ATF, MEST partner to support African tech entrepreneurs

African Technology Foundation (ATF) and the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) have announced a partnership aimed at supporting the development of African technology and a new generation of African entrepreneurs.

With both ATF and MEST having operations in Silicon Valley, the partners said the agreement will see them leveraging their cross-continental presence to identify and evaluate technology related opportunities in Africa, as well as promote scholarship and mentorship opportunities for African entrepreneurs.

Under the partnership, ATF and MEST will mutually develop their respective and collective business interests in the internationalization of African technologies; develop global opportunities for the investment in, and mentoring of African entrepreneurs; and will leverage existing partnerships and networks to support pan-African technology ecosystems.

Under the partnership, ATF and MEST will mutually develop their respective and collective business interests in the internationalization of African technologies; develop global opportunities for the investment in, and mentoring of, African entrepreneurs; and will leverage existing partnerships and networks to support pan-African technology ecosystems.

“Central to this [partnership]is the bridging of knowledge gaps for aspiring African entrepreneurs that are either starting new ventures or scaling up their existing operations. Africa’s future will be hugely reliant on the rapid growth of knowledge economies and the entrepreneurial endeavors of a youthful population driven by stage agnostic technologies,” said Stephen Ozoigbo, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of ATF.

“We are delighted to be teaming with MEST, whose training programme has empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs in West Africa and provided a unique and globally recognized platform for driving technology based investments to the region,” Ozoigbo said.

“African Technology Foundation has done a superior job at bridging the gap and connecting the dots between innovators in Africa and tech forces in Silicon Valley and beyond,” said Neal Hansch, managing director, MEST incubator.

“We strongly believe this partnership with ATF will benefit our trainees and incubated companies at MEST by furthering their reach and visibility. We’re excited to work together for years to come and collaborate for the benefit of increased entrepreneurship and recognition of the skilled developers and tech talent across the continent.”

Acer launch Chromebooks for classrooms

Acer is committed to the Chromebook and has unveiled two new models designed for schools. Both are designed to stand up to the rigors of use by students. One is an 11.6-inch highly portable model and the other a big 15.6-inch Chromebook.

The Acer C740 Chromebook is designed for education programs that allow students to take their Chromebooks home. It is small and light to fit in a backpack for the trips back and forth between school and home.

Chromebooks are a big deal for schools because they're cheap and relatively easy to lock down. However, not just any Chromebook will do -- ideally, you want a laptop that can survive bumps and drops from less-than-careful students. Acer thinks it can handle that unforgiving audience. Both laptops have shells that withstand up to 132 pounds of force, corners that handle falls from up to 18 inches high, and reinforced hinges that won't easily snap. The C740 even gets specially extended hinges to make sure it won't flop or twist in high-stress situations, such as a kid's backpack.

The Acer C910 Chromebook has a large 15.6-inch display that is available with either a high-resolution option (1920 x 1080), or the more budget-friendly standard laptop resolution of 1366 x 768. All of the displays on this and the C740 have anti-glare properties. They're respectable systems beyond those tougher exteriors, for that matter. Both Chromebooks have the option of Intel Broadwell-based Celeron or Core i3 processors, and either 2GB or 4GB of RAM.

You're mostly paying based on the screen and storage. The C740 starts things off with a 1,366 x 768 display, a 16GB solid-state drive and a 9-hour battery at $260. Pay a little more for the $279 C910 and you'll get little more than the larger LCD and a slightly shorter 8-hour runtime, but there are more sophisticated variants with 1080p displays and 32GB of space. Both Chrome OS models will be available in February, or in time for schools starting their early planning for the next school year. And before you ask, the C720 isn't going away -- Acer tells us that the C740 is an education-specific model rather than a replacement.

Two New Motorola Smartphones, Moto G Titan And Moto E Styx Surface

Details of two new Motorola handsets have surfaced on Argos, an online retailer website from the U.K. The entire specifications of Moto G Titan and Moto E Styx along with pricing were listed on the retailer's website.

According to GSMArena, the Moto G Titan has similar specs that are available on the second generation Moto G that was released last year. It measures 141.5 x 70.7 x 10.99 mm but it weighs 6 g more than the Moto G 2014 edition. The 5-inch display of the device supports a slightly different resolution than HD resolution of Moto G 2014. It supports 1280 x 768 pixels and it comes with 8 GB of native storage. It is powered by a quad-core processor and it brings along an 8 MP main shooter. GSMArena claims that the Moto G Titan is the 4G LTE enabled version of Moto G 2014. Argos had listed the Moto G Titan with a price tag of £159.95 (around AU$ 295) for the unlocked edition.

