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1 December 2015
Amazon be designing and testing order delivery by drone while Yudala be delivering already! Big up, Yudala!
Yudala first!
Amazon, the US tech and retail giant, has been designing and working on a drone delivery project, Prime Air, for a while now. Amazon intends to deliver customer orders by drone within minutes in the near future, but guess what? Nigeria online e-commerce site has already delivered its first order by drone, right here in Lagos. Yea, cool, huh?
*Evil grin* Well, Yudala actually beat Amazon to the race many thanks to delays and strict US regulations.
Become a Deloitte apprentice by playing a game!
Become a Deloitte apprentice by playing a game!
Well, if you are my generation (generation Y) or better still, from the techie school of thought, then you will most likely agree with me that a lot of old things are still going on around here.
But hey, it's not an all gloomy picture; some important developments and changes in attitude are already taking place and these are inspiring. Deloitte, the professional services giant, is set to trial a process of selecting the best talent using a game. This disregards traditionally held beliefs of university education and academic excellence as proof of intelligence and I think this is wonderful.
This may not make any sense to the older generation, but if you recognize that a lot of Millennials currently see schooling as an unnecessary and stifling undertaking, then the logic in using this radical method of recruitment is not far fetched. We call it "radical" now, it may as well become the norm in the future.
Read full story here and here.
19 April 2015
3-D printed human organs; Rejecting free internet in India? ; Mobile West Africa 2015; Snap pictures non-stop;
Hello buddies, it has been another eventful week, thank God for the gift of life and the gift of science and technology!
3-D printed human organs
Do you remember this piece on 3-D printing? Well, although scientists have been 3-D printing human tissues for a while, see here also, lately there has been a buzz about the team at Cornell University printing a human ear (which is an organ; tissues make up organs).
12 April 2015
Two Million Phones sold in a day; Smart Watches; US blocks Intel China upgrade; Apple jostling for exclusive tunes like Jay-Z
What a hectic week it has been for me as well as on the tech scene. I'm gonna keep it short and simple on this one.
Yep! you read the heading right, Xiaomi sold just over two million smartphones in one single day! that's crazy, right? Well, apparently, Xiaomi often called the apple of China, made $335 million (don't scream, pls) during its annual "Mi Fan Fest" selling a range of devices. The company is already one of the top electronics manufacturers in the world making smart watches, phones, TVs etc. Of course, its Chinese, what else did you expect?
Apple also debuted its much anticipated Apple smartwatch and MacBook this week. The smartwatch was available for trial in select stores around the world, and trust Apples fans there's already a backlog of orders. But, hey a range of other companies also have smartwatches in the market already, including Samsung. Well, I haven't tried an Apple smart-watch yet, so I'm just gonna chill for the reviews to come in.
Well, Tianhe-2 located in China, has been the most powerful computer for a while now and China wanted to upgrade it. However, the upgrade was to use chips from Intel, a US manufacturer. Apparently, US has sighted fears over nuclear research to stop Intel from supplying China with the chips. Read story here. But trust China, they have decided to accelerate development of homegrown chipmakers to supply the needed chips. I think what this story speaks to is that regulatory risks are real! Do not neglect them.
Lastly, do you remember what happened with Jay-Z, Tidal and Spotify? Well, here's the story. Jay-Z and some other musicians including Madonna, Kanye West, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Calvin Harris, floated their own music streaming service, Tidal. Well, apparently in order to boost sales, Jay-Z pulled his album, Reasonable Doubt, from Spotify, a dominant music streaming service, and put it exclusively on Tidal (talk about business guts!). Well, I think that might have just sparked a race for exclusive content. In recent news, Apple has joined the race, read here.
Muchas gracias!
Yep! you read the heading right, Xiaomi sold just over two million smartphones in one single day! that's crazy, right? Well, apparently, Xiaomi often called the apple of China, made $335 million (don't scream, pls) during its annual "Mi Fan Fest" selling a range of devices. The company is already one of the top electronics manufacturers in the world making smart watches, phones, TVs etc. Of course, its Chinese, what else did you expect?
Apple also debuted its much anticipated Apple smartwatch and MacBook this week. The smartwatch was available for trial in select stores around the world, and trust Apples fans there's already a backlog of orders. But, hey a range of other companies also have smartwatches in the market already, including Samsung. Well, I haven't tried an Apple smart-watch yet, so I'm just gonna chill for the reviews to come in.
Well, Tianhe-2 located in China, has been the most powerful computer for a while now and China wanted to upgrade it. However, the upgrade was to use chips from Intel, a US manufacturer. Apparently, US has sighted fears over nuclear research to stop Intel from supplying China with the chips. Read story here. But trust China, they have decided to accelerate development of homegrown chipmakers to supply the needed chips. I think what this story speaks to is that regulatory risks are real! Do not neglect them.
Lastly, do you remember what happened with Jay-Z, Tidal and Spotify? Well, here's the story. Jay-Z and some other musicians including Madonna, Kanye West, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Calvin Harris, floated their own music streaming service, Tidal. Well, apparently in order to boost sales, Jay-Z pulled his album, Reasonable Doubt, from Spotify, a dominant music streaming service, and put it exclusively on Tidal (talk about business guts!). Well, I think that might have just sparked a race for exclusive content. In recent news, Apple has joined the race, read here.
