on your forehead and a clip on you ear. It first calibrates by turning a bit then it will find out your mood and respond, most of the time it waves fast when you are happy or surprised they didn’t tell us what it does when you are annoyed. So the future might make your wife know mood…. well lets just wait.
Espon Moverio HMD
Imagine having a projector literally tied to your eyes, The Moverio projects videos and images onto a transparent display that is quite wide and seems like a 42 inch screen in the air, more like a magnified version of Google Glass. However its clearer when you look towards a white screen, yeah you can still see the rest of the world through the sides. The Moverio HMD has a physical controller that is powered by android, though its purely made up of hardware buttons. You definitely need to try this one out
Ink Case N2
The Ink Case N2 has an ebook reader at the back, you can even change the back cover to a static image, it syncs with your phone and has hardkey buttons to control the Ink case, it however makes your phone bulky and the available prototype only works with the Galaxy Note 2, and just in case you are lucky any 4.3 smartphone.
These were some of the apps that were being showcased;
The future will have all games we used to play onto touch screens, Matatu is a revolutionary app that brings us a card game with origins from Uganda, it lets you cut, pick 2, or pick 3. Every Ugandan would definitely want to try this out.
Noisy Gates
Orange brought us close to the developer of Noisy Gates, an app that detects loud noises in a particular environment and lets you know whether the noise Levels are friendly. It will calibrate, then measure sound levels then pick your location. This information is relevant to several ministries to make sure noise levels are human friendly. In the future fighting against noise polluters will be much easier.
MensPreg
These developers have told us that it is possible to prevent pregnancies and monitor period cycles, one of the reviewers was had to say that the future is bright.
Some of these gadgets are so bizarre you need to be there to enjoy the experience and the apps are worth downloading
If you have been reading GURU8 alot you will notice we have broken stories and done reviews on several smartphones, and you will definately find that smartphone at the Orange Expo, yeah you will get to see the iPhone 5S, and 5C, HTC One, Xperia Z , ZTE, Huaweis and lots of Android, Windows phones on discounts of up to 40%.
The Expo is going on up to Tomorrow so you have got to be there to see, touch and enjoy. Be there!
The Nexus 5 is probably the worst leak in the history of an android phone launch. We now know how it looks like before its launched, wait we even know how much we have to pay for it.
Google needs to work on privacy of its launches because the Nexus 5 appeared in Google Play at price of $350 for the 16Gb model. An even bigger resolution photo accidentally appeared on the Google Nexus website, however it was later removed. Thanks to Engadget who took the screen shot below. You are probably not very hyper about the launch of the Nexus 5, we might just have to wait to get confirmation on the Tech Specs.
Otherwise from the large photo you might notice a new camera icon, new wallpaper and probably Android 4.4 KitKat.
Well, we just have to wait for Google to give official confirmation on the tech specs and more details on the Nexus 5.
Source: Engadget
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
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.
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
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.
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 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’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
GURU8 is a Technology website showcasing the Latest News, Event updates, reviews and rumours in the Tech world while providing a platform for everyone to interact as well as gain information in reference to technology.
Contact us: info@guru8.net
+256771681909
©Hive Digital Ltd. GURU8 is a brand of Hive Digital Ltd
