Computer Village Magazine by CV Mag

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EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1

THE INDEPENDENT BUYER’S GUIDE & SOLUTIONS

DAARSAT:

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW

BEAUTIFUL NUBIA ON MP3

LG SCARLET

FACEBOOK:

NIGERIA'S FAVORITE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE - SPECIAL"

TOTAL REVIEW:

SAMSUNG i900 OMNIA NOKIA E71

TECH SECURITY: HOME

OFFICE DELIVERY

WINXP VS VISTA

WHAT DO YOU NEED AN INTERNET CONNECTION FOR?

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ABOUT COMPUTERVILLAGE-MAG.COM

omputervillage-mag.com is published by Pro-Active Vision Nigeria LTD, a company incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 1990, and the company is limited by shares.

Computervillage-mag.com helps ICT users plan, buy and integrate the technologies that keep them and their companies ahead of competition. We distinguish ourselves from our competitors through comprehensive review of newest and hottest product which help you to decide what to buy, where to buy and how to get the most out of your technology while we also give you a FREE opportunity to recycle your old mobile phone, laptops etc for a new one.

Who are we? We're innovators, business designers and project managers; we work with our clients to produce big results in their businesses. Yet, we're also original thinkers and entrepreneurs who create new business models in partnership with our clients. Pro-Active Vision offers you a wide range of business support service, concepts solution and ideas, geared at giving your brands the necessary strategic enhancements for visibility. We believe success is built on relationships that are founded on trust. It works because of our coordination of action and vision. At Pro-Active Vision, we measure our progress in several ways: in how we perform as a company, in the contribution we make to our clients and in how Pro-Active Vision can make an impact on your business and the society at large.

Our Mission Our mission is to meet the informational needs of technology buyers both at work, at home and on the road, to keep readers up to date with educational initiatives across all sectors involved with IT and Home entertainment.

As a value- adding outfit, Pro-Active Vision offers both below the line and above the lines services, some of our ideas of core competence include Corporate Logo Creation, Designs and Print Productions of Diaries, Calendars, Annual Report and Accounts, Almanacs, Posters, Banners, Flyer & Magazines.

Our Vision To evolve a civilized business transaction with the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Our holistic approach to brand enhancement led us to the launching of a new business solution tag Computervillage-mag.com which makes us an indispensable partner in your organization's journey to the utopian brand Eldora do. Computervillage-mag.com Computervillage-mag.com is an interactive, independent buyer's guide and solutions magazine, we show you the exciting possibilities of how technology can enhance and enrich your life. With its bi-monthly publication on product reviews, price comparison, technology news, solutions articles, product features and performance, as well as special reports.

As the #1 Independent Buyer's Guide & Solutions, CVM aims to connect manufacturers/distributors/suppliers and buyers together with price comparison. Home/office delivery + free delivery service shall evolve as a matter of strategy and cooperation from all subscribers.

We hope youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll enjoy this issue. Please send comments, ideas or opinions via: Feedback@computervillage-mag.com or SMS Only : 0805 866 6606 Advert Hotlines: (0) 706 242 9510, 1 765 8610 Subscriptions info@computervillage-mag.com (0) 806 298 6601, 702 850 7827 http://www.computervillage-mag.com Contact Us: @ #51, Shipeolu Street (Opp. Mr. Biggs) Palm groove, Lagos-Nigeria.

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contents ICT NEWS News Facts and figures

THE NAIJA GAMER OVERVIEW: The average Naija gamer is forced to own too many pirated copies. In my experience, the fact that pirated game software is cheap doesn't always mean it's so good. FIFA 09: The price of new, for a patch. HOME SCHOOLED IS NO SCHOOL- A TRUE LIFE STORY: So you're a heavyweight champion at home, whooping digital butts with a tiring ease in all games, you name it, beat 'em up's, shoot 'em up's, score 'em all, stick 'em up's, outrun 'em all e.t.c.

COMPUTERS & SOLUTION Nigerians and indigenous Manufacturers: It is a shame that Nigerians keep building foreign economies while we turn our back on Made in Nigeria brands (not without reason in a few cases). My Super Computer: who needs a super computer? Well, this is a question of utility... professionals who have to edit huge videos, cut them, rework angles, match sound tracks, edit audio or anyone who enjoys the pleasures of strikingly superb looking games, played “as they were meant to be played”, or anyone who wants to see the best quality their new flat screen High Definition TV can offer them in home entertainment. Tech Security: Buying new computers meant you got bugged down with it, in fact there is not enough room in this section to moan about the ills of Windows Vista.

MOBILE PHONES Overview: According to expert, it is said that “Nigerians' thirst for mobile phones will continue to grow in the next few years. A survey from one of the world's largest market research outfits, also forecast a 34 per cent growth in subscriber base from the current 52.9 million to 70.9 million in 2010.” Nokia E71: Mobile Business, slimmer and pocket-friendly, more powerful and a whole lot more. SAMSUNG i900: Glossy looks, great feature-pack and resourceful software solution are best words to describe i900 OMNIA.

ART & CULTURE MUSICIAN OF THE MONTH:

Beautiful Nubia

HOME ENTERTAINMENT DAARSAT: DAAR Communication did not only raise the bar for the competition but set another standard in Africa and in the industry with its IT use.

Internet Connectivity:In this 21st century the Internet is somewhat indispensable when it comes to use in too many areas. For example, when it comes to keeping in touch with friends and family – I can't imagine the World without facebook, it would literally feel like the world without phones, which I remember too well.

BIO: Segun Akinlolu (Beautiful Nubia) was born in 1968 in Ibadan, Nigeria; he studied veterinary medicine for six years at the University of Ibadan after which he worked as a veterinary doctor for several years in Lagos, Nigeria before finally becoming a full-time musician in 2000.

LG SCARLET: It is a full HD (High Definition), 1080/24fps TV equipped with a major store of inputs that include a set of component video inputs, VGA, USB and four HDMI inputs. Other clever technology highlights include LG’s Intelligent Eye system that adjusts the backlight to suit the light levels in your room.

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G lo b a lv illa g e Customer Service

Editor'sViewpoint

Asst.editor/Account manager Omotalade Omolola Senior-editor/webcontent Tolulope Akinsanya Contributing Editors Gariokwu Lemi Olatunji Oke Adeniran Ogini Research Correspondent Babangida B. Harrison Classified Sales exec. Olaseni Rahmon Design & Production Design: Adeniyi Ayelabowo Illustration: Kolawole Oyegunle Circulation & Distributions Kazeem A. Bisiriyu

Therefore, CVM is NOT restricted to any market segment or area but represents the entire Nigeria with focus on maximizing IT investment and Aligning IT with Business Goals. Integration of ICT in education, entertainment and youth empowerment shall not be left out while indigenous IT manufacturers shall be endorsed.

Legal Peters Adesoji & co. Advert Hotlines (0) 706 242 9510, 1 765 8610 Subscriptions & Back Issues info@computervillage-mag.com

ICT- as a mantra, is the force behind communication, driving information into its very relevance in all and every echelon of society- your ability to rule ICT, determines your performance in this present world and by rule I mean; to master the skills and tools relevant to your calling! - This is what we at CVM have resolved; to present you with relevant information, not just on ICT thinking but also on its relevant tools, development and technology and how they affect industries world wide.

(0) 806 298 6601, 702

Contact Us @ 51, Shipeolu Street (Opp. Mr. Biggs) Palm groove Lagos, Nigeria. Computer Village Magazine is published bimonthly in Nigeria by:

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While every care has been taken to ensure that the data in this publication are acurate, the publisher cannot accept and hereby disclaim any liability to any party to loss or damage caused by errors or omissions resulting from negligence, accident or any other cause.

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Online subscriptions http://www.computervillage-mag.com

In a nutshell, we are independent in our operations and it is essential to inform you that CVM is an interactive Magazine where everyone is free to make his/her opinion on technology known to the public. We are using this maiden edition to place you on the right track, on an important journey that we hope you will take with us, taking you through the present and future of IT and the benefits you stand to make out of your IT, be it your mobile phone, game or software- just imagine IT. HA! Ha!! That's the way the world goes you know? You either join the train or get left behind or like a few unfortunate ones get knocked off the trail - waiting for the train that is already here and passing. But there is also one thing I will prefer you choose to do. Grab the drivers seat or the rail control man's Job and determine when and where the train would leave from and to- or at least where it would pick you up from. ION UT SOL

ALL PRODUCTS

Editor-in-chief Balogun Babatope .A

We would at this Juncture, state factually that Computer Village Magazine (CVM) represents the global interest. However, it is important to recognize the contributions of the Computer and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN ) for the promotion of IT/ICT in Nigeria. This association must be applauded for their relentless effort towards creating a hub for IT/ICT .

EDITORIAL

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DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRINTERS & SCANNERS SOFTWARE DATA STORAGE DEVICES

VIDEO CAMERA & SURVEILLANCE CAMERA PROJECTORS PC SECURITY HOME ENTERTAINMENT PORTABLE ENTERTAINMENT GAMES GENERAL ACCESSORIES PRICE COMPARISON PRODUCT REVIEW IT/ICT EXPERTS ARTS & CULTURE USED STORE

n an African context, the village is regarded as a place of communal human co-existence which encompasses society and the community. Consequently, Computer Village Magazine (Computervillage-mag.com) is an Independent Buyer's Guide and Solutions. The name has been chosen to enable us symbolize the generality of Nigeria and West Africa with core interest in Information Technology and the integration of Information and Communication Technology in our daily lives.

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EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1, 2008

ICT NEWS BLOGS COMPUTERS & SOLUTIONS

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ICT NEWS ACROSS THE BOARD ... What's on the News? NIGERIA NCC BOSS – Ernest Ndukwe confirms that Nigeria has achieved 80% phone penetration since the year 2000. Ndukwe stated that the Nigerian government remains committed to ICT playing an important role in National development. All this and more, was said at a public lecture held in kaduna and organized by the Northern Nigeria based Arewa Youth Forum. NIGERIA'S GETTING INFILTRATED BY FOREIGN BRANDS said the Managing Director / Chief Executive officer of Omatek computers, Engr. (Mrs) Florence Seriki at the launching of Omatek's 8” notebook for the Nigerian market. The Omatek CEO is slightly worried by the undue compettition of foreign brands, stifling local products. Nigeria's 40 billion naira NigcomSat 1 is missing in orbit and might be on its way back down to earth, what happens to the News that NigcomSat -2 and 3 might soon be launched? The News is, Nigeria seeks a $500million loan to build the new satelites. MTN has sent a team of Engineers to China to search for cheap phones. Those one's that can retail for the equivalent of ten US dollars. Watch out for more N1900 “Huawei” type phones.

AFRICA Zambia Revenue Authority joins the growing list of African collection agencies to introduce e-banking services, thus allowing Zambians to submit tax returns online. Even Mauritius has managed to implement online filing of taxes. Lagos... Ugandan government insists they are still on track to meet 2015 digital migration

FACTS AND FIGURES 1000000+ number of Nigerians on Facebook

152 kbps, actual speed of the Starcomms IZAP if you are outside certain coverage areas

82,150 naira, Cost of new Samsung Omnia at I-Cell

1,999 cost of a cheap phone with visafone

0 number of Nigerian shops on google maps

deadline, the Ugandan Communications Commission insists that although institutional differences might have created a slowdown, Uganda was still at par with its neighbours.

WORLD United States Department of Defense bans the use of disks and USB drives on all computers connected to the US military network. This is followed by the spreading of worms across the network. Other networks that need to be secure probably ought to take note. Nokia led the worlds top 5 mobile phone manufacturers in Helsinki to launch a rating system for chargers allowing consumers to compare and choose more easily, low energy consuming chargers. Intel to launch 8 core proccessor as part of the Nehalem series in 2009. The Nehalem EX would feature an eight way, eight core server design, providing 128 threads of processing power.

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Overview Super computer Tech Security Internet Connections Facebook

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PROUDLY NIGERIA?

