Posted by Sara Lacy Via Pandodaily

Jason Njoku doesn’t like being anyone’s bitch.

As I learned the last time I saw him– over machetes in Nigeria– that includes vigilante mobs. But that also includes YouTube, Amazon Web Services, and US-based video ad networks. And those are the people causing him the most problems since we last spoke.

Njoku is building IrokoTV. It’s not only one of the most exciting Web companies to come out of Africa, and it’s one of the most interesting original video startups I’ve seen in the world. He’s painstakingly building a modern distribution engine for the second largest movie industry in the world by volume: Nollywood, or Nigerian cinema. Brick. By. Brick.

Iroko does it all: They roam the markets of Alaba cutting deals with independent film producers, they scrub the content for remove copyrighted content, they subtitle it, they enter all the metadata, they convert it from outdated formats, they enter all the relevant information in a IMDB-like database, and upload it for hundreds of millions of people in the Nigerian diaspora to rabidly consume. (That’s him haggling with producers above; Njoku is on the right.)

Until a few months ago, he let YouTube do the rest. He started a turn-key YouTube channel, that handled the cost and challenges of serving up gigabits of video every month. They handled ad sales. And even some distribution, putting Nollywood movies in some genre lists.

Click here to read the rest of the story on pandodaily 

Press Release

NXP Software has integrated Verimatrix enhanced HLS content authorization into its LifeVibes QuickPlayer opening the way for premium internet TV services on Android phones and tablets

Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 16 February 2012 – NXP Software has integrated Verimatrix ViewRight® Web client security into the Android version of its LifeVibes QuickPlayer. ViewRight Web is a component of the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™), and its integration into QuickPlayer enables enhanced security for adaptive streaming content delivery on Android phones and tablets. This opens the door to new revenue streams for service providers such as broadcasters and IPTV providers to add premium (paid for) internet TV services.

“Consumer demand for premium content on smart phones and tablets is growing rapidly. As a global leader in enabling exciting multimedia experiences, NXP Software is keen to help service providers meet this demand. By partnering with Verimatrix, we have combined our know-how in high quality video and audio on mobile device platforms like Android with Verimatrix’s deep expertise in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services,” said Peter Van de Berg, Marketing Director, NXP Software.

This new version of LifeVibes QuickPlayer supports fast deployment of VCAS-secured video service applications across the wide range of Android-based devices on the market using the proven HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) adaptive bitrate protocol. It enables an enhanced security infrastructure for HLS that is fully compliant with the rigorous requirements for licensing premium content. Furthermore, LifeVibes QuickPlayer offers a “living-room quality” user experience. It ensures a fast start to playback, and maintains smooth viewing with no re-buffering, dropped service or visual artifacts even during network switches and variations in bandwidth availability.

“As the OTT video market matures, network operators are now able to blend Internet TV into their traditional services – from an operational, technology and revenue model perspective. This requires enhanced security functionality and options in order to deliver premium content to connected devices. Our partnership with NXP Software helps operators to deliver services on the broadest range of new mobile devices, while still maintaining the appropriate level of security,” said Steve Oetegenn, chief sales and marketing officer at Verimatrix.

ViewRight Web and VCAS™ for Internet TV are components of the VCAS 3 architecture, which addresses the new video marketplace with a proactive revenue security and enhancement approach for DVB broadcast, hybrid, and IPTV networks. The Verimatrix ViewRight Web client family is a robust package of portable security applications that provide enhanced security for HLS service delivery, including authentication and fine grain entitlement management for a variety of device categories, including PC/Macs, mobile handsets, tablets, set-top boxes and connected TVs.

About NXP Software

NXP Software is a world-wide leading software vendor for mobile multimedia. It specializes in innovative multimedia solutions and applications to help mobile device manufacturers and service providers deliver extraordinary media experiences.

End-user insights drive its designs, resulting in differentiating end-user experiences, while its unmatched audio and video expertise ensures better performance and customizable solutions.

NXP Software has established strong partnerships with key vendors to ensure optimum flexibility, ease-of-integration and interoperability between hardware and software platforms. Its LifeVibes portfolio of software products is used in over one billion (1,000,000,000) mobile devices, making the company the market leader in software solutions and applications for mobile multimedia. LifeVibes is a trademark of NXP Software.

For more information, please visit our LifeVibes QuickPlayer product page and follow us at twitter. A joint solution brief from NXP Software and Verimatrix is available.

