Category: BUSINESS

Bitcoin Comes Under Senate Spotlight

Staff Writer

Bitcoin is about to get some time in the Capitol Hill spotlight. A pair of Senate committees will hold hearings on the policy issues raised by virtual currencies in the coming weeks, according to Senate aides, a development that comes amid growing attention from government regulators to digital forms of money. Bitcoin, a currency that is essentially a computer code and is not backed by any government, has seen its value surge this year because of  interest from retailers and investors. But government agencies have also stepped up their oversight of…

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Markets are suddenly tumbling all around the world, right as Twitter is going public

Staff Writer

North American stocks have been sliding all morning. The S&P 500 index is down 0.6%, trading at 1760, 14 points off the highs of the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.2%, but the NASDAQ is the big lagger, down 1.0%. The index is being dragged lower by QUALCOMM (down 3.8%), Whole Foods (down 8.9%), and Tesla (down 7.5%), which all missed expectations on earnings this week. And after a boost earlier, European indices are now giving up gains. The Italian FTSE MIB is down 1.6%, and the…

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DotConnectAfrica attends Transform Africa 2013, calls for the progress of its .africa commitments to be acknowledged

Staff Writer

DCA was invited as a delegate to the international high-level conference that was held in Rwanda from October 28 to 31, 2013 Nov. 3, 2013 – The conference was attended by over 1,500 delegates and Seven African Heads of State including among others Presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Gabon, and Burkina Faso.  Other delegates included Ministers and CEO’s of blue chip firms. The summit was Co-hosted by President Paul Kagame and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of pooling together International participants…

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New gTLDs: does your business know a thing about new domain names

Staff Writer

New generic top-level domains are set to shake-up the way businesses pick names for their websites. We explain how they work The starting gun has been fired on the biggest land grab in the history of the web. Beginning today, thousands of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) will be unleashed, giving businesses the opportunity to be more creative with their website addresses. No longer will businesses be restricted to .co.uk, .com or the slightly more esoteric likes of .net or .tv. Instead, they’ll be able to put their brand name…

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Why the world’s technology giants are investing in Africa

Staff Writer

“I don’t understand. Why is it that the media only seems to talk about Africa when bad things happen?” The man behind the counter at my hotel in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, was talking to me about my job, and why I was visiting. He looked genuinely pained. He told me he is a big fan of the BBC – in west Africa the World Service and language services have a big following – but it seemed to him that the media outside the continent often only noticed when bad…

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book fair targets Internet giants Amazon, Apple and Google

Staff Writer

Organisers of the world’s biggest book fair warned on Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading. American giants Amazon, Apple and Google — whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry — are “logistics magicians but are not publishers”, said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. “There’s no passion there,” he told reporters as the giant German book fair prepared to open Wednesday. Boos warned it…

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During Shutdown, IRS Computers Still Churn Out Tax Liens, Levies And Bills

Staff Writer

At 1 A.M. Tuesday, just an hour after the budget standoff forced the partial shutdown of the federal government , Forbes contributor Kelly Phillips Erb (aka Taxgirl)  delivered two pieces of bad news to taxpayers: you still have to pay any taxes due, and if you have problems, tough luck, the Internal Revenue won’t be answering its phones. (Yes, you cynics, that is news. Even during the busy tax return filing season more than two thirds of callers do get through to  a human being at the IRS, although they…

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Twitter to raise $1bn in its stock market launch

Staff Writer

Social networking company Twitter has said it plans to raise $1bn (£619m) in its stock market debut in documents filed with US regulators. In the filing, revealed on Thursday, the seven-year-old company said that it now has 218 million monthly users and that 500 million tweets are sent a day. It made a loss of $69m in the first six months of 2013, on revenues of $254m. It will be the largest Silicon Valley stock offering since Facebook’s listing in 2012. Analysts said that the offering was likely to get…

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ICANN and Your Internet Abuse

Staff Writer

In spite of the material we were presented with in Durban something has gone very wrong inside of ICANN Compliance. KnujOn has published a report which demonstrates that ICANN Compliance appears to completely collapse between September 2012 and December 2012. Following December 2012, ICANN seems to stop responding to or processing any complaints. It is around this time certain compliance employees start disappearing. This was not limited to the Sydney office as some would have us believe, all while we have been given assurances the compliance team was being ramped…

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DCA Registry Services Kenya Participates in 2nd African IGF – Updates its .africa Bid

Staff Writer

The 2nd African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF) successfully concluded. The conference was held from 24-26 September 2013 at the Multimedia University, Nairobi Kenya. The AfIGF conference was organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the IGF Secretariat in cooperation with the Kenyan government among other stakeholders. DCA Registry Services Kenya delegates also attended the conference and contributed to important discussions and pertinent proceedings. In his opening address that was communicated via a recorded video message, Fade Chehade, ICANN’s President & CEO noted that the African IGF…

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