OMATEK, ZINOX AND ALLIED Computers - How much do you know about their products? Nigerians and indigenous manufacturers t is a shame that Nigerians keep building foreign economies while we turn our back on Made in Nigeria brands (not without reason in a few cases). We patronize Asian countries with heavy concentration on China and India (not overly unlike even the developed World). The fact is, many Nigerians do not know or are not aware of the fact that all the imported IT/ICT products and Made in Nigeria brands often get their materials from the same sources as their locally made rivals. In a nutshell, the difference between these products is that “Made in Nigeria” is better putting into consideration our environmentpower, durability etc.

According to the Managing Director / CEO of Omatek Computers, Engr. (Mrs.) Florence Seriki at the launch of their latest version 8'' notebook into the Nigerian market. “The notebook which is the latest version is suitable for the Nigerian environment and made for the Nigerian students both in the secondary and tertiary institutions”. It is essential to say that the major difference is the brand name coupled with the fact that too many Nigerians prefer foreign products and services, this strange preference even goes as far as foreign names. We enjoin Nigerians to identify with our country and the good things that come out of Nigeria especially to enhance the development of Information and Communication technology. I have confirmed the durability of the Made in Nigeria laptops/notebooks and I can say authoritatively that the computers share the same standard with foreign brands while they are better than some of the imported ones. This is to say that we should not allow the “foreign computer vendors turn our country into a dumping ground for their products”. The Made in Nigeria PC has the same features and maintain the same standard with computers all over the world.

The Nigerian economy is the second largest in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa which should be an advantage for indigenous manufacturers to dominate other African economies with exportation of Made in Nigeria products. If we Nigerians don't patronize them though, why would other countries? Our population is awesome and remains one of the largest markets for IT in the world and undoubtedly the largest in Africa. It should be said that indigenous manufacturers often do not have their products within the reach of Nigeria's populace, instead they deal overly with corporate organizations forgetting interested but average individuals. It must also be said that foreign computer and hardware importers or manufacturers concentrate more on the Nigerian people, with high focus on advertisement – barely would you read any newspaper without their advert placements. It is imperative to charge the indigenous manufacturers to make their products known to people by spending more on advertisement – at least to be at par with the foreign brands and ensure the easy availability of their brands in the market. One is more likely to see indigenous hardware in banks for instance, than advertisements in the papers. It would also appear that Nigerians only know about Made in Nigeria computers and hardware through newspaper articles and not through advertisements and availability. In conclusion, we hope the indigenous manufacturers will focus more on advertisement so as to reach the people while we implore all buyers to make their findings about Made in Nigeria brands e.g. Omatek, Zinox, Allied and others to make informed decisions.

E-mail us: feedback@computervillage-mag.com and make your opinion known about computers and hardware Made in Nigeria.

EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 07

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my Super Computer

the Dream ho needs a super computer? Well, this is a question of utility... professionals who have to edit huge videos, cut them, rework angles, match sound tracks, edit audio or anyone who enjoys the pleasures of strikingly superb looking games, played “as they were meant to be played”, or anyone who wants to see the best quality their new flat screen High Definition TV can offer them in home entertainment. For all of these people, the Super Computer is now within reach. Far from the days when a super computer meant having a huge mainframe the size of an entire room or hall, the 21st century super computer can seat pretty in the living room, lounge, the bedroom or in the study, along with the rest of your other entertainment widgets.

In this maiden edition, we would be looking at the super CPU (central processing unit or computer box with the CD tray as you might know it), which one can easily acquire “at a price” here in Nigeria. In every edition hence forth, we would have in the spotlight a device, which would totally blow your mind with it's capabilities and probably leave a gaping hole in your pocket. For some of us, we can make it a reality today, for others it is tomorrow's reality and for some others still, it is only that ever evasive Dream. Our super computer in this edition, would be one, which some of us popularly know as a clone. Our reporters have been to a lab where a device of such magnitude can be hatched†. In this edition we would give you a recipe to have that super CPU sitting pretty at your place. A warning though: if you have ever been described as a technophobe please skip the following highlighted parts EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 08

Computer (I'm surprised you are reading a magazine called “ComputerVillage-Mag”). To begin with, you would need to go for the AMD Quad core Processor. The beast with four processors stacked together all working together in sync to bring you up to lightning speeds. Imagine a P4 processor as a little 2 door hatchback, an Intel Dual core Processor as a fairly rugged salon and the AMD quad core as a mighty 4x4 in a race through really rugged terrain, combining the maneuverability of the little hatch back, the resilience and speed of the salon and the strength and low energy consumption of a good 4x4. You've probably had enough of my metaphor, but I hope you get the Picture. We would then need a motherboard to sit our heavy 4x4 processor. For this task you can call on the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI AT X A M D motherboard or simply just ask for the ASUS motherboard that supports your AMD QUAD core processor. This motherboard has all the strength to carry along your monster of a processor. In fact, it comes with a lot of add on features that would beat down a lot of the features one would find on the average PC, in the area of it's on board sound card, quadruple 2.0 USB ports (without the possible extensions) and networking capabilities. On this motherboard you can then add your two, 1 gigabyte DDR2 RAM cards (the motherboard supports up to 2gigabytes per slot but good luck with finding that at a near decent price). Add Seagate's 1 Terabyte hard drive ( about one thousand gigabytes), Liteon's DVD writer – DVD/CD RW, a PCI TV card, a PCI WiFi card, Nvidia's Geforce 1gb PCIExpress graphics card and finally house it in a shell worthy of all this value.

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my Super Computer

the Dream

Behold, the ASUS VENTO 3600, described in some reviews as “big, bad and black” - though it comes in several colours (Http://www.futurelooks.com/). Seriously though, why buy such a monster? Well simple, because its one of the few casings that can power the sort of monstrosities we have packed into our super computer. It would not only power it but it will also stop it from over heating with its superbly designed ventilation system. In addition, the aesthetics command us to have it, as it would look just beautiful where ever you put it. Just imagine it in your living room, pardon my “techie” slang but it would look totally “k3w1”. If you are not really technologically inclined and read through the highlighted bit, congratulations on coming this far. I promise that in future editions I would endeavor to cut out as much of the technical details as possible. Here's the interesting part, when you have a super computer this well equipped what can you do with it? Whatever your heart desires I say... but imagine this. Imagine the Vento 3600 sitting in the middle of your living room. Just below the 42inch plasma screen HD ready TV. You have hidden away your satellite dish's PVR decoder, and the Logitek wireless keyboard and mouse. The CPU would handle all your DVD playing and reaping needs, you can browse the Internet from your favourite couch – better still sit at home and watch TV and tell the family you are working (ALT + TAB switches to the excel sheet, get it), if you're into video editing though you can achieve a lot from the comfort of your couch, and if you are a gamer... (sighs). How about playing all the latest games at a more than decent resolution of 1240x1024 pixels

Computer and over seventy frames per second. That is slightly more frames per second than you'd get on actual TV, beating down even the graphics that the PS3 can deliver – yes, I'm not kidding. The sound card would deliver fully cinematic 5.1 digital Dolby surround while the 1gigabyte Geforce graphics card would deliver nothing short of a truly High Definition TV experience. The connections; simple, the super computer is connected to your Flat screen TV on one of the AV channels, audio is delivered to either your TV or sound system from the computer, the Wifi card connects the computer to your laptop and other Internet enabled devices. The operating system on your super computer? Windows Vista Home Edition or professional as the case maybe, it would operate smoothly like a vivid dream. A very important disclaimer though, although I would really love your feedback ( e m a i l m e : tolu@computervillagemag.com), please don't say I or the magazine led you to ruin, on your attempt to put together a dream computer. Do get a professional to do the job, we only aim for you to ask for the best and then better. System Specs at a glance AMD QUAD CORE Processor 2.3Ghz ASUS A8N-SLI Premium 9392 Gigabytes of RAM Seagate's 1 Terabyte SATA Hard drivenNvidia Ge force 1Gb Graphics card ASUS VENTO ATX CasingTV card WiFi Card E-mail us: feedback@computervillage-mag.com

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Tech Security

WE LOVE YOU XP – BUT WE HAVE TO LEAVE YOU...

ow a lot of us are quite bitter about the several inefficiencies of Windows Vista and the fact that Microsoft even had the audacity to release what many of us think should have remained a beta version to the world. Buying new computers meant you got bugged down with it, in fact there is not enough room in this section to moan about the ills of Windows Vista.

However, just the other day I discovered a major security flaw in my Windows XP service pack 2. Did you know that the fact that you have placed a password on your XP to prevent just anyone from gaining access to your important information is at best something of a... yes that what they call it, “goat preventive measure”. The fact that you start your computer and before you can even see the start button it asks you to put that really complicated password you worked up so no one would guess does not mean your information is safe. In fact, I am sure at least some people would be startled with how easy it is to get past the password in Windows XP service pack 2. Have you ever tried to enter your password in Windows XP only for it to seem like you have totally forgotten your password? Well, if this has ever happened to you then you might have been compromised. The truth is, to copy all the information on your EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 10

hard disk if you run Windows XP would be a breeze for anyone who is discerning enough. The person would have to do very little to compromise all that is on your computer. A portable hard drive would have all your information in less than twenty minutes. Windows Vista however, with all its flaws is one of the most secure operating systems ever built by Microsoft, if anything at all, it might be a little bit of an overkill on the part of Microsoft, but when all is said and done, when it comes to security... you should be glad you have Vista (there are a bucket load of alternatives) and not XP if that's your case. E-mail us: Feedback@computervillage-mag.com

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INTERNET CONNECTIONS IN NIGERIA VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY

hat do you need an Internet connection for?

If you have access to a computer or modern mobile phone then this question should at some point pop up. My personal answer to the question, st “everything”. In this 21 century the Internet is somewhat indispensable when it comes to use in too many areas. For example, when it comes to keeping in touch with friends and family I can't imagine the World without facebook, it would literally feel like the world without phones, which I remember too well. If you're not on facebook yet then at least you must have felt the joys of email or love the greatness of the infinitesimal amount of information on google. For the more advanced users, the Internet is indispensable in networking of computers or offices, uploading and viewing of online videos and so much more.

In this particular edition though, the goal is to make a recommendation for those who only use the Internet to check their e-mail addresses (for example mutiuwalejames@yahoo.com). If all you do on the Internet is check your email and send e-mail, with all due respect if you are paying over ten thousand Naira for an Internet connection for yourself and maybe the wife who only checks her e-mail too, you are certainly overpaying. In fact, I can bet you are also heavily under utilizing your Internet connection. Except you have a “router” (the box thing they say allows you to connect to your laptop without wires) and share the connection with your neighbours then hopefully there's some young person or people

around the corner enjoying the great “bandwidth” - If this is the case then you would probably be having trouble checking your email. In that case, do make sure you remember to ask the Tech guy or lady to install the router with a WEP key or better still just make sure your WiFi is secure. Back to the issue at hand though, what would you actually be needing if you're paying a bit over ten thousand naira (NGN10,000) too much? SMALL USE - SMALL BUT MIGHTY INTERNET Ye s , a n y I n t e r n e t connection that costs above ten thousand (NGN10,000) naira is superfluous to the needs of any e-mail checking Internet user. Have you considered a decent dial up CDMA connection? These things are quite well priced and in fact, you would have a swell time checking your e-mail without any trouble (at least for the most part) . This reviewer has used most of Nigeria's major CDMA Internet providers and thus has a verdict to pass on them, dear consumers. To be sincere, I reckon I should start from the worst and work my way up to the best. Multilinks was once the leader when it came to CDMA Internet provision, whether it was their innovative ways (e.g in providing true pay as you go Internet), their efficiency or a lack of solid competition that made them look so good a while back is a matter of contention. However, todays reality sees Multilinks behind those behind at least in the eyes of this user. As of the moment while I write this article, this CDMA “Internet” provider's EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 11

