Author: Kaluka wanjala

Travelstart, the South African-based Online Travel Agency (OTA) with offices throughout Africa and subsidiaries in the Middle East and Turkey, today announced a US$40 million funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, the global technology investor. With the new funding comes a strategic partnership with Africa’s largest mobile telecommunications provider MTN which has a subscriber base of more than 230 million. The funding will be used for Travelstart’s expansion and to solidify the company’s position as the biggest OTA player on that continent. Africa is considered the last frontier in online travel. In most developed countries Internet and mobile travel purchases now…

Al Jazeera Media Network has launched a new audio web app that will give users in low-bandwidth regions access to a live audio stream of the Al Jazeera TV broadcast on their devices. The service will help Al Jazeera reach new audiences where low Internet speeds limit access to video. The primary markets being targeted are Africa, the Middle East, and South-East Asia. Ibrahim Hamid, director of Enterprise and Digital Platforms at Al Jazeera Media Network, says, “The launch of our Al Jazeera audio streaming service will give new audiences the ability to listen to the live broadcast of our…

Back in December, we told you about Mozilla’s decision to kill Firefox OS two and a half years after the company tried its luck in the smartphone OS market. The company announced that it was not putting in more effort in the smartphone OS but promised to support the existing devices powered by Firefox OS. The company revealed that it was investing more on Internet Of Things (IoT) going forward. Read More: Mozilla kills off Firefox OS for Smartphones After Two and A Half Years of Existence For those who have Firefox OS devices, Mozilla has said that it will…

Sometime last year, we told you that Sony had plans to update a number of its devices to the latest Android iteration (at that time it was Android 5.1 Lollipop). One of those devices that was to get the update was the Xperia M4 Aqua. This did not happen then and will not be happening anytime in the future as Sony plans to update the Xperia M4 Aqua directly to Android Marshmallow. The company revealed this through Twitter as it answered a user who had concerns that his device still didn’t have the update. https://twitter.com/sonyxperia/status/694594646605979652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua…

Kenya’s ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru has lauded Airtel for its commitment to support e-learning in Schools by providing free internet connection to schools in Kenya through the company’s Free Internet for Schools Program. The Information Cabinet Secretary was speaking yesterday at Machakos Boys High School in Machakos County, Kenya where he launched the program to connect 23 schools to the free internet under the program. The launch event was also attended by Principal Secretaries Eng. Victor Kyalo (ICT & Innovation) and Sammy Itemere (Broadcasting & Telecommunications), Machakos County ICT Minister Hellen Kiilu among other top government and education officials from…

Yesterday, we saw the first official photos of Microsoft’s soon to be launched mid-range smartphone, the Lumia 850. It seems that this is not the only smartphone that Microsoft is working on the Lumia 650 which is supposed to be unveiled anytime this month. Some publications have suggested that this will be the last Lumia smartphones from Microsoft as the company will be shifting to use the ‘Surface’ branding on its smartphones. This is just a rumor and nothing has been confirmed as of yet. Back to the Lumia 650, its first press shot has just leaked online giving us…

LG will be unveiling its latest smartphone, the LG G5, later this month at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016. LG has already sent out invitations for an event it has on February 21st. This will be the same day that Samsung has set to unveil its latest flagship, the Galaxy S7. Read More: Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S7 on February 21 LG has confirmed that the G5 will be at the event and right now it looks like it will be the first flagship smartphone from a major manufacturer this year. This is if Samsung doesn’t jump ahead of…

Microsoft has shown interest in both Android and iOS but not with devices but rather with apps. Most of the company’s popular and unpopular apps have been making their way into these different platforms and the company has been offering them free to users. The company’s latest move in the apps market is its acquisition of SwiftKey, the popular Android and iOS keyboard. Microsoft has paid $250 million for the company behind this popular third party keyboard that has been downloaded over 300 million times from the Apple App store and Google Play store combined. As I have mentioned above,…

The future of Microsoft Lumia devices is unknown at this point. We have heard the Microsoft was planning to introduce new ‘Surface smartphones’ and that the soon to be launched Lumia 650 will be the last Lumia smartphone. This may or may not be true but we are getting even more confused as new images of what is believed to be the Lumia 850 have just surfaced online. We have heard of the Lumia 850 before but never saw its actual photos before. Since the photos do not come with any Lumia 850 branding, this phone may just turn out…

Alcatel is set to announce two new smartphones later this month at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2016). These two smartphones are the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4 and 4S. Alcatel has of course not said anything about these smartphones but their specs have already leaked online raising our expectations. From the leaked specs, these two smartphones really look attractive and worth looking into. The Alcatel Idol 4S Starting with the Alcatel Idol 4S, it has a 5.5 inch QHD AMOLED display. Underneath, it is powered by a 1.8GHz + 1.4GHz octa-core CPU with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal…