DD
MM
YYYY

PAGES

DD
MM
YYYY

spot_img

PAGES

Home Blog Page 7805

Mobile Payment Technologies – Which One Is Right For Nigerian Developers?

3

Mobile payment is an alternative payment method that involes the use of phone to make payment, over cash, credit cards or cheques. There are four main technologies behind this, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

  • Premium SMS based transactional payments

The consumer sends a payment request via an SMS text message or an USSD to a short code and a premium charge is applied to their phone bill or their online wallet.

 

  • Direct Mobile Billing

The consumer uses the mobile billing option during checkout at an e-commerce site—such as an online gaming site—to make a payment.

 

  • Mobile web payments (WAP)

The consumer uses web pages displayed or additional applications downloaded and installed on the mobile phone to make a payment. It uses WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) as underlying technology and thus inherits all the advantages and disadvantages of WAP.

 

  • Contactless NFC (Near Field Communication)

Near Field Communication (NFC) is used mostly in paying for purchases made in physical stores or transportation services. A consumer using a special mobile phone equipped with a smartcard waves his/her phone near a reader module.

 

Now, which one is good for Nigeria? The most dominant one in the near future  will remain the first two or three. The last one, presently used by Google in its Google Wallet is not ready for Nigeria. The fact is that most of the supermarkets must be ready to adopt it before you can make money out of this.

 

Though in the West, they want to get the customers to pay as quickly as possible to save costs and reduce queue, Africa has not caught that bug. Yet, it is the NFC that will be the most transformative in the long-run. There are many technologies that NFC powers. In inventory management, apps can integrate it to come up with cheaper alternatives to RFID.

 

Microsoft Imagine Cup – Ugandan Makerere University Has Won It for Four Straight Year in East And Central Africa

0

Students from Makerere University, Uganda have for the 4th Year running scooped the first position of the Microsoft Imagine Cup.  The East and Central Africa Regional challenge was held in Nairobi on 9th May 2011 and Ugandan school came top. They are scheduled to represent the region at the Cup’s world stage in July 2011 in New York.

Think about this? With the almighty Kenya, Uganda has topped the region 4th straight year. That is a feat in the mobile and software ecosystem. Maybe the Kenyans are not developing in Windows or W.Mobile. Yet, give the Ugandans credit.

Four years is not a fluke and the school must really be good. Good enough, in recognition of school’s consistently excellent performance in the Imagine Cup, Microsoft has approved the establishment of a Microsoft Innovations Center at the Makerere University’s College of Computing and Information Sciences. The Center is scheduled to be launched in July 2011. The Innovations Center will accord CIT students as well as students from the entire University a conducive working environment to work on more innovations.
The Imagine Cup team competed in the software design category and their winning project CRIMEX is a desktop, mobile and web-based system that focuses on crime pattern analysis in developing countries.  Kenyan students from Strathmore University, Kenya came in second and third with their projects dubbed “The Greenhouse Project” and a game focused on “universal education and gender equality”.

CRIMEX is a desktop, mobile and web based system that focuses on crime pattern analysis in developing countries. For business to thrive in a given area, it is important that the crime rate is low. Law enforcement and crime investigation units in East Africa are under-staffed with little or no experienced crime analysts. The crime departments resort to manual data analysis from field reports, and witness testimonies to predict patterns. CRIMEX provides a unique solution for law enforcers; ranging from crime pattern recognition to facial recognition capabilities and biometric analysis. CRIMEX can also be linked to international crime databases where need be. CRIMEX is in line with the 8th MDG i.e. a global partnership; particularly addressing the special needs of least developed countries. The rule of law in society is a key necessity in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals.

BuzzCity Mobile Ad Network Growth Fuelled by Demand for More White-Label Content Services

0

BuzzCity, the global mobile media company, has for the first time in its history hit a new milestone – in May alone it served 10.5 billion adverts across its mobile advertising network.  BuzzCity attributes this increase to greater consumer demand for mobile content and being able to meet that demand with its own white-label content services, leading to record numbers in ads served on its mobile advertising network. The driver? Increase in ‘white-box’ phones to target wider market.