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website is not accessible. Their customer care lines are impossible to reach (from a Multilinks phone and otherwise) and there are incredible queues at their Victoria Island office (at least when last I was there). To make matters worse, while a bunch of their competitors would have at least 105 kilobytes per second as the speed whenever one is connected (look in the bottom corner and the flashing monitors if you use a CDMA) when last my Multilinks CDMA connection worked it was reading a paltry 52 kilobytes per second, to make matters worse its a pretty unreliable connection. In fact, as of now, since I was out of the country for over three months, it has stopped working and the box (I have the phone box) is pretty useless, apart from keeping up my â&#x20AC;&#x153;workâ&#x20AC;? table's appearance. Thanks to Multilinks appalling customer service, it's impossible to get my Internet connection back on track. I sincerely hope Multilinks is like the proverbial ram (agbo) that has taken a step back, only to come back with a lot more power and blow our minds away. Now on to more positive things, w e l c o m e STARCOMMS into the picture, if anything at all they have a high standard of customer care. They are accessible to their users, often helpful and never too cock y to apologize. Their CDMA connectio ns are pretty good as well. There might be slight delays (two days to two weeks) in getting your Internet connections active but still the wait would often be worth it. The speed of the Internet connection is quite good and checking your mail, yahoo, live or gmail is pretty easy and achievable. There seems to be some peak periods though and if you have 24 hour access you should probably steer clear of such periods. Late evenings in the weekends and 9pm to about 10.30pm on weekdays. Apart from this few glitches, Starcomms delivers a pretty sweet deal especially when it comes to the cost of the whole thing. You can get a Starcomms CDMA phone for as little as nine EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 12

thousand (NGN9,000) naira (give or take about five hundred naira), in fact as at November if you buy one of these phones you get 50 hours free. For those that only check email, I would recommend the five thousand naira (NGN5000.00 = 100 hours) hundred hours plan, which gives you the freedom to check your e-mail anytime of day ( as soon as you start trying to chat via webcam or something, you might want to get a new Internet connection check this section of CVM for recommendations) and yes it is now compatible with Vista. There's one more downside to Starcomms sweet deals though, they seem to want to force everyone to buy their Huawei phones for CDMA access or a more expensive phone. The cheap trusty Nokias have all but disappeared from Starcomms stores and dealerships. This is a bit of a shame since one can't even begin to compare the durability of a Nokia phone to that of those Huawei things. I have a Huawei phone and a Nokia 1120 phone, both Starcomms, they have both fallen into the toilet... the Huawei was rescued just in time but ever since the keypads number 4 has stopped working, while my Nokia grows from strength to strength. The Nokia has even been run over once by my Nissan Sunny in the sand, it has been thrown in a moment of despair but yet it grows from strength to strength. Starcomms is hiding away their Nokia's while Visafone is not. The verdict? Starcomms is a great choice for everyday checking of e-mails but Visafone has some great offers which you should check out in our next edition. STARCOMMS http://www.starcomms.com/d_cdma.php OUR VERDICT: Multilinks http://www.multilinks.com OUR VERDICT:

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NIGERIANS ON THE INTERNET “WHERE DEM DAY?”

orget all the negative naija PR but when the bulk of Nigerian's hit the Internet where do they go? No question about it, a great deal of them are busy on Facebook. Yours truly has a face book profile, CVM has a group ( Search for us, Computer Village Mag) and thousands if not millions hit face book dailly.

If you've not heard of the phenomenon then I'm slightly worried, oh we ll, it's our job to fill you in.It's tough in this day and age not to know about the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winning social network, Facebook. Facebook is a social network site that started out strictly for college students and was available by invitation only. Now, it is a cultural phenomenon. Second in users only to MySpace, Facebook has taken hold as the next big thing in social networking. The network is made up of hundreds of separate networks based around schools, businesses and regions. Although registration is now open to the public, the site still caters to a college and high school demography focusing on networking through groups and social activism. Profiles allow users to post pictures, comments, blogs and apps. Additionally, it has some of the best privacy options on the Internet. We felt that Facebook really encouraged using the site to foster relationships with people you already know, or friends of friends. The only thing we feel keeping Facebook out of the #1 spot is the lack of customization options. However, most users like the design and uniform feel of the site the way it is. Choosing between MySpace and Facebook is really a matter of preference; it depends on where your friends are and your interface preference. Facebook's website design is straightforward; it has few graphics or decoration, but they managed to create a uniform utilitarian interface that most users adore. Although you

can't customize skins or change your color scheme, you can rearrange the position of some of your information boxes on your profile by simply dragging and dropping them to other spots on the screen. Unlike MySpace, your Facebook backend looks exactly like what others see on the site when they look at your profile. You see what they will see. When you register, your location and/or school become your first “networks,” from there you can search for others in your network looking for friends or colleagues. Once you've found someone you want to connect with, send them a message, see a list of their friends and invite them into your network of friends. Share photos, notes and news feeds. Your friends can also post comments on your profile wall. Facebook apps are probably the most appealing aspect of the site. One of the first social networking sites to incorporate third-party applications into the system; you have a variety of options to choose from. You can add quizzes, support tags, feeds and more. Some other interesting aspects to Facebook profiles are the automatic linking and News Feed. The automatic linking happens when you place a specific noun in your interest or education section. The link will direct you to others that also have the same interests written down or school selected. It's not a perfect science, but kind of fun to see which other members share your music, movie or book selections. The News Feeds work like mini spies. If you subscribe to someone's feed or if you are subscribed, your friends can see what music you are listening to, the website you are on or what you've just bought on Amazon. Security: Users must be at least 13 years old to register with Facebook. In their Terms of Service agreement, Facebook states that they do not allow offensive content such as sexually charged language and explicit photos; however, they also state that it is not their responsibility to closely monitor the content on their website. They encourage members to EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 13

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report content they find offensive, Facebook provides a “report this person” link on all profile pages. Facebook has some of the most specific and custom privacy setting of all the services we reviewed. In addition to making your entire profile private you can select which section of your profile you would like displayed and to whom. For example, your Wall can be open to everyone, but your photographs can be set to only display to your friends or friends of friends. The same is true for your personal information, education, work and contact information. However, we felt a little uncomfortable that your screen name and email address were defaulted to automatically display instead to default to hide. Facebook also allows you to block individual users, report spam and report profile abuse. Additionally, you cannot browse through the Facebook database without registering. Networking Features: Facebook's bread and butter are their groups. Much like college campuses create groups, so does Facebook. You can join your favorite band, political candidate and local organizations. They have more than 500 groups in 23 categories. Facebook has really ramped up its networking features. Before it used to be just a simple place for people with similar interests to, well, network. Now, they are filling it up with additional options like apps, and instant messaging, forums, photo tagging and more. Facebook also allows you to send whole photo albums to friends even if they are not members of the Facebook community. Recently they've put more emphasis on additional features like uploading personal videos and expanding the marketplace. We also found an app for Facebook Mobile, a mobile version of Facebook that can be accessed on your phone. Search: You can't search or browse Facebook's database without becoming a registered user. You must join at least one network to browse or search for people. Click on “Join a Network” and choose a network based on your location or school affiliation. Click on “browse” and a list of random members within your new network are displayed. You can also see a list of groups within your network. Unlike similar sites it is more difficult to just go into a section and “search” for members. You have to look them up through your school or work or city EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 14

connected through links on your profile. Once you start making friends you can then search for more friends through your friends' networks. You can also look for people simply by name, email address or yahoo contact list and Windows Live. Facebook does provide a “discover people you may know section” that collects a listing of people, which according to your profile information you might know or have a connection to. We noticed it usually pulled people from our high school or college. Help/Support: Facebook includes a comprehensive help section complete with 'getting started.' The FAQs are broken down according to the various sections of the site like account settings, privacy and security, applications, advertising, social ads, mobile and more. There is also a section for you to submit suggestions and an entire section dedicated to safety for parents and users. Legitimate Friend Focus: Facebook encourages you to be friends with people outside the Internet and to use their site as a commonality among you and your real life friends. All true the time we had a Facebook account we did not receive one piece of junk mail or phony friend request. We felt completely safe using this service and not once did we get that creepy chat room feeling of strangers looking for age/sex/location or “how you doin'?” Summary: Facebook is a great social networking website that doesn't waste time with extras and eye candy. This is a no-nonsense site with plenty of networking options, and with the open source apps and friendly atmosphere you really can't go wrong. Additionally, this is one site we felt the safest on. We didn't have random strangers approaching us for friendships and it felt like a comfortable gathering site. Choosing between Facebook or MySpace really depends on where your friends are. It's not uncommon for people to have accounts with both services. *Http://social-networking-websitesreview.toptenreviews.com/ Send us feedback@computervillage-mag.com

Overview Review: Samsung i900 OMNIA Nokia E 71

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Mobile Phone- Overview.

T is evident that Nigeria remains the fastest growing market for GSM mobile phone in Africa and one of the fastest in the world with the concentration of many of the world leading manufacturers of mobile phones in Nigeria. According to experts, it is said that “Nigerians' thirst for mobile phones will continue to grow in the next few years. A survey from one of the world's largest market research outfits, also forecast a 34 per cent growth in subscriber base from the current 52.9 million to 70.9 million in 2010.” http//www.researchandmarkets.com also projected that the level of wireless penetration in the country will increase from 35.8 per cent this year to 45.4 per cent in 2010. On competition, the report forecast that MTN, the largest operator in the country, will sustain the leadership with a market share of 43.5 per cent in 2010, followed by Zain (33 per cent) and Globacom (20 per cent). "We expect the competitive environment in the Nigerian wireless market to be stable over the next few years with number two player Zain and number three player Globacom serving EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 16

approximately 33 per cent and 20 per cent of total subscribers respectively," stated by the report. On profitability, the report projected that MTN will receive the highest Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of $ 14.57 and 52.8 per cent Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) margin in 2010 whereas ZAIN will have ARPU of $ 8.06 and 39.9 per cent EBITDA margin. The GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications) revolution began in August 2001 and changed the face of Information and Communications Technology in Nigeria. It is imperative to say that emergence of GSM has led to the rapid development of IT Investment and the integration of IT to business goals. This development has placed Nigeria a step above many African countries as the “Giant of Africa”. Our market is regarded as “one of the fastest growing GSM mobile phone markets in the world” Statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed that there were just about 450,000 working lines from NITEL

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in 2001, by August 2004, the GSM operators recorded over seven million subscribers. The nation recorded an increase in the number of active phone subscribers to a total 53.33 million at the end of June this year. The latest figures by the Nigeria Communications Commission show an increase of more than two million over the 49.6 million recorded at the end of May. The teledensity ratio increased to 38.09 percent from 35.43 at the end of May. At the end of the second quarter, there were 2.11

million mobile CDMA customers, 4.1 percent of the total. A year earlier, there were just 0.22 million, 0.6 percent of the total. The number of active mobile GSM lines rose to 49.62 million from 43.79 million in March, and the fixed-line market grew to 1.60 million users in June from 1.55 million three months earlier. In a nutshell, growth in Nigeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobile phone users has brought about many multinational organizations moving their corporate headquarters to Nigeria.

Mobile Phone- Overview.

Review

Samsung I900 Omnia -100% Review. Key features: Quad-band GSM support 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS 624MHz Marvell PXA312 CPU and 128 MB RAM 3.2" 65K-color touch screen with resolution of 240 x 400 pixels 5 mega pixel auto focus camera with wide dynamic range mode, face tracking, smile detection, geotagging 8 to 16 GB of storage memory, microSD expansion Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS Wi-Fi Stereo Bluetooth and USB connectivity FM radio with RDS Optical joystick with virtual mouse functionality Built-in accelerometer for auto screen rotation and call muting TV-out Firm build and great finish

Introduction ou must have observed series of colored adverts placed on daily newspapers introducing the new Samsung i900 Omnia. We believe Samsung must have spent fortune on adverts just to stamp their new Omnia impression on the minds of their loyal customers and buyers in general.