About Verimatrix

Verimatrix specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services around the globe. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) and ViewRight® solutions offer an innovative approach for cable, satellite, terrestrial and IPTV operators to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. As the recognized leader in software-based security solutions for premier service providers, Verimatrix has pioneered the 3-Dimensional Security approach that offers flexible layers of protection techniques to address evolving business needs and revenue threats. Maintaining close relationships with major studios, broadcasters, industry organizations, and its unmatched partner ecosystem enables Verimatrix to provide a unique perspective on digital TV business issues beyond content security as operators seek to deliver compelling new services.

For more information, please visit www.verimatrix.com, our Pay TV Views blog and follow us at @verimatrixinc and LinkedIn to join the conversation. 

Note for editors

Marketing & Communications NXP Software

+31 40 272 6000

Info.software@nxp.com

www.nxpsoftware.com

Quoting TechRadar, BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 is using the operating system BlackBerry OS 7. User interface is also customizable, named Porsche Design UI.

Specifications of the smartphone BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 ie 1.2 GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, 768 MB RAM, 720p HD video recording capabilities, and 8GB of internal storage. PIN for the P’9881 was exclusively so instantly recognizable when using BBM.

The mobile design is much more different than the general BlackBerry. The most obvious is its keyboard. While the manufacture of materials such as stainless steel wear.

BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 will be sold at Porsche Design stores around the end of this year.

Specifications of BlackBerry Porsche P’9981:

Network:
2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network: HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100

Size / Dimensions:
Dimensions: 115 x 67 x 11.3 mm
Weight: 155 g

Screen:
Type: TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 640 x 480 pixels, 2.8 inches (~ 286 ppi pixel density)
- QWERTY keyboard
- Optical trackpad
- Multi-touch input method
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off

Audio:
Alert types: Vibration; Polyphonic (64), MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker: Yes
3.5mm jack: Yes

Memory:
Phonebook: Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records: Yes
Internal: 8 GB storage, 768 MB RAM
Card slot: microSD, up to 32GB

Data:
GPRS: Yes
EDGE: Yes
3G: HSDPA 14.4Mbps, 5.76Mbps HSUPA
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, dual-band
Bluetooth: v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
USB:  v2.0 microUSB

Camera:
Primary: 5 MP, 2592?1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
Features: Geo-tagging, face detection, image stabilization
Video: Yes, 720p

Features:
OS: BlackBerry OS 7.0
CPU: 1.2 GHz processor, Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset
Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
Browser: HTML
Games: Yes + downloadable
Color: Black
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- NFC support
- MP3/eAAC + / Flac / WAV player
- MP4/H.263/H.264 player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo / dial
- Predictive text input

Battery: 
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
- Stand-by: Up to 348 h
- Talk time: Up to 5 h 30 min

Trust Naija peeps, they are waiting for it already. But before buying this phone, why not ask yourself these questions below.

You can now post your ads free right from Facebook onto the dealfish site.

To do so, Visit their facebook page,

Just click on the fourth icon at the Tabs section on the left hand side of this page ”Use Dealfish on Facebook” . Once posted, it would appear on the dealfish page after it’s moderated.

Dealfish is an online classified ad website which enables users to buy and sell goods, post and find employment and property throughout Africa and worldwide.

Dreams start off small, some die while others grow, but for a dream to become a reality it takes more than just dreaming, but the willpower to take actions that move mountains and that is how the IROKOTV dream became a reality…

We are proud to announce to the world, and to you our viewers, that 54 days old “IROKOTV”  has just passed the 100,000 viewers milestone, and it’s time for celebration…

From those that brought you Nollywoodlove and Yorubalove on YouTube came IROKOTV; a Super-Premium online location for the best of Nollywood…

As we celebrate this milestone, join us on a journey as we navigate through the website.

Welcome to the Homepage.

To fully enjoy all the site has to offer, you will need to” sign up” and you can do this through your Facebook, twitter or the signup form on the homepage. You can use the “search box” at the top right corner of the page to find everything the website has to offer, from your movie stars to the different movies. At the top left corner, you will find two dropdown menus; “Movies” and “Actors”, which you simply click on to see all the movie genres and stars in the movies on the website. Going down to the bottom of the page, you can check out what everyone is watching, in our “Most Popular” section and just below that, we have the “Without Registration” section where you can watch movies without filling the sign up form.

Every movie comes with a synopsis/plot summary, and also a cast list and by simply moving your mouse cursor on a movie; you can read a summary of the movie, and also see the cast in the movie

Each movie has a comment sidebar, where viewers can drop their comments on the movies, the stars and everything else they enjoyed about the movie.

