Designing SMS apps for mobile Africa

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As is well known, our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We aim to do this through technology, and in Africa, that means developing tools for the mobile phone. Africa has the world’s highest mobile growth rate. Mobile phone penetration is six times Internet penetration -- one third of the population owns a mobile phone and many more have access to one. Most of these devices only have voice and SMS capabilities, which is why we have chosen to focus our initial mobile efforts on SMS.

Official Google Mobile Blog: Designing SMS apps for mobile Africa

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• Google launches push to send Ugandans vital information through their mobiles (guardian.co.uk)

South Africa: Call for Probe Into Claims of SABC 'Looting'

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Jocelyn Newmarch

A SUBMISSION to Parliament that highlights possible instances of corruption and wasteful expenditure by SABC managers might finally result in a proper investigation of the public broadcaster.

Former SABC chairwoman Kanyi Mkonza made an explosive submission to the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications last week, alleging that SABC senior managers and executives were corrupt and opportunistic.

Yesterday Mkonza said several issues she raised in her submission were under investigation by the SABC, while others -- such as an R18m petrol bill apparently run up by senior managers -- had only come to light a month ago.

Musa Zondi, the Inkatha Freedom Party's member of the portfolio committee, said he was calling for a full judicial commission of inquiry to look into the board and management, as a result of Mkonza's submission.

The Save Our SABC civil society coalition wants a forensic audit of the SABC to be conducted once an interim board is in place.

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Call for Probe Into Claims of SABC 'Looting' (Page 1 of 1)

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• ANC welcomes dissolving SABC board (thetimes.co.za)

Where's The Gold?

Nathan Lewis

The Comex is the name for the largest gold futures market in the world, traditionally centered in New York City. Although the market recently became part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, it has retained its old nickname. Also, the depositories which hold the actual bars of gold used to settle the futures contracts remain in New York City.

A gold depository must be the most boring business on earth. They charge a small monthly fee to store 100oz. standardized bars of gold in an insured vault. It is an industrial-sized version of a safe deposit box.

The owner of a 100oz. bar owns a specific chunk of gold. It has a manufacturer, a serial number, and an exact weight measured to the 1/100th of an ounce. A written depository receipt -- similar to an old-fashioned paper share certificate -- shows the exact date the bar entered the depository, and the entire chain of ownership since that date; they often change hands without leaving the depository. You can request to withdraw the bar from the depository, and you should receive exactly the bar indicated.

Nathan Lewis: Where's The Gold?

The Cost of Cheap Internet - Can Seacom Live Up to the Hype?

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Miles Donohoe

With all of the infrastructure development currently underway in South Africa one could be forgiven for thinking that the 2010 FIFA World Cup is the only transformation the country is undertaking.

While there has been comparatively far less fanfare surrounding its arrival, the launch of the Seacom cable in July heralds a seismic shift in South Africa's telecoms industry, with the promise of cheaper Internet access.

The Seacom cable, which snakes along the East African coast, will provide international fibre optic bandwidth that connects southern Africa to the rest of the world for the first time, and is set to be the first of a number of undersea cables launching over the next few years.

allAfrica.com: Africa: The Cost of Cheap Internet - Can Seacom Live Up to the Hype? (Page 1 of 1)

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• Broadening the band (mg.co.za)

California's Fiscal Crisis: The Legacy of Proposition 13

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By KEVIN O'LEARY / LOS ANGELES Kevin O'leary / Los Angeles – Sat Jun 27, 4:55 pm ET

The financial crisis in California grew worse this week as State Controller John Chiang warned that if legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package, he would begin paying California's bills with IOUs on July 2. The last time the state did this was during the Great Depression.

What has brought California to such a perilous state? How did its government become so wildly dysfunctional? One obvious cause is the deep recession that has caused tax revenues to plunge for all states. But California's woes have a set of deeper reasons: direct democracy run amok, timid governors, partisan gridlock and a flawed constitution all contribute to budget chaos and people in pain. And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era. In Washington, the Reagan-Bush era is over. But in California, the conservative legacy lives on.

California's Fiscal Crisis: The Legacy of Proposition 13 - Yahoo! News

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• California's Fiscal Crisis: The Legacy of Proposition 13 (time.com)

Financial crisis: From chaos to complacency

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The Guardian, Monday 29 June 2009

Last October, Gordon Brown was furious with bankers. "I'm angry at irresponsible behaviour," he told GMTV, as he unveiled a £500bn plan to rescue a banking system near collapse. "Where there is excessive and irresponsible risk-taking, that has got to be punished. The day of big bonuses is over."

