TECH - itbusinessdirect

JuuBike: Streamlining the Kenyan Bodaboda Transport Sector

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

The Boda Boda Safety Association of Kenya recently launched a new app called JuuBike that will connect riders to customers in what the Association says will streamline the industry and inject discipline. The IBCA caught up with its founder who told us more about it. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? JuuBike: The technology in Kenya has been improving rapidly and being adopted by very many different sectors eg, communication,Transport, manufacturing and many others. It has the engine that is driving the Kenyan economy as today almost everything is…

AI ‘poses less risk to jobs than feared’ says OECD

April 4, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Fewer people’s jobs are likely to be destroyed by AI (artificial intelligence) and robots than has been suggested by a much-cited study, an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report says. An influential 2013 forecast by Oxford University said that about 47% of jobs in the US in 2010 and 35% in the UK were at “high risk” of being automated over the following 20 years. But the OECD puts the US figure at about 10% and the UK’s at 12%. Even so, it says many more workers face…

Q&A: Leti Arts bringing authentic Africa to the world through games & digital comics

March 2, 2018March 6, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Caption: (inset) Leti Arts Co-founders, Eyram Tawia (Ghana) and Wesley Kirinya (Kenya) Africa is at the verge of global stardom, with the latest box office stunner movie featuring African superheroes in their fictional Kingdom of Wakanda. There is no doubt that Africa is starting to create its own imagery and endearing the world. It is through such that companies like Let Arts are focusing on. The IBCA caught up with Leti Arts to find out just what the founders are working on to bring an authentic Africa to a worldwide…

Mobile Commerce enabler DOCOMO Partners with Safaricom to Launch first App Store Integration with M-PESA.

February 23, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Global mobile commerce enabler, DOCOMO Digital has partnered with Safaricom to give customers the option to pay for content on the Google Play Store using M-PESA. The integration, which is powered by DOCOMO Digital’s mobile commerce enabling platform using Google Play’s payment API, allows M-PESA customers to use the mobile money service to pay for goods and services from the app store. The service is available to more than 27 million M-PESA customers in Kenya with an Android smartphone or tablet. From today, customers matching this criteria can purchase content…

Vatican organizes first ever hackathon in history dubbed VHacks

February 22, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

The Vatican alias the holy city is organizing its first ever hackathon in history dubbed VHacks.”I did not have to pitch the idea to the Pope,” laughs Jakub Florkiewicz, the co-initiator of the event. “But the participants of the event hopefully will,” he adds. So how did this unlikely event come to be? “It’s a story about a student arriving in Rome with an idea, and finding people who got excited about that idea,” Florkiewicz explains. “Passionate myself about hackathons, I had the luck of meeting people – Vatican insiders –…

Experts think AI Might Mess with us in the Next Five Years

February 21, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

When we talk about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence, the emphasis is usually on the unintended side effects. We worry that we might accidentally create a super-intelligent AI and forget to program it with a conscience; or that we’ll deploy criminal sentencing algorithms that have soaked up the racist biases of their training data. What about the people who actively want to use AI for immoral, criminal, or malicious purposes? Aren’t they more likely to cause trouble — and sooner? The answer is yes, according to more than two…

WhatsApp Users can now Call Without Internet thanks to Rwandan Made Prototype

February 20, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

It is easier for a WhatsApp user in diaspora to audio or video call or chat with his or her counterpart in Africa who has the same application than traditional telephone calls and text messages. The situation is the same for people who use Skype, Facebook Messenger, Viber and WeChat, to mention a few. But at the moment, the number of smartphone holders is very small in many developing countries especially in Africa. For instance, the number of smartphone holders in Rwanda is below 1.2 million. This challenges service providers…

Amazon Echo Dot ad cleared over cat food order

February 15, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

A television ad for Amazon’s Echo Dot smart speaker that caused a viewer’s device to try to order cat food has been cleared by a UK regulator. The advert, which aired in October, featured a man asking Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa to order Purina cat food. A viewer said the ad caused their Echo Dot device to respond after hearing the ad on the television. The viewer complained that the ad was “socially irresponsible”. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it would not uphold the consumer’s complaint because it…

Dutch DDoS mystery: Who’s behind the sudden massive wave of attacks on banks?

February 6, 2018February 6, 2018

There is as yet no indication of who is behind the massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Netherlands banks and government websites that ran from last weekend to Tuesday. Initial reports suggesting a Russian connection appear baseless. The attacks began just a couple of days after media reports stated that Dutch intelligence tipped off their American counterparts about state-sponsored Russian spies hacking the apparatus of the Democratic Party and stealing the infamous “leaked emails” that may have swayed the 2016 election. “This weekend’s DDoS attacks were heavier than…