Join today to check out your favorite stars, watch the best movies, and have a unique all round experience

Like us on www.facebook.com/irokotv

Follow us on www.twitter.com/irokotv

www.irokotv.com

What did the World Wide Web look like in 2011? Royal Pingdom has rounded up some stats that paint a picture of just what happened on the Internet last year.

In 2011, there were 3.146 billion email accounts across the globe, Royal Pingdom said, citing an email statisticsreport from tech research firm the Radicati Group.

Despite the popularity of free email services like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, Royal Pingdom (viaCampaignMonitor) pointed out that Outlook was the most popular email client. CampaignMonitor found that Outlook accounts for more than a quarter (27.62 percent) of all clients, while Hotmail took about 12 percent, Apple Mail had 11 percent, Yahoo was just under 10 percent (9.54 percent), and Gmail comprised 7 percent.

Hotmail remained the largest email service in the world, however, with 360 million users, Royal Pingdom said.

Did you feel overwhelmed by email last year? Royal Pingdom said the average corporate user sent and received 112 emails every day in 2011. It added that 19 percent of corporate emails delivered were spam, in spite of filters.

Worldwide, the spam rate was much higher, at 71 percent, Royal Pingdom said.

In 2011, email also celebrated its 40th birthday; the very first email was sent in 1971.

This article is a classic, the details, the stats, I had to re-post it on biztechie.

By Leslie Horn Via Pcmag

The number of Web sites also climbed to 555 million by December, with 300 million new sites added in 2011.

Royal Pingdom also gave a breakdown of the wider Internet population, which hit 2.1 billion last year, according to Internet World Stats. Most of those users were in Asia (922 million), while about half were in Europe (476.2 million), and 271.1 million where in North America.

The site also said Internet penetration in China reached 36.3 percent. In fact, earlier this week a report from the government run China Internet Network Information Center said the number of Internet users in the country has hit 513 million.

Royal Pingdom also posted some facts about social networking. It said that Facebook grew to more than 800 million users by December, with 200 million added in 2011. A recent estimate from iCrossing predicted that Facebook could be one billion members strong by August.

Additionally, Royal Pingdom said Twitter now has 225 million accounts, 100 million of which were active, sending 250 million tweets each day.

Royal Pingdom also covered video, noting that there were one trillion playbacks on YouTube alone last year.

It’s nice to know that CP-Africa will be interviewing him (thumbs up CP-Africa)

Cp-Africa

CP-Africa will be interviewing former CNN West Africa Correspondent and Founder of Battabox.com, Christian Purefoy on his new startup and the just concluded fuel subsidy removal protests in Nigeria. Throughout last week, Battabox streamed the protest live from Ojota, Lagos. Nigerians also uploaded videos from the protest to the site.

CP-Africa’s interview with Christian Purefoy will focus on:

1. His new startup and his reasons for starting it

2. His perspective on the just concluded protests in Nigeria

3. His experience on covering West Africa for CNN

Interested CP-Africa readers should send any questions they may have for him to publisher@cp-africa.com.

Please title your e-mail as: Christian Purefoy on CP-Africa

The most insightful and most pertinent questions will be selected and posed during the interview which will be conducted live via Google + Hangout.

By Mat Honan, Gizmodo

I just switched the default search engine in my browser from Google to Bing. And if you care about working efficiently, or getting the right results when you search, then maybe you should too. Don’t laugh!

Google changed the way search works this week. It deeply integrated Google+ into search results. It’s ostensibly meant to deliver more personalized results.

But it pulls those personalized results largely from Google services—Google+, Picasa, YouTube. Search for a restaurant, and instead of its Yelp page, the top result might be someone you know discussing it on Google Plus. Over at SearchEngineland, Danny Sullivan has compiled a series of damning examples of the ways Google’s new interface promotes Plus over relevancy. Long story short: It’s a huge step backwards.

A lot of people are crying foul, and even “anti-trust.” Sure, it does seem pretty transparently designed to drive traffic and users to Google Plus, and to make Google Plus brand pages the go-to place for a company’s social media presence. And it’s true that results from Facebook and Twitter in particular have been noticeably kicked down.

But I didn’t switch for political reasons, or as an act of protest. I don’t care if Google hurts Twitter or Facebook—or even Friendster for that matter. Boo-hoo. I only care if it hurts me. And this does. Google broke itself.

For years, Google Search has been the highest quality web product I’ve ever used. It has remained consistently essential as an information-delivery mechanism. I typically hit it hundreds of times a day—on my phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. But with one update it wiped out all those years of loyalty and goodwill it had built up.

