YouTube can be Useful

YouTube.com is a video sharing website that started in 2005 and has since exploded into worldwide popularity. YouTube videos can be uploaded by virtually anyone and video content can range from animation, to vlogs, to instructional videos about cooking, artwork, makeup and an assortment of other specialties. When YouTube first launched it was mostly used by people who wanted to share information on a specific hobby or talent but as the website gained substantial audiences, bigger organizations noted its potential and signed on.

There are plenty of frivolous and funny videos on Youtube. However, there is also a wealth of truly helpful and educational material available on the site. The Wildlife Conservation Society has a channel where clips about conservation efforts are available for viewing at any time. Blick Art Materials uses YouTube to launch step-by-step tutorials about various techniques for painting, sculpting, and art projects. Sesame Street has a channel dedicated to sharing clips from several decades of the show. Even esteemed colleges such as Harvad have embraced YouTube as a way to share knowledge for free. Anyone who clicks onto the  Havard YouTube page will be able to access full class lectures on a variety of subjects. These are the very same classes that UC Berkeley students experienced and the education provided in the clips is top-quality even though the viewers will receive no official credit for watching the videos.

YouTube has also been noted as being one of the most famous social media platforms for showcasing new and creative work for all age ranges. Story Bots is one such creation that is intended for an audience of small children. StoryBots are cute animated figures that help children learn the alphabet through fun sing-along songs. StoryBots are colorful and cute. The songs they sing are funny and clever and are likely to amuse parents as well as children. StoryBots are an example of how YouTube can be used to entertain and educate even the smallest members of society. They can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/user/storybots?feature=chclk

As the world changes and makes it more accessible and practical for people to interact with media, a franchise like StoryBots helps to introduce children to all the wonderful things that the Internet can be used for in a fun and playful way. The same can be said for the Harvard channel for older viewers as well as the more basic tutorial channels for those who have hobbies that they would like to perfect, whether it is doing nails or fixing cars.

The world is changing more rapidly than ever before due to increasing technological advances. A decade ago YouTube did not exist; today it is reshaping how people communicate. This includes allowing educational institutions and for-profit and non-profit organizations to readily engage new audiences and share valuable information. YouTube can be a helpful learning tool and those who value learning should take time to explore the site and see what content fits their specific needs in order to enhance their educational experience.

Africa Internet Usage and Statistics

Africa is the second-largest continent, after Asia, in both size and population; it is located south of Europe and bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east by the Indian Ocean at about 30.2 million km² . With 1.0 billion people, Africa accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population, a large chunk of the world’s population. With this Africa has slowly but began to embrace the possibilities of new technologies, especilly the internet and how beneficial it may be for the expanding population of the continent. In this post are statistics of Africa and its Internet revolution.

Africa Internet Usage and Statistics: What You Need to Know

Although it’s an established fact that the Internet usage in Africa is still limited by a lower penetration rate when compared to Europe and United States with most Internet activity and infrastructure concentrated in countries like South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and smaller economies like Mauritius and Seychelles. Africa is also one of the fastest-growing in the world interms of connectivity and usage especially in mobile telephony which has become more widespread than fixed line telephone.

The opportunity lies more in Broadband Wireless Access technologies as the key to make Internet available to the population at large, several Telco’s (Telecommunication companies) in Africa are looking at this option as a more viable option
All indication about internet in Africa which includes but not limited to network traffic, available bandwidth and the cost of bandwidth, Internet Service Provider subscriptions, host number shows that South Africa is not just a leader here but also the only African country that has figures similar to what you find in Europe and North America; this is closely followed by countries like Seychelles and Mauritius, also coming up is a number of North African countries that includes Morocco and Egypt, the leading Subsaharan country in telecommunication and Internet development apart from South Africa is Kenya.

While internet penetration is still low as reported by several sources, It should be noted that “the data on Internet subscribers only partially reflect the actual number of Internet users in Africa, and the impact of the network on African daily life and culture”. A number of internet users do not have broadband internet services in their homes but higher percentage of Africans rely on cyber cafes and other means like that, even greater percentage prefer to access the web via mobile devices, up to 50% of Nigerians access the web via mobile devices for instance.

