Why Uganda’s President Will Start Investing in Startups Making Apps

A few days back. i came a cross this link i one of my feeds from New Vision Online with a story about that one Ugandan that has developed an app to help the youth and other pro-president supporters communicate with the president. As a matter of fact i ordered for a glass of water and cake, this sounds like the best dish of a morning you can have at your favorite hotel but i did exactly that. I was all set to dear the article where i immediately saw another pop of the reminder of a similar article from The Daily Monitor Uganda, those who read Amakuru Online (www.amakuruonline.com)know how this pop up thing works. setting only feeds of the articles you will read in a given paper.

I read the article and honestly sometimes i love how Ugandans love to use the word innovation to mean creating anything that’s money fetching.

sometimes i am driven off by this “innovation” and the fact that it has won attention of the two giant media houses in Uganda.Cutting the story short as always said: The group made up of 6 youth clearly possessing technical abilities(since they developed the app) reportedly spent 5 million Uganda shillings approx $2000 if u get the current exchange of a dollar being at 2800Ugx. The group claims to have invested their hard EARNED CASH – that i wish they had invested elsewhere.

Sharing with a few friends within my reach, i got different questions and ideologies showing how ugandan youth have lost the who idea of innovation.

Ugandan Youth are mostly driven by what to earn immediately after the innovation is up or even before the innovation is in place.

in my opinion, Ugandan youth should focus at impact first of any innovation to our community and then later the moneys later. This is a better app and will add something to Ugandan youth especially in the youth developmental programs that are running in the country.

“Lets innovate to change lives first and money will come later” Opodo Daniel

Source:  amakuruonline.com

ACIA Awards 2015 now open for entry

About the Awards

The ACIA Awards is an annual initiative that fosters innovation through the recognition and reward of outstanding ICT innovations. ACIA provides a platform upon which outstanding ICT innovations can be showcased and propelled to further success.
The initiative was established in 2010 by the Uganda Communications Commission and since its establishment, various innovations have been recognised and awarded in different ways.
ACIA 2015 will mark the 5th round of the awards.
The winners shall be announced at a Gala dinner ceremony on Friday May 22nd 2015

Objectives of the ACIA Awards

• To recognize outstanding innovations in the development and adoption of ICTs in Uganda
• To encourage individuals, academia, industry, government agencies and other entities to harness ICTs in creating solutions to Uganda’s development challenges
• To inspire, nurture, and facilitate Ugandan youth to develop a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship by leveraging ICT
• To raise awareness of the value of ICTs in the development of the country.
• To create a platform for showcasing innovations within the ICT industry in Uganda.

Young ICT Innovators

This category targets the youth and has 3 subcategories in which they can participate. The Primary and Secondary School students will compete first at a regional level and winners at this stage will advance to compete nationally.

Young ICT Innovators

This category targets the youth and has 3 subcategories in which they can participate;

1. Uganda’s ICT Explorers for primary school students
2. Uganda’s Rising Stars for secondary school students
3. Uganda’s ICT Visionaries for youth aged 18 – 28 years

The Primary and Secondary School students will compete first at a regional level and winners at this stage will advance to compete nationally.

Source: amakuruonline.com

MTN Uganda awards outstanding women

MTN Uganda has awarded outstanding women and pledged to continue supporting women in Business (WiB), New Vision reported. The winners of the 2015 edition of MTN Women in Business Awards received a work trip to South Africa to meet the biggest SME and learn from them, MTN office Wi-Fi for six months, USD 10,000 from the Y’ello Rose program, CUG activation and free subscription for six months, five MTN Fixed lines, and one year hosting at MTN Uganda’s Mutundwe data centre. They also received advertising space for three months on NTV, free business advisory services from the Uganda Development Bank and a free strategic plan review for sustainable growth, and a 50 percent discount on adverts in Summit Business Magazine.

