Truecaller announces 'Call Recording' feature

Truecaller has introduced a new call recording feature for its Android users globally. The company says the feature will help users in reporting fraudulent calls and harassment. This is another step towards upgrading Premium offerings aimed at making communication safe and efficient by helping users report harassment related or fraudulent calls, Truecaller said in a statement.

When a Premium user dials or receives a call, they can toggle on the recording feature from the Truecaller Caller ID screen. The recordings are then stored on the user's phone. Users without a Premium subscription can get a free 14-day trial of this feature, the company added.

The latest feature also assists its users in keeping track of important conversations with businesses, colleagues, or friends.

On its blog, Truecaller said, "From users identifying new business clients to empowering women in their fight against harassment or objectionable calls, or for everyone being protected from potential fraud. Truecaller has been there to safeguard calls and SMS to give you the right to know who is trying to get in contact. With the added feature of call recording, this will empower users to keep track of important conversations they have with businesses, colleagues, and people.

Sponsored Post: About Sports Betting West Africa 2018

The Sports Betting West Africa summit is a place where old business relationships are renewed and new ones are formed in the heart of West Africa. Representatives of gambling and iGaming companies from around the world meet in Lagos, Nigeria every year to engage in thought-provoking discussions, gain enriching information, and discover new opportunities in the African market.

After a successful 3rd Annual Sports Betting West Africa in July 2017, Eventus International aims to make the next SBWA much more engaging and informative to gain support of various stakeholders in the gambling industry.

THE 4TH ANNUAL SPORTS BETTING WEST AFRICA summit will showcase the best that Africa has to offer. Operators, regulators, Affiliate marketers, software providers and legal advisers who represent leading companies in the gambling industry will all be joining us in Lagos for SBWA. Please join us for the 4th installment of this prestigious event.

About The Venue:

Eko Hotels & Suites, Lagos

Eko Hotels & Suites is the most preferred hotel in West Africa. It's all about the right mix! Located in the heart of Victoria Island and shielded from the hustle and bustle of the Lagos metropolis.

AGENDA

After a successful 3rd Annual Sports Betting West Africa in July 2017, we aim to make SBWA2018 even more engaging and informative while we gain support of various stakeholders in the gambling industry. This agenda is relevant and packed full of thought provoking topics.

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ESGC technical partner CWG, to drive efficiency in govt, gaming

Computer Warehouse Group Plc, Nigeria’s largest system integration company, says it will focus on driving efficiency in the government agencies, utility and gaming sectors as part of its strategic operational growth plan.

According to the company, this will empower it to remain the leading technology services platform provider in Africa. The CWG’s Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Mr. Adewale Adeyipo, while revealing the growth projection plan in an interaction with journalists in Lagos, said it would be extending its expertise to ensure its impact was felt in other sectors of Nigeria’s economy.

According to him, after 25 years of doing business and providing services to major corporations in Nigeria and West-Africa, and being strategic partners with major multinationals on the continent, it intends to innovatively set technology solutions to drive efficiencies where other service providers have deemed it impossible to penetrate.

“We have re-engineered our operations, people and process models to harness the opportunities before us. Our next line of growth projection is to focus on solving some sectors’ challenges with indigenous solutions,” he said.

Adeyipo said, “The operational mandate for the CWG is to deploy technology solutions that enable growth. This, the company and its workforce have set out to achieve riding on the ‘Can-do-spirit’ as a core value and operational philosophy.”

He further stated that its ability to roll out solutions that were addressing immediate challenges while curbing the occurrences of new ones in these sectors would continue to endear the CWG to the customers in the next five years and beyond.

Adeyipo also noted that going by the CWG’s knowledge of Nigeria’s ICT space, the expertise built had offered an opportunity for a paradigm shift, allowing the learning of 25 years to remain relevant for a long time, even in the face of economic instability.

“The CWG will be around for a long time creating incredible and innovative services in and out of Africa. All can be sure of the CWG’s understanding of market trends and its ability to respond appropriately. Applying the new definition of customer service as regards the deployment of the IT and value creation, we understand the season we are in,” he said.

Given the dwindling state of the Nigerian economy and the drop in purchasing power, the CWG said it intended to deploy innovative platforms with models that would ease the burden of the everyday business and ensure adequate return on investment in regions where it operated.

CWG Plc, which currently leads the charge in the gaming/lotto technology platform and solutions in West Africa, is also technical partners to the Enugu State Gaming and Lotto Commission (ESGC).