 Key facts that are worth noting
1,037,524,058 is population estimate for Africa in 2012, out of which there are 167,335,676 Internet users in Africa on June 30, 2012, 2011, a 15.6 %% penetration rate, a significan increase from 2011 data which placed it at approx 13%+
Nigeria still has the highest number of users at 48,366,179 followed by Egypt at 29,809,724, Morroco at 16 million, Kenya at 12 million and South Africa at 8.5 million.
The largest percentage of Internet subscribers are found in small economies such as Seychelles, where as much as 37% of the population has Internet access (while in South Africa this value is 11% and in Egypt it is 8%).
Mobile! Mobile!! Mobile!!! Africans cherish mobile. There are more than 650 million mobile phone subscribers in the continent, this is more than either the United States or the European Union.

Flappy Bird No More

As I tapped my finger so hard on the ginormous Samsung Note screen of my friend Kalvin I began to ask myself why something of less than a megabyte could so addictive nevermind the fact that it's so darn hard. The game simple to play takes a series of taps to maneuver the seemingly ancient looking graphic bird past a series of pipes blocking it's path. But with the need to be precise on guiding the bird it proves difficult making it insanely addictive not only to me but a number of people globally. The Vietnamese game developer Dong Nguyen took to twitter on Saturday to announce the stop on the downloads of the game 

""I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore."
WHAT COULDN'T HE TAKE NO MORE ? 

Generally Nguyen was faced with a lot of criticism Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has spoken out following the furore over his decision to pull the game from Android and iOS app stores, saying that it was an 'addictive product' that had become 'a problem'.

Buses were overturned, skyscrapers were ripped out of the ground and a state of emergency was declared worldwide earlier this week, when fans of the constant-tapping game reacted with horror at its departure.

While he receives death threats on Twitter, Nguyen has spoken about the reasons behind his decision to pull the plug in an exclusive interview with Forbes, saying: "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.

"But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever."

You hear that? Gone. Forever. Never to flap again (that is unless you have already installed the game, in which case you have until it is rendered obsolete by future OS updates).


It seems the fame Flappy Bird brought Nguyen proved too much for him, with the game designer adding that "my life has not been as comfortable as it was before" and that he is having trouble sleeping.

This came in spite of reports that the game was earning him more than $50,000 a day in advertising revenue, on which he commented: "I don’t know the exact figure, but I do know it’s a lot."

iPhones holding the game have sprung up on eBay at exorbitant prices since its removal from app stores, and numerous rip-offs have popped up in its place, including Happy Bird and Fly Birdie.

Asked if he had anything to say to disappointed Flappy Bird gamers, Nguyen offered: "Thank you very much for playing my game."

 Why the Internet matters in Zim?

The Internet which is slowly gaining currency in Zimbabwe has had a significantly long history. According to experts, the Internet has precursors that date back to the 19th century, especially the telegraph system, more than a century before the digital Internet became widely used in the second half of the 1990s.

In Zimbabwe, internet accessibility is growing at an exponential rate. Statistics show that 1,6 million people in the country, approximately 14 percent of the population, have access to the Net. Zimbabwe is ranked among the top ten countries in Africa with a high number of people connected to the Net.

In many ways, the Net is revolutionising human relationships in Zimbabwe. Social platforms like Facebook, incidentally the most popular website in the country, now allow individuals to communicate with distant relations on a daily basis.

It can be argued that the emigration of Zimbabweans to other parts of the world in the past decade has in a way helped to fuel the need to use technology for loved ones to stay connected together.

Web portals featuring classified advertisements have allowed business and individuals to advertise and get deals that would have otherwise been impossible. Such platforms now allow for people to engage in virtual trading and this is an area that will continue to grow as the country gets better connected.

In addition, recruiters and job-seekers now utilize online platforms to identify job seekers and to advance their careers, respectively.

There is no doubt that the advent of the technology age has significantly expanded business and social opportunities. To put it bluntly, opportunities in the Internet Age have become boundless and almost infinite – even for Zimbabweans who are slowly awakening to the potential of the medium.