Moto E Styx is also being dubbed as the 4G LTE version of the Moto E that was released in 2013. The handset has almost the same design and appearance like the Moto E budget phone. However, the Moto E Styx features an upgraded quad-core processor. The original Moto E is driven by a low-end dual-core processor. Argos had listed the handset with a price tag of £109.95 (around AU$ 202).

Both the handsets are featuring the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop update. Motorola has not spoken anything on launching new handsets in this year. Hence, there is no confirmation on Moto G Titan and Moto E Styx.

On Jan 14, IBTimes had reported that a new low-end Motorola smartphone was spotted at the FCC regulatory organization in the U.S. The handset is being referred to as Moto E successor handset. Fresh rumours have only revealed the dimensions of the device but other rumours claim that it will feature 4.5-inch display with support for 540 x 960 pixels, Snapdragon 400 CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 5 MP camera and more.

Nokia Networks completes transfer of wireless network business of Panasonic...appoints Bernard Najm for Middle East and Africa

Pursuant to the announcement they made on July 31, 2014, Nokia Networks has now completed the business transfer of a part of the wireless network business of Panasonic System Networks Company Limited in Japan. As originally stated, this includes the transfer of fixed assets, employees and relevant contracts from Panasonic to Nokia Networks.

The agreement covers Panasonic’s mobile phone wireless base station system business for mobile operators and related wireless equipment system business. This acquisition enhances Nokia Networks’ existing mobile broadband capabilities and is expected to reinforce and further improve efficiency and quality control for product development and R&D, as well as strengthen its market share for base station systems and related wireless equipment in Japan.

The acquisition includes:

·         Panasonic’s LTE/3G wireless base station system business

·         Related wireless equipment system business

·         Fixed assets and business contracts with Panasonic’s customers get transferred to Nokia Networks       Japan

·         More than 300 Panasonic employees involved in the transferring business.

Ashish Chowdhary, Chief Business Officer at Nokia Networks, said: “With this acquisition, Nokia Networks will single-handedly contribute towards the domestic and overseas business of Japan’s operators, and also benefit from synergies in terms of efficient product operations and focused R&D efforts. Furthermore, this acquisition also provides us with the opportunity to tap the potential of the Carrier Mobile System market – a key focus area for our business in Japan.”

With proven base station technology, along with an industry-leading portfolio and strong footprint in the Carrier Mobile System Market, Panasonic is one of the most trusted brands in Japan’s telecommunications landscape.

Meanwhile, Nokia Networks has also announced the appointment of Bernard Najm as vice president and head of its business in Middle East and Africa, effective December 15, 2014. Najm, who will be based in Dubai, is currently leading the business in the sub-region called “SKIL” - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Levant that includes Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Najm has 18 years of experience with a wide competence base covering management, business and technical aspects in mobile and fixed telecom networks. He has been serving the company since 1996 and has held several senior management positions in several countries in Europe and the Middle East. He holds a Masters degree in Telecommunications and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering.

Until a new head for the SKIL sub-region is appointed, Najm will continue to lead the sub-region in addition to his new responsibilities. Najm takes over from Igor Leprince, who has assumed the leadership of Global Services, on November 4, 2014.

Middle East and Africa remains an important market for Nokia Networks’ mobile broadband business. As the world’s specialist in mobile broadband, the company is committed to helping its operator customers in the region to build and run world-class mobile broadband networks smoothly and cost efficiently.

IBM Opens First Cloud Data Center With SoftLayer

As part of its $1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint, IBM has announced the opening of its first cloud data center with SoftLayer in Germany. Located in Frankfurt, the new facility provides customers with a local cloud center to help them meet Germany and Europe’s strict security and data privacy regulations, improving application performance by lowering latency for local customers.

“Data privacy regulations in the European Union (EU) are among the most stringent in the world, and Germany has one of the strongest policies,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer, an IBM Company. “While all our cloud data centers have SoftLayer’s same strict standards for security and privacy, the new Frankfurt facility will allow German companies and clients to benefit from in-country data storage, a requirement in many industries to comply with German data protection laws.”

The Frankfurt facility is part of SoftLayer’s unique global network, differentiated by its network-within-a-network architecture, and offers 10Gbps connections to SoftLayer services, with only 7 milliseconds of latency from SoftLayer’s Amsterdam facility and less than 330 milliseconds of latency from other SoftLayer cloud data centers around the world.