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Glossy design and slim body Nice battery life Fast response and performance Excellent thumb-optimized software package Thumbable virtual QWERTY keyboard with optional landscape mode Touch Wiz UI DivX video support right out of the box Above average audio quality Headset comes with a 3.5mm audio jack Main disadvantages: Poor sunlight legibility Memory card not hot-swappable Non-standard display resolution No dedicated 3D accelerator Non-standard USB port Web browser lacks real Flash support

CVM considers it obligatory to review the latest Samsung i900 Omnia for potential buyers and the public. Glossy looks, great feature-pack and resourceful software solution are the best words to describe i900 Omnia. No wonder it holds the crowd hooked merely from its adverts. CVM confirmed through its research that the latest Samsung is the first five mega pixel Windows Mobile camera phone

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already in the Nigerian market. We are glad to welcome i900 Omnia to the Nigerian market, in which samsung itself has been a major competitor. After all said let's go there to see what the latest Samsung phone has for users. It truly is a great achievement for Samsung to have a gadget fit to compete with the likes of Apple iPhone 3G and others. In fact, it has a lot of effects in common with the iPhone - the full Touch UI, the nice multimedia capabilities and the superior web browsing experience. We have already put Omnia to test and we do hope however that this review will bring you a little closer to deciding your loyalty. Some of you must have gone through different articles and adverts on Omnia and might be probably wondering if this review is worth your time. Well, we have put a devoted effort to make it worth it. So if we've convinced you enough, take a glimpse of i900 Omnia and it accessories. Unboxing the Samsung i900 Omnia Samsung i900 Omnia comes in well looking medium-sized package. Its contents cover all the basics. A DC charger, a CD with the required software for PC synchronization and a bunch of manuals. The stylus dongle is also included and it's almost identical to the LG Viewty's in design. And much like with the Viewty, it's meant to dangle on its string tied to the lanyard eyelet. This isn't handy at all, so our guess is most Omnia users will give it up in the end. There is also a hands free, which consists of two parts - a remote and a set of headphones. The remote sports a standard 3.5mm jack, which means that you can change the provided headset with any other set you have at hand. Finally, there are number of ear buds of varying sizes for a comfortable fit of the nicely designed headphones.

Review

Samsung i900 Omnia and it weight The weight of 127 grams isn't much of an accomplishment for a no-keypad device but we guess it's the price to pay for all the superior features on board. Standing at 112 x 56.9 x 12.5 mm, Samsung i900 Omnia is on the heavy side. This is of course mainly in terms of width and height, as the 12.5 mm thickness does sound great to us. In all fairness, it cannot be compared with few others in this respect but the Omnia is still easily pocketable. Design and construction Design wise, the Samsung i900 Omnia doesn't differ that much from most other touch screen handsets. In fact, there isn't much room for designer creativity in this class of devices, so the Omnia is understandably similar to its market rivals as earlier said. On the positive side, we do like the finish of the rear because it looks really classy. At the top of the front panel of the Samsung i900 Omnia we find the earpiece, the ambient light sensor and the secondary video-call camera. C o n t ro v e r s i a l Wi d e QVGA Display Samsung i900 Omnia is equipped with a large 3.2" 65K-color display with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. As with most Pocket PCs, picture quality isn't really impressive. Not that it is too bad either but we've seen Samsung do much better on their feature phones. The display resolution can also be considered somewhat of a problem at times. Wide QVGA might be great for watching widescreen movies, web browsing and viewing photos but it does bring up some compatibility issues. In terms of sunlight legibility, Samsung i900 Omnia is also far from its prime. It's really hard to see anything on the display outdoors on a sunny day, and finding a proper angle for working with the phone is near impossible. This has a particularly negative effect on photography, as you can hardly see the viewfinder at times. EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 19

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Samsung's phonebook The contacts management is usually considered one of the strongest points of Windows Mobile. You have an unlimited contact list, unlimited info fields for each contact and excellent synchronization options. However, the small font and tiny fields make the stylus a must when you are looking up a contact or editing its details. Samsung have chosen to replace the contacts list with a touch optimized application of their own. It's accessible from the Samsung Main Menu and it's rather iPhone-like, or let's say iPhoneinspired. You can scroll the contacts by dragging your thumb across the display or quickly jump to a letter (iPhone way). The contacts list can be easily sorted by memory (Phone or SIM), by Name, company or Category, or you can easily search by gradual typing. The contacts are presented in a rather thumbable way. Only if you want to edit a contact's details, you get transferred to the regular Windows Mobile interface. When editing a contact you have an excess of available info fields - and if by any rare chance, those are not enough, you can always rename some of the existing ones to use as you like. The touch-optimized Phonebook may not be good at editing, but it has a handy delete mode. The usual Windows Mobile phonebook is also available. The only advantage it brings is the Last Call field that appears when you preview a contact. It's quite handy to have the last time you called that person and it's a feature unique to Windows Mobile. Call management The Phone application of the Samsung i900 Omnia offers a large dial pad but probably its most useful feature is the Smart dialing. With Smart dialing you hardly ever need to go to the Contacts list in order to dial a number - just start typing a name or a number and you get all the matching entries from both the contacts list and the calls log. Samsung have gone so far in replicating a regular phone's dial pad, that even a long press on the # key starts the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vibrate only/silent ringingâ&#x20AC;? profile. During a call the Samsung Omnia locks the display until your call is over. To unlock it during a call you need to press the touchpad once. If you don't touch the display within a short while afterwards, it automatically locks again.

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Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also mute an incoming call by simply turning the phone face down on the table. If you turn the Omnia over again, muting gets released and the ringer resumes. As part of our effort to get utmost information on Omnia we measured the loudspeaker performance of the Samsung i900 Omnia and compared it to a few other smart devices. One thing is for sure - you won't miss any incoming calls as the Omnia is loud enough to score the Good mark. The Calls log on Windows Mobile devices offers practically unlimited entries. Much like with the Phonebook, Samsung have created an entirely new Calls Log application which is much more thumb-optimized than the original one. Messaging Samsung's goal at messaging is not as creative as their Contacts or Calls Log applications they use the default Windows Mobile inbox and editors. Interestingly enough, e-mails and SMS on the Omnia share one and the same editor, which is rather uncommon in Windows Mobile. The Xt9 prediction system is there to assist typing but you can switch it off just as easily. Another Samsung touch is the files toolbar, which allows you to attach files in your messages easy as ABC. As of Windows 6.1, users enjoy threaded SMS, so you can be sure you get that feature in the i900 Omnia. The email inbox holds no surprises to experienced Windows Mobile users. You have support for POP3, IMAP and Push Email. Perhaps now is a good time to mention input options on the Samsung i900 Omnia. Samsung have preinstalled three different layouts of a rather thumbable keyboard, since the default Windows Mobile keyboards are fit for stylus use only. The choices include a full QWERTY keyboard, a Blackberry style QW-ER-TY keyboard and a regular phone multi-tap keyboard. Unlike the standard WinMo keypad however, when you hit a number field, you have to manually switch the keyboard to number input. Also, Samsung i900 Omnia definitely wins a point when it comes to typing, thanks to its vibrating touch feedback. Furthermore, since the screen auto rotation feature is available throughout the whole interface, you also benefit from a larger landscape version of all those keyboards in every application. Of course, much like with any other Windows Mobile Pro device, there is support for handwriting character recognition

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so if you wish, you can use the supplied stylus to write directly on the screen. Samsung have decided to extend the touch interface to some of the Windows Mobile system settings. The options of the standard OS are usually displayed with a minute font and small checkboxes or sliders that are not really comfortable to set unless you pick up the stylus. The Samsung Omnia Home screen gives access to the Wireless manager allowing users to turn connectivity options on and off, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. You can also turn on the "Flight" and "Vibrate only". You further have the option to toggle the auto screen rotation and the mouse pointer on and off. The USB connectivity mode (Active Sync or Mass Storage) is also configurable from the Settings tab on the Home screen. The last thing that you can toggle on and off here is the camera LED mode, which doubles as a flashlight. File management and file system performance Samsung i900 Omnia offers generous file storage capacity. The handset comes in two flavors - one with 8GB and another one with 16GB worth of data storage. The Samsung Omnia even has a microSD card slot, which easily works with 4GB and 8GB memory cards. However, the downside o f O m n i a ' s implementation is that the slot is not swappable you have to remove the battery in order to access it. We ran a copy speed test on a Windows XP-based PC paired with the Omnia in USB Mass Storage mode. The Omnia proved rather fast in the Write operation (copying from PC to handset) but was some 30% slower in Read (copying from handset to PC). Here are the results: Samsung i900 Omnia copy performance: ? PC to handset -> 3.9 MB/s

Review

? Handset to PC -> 5.2MB/s Bear in mind that those figures will be lower on a Vista-based PC for some Microsoft-onlyknows-why reason. That's another story entirely and we'd rather stayed out of it. Excellent Image gallery When it comes to image browsing, the Samsung Omnia Media Album is really fast displaying and browsing those 5 mega pixel images full screen. It's actually a full featured file browser that shows only multimedia folder contents. Since its universal (not only photocentric), you can filter the shown files by type image, video, music, and documents Back to image browsing, the Media Album certainly benefits from the auto screen rotation feature. Zooming is as easy as on the Apple iPhone for example. You zoom in and out by simply dragging your thumb up or down the image. The first zoom step is a bit slow, but we are talking 5 mega pixel images here. At this point we are really pleased with the Samsung solution. Music The Samsung Touch Player caters for the music department on the Omnia. You can sort music by album, artist, and genre or you can create custom play lists. Sorting the tracks by album brings the album cover interface. The album covers look nice and large, and can also be displayed full screen while you're listening to music. U n f o r t u n a t e l y, t h e Samsung Touch Player lacks any equalizer presets; shuffle and repeat are the only related options. FM radio is superb The Omnia sports a built-in FM radio and it naturally requires the headset to be plugged-in. The FM radio has an excellent interface, much like the rest of the multimedia players aboard, and is highly touch optimized. And it's packed with pretty much every feature you would need. There are two separate lists for stored stations - they can both store unlimited number EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 21

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of stations. You can also place shortcuts to six favorite radio stations on the main screen. The Radio player can run in the background, automatically pausing during calls, and broadcasts can be easily recorded with rather acceptable audio quality at 128kbps and 44000 kHz. Naturally, there is RDS support. Windows Mobile camera phone, now that's a first The Samsung i900 Omnia packs a really nice 5 mega pixel camera, which produces images with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It comes equipped with auto focus, digital image stabilizer, face recognition, smile detection, and geotagging courtesy of the built-in GPS receiver. The LED flash next to the camera lens completes the tally. The Omnia camera shoots in landscape mode and makes use of the dedicated camera key. It's got an intuitive user interface that makes changing settings on-the-go a breeze. Camera Interface and usability Since the Omnia display has a different aspect ratio than its camera sensor, the viewfinder doesn't take up the whole screen estate. Thus it easily fits two columns of controls on the left and right side of the viewfinder. You can of course opt for a full screen viewfinder, but this would crop the live feed from the sensor to fit the display. The resulting images however have standard resolution and don't come out cropped. The Omnia camera offers several shooting modes (single, continuous, mosaic, panorama and the smile detection one). The smile detection mode makes use of face recognition and in this mode the camera doesn't take a photo as soon you press the shutter all the way down. Instead, it waits for the smiles on all recognized faces in the frame. The Omnia also offers extensive shoot scenes (portrait, landscape, sports, party & indoor, beach & snow, sunset, dusk & down, fall color, night shot, firework, text, show window, candle light, back light). You can also directly control the auto focus (regular, macro and face detection) from a shortcut in your viewfinder. The additional camera settings include selftimer, white balance, color effect, ISO setup (ISO50-800), on-screen gridline and shutter sound (which unfortunately cannot be turned off). And finally, the Omnia offers the proprietary Samsung Wide Dynamic Range setting for shooting high contrast scenes (not really that useful), as well as GPS geotagging. EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 22