As the Internet revolution unravels, organisations that do not have an effective online presence through web portals or websites will undoubtedly miss the opportunities and risk becoming obsolete. Nations, organizations and individuals that do not invest in enhancing their online presence will be left behind because the wheels of the Internet are turning on a rate that is akin to the speed of lighting.

Sadly, most organisations and individuals in Zimbabwe do not yet realise the full potential of the internet.

For instance, an art gallery or an individual artist in Zimbabwe would probably have to wait for a periodic art exhibition to showcase their products. Yet, in actual fact, they have the option of having a personal or corporate website which would be viewed globally on a 24/7 basis.

This would generate more business through online marketing – an art buyer in any part of the world, for instance, would be able to contact the gallery or artist via email and organise the transaction from there.

An investment company or bank could have a website which allows their company to check their account status over the internet as opposed to physically visiting the branch.

The list of options on how to exploit the internet for business and social benefit is inexhaustible. The fact of the matter though is that being online does not happen all by itself – it requires ongoing investment, research and updating of content and making it interesting to potential audiences.

Top 5 2013 Tech Trends

Yes its February 2014 and I am only doing a post on 2013 tech trends but the past year has had  a lot to offer that has filtered into our current year . The square off between smart phone companies saw them become bigger and bigger,  faster and a lot more intelligent than most of us . The wrist watch became smarter than an average kid in the playground and we saw the digitized prescription free Google glasses. So the following is a guide to the top five tech trends that ruled 2013.

5. Company Buyouts

Many giants in the tech industry purchased each other off  as a battle to acquire each others stake in the industry. This proved very successful for many companies as they began to grab foothold in markets different from them.Be it the inking between Nokia and Microsoft or Yahoo acquiring Tumblr, 2013 was one of the biggest years in tech buyouts. Some pretty shocking, some expected and some downright confusing.

4. SamartPhones

2013 was the year when smartphones not just got bigger but some went over-board with the sizing. While 5-inch displays were the commonest of features, there were smartphones with screens as big as 6.5-inches. To the point that many people started calling them phablets as a play to their size in comparison to tablets. Their popularity made people rush to buy them. In Zimabwe through the blacmarket smarthphones became a major trend as people were being offered way less the price authorized dealers were selling at. 

3.Cheaper Tablets

One of the biggest tech wins of 2013 were budget tablets. While smartphones continued to set new bench-marks when it came to pricing, tablets were relatively cheaper and with competition getting tough, the prices quickly dropped. Tablets almost replaced the laptop with many students opting to use one, I my self own one and clarity and optimized experince is far more preferable than the standard 1kg! laptop. 

2.Smart Watches

From the pebble smartwatch to Sony smartwatch 2 and Samsung Galaxy gear, 2013 was the year of smartwatch launches. It made asking for time a whole lot bigger. While most of them failed to make the cut, they did set the ball rolling for wearable technology. I wonder when they will hit the shelves in the country. Pretty sure they will be costly.

1.Google Glasses 

While no one has yet emerged as the true challenger for Google Glass, and the gadget itself is mired in various lawsuits and cases, it is one of the trend-setters of 2013. We do hope that Google Glass finally becomes available to the public by 2014. I guess for some of living in the third world expect them 2016. 

(images taken from google.com)

An Invitation

Being new to the blogger sphere seems a little intimidating to any individual behind a keyboard. It's crazy to be honest. A single question always sticks into my mind when i read other blogs " HOW DO THEY DO IT ?" The creativity and that most bloggers have out there has garnered them a huge following. Bloggers such as Wired.com, The Hypbeast Collective Team and TechCrunch.com and have allowed their blogs to be a window for many people in the various aspects of  technology. Technology has since evolved from mere inventions such as the Fax,  the LightBulb or the common house hold gadget to so much more! Your wrist watch can do so much than the ordinary kitchen clock in the house.There is so much to talk about in terms of the trends in technology. Clearly the focus of this blog is pretty obvious ! Keep logging in to be taken into the world of Technology.