APO Innovation Lab designs cutting-edge print monitoring system for press releases in Africa

Upon successful completion of a three-month testing period, APO Group (www.apo-opa.org) has unveiled its print monitoring workflow system for press releases distributed across Africa. For the last couple of years, APO Innovation Lab has worked towards developing an advanced automation tool that pinpoints where customers’ press releases have been picked up in newspapers and magazines across the 54 African countries, whether they are in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic or local languages such as Afrikaans, Zulu and Swahili. During the test, more than 400 print publications were monitored, and 1000 print clippings collected.

This significant breakthrough opens up new possibilities for organizations. They will now be able to gauge their message penetration in print media and gain valuable insights on how the national, regional, local and pan-African press responds to their communication efforts.

In the space of two years, APO Innovation Lab, APO Group’s Research and Development arm, succeeded in designing a highly sophisticated analysis engine that uncovers press releases’ mentions in all African news sources, regardless of the language. Furthermore, to ensure accuracy and relevance, all editorial coverage is scrutinized by seasoned analysts.

The new technology has been developed at the request of customers and partners, who expressed the need for a multi-market press release’ monitoring solution that measures the extent of their print media coverage in all 54 African markets. Until now, no such solution existed.

Over the years, APO Group has earned the trust of many Public Relations agencies including the most prestigious ones such as Edelman, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Fleishman Hillard, Ogilvy, APCO Worldwide, Havas MSL, Baird’s CMC who, to meet the needs of their clients, use APO Group services. In 2017, 56 PR agencies collaborated with the consultancy compared to 42 in 2016. A number that keeps increasing year-on-year.

“APO Group has a strong track record of providing a support system to communication practitioners and PR agencies which regularly call on our expertise in media relations for Africa. As no such tool was available on the market, we decided to take on the challenge of developing a pioneering technology internally,” said Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, Founder & CEO of APO Group. “This innovation is the fruit of relentless work by our Lab team. Given the diversity and the number of markets we serve, perusing all print publications and generating an almost inexhaustible number of press cuttings was far from easy and required considerable ingenuity. After testing the technology thoroughly, we were thrilled with the results which far exceeded our expectations.”

Press release’s print monitoring, coupled with online monitoring and social media analytics, beefs up organizations’ capabilities to assess their return-on-investment more accurately. With the complete press release’s media monitoring solution, they can now access a powerful decision-making tool that gives them a holistic understanding of their campaigns’ performance and a clearer vision of how efficiently they support their business strategies. 

For every press release distributed either through Africa Wire® or MENA Wire® technology, APO Group will provide its customers with a full press release’s media monitoring report including rich data and precise metrics on online news penetration, international reach (screenshots of Bloomberg Terminal, Factiva, LexisNexis, SyndiGate…), social media, and print media coverage.

“To my knowledge, APO Group will be the first company to provide print monitoring as part of its press release distribution service globally. Now that we have the technological and human capacity to monitor print media, we will challenge the limits of the possible to keep bringing a wealth of data to our customers. We set ourselves the objective of monitoring 600 Africa and Middle East related-media outlets worldwide and double the number of press cuttings by the end of 2018. This is just the beginning of our commitment to enhancing our press releases ‘media monitoring reports”, added Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard.

Since APO Group was founded, innovation has always played a crucial role in delivering service excellence. The consultancy allocates 6,5% of its total budget to the APO Innovation Lab, whose mission is to invent and test emerging technologies in response to corporate communications challenges. The addition of print monitoring in press releases ‘media monitoring reports underscores APO Group’s commitment to supporting organizations whether they are private companies, public and governmental institutions or PR agencies in achieving superior editorial coverage.

A sound bite of Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard is available for media to download here: http://www.apo-mail.org/180206ENsoudbite.mp3

Samsung's The Wall makes massive, 146-inch modular TV a reality

Samsung kickstarted CES 2018 with a massive 146-inch 4K TV it's calling "The Wall." Yeah, it's a wall, alright. The Wall is the one of Samsung's many 2018 TVs to use a new display technology called "Micro LED."

Think of it as the next evolution of the many display technologies TV makers have been ramming down our throats over the years. First it was LED, then OLED, then Quantum Dots, and now it's Micro LED.

As with all previous TV acronym tech, Samsung's touting Micro LEDs as the next leap for picture quality.

All Samsung TVs with Micro LED tech, including The Wall, will be noticeably brighter and have better contrast. That means colors should look even better, especially when viewing HDR (or HDR10+) content.

Last year, Samsung announced a 34-foot 4K LED TV that could challenge movie theater screens, and now it's ready to sell a version for home use. The Wall by Samsung uses similar MicroLED tech that is "self emitting" (read: Each pixel works without a backlight) and can be assembled in extremely large sizes thanks to its modular design. There are not much information to go on yet, but the 146-inch 4K screen seen promises "outstanding brightness, contrast, and close-to-perfect viewing from any angle."