Sure, I can opt out of social results with a click—but as with all things I don’t want to have to opt out. I don’t want to have to make that extra click. I want to enter a query, and have the most relevant results returned to me as quickly as possible. (And if Google genuinely doesn’t think it’s a big deal for people to take the extra step oft opting out, why has it focused so relentlessly on optimizing speed for so many years?)

The great thing is, of course, you can just switch. Hit up your browser preferences, and swap your default to Bing. I know, I know, but yes I’m serious. Sure, Bing had a rocky start. But if you haven’t seen it recently it’s worth another look. It has a super clean interface. It’s fast. And operators work the way you expect them to. Best of all it’s relevant.

In short, it’s a lot like Google. Not the Google of today, but the Google you fell in love with, the one that put your search results above its financial ones. The Google that delivered.

This post originally appeared at Gizmodo.

According to Co-Founder Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia will be going dark for 24 hours on Wednesday to protest against the the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Jimmy Wales tweeted

“This is going to be wow,” reads one tweet. “I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!”

25 million daily visitors will be affected according to Wales (the total number of English Visitors). Wikipedia has over 420m unique monthly visitors, and there are over 20 million articles on Wikipedia across almost 300 languages.

Visitors within the blackout period will be greeted with a screen explaining Wikipedia’s stance on the bill and information on how to take action against SOPA. – Exactly how Wales hope Wikipedia will melt phones. Along with Reddit, Wikipedia joins huge Internet names like WordPress, Mozilla, and all of the Cheezburger properties in Wednesday’s “black out” protest.

The Act, if passed, endangers the future of Internet content sites by holding them directly accountable for content placed on them. That way, the government will control the flow of information and a lot of web based businesses will be affected.

Recently, I’ve been having a weird feeling about Google’s business antics, In the past, Google has always been one of the most trusted brand worldwide but that has changed of late. Is it their constant feud with facebook or the recent change in search settings (In a bid to force Google Plus on internet users) or when they paid bloggers to write posts in praise of Google Chrome which is against their own TOS.

I am not saying they are guilty or Evil but they are becoming suspicious. Now, it was discovered that Google has been secretly playing dirty in Africa after an investigative post by its major competitor in Kenya was published today.

Post by Stefan Magdalinski Via mocality

I’m very proud of the business that we’ve created here at Mocality, but I’m especially proud of two things:

1. Our crowdsourcing program. When we started this business, we knew that (unlike in the UK or US, where you can just kickstart your directory business with a DVD of business data bought from a commercial supplier), if we wanted a comprehensive database of Kenyan business, we would have to build it ourselves. We knew also that if we wanted to build the business quickly, we’d have to engage a lot of Kenyans to help us. So we built our crowd program that utilises M-PESA (Kenya’s ubiquitous Mobile Money system) to reward any Kenyan with a mobile phone who contributes entries to our database, once those entries have been validated by our team. Over two years, we’ve paid out Ksh. 11m (over $100,000) to thousands of individuals, and we have built Kenya’s most comprehensive directory, with over 170,000 verified listings. Personally, I regard the program as one of THE highlights of my 18 year career on the internet.
2. From day 1, we aimed to target all Kenyan businesses, irrespective of size. As a result, for about 2/3rds of our listed businesses, Mocality is their first step onto the web. That’s about 100,000 businesses that Mocality has brought online.

Please bear these two facts in mind as you read what follows.

Our database IS our business, and we protect and tend it very carefully. We spot and block automated attacks, amongst other measures. We regularly contact our business owners, to help them keep their records up-to-date, and they are welcome to contact our call centre team for help whenever they need it.

In September, Google launched Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO). Whilst we saw aspects of their program that were competitive, we welcomed the initiative, as Kenya still has enough growth in it that every new entrant helps the overall market. We are also confident enough in our product, our local team, and our deep local commitment that we believe we can hold our own against any competition, playing fair.

Shortly after that launch, we started receiving some odd calls. One or two business owners were clearly getting confused because they wanted help with their website, and we don’t currently offer websites, only a listing. Initially, we didn’t think much of it, but the confusing calls continued through November.

THE FORENSIC ANALYSIS

What follows is necessarily a little technical. I’ve tried to make it as clear as I can, but two definitions may help the lay reader:

• IP Address – the numerical id by which computers identify themselves online.
• User-Agent - When a browser requests a page from a webserver, it tells the server what make, model, and version of browser it is, so that the webserver can serve content tailored to that browser’s capabilities. Webservers keep a log of both these details for every page requested, allowing us to do interesting detective work.

If you’re not interested in the technical details, you can always jump straight to the Conclusion.

Read the Rest Here