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So overall, you get all the goodies of a highend camera phone plus some extras. The Samsung Omnia Panorama mode probably deserves some special attention. Samsung have made shooting panoramic images fully automatic - you're guided along the horizontal axis and images are taken automatically when your framing is just about right. However, the individual images are taken in the meager 320 x 240 pixel resolution. The produced panoramic image is so low-res it ruined it for us. The Omnia panoramic mode allows making panoramas out of up to eight consequent shots. Usually the 8-shot images have too wide a field of view and all straight lines in the center distort heavily as if taken by a bad fish-eye lens. Panoramas tend to look much more natural when they comprise out of three or five frames - the geometric distortion is less prominent. It's good that the number of frames is user-configurable. Video Samsung i900 Omnia records VGA video (640 x 480 pixels) at 15fps or QVGA video (320 x 240 pixels) at 30fps. That's not much by any standard - point & shoot digicams are already pushing video recording to HD, while camera phones (even the Omnia kind with its capable processor) are still short of the VGA@30fps standard. It makes you wonder how Nokia does it with their Symbian smart phones. Organizer Windows Mobile offers several timemanagement features and all of them are easily sync able with MS Outlook. As of Windows Mobile 6.0, the Calendar allows browsing the events to come. It offers daily, weekly and monthly view. You can have the week start on either Monday or Sunday. You can also hide weekends from the Calendar if you use it for business strictly. The To-Do list allows you to add tasks and assign them priority. The Notes also come in handy, as you can either type or directly write the text down on the screen. The Voice recorder and Calculator go without saying. A nice surprise is that Samsung have redesigned the default Windows Mobile calculator and now it has much more pleasant looks without sacrificing usability, and its more thumb able. There is also the excellent Clock application that gets you touch optimized access to alarms, anniversaries, the world clock and the stop watch. Alarms are rather easy to setup and turn on or off. They can

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be repeated on selected weekdays and are unlimited in numbers. You can also setup different anniversaries, which can get repeated on an annual basis. And finally, the World clock is most nice looking and intuitive application of the kind we've seen lately. A tap on the blue mini map opens it up full screen and you can drag around to select the time zone you are interested in. Another application is the rather handy Search application, capable of searching throughout the whole file system and applications. You can set filters, so that the application searches only in the places you need. Mobile Office Among the Windows Mobile core applications is the Office Mobile package featuring support for viewing and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. With the latest version of the Office Mobile, you also have the OneNote application. Thanks to the pre-installed Boratech File Viewer, there is also support for viewing PDF documents. Performance when working with PDF file is commendable, but that's to be expected with the powerful processor. The pre-installed Biz Card Reader is a rather handy utility to scan text or business cards and it comes with character recognition. It does an impressive job at that - at least in English. Business card scanners are not something new but that's among the first document scanners implemented in a GSM handset, and it's quite good. The card scanning is also impressively accurate. All the contact

details can also be stored in your Phonebook should you choose so. Conclusion The Samsung i900 Omnia has left us with nothing but good impressions. Everything about the device speaks "high-tech" - from the innovative touch interface through the rich connectivity and multimedia capabilities to the exclusive hardware characteristics such as the optical touchpad or the 5 mega pixel camera. It's probably the first time that a Windows Mobile Pocket PC turns out as a fully-fledged multimedia device. Samsung have made sure that the i900 Omnia is equally fit for both business and entertainment. Of course there are a few disappointment - some things e.g. the sunlight legibility of display are not up to the expected high standards while other stuff will benefit from some tweaking or software updating (such as the camera performance and the Flash support). But overall the Samsung Omnia is a wellbalanced product that seems in for some major success on the market. We think that "balanced" is the key word here as the major competitors the likes of iPhone 3G - seem to offer more in some respects but severely fall behind in others. Samsung i900 Omnia is also a good value for money as this kind of cash would hardly buy you a more complete characteristic pack than that.

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Key features: Quad-band GSM support 3G with HSDPA 3.6Mbps support Landscape 2.36" 16M color display of QVGA resolution Comfortable full QWERTY keypad Convenient business-minded shortcut keys Symbian 9.2 OS, S60 UI with FP1 (topped with some FP2 goodies) 369 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB of SDRAM Wi-Fi Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS 3.15 mega pixel auto focus camera with LED flash 110 MB of internal memory, micro SD expansion, ships with a 2GB card Slimmest smart phone to-date, slimmest Wi-Fi and/or GPS handset to-date Stainless steel casing

ollowing the release of E61, the Nokia E-series is back in the market with a new pet for business-minded users. Nokia E71 seems to have it all to take over and build on the E61 QWERTY messengers' expertise. The smooth upgrade is much slimmer now and pocketfriendly, more powerful and a whole lot more skilled. The smaller display is actually the only step down.

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Standard 2.5mm audio jack Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support Micro USB v2.0 FM radio Remote Wipe Provider-independent VoIP support Infrared port Great battery life Office document editor Rich retail package Main disadvantages: Below average camera performance Video recording maxes out at QVGA@15fps No dedicated camera key Smaller display than its predecessor Cheap-looking power key No RDS for the FM radio

The Nokia E71 is among the best-equipped Nokia smart phones to-date. It's quick and responsive and carries a remarkable feature load for its compact size. Connectivity is at its highest with the Nokia E71 boasting every single connectivity option, which is currently available. Add the GPS receiver and the slim metallic design and you've got yourself a smart phone that walks and talks high-end.

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Nokia E71 however is in for some tough Blackberry competition. The Bold 9000 seems like a nice alternative having almost the same feature pack as the Nokia. Blackberry's proprietary Operating System is not as widespread as the Symbian S60 but the business applications are all there, so the target audience won't feel deprived. The Bold also has a screen of much higher-resolution than the E71, but then, size is worth a thought. Package Package of Nokia E71 is quite worth the applaud. The phone comes with Nokia's fastest and smallest charger, which is comfortable to carry around. At the same time, you wouldn't need to have it on you that frequently, given the battery capacity. A 2GB micro SD card also comes with the E71 and a leather carrying case. A leather lanyard is therein too and so is a CD with the needed PC sync software. The supplied hands free however is one piece, which means you, cannot use the hands-free remote with another headset. There are also manuals, quick start guides and a few leaflets. Nokia E71 360 and size. Nokia E71 is easily pocketable as it measures 114 x 57 x 10 mm and 66 cc of volume. Do not mind judging by its height or width on this magazine but the phone is never a burden, for handling and pocketing. Though, the QWERTY keyboard takes its toll, so it's not the most compact of phones but Nokia deserve a bravo for getting as close as possible. Moreover, at 10mm thickness, the Nokia E71 is not only the slimmest full QWERTY device on the market, but it's also the slimmest smart phone to-date and that should count for something. Design With QW-ER-TY devices as a typical communication devices. As such, Nokia E71 can barely impress with design: the crowded keypad and smallish the screen is relatively smaller to E66. However, the E71 pulls of quite some style. It's much slicker than most

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messengers with its stylish steel casing and looks well-designed. The Nokia E71 earpiece is well placed in the pack flanked by an ambient light sensor to the left and the video-call camera lens to the right. Below is the 2.36" display, followed by the main bank of control and navigation keys and the QWERTY keyboard. The last thing on the front is the mouthpiece in the left bottom corner. The back panel of Nokia E71 is a real delight. It's dot-patterned stainless steel battery cover which looks tremendous and the metal lining on the front panel is fingerprint proof which protects from stain. The rear or back of Nokia E71 features the 3 mega pixel camera lens, with LED flash and a self-portrait mirror. The 3 mega pixel shooter is complimented by a LED flash and a self-portrait mirror. Removing the battery cover is quite easy, all you need to do is gently press the two release knobs on either side at the bottom and it pops up immediately. To fix it back is a bit difficult as you'll need to push a few times before it locks properly. Nokia E71 comes with a battery specification of 1500 mAh BP-4L LiIon. With this kind of battery it seems there's no stopping Nokia E71. It is quoted at 410 hours of stand-by time and 10 and half hours of talk time which is more than impressive. It is important to add that you can make it through three days of heavy usage in the real sense. At Computervillagemag.com we used it for about three hours on web browsing over Wi-Fi, an hour of calls and about two hours of other phone features before it eventually went dead, about 60 hours after a full charge. We do not think an average user would put as much pressure on it as we did while we made our research, which means it may last almost a week on a single charge. The construction of Nokia E71 is excellent

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with the stainless steel casing; it is equally easy to operate with hand. Nokia E71 features a 2.36" 16M-color QVGA display. This is smaller than the Nokia E61 screen but it must be said that it has obviously been sacrificed to make the phone more compressed and pocketfriendly. Compared to few latest phones like Samsung i900 Omnia the screen performance is better and capable of working under the sunlight with excellent contrast and vivid image. Telephony Without any â&#x20AC;&#x153;network problemsâ&#x20AC;? sound during calls is very clear and free of any interference and vibration is also strong enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message. Nokia E71 also includes an advanced call manager for filtering your incoming calls. You can select various settings accepting only calls from your contacts, from all nonp r i v a t e numbers or from anyone. In addition you can set up different r i n g i n g profiles that c a n b e scheduled to activate at a certain time. Lastly, you can also set the behavior of the phone when rejecting a call busy tone, reject with SMS or answering machine on are some of the options. The Nokia E71 also has support for VoIP calls - you just enter your account info if you have one and you are good to go. We conducted a speakerphone test with Nokia E71 and we can say it is loud enough. Operating System. Nokia E71 runs on Symbian 9.2 Operating System with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has the Feature Pack 1 preinstalled but it also brings in a number of enhancements and upgrades inherent to Feature Pack 2. EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 26

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Nokia E71 is powered by a single 369 MHz CPU and has 128MB of RAM. The Operating System, Symbian terms this means that navigating the menus is fast with instant response to key presses and no delays whatsoever. The Memory Full warnings are basically unlikely so you can make full use of available memory. The phone's main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. However with the Nokia E71 is more of business targeting of a phone so you cannot opt for having animated icons as with most other Nokia phones. This option can also be disabled if you feel like. The built-in memory is 120MB, which is a decent figure by all means. The included 2GB micro SD memory card comes in very handy for extending it but even higher capacity cards are supported. According to our research, Nokia E71 has no problem handling an 8GB micro SD card, which is the about l a r g e s t currently available on the market. To a c c e s s applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won't notice any difference compared to accessing ones in the phone memory. We must point out a new feature, you might know as Remote Wipe. It's not a new feature per se, but up until now it was usually reserved for corporate scenarios. Now it's available to everyone. In case your Nokia E71 gets stolen or lost, you should simply send a coded SMS message. It gets locked down and after three unsuccessful attempts of unlocking it; it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E71 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.

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Customization There are four preinstalled themes on Nokia E71. The rest is left to the imagination of the user, as you can download as many other themes as you wish. Besides, read your user manual for guide and not to complicate issue. Phonebook The phonebook of Nokia E71 isn't any different from other Symbian handsets. It is simply great - offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields, with all the available memory potentially usable for the purpose. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of any. Personal ring tones and video are also available for assigning. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give a specific ring tone to each group. The Call log application, although not exactly a part of the phone book, is also one o f t h e Symbian elements. It can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby. If you access the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you're looking for a specific call. Messaging According to our research, what we have here is Eseries, Symbian and QWERTY, end of

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story. The full-fledged keyboard and the software support make for a great messenger. From a nice and sensitive editor to advanced predictive input and error correction - it's all there. There are four message editors aboard: SMS, MMS, audio and e-mail. The SMS editor is the well know intuitive application for all Symbian S60 smart phones. It has a counter of the characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending. It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on screen, once the message reaches the addressee and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging submenu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or discarding it. The MMS editor has virtually the same interface as the one we just described, with the added subject line being the o n l y difference. The audio message, a l b e i t technically a type of MMS, was obviously d e e m e d important enough. There is a separate editor, which can either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip. Email is the highlight in the Nokia E71, as it supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email solution, along with System Seven and Visto Mobile. Encryption is also on board, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets. It seems Nokia has got everything covered except for Blackberry Connect support. The company has announced that since they are offering a push email service similar to that of EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 27

