Year: 2018

New Panacea, Transforming the Education Sector in Africa

Staff Writer

After recently launching its Android App, Panacea, a Nigerian e-library startup, is geared towards revolutionizing the education sector in Africa. The IBCA caught up with its founder who shed some light on what it is all about and their future plans. How can you define the technology sector in Nigeria? Panacea: Technology in Nigeria is growing and growing fast. Both government and private sectors are embracing technology as quick as possible. Technology adoption across Nigeria has also been very encouraging lately.This is evident in the number of tech startups springing…

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Amazon Japan offices New raid in competition probe

Staff Writer
Amazon CloudFront Edge

Amazon Japan said its offices have been raided by the country’s fair trade regulator on suspicion of anti-trust violations. The online retailer is suspected of asking suppliers to shoulder costs incurred for selling their products at a discount, according to media reports. The firm said it is cooperating with the investigation by Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JTFC), Reuters reported. JTFC declined to provide more details on the case when contacted by the BBC. It’s not the first time Amazon Japan has been investigated over anti-trust breaches. In 2016, JTFC raided…

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Google will now ban ads on cryptocurrencies and related products

Staff Writer

Alphabet Google said on March 14 it will ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and related content starting in June. Under the new policy, the company will ban ads for unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency and financial spread betting among others. In a separate blog post, Google said it took down 3.2 billion ads that violated its advertising policies in 2017, nearly double the number of ads it removed in 2016. “Improving the ads experience across the web, whether that’s removing harmful ads or intrusive ads, will continue…

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Reddit has new secret to fixing facebook

Staff Writer

Reddit somehow seems to fly under the radar for the average person, despite being the sixth most popular website in the world. But while its ugly aesthetic – and often, ugly content – is alienating to many, there is much to admire. In fact,  Reddit provides a model for how to create a more interesting, fairer web. A model that doesn’t drag down other publishers in the process. Reddit’s system – where users upvote things they like, and downvote things they don’t – is about as transparent as it gets…

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Snap reportedly laying off around 100 new engineers

Staff Writer

Snap is about to undergo another round of layoffs, with this one seeing a cut of around 100 engineers, according to Cheddar and CNBC. While that’s a small portion of Snap’s total headcount — around 3,000 people — it reportedly represents about 10 percent of the company’s engineering team. The cuts are expected to come within a week and will be the first focused on engineering. Snap hasn’t commented on the report. This is the fourth round of layoffs at Snap in the past year, though the first three were…

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New Laundered Bitcoin worth Billions Linked to UK Company

Staff Writer

A UK company has been linked to the laundering of 650,000 stolen bitcoins worth £4.5bn.The coins were taken by hackers from Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, leaving tens of thousands of customers out of pocket. It’s not clear who is in control of the London-based firm Always Efficient LLP. Mt Gox operator Mark Karpeles apologised to investors and said he was co-operating with the investigation. The FBI has charged a Russian national with laundering the stolen bitcoins. Mt Gox matched up those who wanted to buy the crypto-currency with dollars,…

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

Staff Writer

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…

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Amazon acquires New Ring for $1 billion.

Staff Writer

Amazon has acquired Ring, a Santa Monica, California-based maker of connected video doorbells and security cameras, for $1 billion. That will see the E-Commerce giant push further into the home security business: it previously acquired Blink, which makes similar products. Plus, it already offers a Cloud Cam that’s designed for use inside your house, and to allow couriers into your home to drop off parcels as part of its Key program. GeekWire notes that while neither firm has shared details on the way forward, it’s expected that the Ring brand…

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New: How Much Screen Time is Too Much?

Staff Writer

Concerns about the harm caused by too much screen time – particularly when it is spent on social media – are widespread. But working out what a healthy amount might be is far from easy. Apple’s Tim Cook recently said he would not want his nephew on a social network, while child health experts wrote to Facebook warning excessive use of digital devices and social media “is harmful to children and teens”. Some negative experiences on social media – like bullying, or becoming worried about how your appearance compares to…

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

Staff Writer
M-Gas Mpesa Central Bank of Kenya

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…

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