 

Source: amakuruonline.com

How to get Knock On for the Nexus 6 (double tap to wake)

Double tap to wake for the Nexus 6 is just sitting there, waiting for you. / © ANDROIDPIT

This is a seriously cool mod for the Nexus 6, bringing the awesome Knock On functionality from greats like the LG G2 and LG G3. Believe it or not, the Nexus 6 already has the capability for double tap to wake built in, but for some reason Google decided not to switch it on. That's OK though, because today we'll show you how to get Knock On for the Nexus 6.

• Nexus 6 tips
• Nexus 6 Android update news

Note: You don't need to be rooted for this mod to work (see instructions below for non-rooted devices). It's a much easier process if you are rooted though - and the Nexus 6 is a breeze to root - so we'll show you that method first. As far as I can tell you won't take a hit in battery life either.

How to get double tap to wake on Nexus 6 (with root)

1. Download the following flashable zip for double tap to wake on the Nexus 6.

2. Reboot into recovery (turn off your Nexus 6, press and hold Volume Down and Power until you see the Fastboot menu and use the volume buttons to highlight Recovery Mode. Press Power to confirm.

This is Fastboot on the Nexus 6. / © ANDROIDPIT

3. You'll see the Android robot laying on his back. Press and hold Power and then the Volume Up button to enter the Recovery menu.

4. In TWRP recovery, tap Recovery.

5. In Recovery Mode, tap Install.

© ANDROIDPIT

6. Tap Download

© ANDROIDPIT

7. Tap the zip file you downloaded before.

© ANDROIDPIT

8. You'll have to swipe the button to the right to confirm the action. Do this.

© ANDROIDPIT

9. You'll see a success message and you can reboot your Nexus 6.

© ANDROIDPIT

10. Now, from a screen-off state you can double tap the display to wake the phone.

• Galaxy S6 vs Nexus 6 comparison
• Nexus 6 Lollipop problems and how to fix them

How to get double tap to wake on Nexus 6 (without root)

I haven't checked this process and I don't quite see how it works without root, but the friendly folk on XDA Developers seem to have had some success (props to qwerp_ for figuring this one out). All you need to do for this mod is to switch one file for another on your Nexus 6.

Counting the world’s unbanked

Fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults don’t use formal banks or semi formal micro finance institutions to save or borrow money, our research finds. Nearly 2.2 billion of these unserved adults live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Unserved, however, does not mean unservable. The micro finance movement, for example, has long helped expand credit use among the world’s poor—reaching more than 150 million clients in 2008 alone.¹ Similarly, we find that of the approximately 1.2 billion adults in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East who use formal or semi formal credit or savings products, about 800 million live on less than $5 a day (Exhibit 1). Large unserved populations represent opportunities for institutions that are able to offer an innovative range of high-quality, affordable financial products and services. Moreover, with the right financial education and support to make good choices, lower-income consumers will benefit from credit, savings, insurance, and payments products that help them invest in economic opportunities, better manage their money, reduce risks, and plan for the future.

Chrome scrolling is going to be smoother (eventually) thanks to a new API

It looks like scrolling is about be smoother in Chrome, as Google plans to integrate Microsoft's Pointer Events API into the browser.

While there's no timeline for when the API will be implemented, the end result should be less jank when scrolling through a website in Chrome.

The Chromium team notes that though it initially decided to focus on improving existing APIs, feedback from developers has swayed them to adopt the Pointer Events API that is already in use in Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera. From the Chromium Google Group:

Pointer Events offers some technical advantages over the existing use of Touch Events and Mouse Events. Most notably, pointer event listeners never block scrolling, and so replacing all touch event handlers with pointer event handlers will address the main longstanding source of scroll-start jank we see on Android (irrespective of whatever scheduler improvements we're able to make to better prioritize input handling).

The above is a lot of technical speak that boils down to this: the Pointer Events API will offer improved, smoother scrolling for Chrome users by combining touch and mouse events into a single set — as opposed to the current implementation that handles the interactions separately. The changes will hit all six of Chrome's Blink platforms — Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android and Android WebView — but "implementation is expected to take some time."

Source: Chromium Google Group

This is a new and interesting time and period for new and upcoming android developers, everything is becoming simple and easier everyday.

The latest version of android studio is the way to go and a lot will be done for you.

leave alone the drag and drop interface design, they also create code for you.

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