Muchas gracias!
5 April 2015
Spectranet partners iROKOtv: gifts 30 days viewing on iROKOtv
Please take note of the date of this post: 5th April, 2015. As I shall not be liable for any exhaustion of your data as a result of billed streaming on iROKOtv.com. lol.
Well, I just love it when I hear of any development on naija's tech scene, it gives me joy!!
iROKOtv.com, in case you haven't heard of them, is a pan-African internet TV station, with strong roots in Nigeria. That's just the simplest way to put it. They have a lot of movies in their catalogue: Nollywood, Bollywood, Hollywood, (what else?-wood), telenova (ask your wife what this is), etc. which you can either view online or download to see later. Cool, huh!
On the other hand, you have Spectranet, a 4G, LTE internet service provider. 4G LTE basically means super-fast internet connectivity, I think its one of the fastest commercial internet speed you can get around depending on the implementation (telecoms guys, please correct me).
The issue with on-demand video streaming is that it requires a fast and dependable network to be enjoyable, and I guess this has been an issue hindering market penetration of iROKOtv, but Spectranet has a fast and dependable network, and now they (i.e. iROKOtv and Spectranet) have formed a partnership- you get the gist, huh!
SYNERGY!!!! That's the gist!! This may mean increased revenue for Spectranet, because video streaming consumes a lot of data, so you would have to keep buying more from Spectranet. It may also mean an increased quality of service from iROKOtv; I mean, if you see a movie displaying seamlessly just like your traditional TV from iROKOtv, that's quality service. With quality service comes consumer loyalty and brand reputation- you get the gist, huh!
Well, I use "may" above, because the actual details of the deal was not announced, and we do not know what they have agreed on precisely, but whatever it is, it should be SYNERGISTIC!
Well, I just love it when I hear of any development on naija's tech scene, it gives me joy!!
iROKOtv.com, in case you haven't heard of them, is a pan-African internet TV station, with strong roots in Nigeria. That's just the simplest way to put it. They have a lot of movies in their catalogue: Nollywood, Bollywood, Hollywood, (what else?-wood), telenova (ask your wife what this is), etc. which you can either view online or download to see later. Cool, huh!
On the other hand, you have Spectranet, a 4G, LTE internet service provider. 4G LTE basically means super-fast internet connectivity, I think its one of the fastest commercial internet speed you can get around depending on the implementation (telecoms guys, please correct me).
The issue with on-demand video streaming is that it requires a fast and dependable network to be enjoyable, and I guess this has been an issue hindering market penetration of iROKOtv, but Spectranet has a fast and dependable network, and now they (i.e. iROKOtv and Spectranet) have formed a partnership- you get the gist, huh!
SYNERGY!!!! That's the gist!! This may mean increased revenue for Spectranet, because video streaming consumes a lot of data, so you would have to keep buying more from Spectranet. It may also mean an increased quality of service from iROKOtv; I mean, if you see a movie displaying seamlessly just like your traditional TV from iROKOtv, that's quality service. With quality service comes consumer loyalty and brand reputation- you get the gist, huh!
Well, I use "may" above, because the actual details of the deal was not announced, and we do not know what they have agreed on precisely, but whatever it is, it should be SYNERGISTIC!
So much talk about talking Barbie
I forgive you if you do not know what Barbie is, especially if you are a male and an adult who grew up in Africa. It's a doll, a female doll, kids love to play with. It has been marketed for over 50 fifty years through novels, TV etc. So, recently, Mattel (toy giant and makers of Barbie) in association with ToyTalk (a start-up), announced a revamped Barbie. A Barbie that can have conversations with your kids, yep! converse with your kids!
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| Mark Lennihan/AP |
The technology
The technology is not entirely new. Hello Barbie, as she is called, is equipped with a microphone, WiFi (basically internet access) with which it connects to a cloud (basically computing power residing in a remote location). So when a person speaks to Barbie, the words are collected, sent over the internet to a cloud where some software analyses and composes a response for Barbie to reply with. The data is even stored, so Barbie can give you intelligent replies based on what you have told her before. Cool, huh!The outburst
Well, as you can imagine, there has been an outcry from some folks. They raise issues that are quite germane:- Invasion of privacy
- Exploitation of the data collected for marketing purposes
The business lessons
- "Flow" with the trend or be the trend: we see Mattel keying into popular trends of Internet of things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. The internet of things phenomenon basically says that at some point in the future, most things will be connected to the internet, if not all things. Here, I think Hello Barbie is gonna be the trend for smart toys. I believe we will see a plethora of toys making use of technology come into the market very soon. Good thing Mattel did not wait to be shown the way.
- Start-ups: yea, I know, you have heard so much about them lately. ToyTalk is a start-up, and Mattel is a long time industry player. The truth is that start-ups have a lot of strengths: they are agile, innovative, flexible, on top of the trend, risk-takers etc. Rather than see them as competition, take them as collaborators and make something cool with them. Make it a win-win situation.
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