Google Bringing High-Speed Internet to Africa

Satellites will be used where conventional cables would be too expensive

'Africans to gain' from web plan

Google is helping develop a system to bring high-speed internet connections to three billion people developing countries in Africa and elsewhere.

The 03b Networks system aims to use satellites to provide broadband services at the same speeds as those on offer in rich countries.

The service, which is due to begin in 2010, is also backed by cable operator Liberty Global and the bank HSBC.

It aims to tap into booming mobile phone usage in the developing world.

It will target markets in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

The founders of 03b Networks recently helped pioneer the first commercial 3G mobile and fibre-to-the-home networks in Rwanda, the company said in a statement.

Production of an initial 16 satellites has begun, and the project allows for additional satellites to increase capacity.

The company said the system will enable the spread of locally generated content and e-learning, encouraging social and economic growth in the developing world.

There are various other projects under way to bring faster and cheaper internet access to the African continent.

Kenya has commissioned a fibre-optic cable from Fujaira in The United Arab Emirates along the sea floor of the Gulf of Oman, down the East African coast to the port town of Mombasa.

Another undersea telecommunications cable, known as East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), intends to connect 21 countries to each other and the rest of the world with high-quality internet.

Femi Kuti Soundtracks Grand Theft Auto IV

Award winning Nigerian artist, and son of the legendary Fela Kuti, provides the tunes and the talk for a radio station in the brand new Grand Theft Auto game.

GTA IV is the newest game in the very controversial video game series, arriving on consoles in about a months time.




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Google's Surfing Safari

Here is an interesting article about the search giant investing in Africa's emerging Internet sector.

"We feel that we should be a catalyst," Joseph Mucheru says, sitting in his office that overlooks central Nairobi. We, in this case, is Google, and the stout 39-year-old Kenyan heads the company's first outpost in sub-Saharan Africa. About 5% of Africans are online, but the thinking is that as the Internet grows, so will Google.

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'$100 laptop' begins production

According to BBC News...

Mass production of the so-called $100 laptop has begun, five years after the concept was first proposed.

Computer manufacturer Quanta has started building the low-cost laptops at a factory in Changshu, China.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), the group behind the project, said that children in developing countries would begin receiving machines this month
Last month, OLPC received its first official order for 100,000 machines from the government of Uruguay.

"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC.

The organisation had reached the critical stage despite "all the naysayers," he said.

Home-made helicopters hit northern Nigeria

I needed this thing this morning with the crazy traffic!!

KANO (AFP) - Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts.

"It took me eight months to build this one," he said, sweat pouring from his forehead as he filled the radiator of the banana yellow four-seater which he now parks in the grounds of his university.

The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano's Bayero university.

It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.

For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet.

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A Nigerian....next to Yahoo, Google...

Step aside, Google Desktop and Yahoo -- there's a new way to search that's ahead of the pack.
And it's made in North Jersey.
Gaviri Technologies, a feisty upstart in Parsippany, has written a software program that searches for files on your desktop PC -- and all your other gadgets.
Programs such as Google Desktop and Yahoo Desktop Search are designed to search for files on your desktop computer. Gaviri is designed to find files there, as well as on the expanding list of popular mobile devices, including USB flash drives, cameras, MP3 players, PocketPCs, external hard drives and SD cards.
"Technology is moving very, very quickly but search [technology] has been stuck on the desktop," said Emeka Akaezuwa, Gaviri's CEO and founder.

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