Last week, the angry man of politics nodded through a huge bonus package for the boss of one of the worst-hit British banks. RBS is 70% owned by the government, which makes its chief executive Stephen Hester a civil servant in all but name - yet if he plays his cards right he will pocket nearly £10m. So much for Mr Brown's righteous anger. Just a few months ago, the prime minister flew to Washington and called on Congress to "outlaw shadow banking systems and offshore tax havens". Today, the Treasury will publish a new voluntary code of conduct for banks, to dissuade them from constructing intricate tax-avoidance schemes. Again, Mr Brown's fine words translate into too-little action. This is not the general anti-avoidance principle tax campaigners have been demanding. Banks that duck out of the new gentlemen's agreement will face no sanction more severe than a bit of closer attention from Her Majesty's tax inspectors. As a government tax source told this paper a few months ago, "There are less than 100 inspectors actually tackling avoidance, against thousands of professionals advising companies on how to do it." Barclays - which has a huge structured-capital markets arm devoted to helping customers with tax - or any other bank may well decide that these are odds worth taking.

Financial crisis: From chaos to complacency | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

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• Tax havens: Let in the light (guardian.co.uk)

China Again Throws Weight Against Dollar as Reserve Currency, Calls for IMF Solution

The optimists that have long assumed that the dollar will continue to reign supreme due to lack of alternatives have just have their sanguine views challenged as China threw down the gauntlet on coming up with an alternative, non-country-specific, reserve currency.

The US in fact had this option at the time of Bretton Woods and opted instead for a dollar fixed rate standard with the dollar backed by gold. You know how that movie ended. Being the reserve currency requires that the sponsoring nation run current account deficits to get enough currency in circulation for it to serve as a trade vehicle. That's why China and the EU are not keen about the idea of someday having the reserve currency. Both are wedded to being exporters, or at least not being importers.

naked capitalism: China Again Throws Weight Against Dollar as Reserve Currency, Calls for IMF Solution

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• Is this the death of the dollar? (telegraph.co.uk)

Lions rue chances that went begging

Stuart Barnes

From the glory of the first half to the dust and desolation of the second as the 2009 British and Irish Lions went the same way as their 2001 and 2005 predecessors, losing a series and suffering a seventh straight defeat against the global powers of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

Lions rue chances that went begging | Six Nations Rugby - Times Online

"Suck on Our Yachts": Goldman Sachs Issues Non-Apology for Destroying the World Economy

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By Matt Taibbi, True/Slant. Posted June 22, 2009.

Anyone else out there find himself doubled over laughing after reading Goldman, Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein's "apology" for his bank's behavior leading up to the financial crisis? Has an act of contrition ever in history been more worthless and insincere? Even Gary Ridgway did a better job of sounding genuinely sorry at his sentencing hearing -- and he was a guy who had sex with dead prostitutes because it was cheaper than paying live ones.

"Suck on Our Yachts": Goldman Sachs Issues Non-Apology for Destroying the World Economy | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

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Is Goldman Sachs the Root of All Evil?

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Jun 26 2009, 3:30 pm by Daniel Indiviglio

The July issue of Rolling Stone has an article about a different type of rock star: the Goldman Sachs investment banker. The article, called "The Great American Bubble Machine," was written by Matt Taibbi. In it, he viciously attacks Goldman Sachs through a series of arguments, blaming the bank for engineering virtually every bubble, and pseudo-bubble, that has plagued the economy over the past hundred or so years.

I can't link to the article, because Rolling Stone does not put their content online. But it's an amusing read, so you might want to pick up a copy. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was pretty nonpartisan and well-researched. I found myself agreeing with a fair amount of the article as well, but I think it ventures a little too far out into conspiracy theory land.

Is Goldman Sachs the Root of All Evil? - The Atlantic Business Channel

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• Goldman Sachs responds to Taibbi (blogs.reuters.com)

30 Twitter Tools For Managing Followers

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To manage your followers or friends on twitter is not an easy task. To be successful on twitter you have to analyze different things. You should know how active your followers are, do they retweet your tweets, do they update regularly and you should know those whom you are following are following you.

30 Twitter Tools For Managing Followers | Tools | PelFusion.com

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• Tweetmondo.com - Find Nearby Twitterers (killerstartups.com)

MashDeck Launches: The Mashable Twitter Desktop App!

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June 25th, 2009 | by Pete Cashmore

If you’re a Twitter power user, or thinking of becoming one, you’ve likely read our head to head reviews of the best Twitter applications.

But what’s the best application to make the jump from Twitter beginner to a speed-Tweeting power user? And how can experienced users keep their news reading and friends’ updates separate?

MashDeck Launches: The Mashable Twitter Desktop App!

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• The Art and Science of the Retweet with Dan Zarrella (readwriteweb.com)

Banks rush to rescue of credit card trusts

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By Saskia Scholtes and Francesco Guerrera in New York

Record credit card losses are pushing big US banks to come to the rescue of off-balance sheet vehicles they use to transform hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer loans into securities sold to investors.