It also complements existing European IBM Cloud facilities in Amsterdam, London, and Paris and broadens redundancy options and geographic diversity within EMEA and around the world by enabling backups that can be replicated and integrated in any other SoftLayer cloud data center, with free unmetered bandwidth between locations.

In Germany, cloud adoption is on the rise, spurred by the cost savings and flexibility gained by moving operations and workloads to the cloud. The number of German enterprises using the cloud grew by 32 percent between 2012 and 2013, and The Experton Group forecasts the value of the cloud market in Germany at €18 billion by 2017.

Germany consistently ranks within IBM Cloud’s top five best-performing EMEA countries in terms of total monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and growth. German customers using IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer infrastructure include those in the gaming, digital marketing and advertising, and online and IT services businesses.

German customer Avira provides IT-security protection to computers, smartphones, servers, and networks, delivered as both software and cloud-based services. This year, the company introduced several new Internet security products, all built on IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer infrastructure.

“IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer was a dream partner the whole way,” said Jason Radisson, executive vice president of online business for Avira. “From the initial R&D work on a handful of bare metal servers through market release and rapid take up in our user base, SoftLayer responded to our requests swiftly and adroitly. Today, this infrastructure is handling hundreds of millions of requests per hour at peak times. Based on this experience, SoftLayer has become our go-to cloud infrastructure partner for scaling new products.”

The Frankfurt cloud center follows SoftLayer’s standardized pod design, having the capacity for thousands of physical servers and offering the full range of cloud infrastructure services, including SoftLayer’s bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services, and networking. It seamlessly integrates via the company’s leading private network with all SoftLayer cloud data centers and network points of presence (PoPs) around the world. With services deployed on demand and full remote access and control, customers can create their ideal public, private, or hybrid cloud environments.

Customers can receive up to $500.00 USD off of new orders for the Frankfurt cloud data center for the first month of service, for a limited time.

SoftLayer, an IBM Company, operates a global cloud infrastructure platform built for Internet scale. With 100,000 devices under management and a global footprint of data centers and network points of presence, SoftLayer provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service to leading-edge customers ranging from Web startups to global enterprises. SoftLayer’s modular architecture provides unparalleled performance and control, with a full-featured API and sophisticated automation controlling a flexible unified platform that seamlessly spans physical and virtual devices, and a worldwide network for secure, low-latency communications.

“Premium hardware for a superior social experience” Samsung Galaxy A7

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has unveiled the new Galaxy A7, one of the slimmest Galaxy smartphones equipped with premium hardware for a superior social experience. Combining powerful multitasking performance with sophisticated design, the Galaxy A7 expands on the popular services provided by the Galaxy A5 and A3, enabling users to capture and share every moment seamlessly on their social media platform.

​​“We strive to develop devices that appeal to a broad range of consumers and are ahead of the next big social trend,” said JK Shin, CEO and Head of IT & Mobile Communication at Samsung Electronics. “Combining both a stunning metallic design and a powerful performance, the Galaxy A7 is stylish while delivering the superior user experience.”

​​​The Galaxy A7 is equipped with a multicore processor combining two separate quad core processors, enabling users to quickly and easily perform data intensive tasks. The Galaxy A7 has 16GB of memory and 2GB of RAM to power all of a user’s favorite apps and media, and is supported by a long-lasting 2,600mAh battery.

​The Galaxy A7 also supports the intuitive features and services offered by the Galaxy A5 and A3, with an advanced 5 Megapixel front-facing camera and advanced selfie features including ‘Ultra Wide Shot’ and ‘Auto Selfie’ modes, which make it possible to take a photograph using only a voice command or even a simple wave of the hand. The device also features ‘Always Clear Voice Auto Control’ to reduce noise from the surrounding environment, as well as LTE Category 4 support for quick and easy photo and video uploads on any social network. In addition to these features, the Galaxy A7 offers a Private Mode, which adds an extra layer of security for important files and documents. The A7 also has Multi Screen app function capability.

​​The Galaxy A7, Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3 are designed for those who want to express effortlessly their unique style. With these devices, Samsung continues to focus on creating smartphones equipped with the slimmest metal unibody on the market today, with comfortable grip for ease of use. The range empowers users to choose a device which reflects their personal style and lifestyle needs, not just in terms of their unique features, but also their size and color options. There are two variants of the Samsung Galaxy A7 - an LTE version and a dual-SIM version. The phone's processor will vary according to these configurations.