Through BuzzCity’s white-label service, content from BuzzCity’s diverse mobile media properties – Djuzz, JAMsked and Now-Cook – are shared with more than 1000 content partners globally.  These sites have been designed to satisfy mobile internet users’ insatiable demand for relevant, useful and entertaining content via their phones. Providing and sharing this content also provides a great context for advertisers to promote their brands.


Dr KF Lai, BuzzCity CEO said: “Content syndication is a cornerstone of our business strategy and is having a significant impact on BuzzCity’s growth.   Demand is increasing for it, and testament to that is the diverse range of more than 1000 partners we have across the globe. White-label services like ours makesense, as many mobile strategies rely on quality and relevant content as animportant element.”


Although the rapid growth of the smartphones sector has been well-documented it still accounts for just a fifth of the 1.6bn mobile devices sold last year, according to Gartner.  Another driver in the demand for content is the emergence of the localized ’white-box’ manufacturers coming out of Asia – providing lower-end phones with capabilities similar to those of smartphones; just last week Yahoo announced a partnership with MediaTek, a supplier of microchips for mobile phones, to integrate Yahoo’s web services, such as IM and email, into their microchip packages which go into standard mobile phones.


“Mobile hotspots continue growing throughout the world as the adoption of 3G is coupled with cheaper data rates. However alongside that we are seeing the continuedrise of affordable white-box phones which will provide access to the internet where there are no 3G networks and to wider audience who cannot afford the prices of the smartphones.  All in all this results in a greater demand for content that we are experiencing”. said Dr Lai


Djuzz, BuzzCity’s mobile gaming site, which launched last year, is on track to hit the 100 million downloads target in June 2011. More than 45 million games have already beendownloaded since January 2011.  Jamsked, its music listings site now promotes 40,000 gigs per day, is distributed tomobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile portals. Djuzz and JAMsked currently attract around 3 million unique visitors monthly. By Q3 2011, mobile users can look forward to more diverse content on Djuzz such as free indie music and movie previews on the mobile site.



About BuzzCity
BuzzCity is a mobile media company offering brand owners and agencies access to a global advertising network on the mobile internet. The network is made up of publishers from across the world and BuzzCity’s own mobile media properties. As a leading international player, BuzzCity has developed in-depth knowledge of the mobile consumer and provides marketers with clear opportunities to reach this audience via its advertising and publisher programmes. Additional information can be found at www.buzzcity.com On twitter: twitter.com/buzzcity_za

This is a press release which Tekedia received from our email.


 

Some Finalists at Pivot25 – Campus101 And M-Farm

0
Commercialize Agriculture Ideas

The following companies are some of the finalists at Pivot25. Pivot25 is an mlab initiative to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa.mlab East Africa is a consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy.

M-Farm by M-Farm Limited is a market transparency tool for farmers. Kenyan farmers simply SMS the number 3535 to get information pertaining to the retail price of their products, to buy their farm inputs directly from manufacturers at favorable prices, and to find buyers for their produce.  This Kenyan startup has  a simple mission – empower local farmers with prices of produce. They even compensate for regional price changes. How it is done?

Campus 101 by Metro-Mobile is a mobile application that gives students a detailed summary of their university’s e-learning systems, up to date information about school’s events, and access to their Higher Education Loan Board (HELB) statuses.

Microsoft Approves Innovations Center At Ugandan Makerere University

0

Microsoft has approved an Innovations Center at Makerere University. This will be the  2nd Innovations Center in the East African Region and 4th in Africa. The Innovations Center will be used by Makerere University and Uganda as whole to develop appropriate innovations relevant to the needs of their society.

 

 

Microsoft will provide technical expertise and related administrative support to the center for 3 years. A number of training programs will be offered by the center, which will act as a model innovation center on the African Continent. The confirmation came after 4 years of continuous engagements and negotiations between Microsoft, Ministry of ICT, Uganda, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) .

 

 

Through UNIDO, the College of Computing and Information Sciences has also recently been approached by the UN Global Pulse Labs (the innovations arm of the UN) expressing interest in partnering to set up a UN Global Pulse Lab at the College. This recent development is hinged on Microsoft approval of the establishment of an Innovations Center at Makerere.