Robotic Vision Simplified – Microsoft Releases SDK for Kinetics and Motion Sensors

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June 17, 2011

Remember the Microsoft Kinetic 3D sensor for the xbox, which offered a gaming experience where the user uses his entire body as a game control just make making body gestures like swinging the arm or legs? The technology was based on an hardware originally designed by PrimeSense, an Isreali company.

The device uses infrared sensors in combination with cameras to give a 3D output of images in its vicinity, by providing RGB data from the camera and distance information from the infrared sensors. All this power was being “wasted” just on a gaming tool, but no more.

Microsoft has released an SDK for the kinetic, which will make it possible for robotics enthusiasts and indeed anyone to design advanced motion sensor systems based on the kinetic. The SDK offers tools to interact directly with the Kinetic, providing access to raw sensor data streams in real time, skeletal tracking of images (which can be used to track specific human gestures like hand or leg movements) and advanced3D sound.

The SDK presently support programming in C#, C++ and VB, while the hardware itself goes for about $150, a reasonable price for a tool that offers such limitless possibilities for robotics and audio visual intelligent systems.

MedKenya Wins Pivot25. Category Winners Include Mshop, Whive, Uha$ibu and SchoolSMS

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Tekedia Editors

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June 17, 2011

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MedKenya wins the overall prize in Pivot25 – the Biggest Mobile Tech Event in East Africa. Tekedia reported about this company few weeks ago when we noticed what they were up to.

MEDKenya by Shimba Technologies LTD is a platform that provides symptom checkers, first-aid information, doctor & hospital directories. The product aims to make healthcare information affordable and accessible to Kenyans.

Other winning entries include:

Applications in Mobile Payments and Commerce – Mshop)

M-Shop is a platform allowing consumers to order, pay for, obtain and validate tickets for events, travel, goods & services. The solution provides USSD technology or a mobile application on smart phones to deliver this convenience at any time and from any location with a mobile carrier signal.

Applications in Mobile Entertainment, Gaming and Utilities – Whive)

Kenyan Whive hosts over 90,000 Kenyans through its Space Kenya. They are also have 5 Social Media Applications that provide the most comprehensive Social Marketing tools for the African Market.

Applications in Mobile Business and Enterprise – Uhasibu)

Uhasibu by Pluspeople Kenya is a cloud based accounting system for small & medium companies in East Africa. It helps in generating KRA format VAT reports, petty cash management and other financial management features. It also supports East African Currencies and is accessible for sh1,000 per month.

Applications in Mobile Govt: Agriculture and Education – SchoolSMS)

SchoolSMS Premium by Tusqee Systems is an Interactive Mobile Messaging System for schools. It allows parents to get exam results of their kids, enquire about fees balances and get fees statement quotes from the school via use of simple SMS. The company also have IMMS systems for churches

Applications in Mobile Health: MEDKenya

OVERALL WINNER: MEDKENYA

Congratulations to all the winners!!!

Visa Acquires South African Fundamo for $110m

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Tekedia Editors

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June 17, 2011

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The card processing giant, Visa, acquires South African Fundamo for $110m, with cash. This is contained in a statement released by the company to news men in San Fransisco USA recently.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), a global leader in payments is acquiring Fundamo, a leading platform provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies. It also announced a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise plc (LSE: MONI.L), a leading provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed geographies.

The investments will accelerate the execution of Visa’s global strategy announced last month to provide the next generation of payments solutions, enabling consumers to transact wherever and whenever they choose, using a card, a computer or a mobile device with Visa’s reliability, security and global acceptance. The combination of acquiring Fundamo and expanding the relationship with Monitise will enable Visa to deliver best-in-class mobile financial services and payments capabilities to consumers across the full spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile environments from basic services on simple handsets to more advanced services for smart phone owners.