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Blackberry Connect, they are now direct competitors and as such, they would no longer offer Blackberry Connect support starting of Nokia E71 and E66. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start enjoying emailing-on-the-go. Nokia E71 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time. The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically everything you can think of. Push email support is also on board, so we can hardly think of anything the E71 lacks in this department - except for the Blackberry connectivity. As a whole, Nokia E71 is a dream texting device. It might not be the best but it sure is the most pocketable messenger, which should really count for something. Nothing beats the large keys and screen of Nokia E90 for example but then, the Communicator is not something you just slip in a pocket. Music player As part of the features unleashed by Nokia's Eseries music or tracks are uploaded to Nokia E71 via Bluetooth, USB or by simple download. You can also use a card reader for that purpose and transfer them directly to your memory card. Upon completing a USB transfer, the phone automatically prompts scanning for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library. The player comes with five equalizer presets and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won't do. Finally, being one of Nokia's best equipped phones, Nokia E71 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a Bluetooth stereo headset. Audio quality Despite the fact that it's not a music-oriented device, Nokia E71 has a rather good frequency response. However the rest of the readings in our audio quality test aren't really impressive. They are not too bad but are seriously lower than the ones of the best in the class. Generally we would qualify the audio quality of Nokia EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 28

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E71 as acceptable. Video player Nokia E71 features a Real player for playing your video clips. The video player only works in landscape mode, which is quite reasonable given the screen orientation. After all, portrait videos are rare enough. Luckily, there is also a full screen mode, which is quite enjoyable on the generously-sized screen. Furthermore, the soft key functions are hidden in full screen, so that they don't stand in the way and only pop up when a key is pressed. FM radio If you get bored with the preinstalled content on your Nokia E71 (and you have some free time between appointments), you can always turn the radio on for a break. The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. If internet connection is available, the Visual radio application can download all the local stations and save them to the handset with their names. We would have preferred RDS, though not having it isn't really that much of a disappointment. Image gallery The gallery of Nokia E71 doesn't have the rotating 3D view we are used to seeing in the Nseries but it is completely on balance in terms of functionality. No changes are to be seen here in terms of features - you can easily browse images and zoom in up to 8x. Overall, picture browsing and zooming is fast and even comparably large files are sure not to bother you too much. We have seen a couple of Nokia handsets do even better but the E71 is doing more than fine, and it's not really meant to be a multimedia gadget. The gallery filemanagement features (which even include sending multiple files at a time) are basically doubled by the file manager. 3 mega pixel snapper The camera user interface is the same as in the Nokia flagship N95 8GB and that is basically the best thing about the E71 snapper. The camera offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects, which are labeled color tones. Gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing your photos, using the photographic rule-of-thirds.

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Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic. The sequence mode and self-timer are no news. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, redeye reduction and always off. The picture quality however is below average. Pictures lack detail and noise levels are high. The colors are also far from being precise and as a whole there is hardly anything good we can say about image quality. Video recording is another great disappointment with the E71 camera. The business-minded handset only manages QVGA videos at 15 fps, which spells failure by o u r books. As a whole, t h e camera is the one feature of E 7 1 yelling businesscomesf i r s t . Probably Nokia thought a better camera is not worth the effort in a business gadget. We can't help wondering why they didn't stick with the 2 mega pixel shooter of the E61i in the first place. Web browser Browsing the internet on a Nokia smart phone is a pleasure. Now, with the E71 and its landscape screen it's all the better. Reading is much more convenient in landscape mode and, thanks to the great page rendering, content fits perfectly on screen and looks exactly like on a PC. The virtual mouse cursor takes browsing another level up. It is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help navigating your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers full screen view mode.

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The large amount of RAM is another thing that improves the browser performance. The web browser is one of the most RAM-hungry applications. With the E71 you are extremely unlikely to run out of RAM even if you load very heavy web pages and have a few applications running in the background. The ample 2.36" display is another welcome boost to browsing. The final touches to the Nokia E71 browser are the built-in full Java and Flash support. Having surfed quite frequently for the past week, we didn't manage to stumble upon any flash content the E71 was unable to handle and flash video is also not a problem for the E71 web browser. Organizer T i m e manageme n t i s another business p h o n e virtue. L i t t l e wonder, Nokia E71 has one of the most elaborate o rg a n i z e r packages we've seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional. The trip starts with the calendar. It has four different types of view - to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. The agenda view mode is new to Nokia handsets and is really nice - it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen. Every event has its own unique fields, some of which allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder. Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Power point files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box. With Nokia E71 EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 29

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you won't need to pay extra for editing your office documents. There are still a number of updates for the Quick office that come for a price but most users can do just fine without them. The ones that use MS Office 2007 documents however won't be as lucky as the support for those doesn't come included and they will have to purchase the next version of the application. A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E71 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight from your phone. The other prebundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. The Active Notes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes. The Nokia E71 alarm clock application is also very nice. It allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name, set-off time and repeat pattern. Thanks to the wireless presenter you can handle presentations straight from your phone. The printer application enables printing content straight from your Nokia E71. There is also a scanning application, which uses the camera to scan business cards or text. It doesn't do too well though, failing to recognize most of the words correctly. The Sports tracker application allows you to keep track of you recent workouts and follow your improvement in time. The useful "Search" application is also present in Nokia E71. Its reserved line in the active stand-by menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed. The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 30

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listed. Finally, Nokia E71 features a dictionary with a rather rich database. English comes preinstalled but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website. GPS navigation It is imperative to note that the phone also comes with Nokia Maps pre-installed and GPS navigation. This feature is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map but it appears not usable in Nigeria or West Africa. Games Y o u probably wouldn't expect a business tool like the Nokia E71 to feature games and you'd be w r o n g . There are two games preinstalled and those are both quite good. The first is a collection of card games including15 titles. The second game is an arcade-style car racer with rather decent graphics. The Racing Thunder has a really simple game play but isn't nearly as easy getting good at. If those aren't good enough for you - there's dozens of games for Symbian online. Again, make sure you look up only those designed for landscape QVGA displays. Final analysis Nokia E71 is an reliable business tool - in fact it is one of the most capable we've ever seen. Plus, it has completed the demanding task of adding style and slick looks to the QWERTY messenger breed. The performance of Nokia E71 is price worthy except for the below quality of the camera.It is also essential to note that Nokia messenger seems a great purchasing option if you're after a device of this kind. It is our opinion for those upgrading

Naija

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OVERVIEW

es, it's a sad fact that the average Naija gamer has a few too many pirated copies, CDs or DVDs in his collection. Whether it be for the PC, Playstation 1,2 or 3, the Xbox or even the Play Station Portable. The average Naija gamer is forced to own too many pirated copies. In my experience, the fact that pirated game software is cheap doesn't always mean it's so good. All too often one is drenched in disappointment after going a ridiculous amount of miles to purchase the pirated copies, only to get back home and have them all fail to install properly, miss a security code or just downright refuse to work.

I have been a huge fan of the FIFA series of soccer games on PC for over ten years now (time flies) and the fact is that at some point five years ago I finally gave up completely on pirated copies of the FIFA series. They are not collectible, you have no right to customer care, and too often they crashed irreversibly just when you were beginning to enjoy the game amongst so many other woes. Since I've started obtaining original copies, most of the woes have faded away, I don't get premium customer service but at least I have a right to online support and online gameplay. The fact remains though that procuring original CD's or DVD's is ridiculously tough when you are a Naija gamer based in Nigeria. Why, you ask? Well, for starters... my FIFA 2006 World Cup cost only $30 in America when the game was released, when you convert that to naira it should be no more than four thousand naira. If anything at all, software manufacturers should aspire to deliver that software to Africa even cheaper than in America, but the fact is that if you finally found a copy of the same game in Nigeria, it would cost no less than six thousand naira. In fact, for EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 32

my FIFA 2008, I got a used copy in the UK for only ÂŁ8 (Computers Exchange cex.co.uk), which in Nigerian naira is less than two thousand. I am sure that most gamers would be willing to buy games they dearly love in original copies if only they were anywhere near reasonably price. So as we attempt to review games and discuss issues concerning the Naija gamer in this section of CVM I hate to admit the sad reality that too many of the gaming experiences of our fellow gamers would be only through the prism of pirated copies. Please visit us online at H t t p : / / w w w. c o m p u t e r v i l l a g e mag.com/naijagamer Or look for us on facebook NaijaGamer, and please, do enjoy your reading.

FIFA 09: The price of new, for a patch Ok, so I know you are probably wondering why all the games's we're talking about in this edition are soccer games. Well not all, but the fact is that majority of Nigeria's gaming community just like the rest of society are hooked on soccer (we have some American readers). The issue at hand, FIFA 09 has just hit the stores this October and might not be popping up in Nigeria (Game, Palms shopping center) till next year, maybe a dysfunctional version in Ikeja by December. On this note, this is one of the very new additions to FIFA09. Like Valve (the makers of Half Life 2), EA has settled for online verification upon every PC installation of FIFA09. Other platforms would not be getting that, only the PC. We still have doubts about the effectiveness of such

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measures, as too often they affect innocent gamers who have shed out the forty or so dollars for the game, or in Nigeria, the twelve thousand naira you might be paying in Game shopping Centre. EA sports also says that for every PC DVD one would be allowed to install it on a maximum of five computers. Afterwards, you would have to call EA's customer care lines to install it on any other systems and explain yourself. Good luck with such a phone call from Nigeria though. If you were in SA, maybe, but in Nigeria, hmmm /?*,:(.

I haven't finished playing FIFA 08 though, just beginning to master the World Class level and I'm far from “legendary”, which is the dream of any decent gamer. So would I be running to the shops for FIFA 09 (I mean if I could), NO. I would stroll to the shops casually and get on the queue for FIFA09, a game patch that I would be made to pay the price of a new game for. Our Verdict: I love the FIFA series and all, but lets face it, FIFA09 is just a patch ( the rich guys at EA have gotta maintain their BeeMas) Platforms: PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii and of course PC. HOME SCHOOLED IS NO SCHOOL: A True Life Story

The one thing, which I am looking forward to enjoying in FIFA09 though, is the Pro season mode, which unlike FIFA o8 should allow you build your player over the space of five seasons. I was really disappointed in FIFA08 realizing that the “Be a Pro” season lasted only one season. Unlike other manufacturers though, who would have released a patch for such a silly flaw, EA Sports like its fellow mammoth electronic software companies (Micro_ _ _ _ ) would rather have you, the consumer, pay for their flaws.

So you're a heavyweight champion at home, whooping digital butts with a tiring ease in all games, you name it, beat 'em up's, shoot 'em up's, score 'em all, stick 'em up's, outrun 'em all e.t.c. although you persevered through egocrushing, ojoro beating from the console in all games, for many many moons, but now you stand tall, victorious, yes, after much hard work, sore blessed fingers, washed out pads and a game disc your console has gotten so tired of spinning (if consoles could file for a restraining order...), you have conquered your h(R)ome console. So with your hands about your chest in a whooping dance, you begin your next conquest, first a game house, a couple more game houses and then the world. And you believe you can win, like Alexander the Great, swift and unstoppable. Well I thought I could. How wrong I was. I had just mastered the only game that took me a decade and a half of my uneventful life to master, soccer. I never could for the life of me and a few unmentionables figure out how guys could control eleven players at the same time a decade and half ago of my uneventful life. I mean back then, I was still trying to understand what an offside meant, took me a while to notice the roles of the men in black who run updown the sidelines of the field. I never played

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soccer games back then, but I did ace in beat 'em up games like Street Fighter EX2+alpha and Tekken. I was un-touchable, but that is not the case in point anyway, the case in point is that after much practice and royal whooping from my console at home, I finally mastered soccer!!! I finished the master league twice! (just started that anyways), got tired of winning the nations cup, and exhibition matches were easy wins, even at the hardest level, and thus I thought, no, I was convinced that I was finally a soccer guru and now ready to go out into the world and whoop some royal butts. So I went to a game house just up the hood, met boys at consoles tanning away (what else?) at soccer games. Yay! Me thinks, some people worthy of a challenge. So I sat down, took a pad and asked for a challenger. There really was no one available at first, everyone was busy scoring or frowning but luckily, some dude sat down and pulled out the next pad. I should have been more cautious after seeing him changing pads, only experienced players do that, but nah, I was busy trying to remember my perfect formation (and yeah I use MAN U, up REDS!!!! (the real reds that is) ). So, kickoff! My plan was to sneak around the field with through passes like Tonto, take-um good look at his defence, get-um idea how to go through

and start placing goals and Kemo Sabe .... I got royally whooped. Goal after goal I saw my sore blessed fingers as sore cursed fingers, I don't think I'll ever get a clearer re-run of the flash back of the decade and a half years of my uneventful life than I did that day. But after the sixth goal, I cursed my x-box console. After the seventh goal, everybody wanted to have a go at me. I was being gang-whooped. A very humiliating experience I tell you, I know, I should have left after the third goal, save some dignity at least, but I'm one of those annoying hopeless schmucks who keeps on believing and never says die, you know, like those dumb energizer bunnies. After every goal I fantasized how I would make an amazing come back, but um, nah, nothing. I had to leave after the fourth guy and then I went back the next day for an encore more total destruction. So, you might be Caesar at home, but I tell you, there's a Brutus in every game house waiting to take you down. And just like how Caesar was royally gang-stabbed, you would be royally gang-whooped. And those guys were half my age!!!! Arrrrgh!!! Tele Ogundeko Please let the letter's role in, Naijagamer@computervillage-mag.com

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Home Entertainment DAARSAT PREVIEW LG SCARLET REVIEW

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sat EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW

t must be said that DAAR Communications Plc started the use of the latest and most advanced IT equipment in the Nigerian broadcast industry. The organization pioneered Independent broadcasting in federal Republic of Nigeria with the establishment of Ray Power 100FM in September 1994. DAAR Communications did not only raise the bar for the competition, but set another standard in Africa and in the industry with its IT use. It appears that DAAR was the first to have introduced IT to Nigerians through Ray Power 100FM way back in 1994. DAAR established Television broadcast on December 6, 1996 with the introduction of Africa Independent Television (AIT).

