IEEE exhibition

I managed to visit the just concluded IEEE exhibition on 14th and 15th at the Sarit Centre, and was amazed at how this annual event has grown over the last few years. When I was in University, it was much smaller and only had participants from about 3-5 institutions in Kenya. This year's event had participants from Sudan and Uganda among others.

My favourite presentation was MPAWA, an online payment gateway built on MPESA, done by Martin Kasomo. I'm eagerly waiting to see it fully implemented, as it is something I have always wanted to see out in the market and have not had much time to work on :).

It's also something close to that Whiteafrican has talked about, only that it is not operator agnostic..

All in all, there is a lot of interest from large players (Microsoft, Oracle, Celtel, Safaricom, Google had representatives) in what is happening in universities, which can only be a good thing.

iPhone

Apple yesterday unveiled their highly anticipated iPhone.

Among others features:

4GB or 8GB memory
Bluetooth
WiFi
Mac OS X
Quadband GSM
multi-touch display - yaani NO KEYPAD

From the apple website:

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device.

Read more...

USD 499 for the 4GB and $599 for the 8GB when they come out in June on the Cingular network

No 3G though :( - Nokia were quick to point out that ....

Meaning I wait until the release the next version, and yah.. when they make it available worldwide....

Mobile Payments

With Safaricom intending to launch M-Pay sometimes this year, I've been on the look out for similar products in the world.

I came across this article that indicates that VISA are planning to launch a Global Mobile Phone Payment solution.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/01/08/tech-visa.html

I wonder whether this is going to affect Safaricom's product, or whether the two products are infact related somehow.

From the article, apparently a similar solution has been in use in Japan for sometime

GPRS: Internet Chat while on the Move

a friend of mine sent me this link -> wap.mig33.com. I visited www.mig33.com and they also have sms and voice calls offerings that I think could be quite cheap but I haven't tried them out yet.

You can chat via Yahoo and MSN from your mobile phone.. I've tried it out and it's absolutely cool! No need to have a comp to do IM now :) - chat while traveling on a long bus trip or while waiting for a refund cheque....

My next phone I suspect will be geared to mobile internet - chat.. sports.. games.. the works/
Just hope they'll integrate GMail which shouldn't be too hard for them since it's Jabber based..
Meanwhile for Gtalk - there's MGTalk available from http://mgtalk.sourceforge.net/

I find Celtel's GPRS more reliable than Safaricom's which keeps timing out alot.

If u need more help with that i could give u some pointers...

I've tried this on a Nokia 6610i using Safaricom.