The support provided by Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and American Express underscores how the deteriorating health of the US consumer is opening new fronts in the financial crisis.

Losses on US credit cards as measured by Moody’s Credit Card Index rose beyond 10 per cent of total loans outstanding in May, a new high in the 20-year history of the index and the sixth consecutive monthly record.

FT.com / Companies / Banks - Banks rush to rescue of credit card trusts

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Obama's Mistakes: Chancellor Merkel Visits the Debt President

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By Gabor Steingart

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis -- and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price -- and that price might be America's position as a global power.

Obama's Mistakes: Chancellor Merkel Visits the Debt President - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

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Goldman Sachs

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Do you want to know all about Goldman Sachs and their involvement in the financial melt down? Rolling stone has done a great article on their involvement with scams both past and present.

Goldman Sachs

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• Goldman Sachs in London: Massive Profits, Fat Bonuses. (crooksandliars.com)

Hands-on: Google Voice dialing up for launch

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By Ryan Paul | Last updated June 23, 2009

Google is preparing to launch a new service called Google Voice that is built with technology obtained through its 2007 acquisition of Internet telephony company GrandCentral. The Google Voice service gives users a single phone number that can seamlessly route calls to their existing phones. It has its own built-in voicemail service that can be accessed from any phone or through a browser, with GMail-like archiving features for audio messages.

The Google Voice service launched in March for closed testing with a limited audience that consisted of existing GrandCentral users. Google introduced a number of highly impressive features such as automatic message transcription and free SMS delivery. The transcription feature will convert voicemails to text and make them searchable. The service can also automatically forward voicemail transcripts directly to your preferred e-mail account.

Hands-on: Google Voice dialing up for launch - Ars Technica

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Google search features - you should use

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by Abhishek Mehta

Google is an essential element when it comes to the basic composition of the netizens and the word Googling has found its place in our language dictionaries. It is a Cliché but Google pulls the highest Internet traffic in the world and more then 60% of web searches worldwide are performed using this search engine. So, logically no new search engine is going to walkover this supremacy of Google anytime sooner.

This effectively means that you and me should keep on becoming better at using this engine, as its life cycle is not getting shorter. This latest blog of mine is for the basic Google user who dig this engine everyday to find information. Better Search results are as good as better experience and vice versa. Keeping this in mind Google is continuously launching enhanced features on result pages to make web searching a better experience. Here are the Top 3 features for everyone and are as basic as seeing results on search page.

Google search features - you should use

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All things Africa and ICT - PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

I've just run across a spate of items on the development of ICT in Africa; although it could just be coincidence, I suspect there's been a growing interest in this topic in the development community.

First off, Africa Telecom News has just come out with an Africa Mobile Factbook (Hat tip: White African). The report is free - well, if you discount the time needed to take a required survey - but the factbook offers up some interesting statistics. Figure 1 (below) shows that mobile penetration has grown markedly, and they're predicting continuing growth in this sector. White African also points out much of this development is local: "Most of the mobile operators are home-grown. In 2005, the continent’s seven largest investors controlled 53% of the African mobile market."

All things Africa and ICT - PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

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'Cash For Clunkers': Obama To Sign $4,500 New Car Credit

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Car shoppers could take advantage of government incentives worth up to $4,500 this summer to send their old gas guzzler to the scrap heap in favor of a more fuel-efficient new vehicle.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law the "cash for clunkers" program, which was approved by the Senate on Thursday. For owners of low-mileage models such as the 1994 Ford Bronco, 1998 Nissan Pathfinder or the 1995 Chevrolet Blazer, the plan could give them a reason to visit their local car dealer during an economic downturn.

'Cash For Clunkers': Obama To Sign $4,500 New Car Credit

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Why You Shouldn’t Expect $1,000 Gold Anytime Soon

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist
Senior Analyst, The Oxford Club

Since I last suggested gold looked “toppy,” our projected government budget deficit ballooned to $1.75 billion. The Fed decided to print money non-stop to fund a $1.15 trillion asset purchase program. Economic upheaval continued, including several major bankruptcies. Political unrest erupted in Iran. And North Korea stepped up its nuclear defiance.

All should have emboldened gold prices. And yet, the metal struggled to tread water. It’s actually down 2% since February.

Gold Prices

25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts

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by Jennifer Van Grove

It may seem like an impossible task to keep up with all the Twitter apps that have come to market as of late. Even though you have plenty of directories to help with the process, we noticed that it’s still difficult to ascertain which apps support multiple accounts.

As more and more people are using Twitter () for personal and professional reasons, the demand for a Twitter client to match those multifaceted needs is rising. Here are several options to help you tweet now or later from different accounts on your desktop, via the Web, and while on the run. We’ve also included a few browser add-ons and business-specific clients to help you find the right application to suit your Twittering needs.