AIT is the first independent Global Satellite Television station in Federal Republic of Nigeria and first thematic channel from the continent of Africa. It is important to say that the first eight years of Democracy only complimented IT with infiltration of Global System Mobile (GSM) communications while DAAR operates an On-the-spot broadcast of events direct from source with 24hours service. DAAR Communications has recently re-confirmed their position in Africa with the launch of DAARSAT, a digital multi-channel direct-to-home subscription Television. DAAR Communications/DAARSAT has EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 36

achieved the total migration in 2008, 4 years before the prescribed National deadline for Digital broadcast while many African countries still operates on yesterday's SD (Standard Definition). Computervillage-mag.com congratulates DAARSAT and decided to allow the consumers a sneak preview of DAAR communication's latest service. THE BRIEF ON DAARSAT DAARSAT is a digital multi-channel direct-tohome subscription television platform from the stable of DAAR Communications Plc,- the proprietor/operator of the first Independent radio and global satellite television stations in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. With its knack for pioneering e f f o r t s , D A A R Communications PLC has aggregated ultramodern broadcast equipment and facilities for DAARSAT. MASTER CONTROL ROOM (MCR) DAARSAT parades two state-of-the-art fully integrated and automated Master Control Rooms (MCRs). DAARSAT's Main Master Control Room is equipped with 128 Channels broadcast automation system. It comprises of 88 Satellite channels with support for time shifting and local advert insertion, and 40 local channels (16 HD & 24 SD) providing original

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programming. Content ingest is provided vide 8 HD/SD1 channels and 16 SD/SD1 channels (including ingest redundancy). This eliminates tape-based broadcast, enabling split-second flexibility, and total control of ingested and broadcast material, while reducing human error to a barest minimum.

DAARSAT is offering branded LCD HDTV with integrated HD satellite & Terrestrial STBs. These allow viewers to watch DAARSAT's broadcast without a separate decoder. Under listed are DAARSAT's Decoder/STD (Set-top-Box) offerings, to ensure vivid image quality with:

The second MCR also parades 2 HD Ingest, 2 SD ingest, 100% mirroring of primary services, 18 channel HD play out server and two fully integrated interactive television broadcast systems. DAARSAT's ultra modern head-End infrastructure is built on a backbone capable of handling 128 channels including 16 HD channels. This multi-billion naira infrastructure is located in DAARSAT's facility in Kpaduma Hills, Asokoro, Abuja.

BASIC MPEG 4 HD (H.264) HD/SD MPEG 4 HD (H.264) PVR WITH 250 GB HDD 32” & 42” IDTV BASIC (INTEGRATED DIGITAL TELEVISION) WITH DVB S2 & DVB-T HD STB, 32” & 42” IDTV PVR (INTEGRATED DIGITAL TELEVISION WITH DVB-52 & DVB-T HD STD) PVR WITH 250 GB HDD.

SET TOP BOX DAARSAT's state-of-the-Art, innovative MPEG 4 High Definition Set-Top-Box is one of its unique Selling Points (USP). Still a novelty in even some parts of the western world, DAARSAT adventure into fully integrated High Definition digital broadcast is designed to accelerate Nigeria's migration from analogue to digital transmission. The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has set 2012 as deadline for Nigeria to achieve migration to full digital broadcast, while phasing out the now increasingly archaic analogue broadcast. DAAR Communication Plc/DAARSAT has achieved this total migration in 2008, 4 years before the prescribed National deadline while the world around us still operates on yesterday's SD (Standard Definition) Technology. Abuja is the broadcasting hub for all of DAARSAT's operations in Nigeria and indeed the rest of Africa. It is the centre from which all activation and communication of decoders takes place. Operations outside Nigeria have on-line direct access to a suite of computers based here in Nigeria. Instructions to all decoders are processed right from Abuja, Nigeria. These instructions will then be received by individual decoders in other countries. DAARSAT is truly an epitome of Nigerian innovation. DECODER / SET-UP-BOX VARIANTS & INTEGRATED DIGITAL TELEVISION SETS.

DAARSAT SECURE ENCRYPTION VIA CAS DAARSAT employs the world's most advanced and most reliable Conditional Access System (CAS). The encryption of DAARSAT's signals is achieved via the application of CONAX CAS-7, reputedly the world's best and most reliable Conditional Access (CA) Server, which is built on CONAX's powerful security technology platform. This ensures the security of DAARSAT's content, while ensuring that illegal hacking and redistribution of DAARSAT's installed CONAX CAS-7 System combines Conax chipset pairing and water-making technology, thus protecting channels and content sent to the client's device (decoder) from hacking, piracy and sundry illegal distribution. DAARSAT CHANNEL OFFERINGS DAAR Communication Plc has acquired channels from Africa and International channel Suppliers and has packaged these into a bouquet branded as DAARSAT. At the moment this bouquet provides over 50 video channels and few audio channels. The programming genres that are covered include Movies, Sports, General Entertainment, News, Documentary, Life Style Kids/Teen, Music and Specialist areas. These also include 17 indigenous Satellite TV channels, designed, produced and aggregated by Nigerians for Nigerians. From Sports and News programming to Entertainment and generalpurpose programming DAAR PLC has taken prime cognizance of Nigeria's peculiar demographics in designing each channel's programming architecture, and content EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 37

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delivery. With her stated mission to accord Nigeria her status as Africa's final broadcast nation, DAAR Plc has launched two indigenous language satellite TV channels- Gamzaki (A fully Hausa language channel), and Faaji (A fully Yoruba language channel). Within the 1st Quarter of broadcast, DAARSAT will launch it Igbo- Language channel. Almost 50 years since the establishment of Africa's first TV service in Nigeria, DAAR Communications Plc in Nigeria has seized the reigns of leadership of Africa's broadcast land scape. DAARSAT is primly positioned to offer pulsating Sport programming on her AIT Sport Channel. DAAR communication Plc has acquired broadcast right to the German Bundesliga, the French league, the Turkish league, and the Brazilian league among others. DAAR Plc land mark acquisition of all Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). Properties gives DAARSAT unrivaled coverage and broadcast of all Nigeria national team matches. This also includes the U-17 FIFA world cup 2009. DAAR Communication Plc has acquired the right to rebroadcast channels of four English premiership clubs and Ajax Fc. To compliment D A A R S AT s u n d r y s o c c e r o ff e r i n g , DAARSAT parades global brands such as the FOX Sport Channel, Setanta Africa and Euro Sport News. Finally, for an efficient customer management and billing system, DAARSAT has contracted Messrs Magnaquest technologist PVT Ltd an Indian company, to provide the required service from Abuja. In addition, an in house contact centre helps provide solutions, to ensure maximum support and service to subscribers, has been installed at the DAARSAT operational headquarter in Abuja. DAARSAT CHANNELS AIT-MOVIESTAR DAAR-STAR EXPRESS SAHARA ONE SAHARA FILMY B4U MOVIES FOX CRIME FOX ENTERTAINMENT LUXE TV ART CHANNEL GAMZAKI CHANNEL EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 38

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 110 111 112

FAAJI TELEVISION AIT NTA CHANNELS TV MBI INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY TELEVISION TELEVISTA NICKELODEON FOX BABY TV KIDSCO FUEL AIT NEWS EURO NEWS BBC WORLD ALJEEZIRA FOX NEWS AIT PARLIAMENTARY AFRICA BUSNESS CHANNEL CNBC AFRICA AIT SPORT FOX SPORT SETANTA AFRICA EURO SPORT NEWS QUEST TV FASHION TV B4U MUSIC SOUNDCITY KENNIS MUSIC CHANNEL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MUSIC MTV BASE MCM TOP MCM TOP C-MUSIC SCITECH TV DISCOVERY WORLD DISCOVERY TRAVEL & LIVING LOVEWORLD DOVE MEDIA VATICAN TV ISLAM CHANNEL

113 201 202 203 204 205 206 301 302 303 304 401 402 403 404 405 701 406 407 501 502 503 504 601 602 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 801 802 803 901 902 903 904

In the final analysis, DAAR Communications with its ultra modern broadcast IT equipment is a pioneering and truly Nigerian multi-channel pay TV originating and distributing all it services from Nigeria. Our Rating I'm sure you saw that coming, but yes they are truly Nigerian and we have to give them their much deserved props.

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REVIEW: LG 42LG6000 Scarlet LCD TV

The rear of the LG's new Scarlet LCD is covered in a glossy, stylish deep red finish. The inputs are arranged in a neat cluster and looks beautiful.

In a nutshell, we've had the 42” version in for review in this issue. Knowing that many of you are so keen to know how this “Scarlet” performs. We enjoin you to read the full review of the latest LG Scarlet.

It is a full HD (High Definition), 1080/24fps TV equipped with a major store of inputs that include a set of component video inputs, VGA, USB and four HDMI inputs. Other clever technology highlights include LG's Intelligent Eye system that adjusts the backlight to suit the light levels in your room. LG claims this can reduce energy consumption by up to 60% but this has not been proven publicly to confirm the genuineness of the information.

or quite some time, you will agree with me that LG introduced to public its new LCD HDTV called Scarlet. The name “scarlet” was confirmed by Computervillagemag.com via dictionary and the meaning turned out to be RED which is obviously the rear color of the LG HDTV. It is upon the development that we decided to make an exclusive review of the latest LG TV for buyers to make informed decision on purchase.

LG 42LG6000 (scarlet) Design: excellent connectivity options; creates a super depth of field Disadvantage: It is the same with other LCD HDTV nothing

special.

