Posted on 21 May 2012 by Information Desk

Bogobiri House
9 Maitama Sule Street, off Awolowo Road, South-West Ikoyi
South-West Ikoyi
Lagos, Lagos 23401
Nigeria

Monday, April 30, 2012 at 5:30 PM (GMT+0100)

Remember, he is recently signed to mercury music in the UK for Europe distribution.

He currently have a little above 200k users and with is continued push in the international market, you can only wish him good luck. Follow him @iamdbanj

This is a welcome development to the cash-strapped Nigerian startup scene as funding remains a major challenge for so many Tech Entrepreneurs out there. While the barrier may still be high for tech. startups, things are getting better. There is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. So, let the tech. entrepreneurs show up!

However, from the press release made available to us it was not made clear how startups can apply for the fund, but the Lagos-based Cc-Hub will act as an incubator designed to accelerate the successful development of the funded social technology ventures through an array of business support resources and services developed and orchestrated by the hub’s management. The Tony Elumelu Foundation has already identified and selected the following three social technology ventures being incubated by CcHub, who will be the first recipients of the business development grants:

• Efiko is a product of a social tech start-up targeted at improving the pass rate for Nigeria’s secondary students in national exams. The solution is a mobile testing platform tied to school curricula and designed to provide access to assessment and learning resources for secondary school students.
• OfficeMotion is a software company that develops software products for small and medium-sized businesses. They are currently developing a product called Traclist, a web platform that allows micro and small retailers to showcase their inventory over the Internet, thereby giving consumers access to their inventory from web browsers and mobile devices.
• Varsoft is a product of Varsoft Technologies Ltd. It is an inclusive ICT product targeted at congregational type audiences, i.e. libraries, churches, seminars, libraries etc. The solution enables content delivery without the use of the Internet.

Here are the contest rules;

1) You must be unemployed or employed/self-

employed and currently earning less than

?251k per month.

2) You must develop your JAMB result checker

with Python 3.2 , CherryPy , MySQL 5+ , & hg

on Google Code.

3) You must indicate your interest immediately

by posting a link to your repo here.

4) You must complete the result checker

before 11pm on Sunday 8th April and link to

it on the thread.

Theme of this year’s event is “Taking monetisation and content creation Dialogue to the next level”. Interesting list of speakers and discussant is listed for the event. I sure believe it will be a superb event. You can read the full Agenda here.

Date: 24th (Developers’ day), 25th and 26th April, 2012

Venue: Oriental Hotels, Lagos

To attend, simply register here.

The “Smoked by Windows Phone” Campaign is Microsoft’s latest advertising war where any customer in the US can work into its retail stores between 9AM and 10PM local time to challenge Microsoft to a Windows Phone speed test — winners will walk away with a Hunger Games Special Edition PC and “losers” will be offered the opportunity to swap their current smartphone for a Windows Phone. There are 10 prizes per store each day.

A customer confirmed that Microsoft will accept modern smartphones like iPhones, Android handsets, and RIM’s BlackBerry devices. The shoppers will be asked to sign a release form to use their story in future advertising and there’s a number of strict rules involved — including a limitation to one attempt only. Microsoft Store visitors won’t have to hand over their phone at the end of the challenge if they don’t want to, but they will get the opportunity to swap it for one of the latest Windows Phones (excluding the Nokia Lumia 800) without a contract. The $1,000 Windows Phone challenge started during the weekend, as part of The Hunger Games opening weekend, and will end on March 29th.

Sahas Katta, a self-confessed fan of Windows Phone’s design, went down to his local Microsoft Store to pit his Android 4.0-powered Galaxy Nexus in a speed test against Microsoft’s smartphones and, surprisingly, came out on top. The tests are geared heavily in favor of Microsoft’s services, but Sahas still managed to outdo them when tasked with showing the weather for two different cities. The Microsoft Store assistant already had weather tiles for two cities pinned to her Start screen, but Sahas similarly had two weather widgets on his Android homescreen and, importantly, had disabled the lock screen on his phone, allowing him to show the requisite info within a moment of pressing the Galaxy Nexus power button.

Bewildered by this turn of events, the Microsoft Store employees were apparently unwilling to acknowledge Sahas’ win, eventually offering the tenuous excuse that he needed to show the weather for “two different cities in two different states” to qualify as a winner. We have no way to immediately verify that portion of Sahas’ story, but the facts of his victory over Windows Phone are sound — Android has a native option to disable the lock screen and you only need to download one extra third-party weather widget from the Play Store to recreate what he has done here.

Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph, the man playing a central role in pushing the Smoked marketing campaign, has offered Sahas an apology for the hassle and a rematch on a random Windows Phone challenge. Sahas’ own post, although tinged with disappointment, ends on the same note: “If anyone from Microsoft would like to have a rematch, I would be happy to smoke a Windows Phone with Android, again.”

Alex Dadson, Qualcomm’s Managing Director West Africa will be joining us to talk about the firm’s plans to stimulate growth of the mobile market through the development of technologies and services for 3G devices. He will also highlight recent work that Qualcomm has done in Augumented Reality and illustrate with cool demos. You dont want to miss this!!!!

Qualcomm has had physical presence in Nigeria since Sept 2010 and aims to expand the 3G ecosystem and create more opportunities for use of 3G-enabled devices in Nigeria. Qualcomm works with all the major OEMs (Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry) and some lesser known ones too, about 170 in all. Qualcomm is currently shipping over a million chipsets per day which end up in CDMA, 3G (UMTS) and LTE devices of various form factors (feature phones, smartphones, tablets, e-readers etc). Qualcomm’s integrated, single-chip solutions are enabling its partners to offer internet-capable 3G devices that support different tiers of market needs from high-end smart phones to low-cost handsets.

Qualcomm is interested in providing assistance to the Nigerian tech community on how to develop applications that increase 3G uptake. Qualcomm periodically puts out SDKs and most recently released an SDK around augmented reality.

Samsung is world’s leading mobile phone company having overtaken Nokia recently. If you are currently using Blackberry phone, I think it’s right time to switch to Android phone that will fit your lifestyle easily. A big plus is that you can use two sims on this phone!

I got my hand on this new Samsung Galaxy Y Pro duo and I’m really impressed with the ease of use and Android interface. Immediately I turned on the phone, I got all my data (Apps, Contacts etc)from my Galaxy S2 transferred to the new phone and whola! Ready to use.

The Keyboard is a full QWERTY interface and allows you to type like you are on your keyboard If you are comfortable with touch (like I am) you are fully taken care of I found it faster than trackpad for me!

Full Specification

Conclusion, I think this phone is a good deal for anyone willing to get a new phone. You get access to Google Market and you can download as many apps as you want. The price is affordable, under N30,000 (You can compare the price here.)that is a good price for a double SIM Android phone from a powerful brand in Samsung.

 To give the developer community a chance to interact face to face with some of the great guys behind a number of Google products, there will be “An Evening with Googlers” at the hub [CCHUB] next week Wednesday (the 14th) from 5 to 7pm. The Googlers are in town for the upcoming GNigeria 2012 event (15th-17th) and their working areas span across several products and APIs. I’m talking

• Cloud & HTML5
• Google Apps APIs
• Google Maps
• User Experience
• Google+ APIs
• App Engine
• Android & Mobile
• Google Webmaster Tools

If you are interested in being at the hub for the event – please register here:
https://docs.google.com/a/initsng.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHltYTItNlpmbTUwdDBfbnhmMjN6X2c6MQ