25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts

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How Facebook is Gunning for Google (And Killing SEO)

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by Mike Wasylik

This weekend, my mother-in-law asked me to enter a life of crime.

Not in the real world, of course - she’d like the father of her grandkids to remain jail-free. No, instead she invited me to play that Mafia game that’s so popular on Facebook.

Not interested in the game, I politely declined. But when my mother-in-law, who has just joined Facebook, becomes part of an online trend, that’s a sure sign that it’s hitting critical mass in the population at large.

Facebook is quickly becoming the immovable object that will soon butt heads with Google’s irresistible force.

How Facebook is Gunning for Google (And Killing SEO) | Copyblogger

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What Next For The Global Crisis?

Written by Simon Johnson

June 22, 2009 at 11:14 pm

There are two views of the global financial crisis and – more importantly – of what comes next.  The first is shared by almost all officials and underpins government thinking in the United States, the remainder of the G7, Western Europe, and beyond.  The second is quite unofficial – no government official has yet been found anywhere near this position.  Yet versions of this unofficial view have a great deal of support and may even be gaining traction over time as events unfold.

The official view is that a rare and unfortunate accident occurred in the fall of 2008.  The heart of the world’s financial system, in and around the United States, suddenly became unstable.  Presumably this instability had a cause – and most official statements begin with “the crisis had many causes” – but this is less important than the need for immediate and overwhelming macroeconomic policy action.

What Next For The Global Crisis? « The Baseline Scenario

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4 portable app suites to power up your USB flash drive

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by Lee Mathews Jun 22nd 2009

Portable applications suites are a great way to get your hands on a ton of useful software with minimal fuss. Got a new flash drive, or maybe an old one you don't know what to do with?

Throw one of these suites on it and you've got an instant software Swiss Army Knife.

4 portable app suites to power up your USB flash drive

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Is this the death of the dollar?

By Edmund Conway
Published: 7:32PM BST 20 Jun 2009

Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (£81bn).

How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.

Is this the death of the dollar? - Telegraph

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Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter

by Julie Posetti, June 19, 2009

Twitter's role in the Iranian election aftermath leaves no doubt about its power as a global, real time, citizen-journalism style news wire service, along with a tool for facilitating dissent, while countering the view of Twitter as simply a zone for egotistical banality. But it also highlighted Twitter's role as a platform and content generator for traditional media outlets, along with some of the key dilemmas being faced by professional journalists in the Twittersphere.

MediaShift . Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter | PBS

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WARNING: Fake Twitter Invites Carry Malicious Worm

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June 20th, 2009 | by Pete Cashmore

Security sites are warning web users to beware fake Twitter invites in their email inboxes. The reports, based on an alert on Wednesday from Symantec, say the emailed invites come with a malicious attachment which, if downloaded, harvests email addresses from your computer and copies itself to removable drives and shared folders.

The emails carry the subject line “Your friend invited you to twitter!”, while the sender’s address is spoofed as “invitations@twitter.com”. Unlike a typical Twitter invite, however, the email contains no invitation link: instead it carries the attached file Invitation Card.zip, tempting the receiver to download it. The attachment, of course, contains W32.Ackantta.B@mm – a nasty, email address-harvesting worm.

WARNING: Fake Twitter Invites Carry Malicious Worm

Google Maps Finally Ready to Tell You "What's Here" for Any Point on a Map... Almost

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Written by Jolie O'Dell / June 19, 2009 5:51 PM

On the Lat Long Blog, Google has announced a new Maps feature in the right-click menu for any point on a map.

Now, when a user clicks on "What's here?" Google will return as specific a result as possible, be that an address, a "natural entity," or a place name. When combined with the "At this address" feature, "What's here?" can even be used to return a full list of businesses located at a given address. Hypothetically, that is. The list of conditions for this feature functioning as laid out in the announcement seems to be a bit long and convoluted.

The feature recognizes magnification as a factor; for example a "What's here?" query for a body of water near Suffolk, Virginia, returns results of photos for Lake Meade and a link to Hampton Roads Executive Airport as well as a couple user-created maps for that general area.

Google Maps Finally Ready to Tell You "What's Here" for Any Point on a Map... Almost

South Africa: Xenophobia Still Smouldering

Mandisi Majavu

"My worry is that my children are going to be slaves because they won't have anything. These foreign people come to South Africa with nothing, but tomorrow he has cash, third day he owns a shop and fourth day he has a car. Where do these foreign people get this money?"

Small business owners are venting their frustrations on 'foreign nationals' - among them many Somalis - who own shops in the country's townships, causing experts to warn that xenophobic violence could increase.

Businesspeople from four of Cape Town's impoverished communities - Delft, Masiphumelele, Samora Machel and Gugulethu - held several meetings in late May and early June to discuss ways of ridding their communities of foreign-owned shops.

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Xenophobia Still Smouldering (Page 1 of 1)

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