Privately held, Cape Town, South Africa-based Fundamo has more than 50 active mobile financial services deployments across more than 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Fundamo’s deployments currently have a base of more than five million registered subscribers and the potential to reach more than 180 million consumers with mobile financial services. Mobile prepaid payments provide affordable, convenient and secure transaction capabilities that are transformational to the lives of merchants and consumers in those regions.

Profile of The $50m Goodwell West Africa Fund

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Tekedia Editors

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June 17, 2011

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Goodwell Microfinance Development Company is a Netherlands based social investment company which mobilizes capital for microfinance institutions (MFIs) through equity investments. Having successfully operated its first microfinance development company in India since 2006, Goodwell in 2009 launched a second investment company in West Africa.

The US$50.0 million West Africa Fund is to focus its investments in Nigeria and Ghana geographically. Other partners and co-sponsors of the Fund are:

· KFW;
· FMO;
· NM ; and
· other private investors

Part of Goodwell NL’s core strategy is to invest in entrepreneurial microfinance institutions with the goal of creating a substantial social impact and an attractive financial return. The key objective is to work with local partners to improve access to affordable financial services for millions of people at the ‘base of the pyramid’.

The Goodwell West Africa Fund operates with the principal belief that improving access to affordable financial services for people at the “Base of the Pyramid” contribute to sustainable development. This improvement can best be achieved by developing and scaling up entrepreneurial microfinance institutions. The established funds also provides commercial long-term capital and active support to start-up and growth phase microfinance institutions (MFIs) to kick-start and accelerate their growth and build value whilst maintaining their social focus.

Lenovo Chases Small and Medium Businesses With New Server Based on Intel “Sandy Bridge-DT” Xeon E3-1200 Processors

By

Ejiofor Agada

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June 17, 2011

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China based IBM offshoot PC and Server maker Lenovo, is one of the first vendors to come out with entry-level tower servers aimed at small and medium businesses based on Intel’s “Sandy Bridge-DT” Xeon E3-1200 processors. The Xeon E3 chips are designed for single-socket servers and workstations. They were previewed by Intel back in March and started shipping in early April for both servers and for workstations with Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 GPUs embedded on certain models of the chips.

All of the chips have four cores except for the 20 watt E3-1220L, which has two cores. The remaining Xeon E3 models run at between 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz and have power draws of between 45 and 95 watts. The chips make use of the “Cougar Point” series of chipsets from Intel.

Lenovo was initially reselling selected models of IBM’s System x tower and rack servers in the wake of acquiring IBM’s PC business a few years back, but has been doing its own server design and manufacturing more recently. The company is also partnering with Intel to be an early adopter of the AppUp Small Business Service, which was announced in May and which brings cloud-style utility pricing for servers and applications to x64 servers installed at SMB shops.

Oddly enough, Lenovo is using an earlier ThinkServer TS200v tower server as the basis for its AppUp offering rather than the new TS130 and TS430 machines – marry that with the delays in deliveries of Sandy Bridge entry servers in the wake of the bug that was discovered in the Cougar Point chipsets back in January.

The TS130 tower server is based on the C206 version of the Cougar Point chipset, and like other Xeon E3 machines, only has four DDR3 memory slots on its system board. At this time, Lenovo only support 2GB or 4GB memory sticks in the box, for a maximum of 16GB of memory. Lenovo is putting ECC memory in the box for increased reliability, and is also using the RAID data protection cooked into the C206 chipset and SATA disk ports to provide mirroring for disks.

Robotic Vision Simplified – Microsoft Releases SDK for Kinetics and Motion Sensors

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Robotic Vision Simplified – Microsoft Releases SDK for Kinetics and Motion Sensors

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MedKenya Wins Pivot25. Category Winners Include Mshop, Whive, Uha$ibu and SchoolSMS

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Visa Acquires South African Fundamo for $110m

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Profile of The $50m Goodwell West Africa Fund

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Lenovo Chases Small and Medium Businesses With New Server Based on Intel “Sandy Bridge-DT” Xeon E3-1200 Processors

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