The LTE version, which is the one that will see release in developed countries, will ship with a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 CPU.  The dual-SIM model for developing territories will come with an Exynos 5430 chip. Both have an octa-core setup for greater power efficiency. ​The Galaxy A7 will be available in selective market in Pearl White, Midnight Black, and Champagne Gold.

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​Full details and product images are available at www.samsungmobilepress.com.

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Samsung Galaxy A7 Series Products Specifications

Network	LTE Cat4 150/50Mbps, HSPA+ 42/5.76Mbps
Processor	LTE DS/3G DS : A53 1.5GHz Quad + A53 1.0GHz Quad LTE SS : A15 1.8GHz Quad + A7 1.3GHz Quad
Display	5.5” HD sAMOLED
OS	Android 4.4 (KitKat)
Chipset	LTE DS/3G : MSM8x39 (Quad A53 1.5GHz + Quad A53 1.0GHz) LTE SS: Exynos 5430 + M7450 (Quad A15 1.8GHz + Quad A7 1.3GHz)
Camera	13MP AF w/ LED Flash + 5.0MP
Camera Features	Wide Selfie, Rear-cam Selfie, Beauty Face Features
Video	MP4,M4V,3GP,3G2,WMV,ASF,AVI,FLV,MKV,WEBM
	Playback : FHD(1920*1080) @ 30fps
Audio	MP3,M4A,3GA,AAC,OGG,OGA,WAV,WMA,AMR,AWB,FLAC,MID,MIDI,XMF,MXMF,IMY,RTTTL,RTX,OTA
Additional Features	Ultra Power Saving Mode, Changeable Theme (Natural, Classic, Casual, Romantic), Private Mode, Multi Screen, Quick Connect
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n BT 4.0, USB 2.0, A-GPS+GLONASS, NFC (LTE version only)
Sensor	Accelerometer, Proximity, Geomagnetic, RGB, Hall, Light
Memory	2.0GB (RAM) + 16GB microSD slot (up to 64GB)
Dimension	151 x 76.2 x 6.3 mm, 141g
Battery	2,600 mAh

Kropmann at Africa Geospatial event: promises positive developments for Utility Companies

In efforts to expand  partnerships, and inform the Nigerian Market on the value and benefits of adopting GIS Solutions to improve on asset, and operational  management, as well as the analysis of numerous forms of data  Kropmann Communications was fully represented at the just concluded Africa Geospatial forum 2014 held in Lagos on December 9-10.

Speaking at event, Ryan Swanepoel a representative from one of Kropmanns Partners, said it was necessary to be here in person to understand the market, and the opportunities the Nigerian Market presents. Mr Swanepoel stated that GIS solutions and technology has applications across all sectors of the economy.

GIS Solutions are capable of capturing and displaying a wide array of data and displaying it visually in relationship to the  physical location  the data is relevant to.

There are some CIS solutions, which can be used to capture geographically dispersed equipment and represent this equipment in a pictorial or graphical manner referenced to the physical location the equipment is tied to. Such GIS Systems are particularly relevant in utility companies involved in power distribution, water networks, the oil and gas and telecommunication sectors, and can definitely enhance operational effectiveness and asset management within these organizations.

According to Mr. Swanepoel " there was significant interest from a number of states and in particular Lagos state in achieving a better understanding of how they could deploy and utilize GIS systems to improve and enhance government operations in respect to watershed management, land management, rural development, improved locational deployment of government facilities and general assets deployed by the government for the population.

He also indicated that customers have the options of buying GIS solutions and managing or engage with a company such as Kropmann and its partners for a fully managed solution from initial setup to data capture and formatting, migrating the data onto the tool, database administration, and the ongoing introduction of new and relevant sets of data. Whatever the clients’ choice, he indicated that Kropmann and its partners were up to the challenge. He stated that Kropmann Communications the Real World Systems representative in Nigeria, have proven their worth and ability in respect to delivering GIS based solutions and technology, and Real World Systems fully expects  the exclusive partnership with Kropmann Communications to continue and prosper.

Mr. Swanepoel explained that in partnership with Kropmann, they’ll jointly deliver Specialized GIS products  such as Smallworld, Water World, Electric Office, Spatial World etc for clients seeking to enhance their operations and gain a greater understanding of the information/data currently stored in paper formant or scattered across multiple databases within there organization.