From the front, the LG TV is very stylish even with a big ring in the middle which is designed to let one automatically turn the TV on or off. It also glows “scarlet” when in standby mode. The front of the TV is gloss black and the frame extends below the actual screen to hide the speakers. LG Scarlet gives you image options that enhance whatever you're watching. AV Mode EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 39

Review

TECHNOLOGY SPECIFICATION Type LCD Aspect Ratio 16:9 HD Ready Yes Full HD Yes Screen size (in) 42 Resolution 1920 x 1080 Accepts 1080p Yes 24fps Yes HDMI 1.3a 4 Integrated analogue tuner Yes Integrated digital tuner Yes HDMI in 4

optimizes the picture into Cinema Mode, Sports Mode, and Game Mode. And Expert Mode has been certificated by the ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) picture quality calibration institution, making it possible to finely tune the picture at a professional level. The result is a dynamic HDTV that is adaptable to many different modes and settings. This set EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 40

DVI in 0 PC in 1 Component in 1 RGB Scart in 1 Scart in 1 S-Video in 0 Composite in 1 USB in 1 Memory card in 0 Phono audio in 2 Phono audio out 0 Digital audio out 1 Dimensions (hwd, cm) 80 x 104 x 38 Weight (kg) 24

generates an impressive depth of field, especially during the wider and landscape shots. According to experts, â&#x20AC;&#x153;despite being a 100HZ design, the LG Scarlet also struggles to handle rapid movementâ&#x20AC;?. It is good to find out that sound quality of the specially tuned speakers is well above average. They emit a clear and

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lively sound. In conclusion, it is vital to say that LG is stylish, desirable and appears not to cost much above normal LCD but the picture quality on offer is not better compared to the standard of the class leaders at this size. Our Rating

EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 41

Art & Culture Art & Culture Culture Art & Culture Culture Art & Culture e Art & Culture rt & Culture Art & Culture ulture Art & Culture lture Art & Culture rt & Culture & Culture Art & Culture ure Art & Culture re Art & Culture Culture

Art & Culture Art & C Art & Cult Art & Culture Ar Art & Culture Art Art & Culture Art & Cult Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Art & Culture Art & Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Ar Art & Culture Art & Cu Art & Culture Art & Cult Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Cul Art & Culture A Art & Culture Art Art & Culture Art & Cul Art & Cultur Art & Culture Art Art & Culture Art & Art & Culture Art & Cultur Art & Culture A Art & Culture Art & C Art & Culture Art & Cu Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art Art & Culture Art & Cult Art & Culture Art & Cultur Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & C Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Cult Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture Art & Culture

Overview

Musician of the month

Art&

Culture

Integration of ICT in

Arts and Culture

Pictures: Courtesy Beautiful Nubia

n this section of Arts & Culture, we endeavor to acknowledge the integration of Information Technology in Entertainment and in Arts & Culture in general. This is year 2008 and not 500 BC, our Arts has evolved over the century up to this age of idea with Information and Communication Technology. It’s difficult to divorce the growth in the Nigerian entertainment industry from the advancement in Information Technology while it's not news that many music Artistes cook their music from a room with IT equipment like software, computer, speakers, and microphone etc. This room is called a “STUDIO”. It is essential to know that music entertainment falls into two categories such as Music artistes and Musicians. A music artiste is a one man singer and songwriter backed up with a DJ who produces beats at that point while the Artiste mime or “sing along”, he/she could also have few vocal back up. A musician is a singer, songwriter and bandleader as well as a music arranger or organizer. A musician could have a 20 man band or as low as 5 man band each of which specializes on a particular musical instrument contributing to the output or production of the music at the end along with backup vocalist. It is so difficult to divorce music from Arts & Culture while it is also difficult to divorce IT from Music. Music is an Art and it has been part of the human culture from the beginning, on the other hand ICT has been greatly used for

the development of music over the century. It is logical to say that Computervillage-mag.com with its Arts & Culture segment acknowledge the integration of IT in entertainment in Nigeria and Africa. In this segment, we shall focus on music artistes and musicians especially their kind of music and content of such music. Computervillage-mag.com has decided to conduct an in-dept research on music artiste/musician in every issue of our magazine and website. We shall be using this medium for Lyrics Review, interview and Biography of music Artiste or musician and noting the role of IT/ICT in order to encourage the youths. It must be said that music affects the youths positively and/or negatively, therefore we urge our artistes/musician to put more life in their lyrics or music content such that the youths can learn positively and look up to the future which we did in our teenage age by listening to music from the likes of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, King Sunny Ade, I.k Dairo and many more. We enjoin our brothers and sisters doing “Naija hip-hop” to put more life into their lyrical content and send meaningful as well as life changing messages through their music. “Music is power” and “music is a weapon” so the Great Fela Anikulapo Kuti said. “Our hope is in the children”. Whatever kind of music we give to teenagers and the youth determines the kind of person they become, it's either they promote sex, foreign ideals and vulgar language as it is prominent in the “Naija HipEDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 43

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youth as top priority in Nigeria. We shall also review the works and biography of other African artist; all review shall be based on cultural celebration, social upliftment, originality and public enlightment. With respect to Arts and Culture, we shall continue to review meaningful lyrics and biography of REAL music artistes and musician which shall be made public to our readers to make comments. We urge you to join us as we bring your favorite music artiste and musicians to you . Send us feedback@computervillage-mag.com

ICT EXPERTS

CONNECT This free segment is reserved for individual entrepreneurs, computer science students or graduates and free ads for ICT experts confident in his/her expertise. Send your full name, email address, phone number and field of specialization to ict@computervillage-mag.com

EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 44

Pictures: Courtesy Beautiful Nubia

hopâ&#x20AC;? (imported hip hop)as is presently witnessed today. It appears that the current music scene is fast misinforming the youth and parents seem not to know what is happening to the minds of their children musically. We identify with the development in our music industry, at least more of our music is played throughout the media, TV and radio. The growth in our music industry should not make us forget our cultural ideals, this growth should not result to the loss of good morales in our youth thereby avoiding in its totality, the bizarre promotion of sex, drugs and vulgar conversations. We believe this will be an opportunity to contribute our quota to the development of entertainment and put the

UBIA N L U F I BEAUT

NDS" CH SOU I R F O R CREATO GERIA) "A RARE E PUNCH - NI (TH

Pictures: Courtesy Beautiful Nubia

Segun Akinlolu (Beautiful Nubia) was born in 1968 in Ibadan, Nigeria; he studied veterinary medicine for six years at the University of Ibadan after which he worked as a veterinary doctor for several years in Lagos, Nigeria before finally becoming a fulltime musician in 2000. Discography: Kilòkilò (2007); Fere (2006); Awilele (2004); Jangbalajugbu (2002); Fire On The Roof (2001); Voice From Heaven (1999); Seven Lifes (1997) Beautiful Nubia's songs of cultural celebration, social upliftment and public enlightenment have inspired millions of people in his country of birth. With an uncanny ability to reach back into the past, reinvent ancient rhythms and mesh them with original melodies to produce soulchurning sound offerings, this singer, songwriter and bandleader has evolved a form of music that continues to defy classification and appeals to a continuously growing market comprising all sections of the populace the poor and the rich, unlettered market-women and university professors, students and teachers, male and female, young and old. All elements of the society can be found at a Beautiful Nubia concert and, as he

o i B

likes to say, “Everyone is welcome to Beautiful Nubia's party!” His music has been described by various critics as “folk fusion”, “a relative of afrobeat” and "modern African music with meaning" but the artist himself recently described it as “reflecting the roots of modern popular music genres”. Whatever your music taste, there is something here for you. In 1997, while pondering how to introduce himself as a musician, Segun Akinlolu decided upon the performance name of Beautiful Nubia to remind every young African of a time when people like them ruled the world and were masters of the sea, the air and the land. In so doing, perhaps, young Africans would find something positive and inspiring to hold on to from the past which they could employ in projecting to the future. His first album Seven Lifes followed shortly after and he has not looked back.

y h p a gr

Jangbalajugbu, his 2002 album, has sold in excess of a million copies. Awilele and Fere, which followed, have been praised EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 45

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for their tight arrangements and novel sound. KilĂ˛kilĂ˛, his latest album, brings together the diverse elements upon which Beautiful Nubia's music has been built throughout his decade of recording, fusing the didactic with the spiritually elevating and the gently grounding. As usual, he comes with a message of hope and love. Of renewal and growth. Of a place where we can have peace if we learn to

share of ourselves so that others may smile. In this album, Beautiful Nubia's ability to fuse ancient tradition and rhythms with contemporary sounds reaches a distinctly new level of achievement. Kilokilo was Number One on the Earshot! International Music Charts in February 2008 matching the same feat achieved by Awilele in February 2005.

Beautifulnubia on Mp3 LYRICS REVIEW. OHUN OJU NRI (EXPERIENCE)

Lyrics: They say we're free and colonization is a thing of the past But look around you people Time is going by and we still can't get it right They say our land is the home of poverty and disease and we're treated like second-class citizens of the world Our leaders run around begging for help When the solutions are right here at home with us The future of the this land is in the hands Of every man and woman, young and old Everyone of us has a share in the blame for the failure of society See, we're still slaves economically, We're still slaves politically, We're still slaves ideologically But I've got a song to sing Chorus: Je a gbe'ra kuro o ninu ogbun aye, Ore e so'ra, e dakun o, a ma njin si koto Je a gbe'ra kuro o ninu ogbun aye A ni e mu'ra, e so'ra o, a ma njin si koto lo o We're trying to fix things from the top to the ground But the way to solve it is from the ground upwards Lasting change begins at the individual level Everyone dips in the pot but no one replenishes Have you forgotten the rules? EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 46

Without love there can be no truth, justice and peace We must turn our backs on selfishness and greed Go back to our culture of community - all for one and one for all Not just every man to his own We must go back to the land A nation that cannot feed itself Will always remain subservient to others, believe me. We're still slaves to material wealth, We're still slaves to religion, We're still slaves to foreign ideals But I've got a song to sing Chorus: Je a gbe'ra kuro o ninu ogbun aye, Ore e so'ra, e dakun o, a ma njin si koto Je a gbe'ra kuro o ninu ogbun aye A ni e mu'ra, e so'ra o, a ma njin si koto lo o This land will be a great place one day A place where dreams come true Our hope is in the children Teach them to love their fellow man And never to judge anyone by the colour of their skin, religion or language Teach them to be proud of our culture And the values of hardwork and perseverance, honest and humility Treat every child like your own For every child, no matter the circumstances of his birth, Is a beacon to this glorious future

Pictures: Courtesy Beautiful Nubia

Ohun oju nri enu o ma ni le so o Ohun oju ri omo o ma ni le so bo de'le o

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Teach them to be strong in love And never look down on themselves Teach them to be strong And learn to hold their heads up wherever they may go Teach the children to sing this song of pride And let them sing it loud and clear: Songs of pride for the children I'm not ashamed to be who I am I'm not ashamed - I'm a proud African I'm not afraid I'm a child of The Most High I'm not ashamed and I've got a song to sing

The lyrics make track four (4) on the album with a total number of sixteen tracks. We trust you understand the communication between IT and entertainment in this respect, all aspect of entertainment is made possible by IT from its rehearsals to studio and up to the final production level. We must also talk about the live performance which is vastly enhanced by IT, talking about the microphones and the surround speakers which take the music from the stage directly to the minds of the fans and all music lovers.

Pictures: Courtesy Beautiful Nubia

The above lyrics were produced by Beautiful Nubia and the Roots Renaissance Band in

2006 in an album called Fere with its meaning rooted in African culture especially the Yoruba ethnic group.

Beautiful Nubia Watch out

for Exclusive Interview

With Beautiful Nubia EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 47

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MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR OLD MOBILE PHONE… Do you know how much your old phone is worth? Here is a FREE opportunity to recycle your old phone for cash or new! Don't just abandon your old phone to the murky of your drawer or cupboard.

HERE IS A FREE OPPORTUNITY TO RECYCLE YOUR OLD PHONE FOR CASH OR NEW!

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· How to recycle your old mobile phone · Send us narrative information about your old phone and your correct contact information and price bid. · Computervillage-mag.com shall place narrative information of your used phone on our Used Store FREE to connect you with potential buyers. · This opportunity is open to our readers and buyers of technology ONLY not sellers of used phone.

BENEFIT OF TRADING YOUR MOBILE PHONE: TOTALLY FREE TO USE BEST PRICES OFFER CONNECTING YOU TO POTENTIAL BUYER HELP THE ENVIRONMENT.

SEND YOUR NARRATIVE INFORMATION TO: usedstore@computervillage-mag.com SWAP YOUR OLD PHONE FOR CASH OR NEW. Terms & conditions: Computervillage-mag.com and its publisher does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any content posted on any interactive area. Any content placed on our interactive area represents the views of the user posting such information, and not represent the views of CVM. We hereby advice every party involve in any interactive area to endeavor to make a reasonable confirmation before any payment. You acknowledge that any reliance upon such Content shall be at your sole risk.

EDITION 1 VOL. 1 ISSUE 1 48

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