PC Tech Novermber 2010 Issue by Ultimate Multimedia Consult (U) Ltd

FACT FILE SPECIFICATION

STATUS

First Published

FEBRUARY 2010

Issues Published

EIGHT*

Circulation

UGANDA, RWANDA, TANZANIA, KENYA, GHANA, NIGERIA, SOUTH AFRICA, USA**, UK**

Frequency

MONTHLY

Pages

Price (Local)

UGX 5000, KSH. 180, FRW 1200, USD 5, Ghana Cedis 8.

Other Initiatives

Annual Africa Internet [and Mobile] Interpreneurs Conference (AFRIEC), Technology Entrepreneurs Seminar Series (TESS), PC Tech “Educate”, CTBuS (The Academuc Journal of PC Tech), Digital Learning Africa (Online Resource Platform)

VERDICT

PC Tech Magazine gives you value for your money.

*As of November 1, 2010

**PC Tech is sent to selected institutions in USA and UK

VISION To be the leading media organization that promotes openness and collaboration on sustainable innovations in Technology, Business and Society

www.pctechmagazine.com

MISSION To create and disseminate inprint and online products on Technology, Business & Society that have a global perspective but contextually relevant to Africa

Africa’s Most Contemporary Technology Magazine

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

CONTENTS

ONLINE COMMUNITIES MADE EASIER: Before Facebook became so popular, there were just a few websites that offered interractive functionalities enough to create online communities. Security features such as user registration only made it harder for the few that existed to become popular. But with the number of Facebook users growing everyday, many organizations are are networked with their customers through their Facebook accounts... so much that you can now log into most traditional online communities using your Facebook credentials!

4 | Editorial

WHAT’S NEW

5 | Opinion: Are Qualifications Relevant?

INBOX

6 | Letters from readers

222

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

17 | External USB 3.0 Solid State Drive 18 | BlackBerry PlayBook

8 | Did you know, Quotes

NEWS

16 | The new Macbook Air

18 | Nokia’s new flagship device, the N8

19 | Martin Jetpack: Flying Machine

COVER STORY

The Internet has changed how consumers buy and organisations market in today’s economy. The promise of the Internet in the marketing function of organisations is seen as direct dialogue with customers and enhancing opportunities for branding initiatives, product customisation, and relationship building with customers.

FEATURES

24 | Yes, you need that Anti-virus software

BUSINESS SOLUTIONS 42 42 | Enterprise Web Security: Why should there be a Critical Need to Secure the Web in your Company?

LEISURE

44 | Crush on Obama 44 | ATM which dispenses Gold 45 | Website of the Month 45 | The way I see it: Cartoon

25 | How does Antivirus Software work? 26 | Social media impact on our community

GAMING

46 | Building your own Gaming PC 47 | Current PC Game favourites

CLASSIFIEDS

48| Computers | IT Solutions | Internet Cafes, e.t.c

REVIEWS

28 | eScan Internet Security Suite 2010

SHOPPING GUIDE

30 | How to tell the difference between a genuine mobile phone and a fake one

RESEARCH

32 | Dialing into Wealth: Mobiles & Market Women in Ghana 36 | Research News

LEARN

38 | How to make your Facebook photos private 38 | Find out when someone “unfriends” you 39 | How to backup your photos and media 39 | Keep your PC running smoothly with CCleaner 3.0

INTERVIEW

14 | The Markets are Speaking Are you listening? PC Tech’s RICHARD BOATENG had an interview with Geraldine Joseph. pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

EDITORIAL

Editorial Notes EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALBERT MUCUNGUZI ed@pctechmagazine.com MANAGING EDITOR JOSHUA TWINAMASIKO josh@pctechmagazine.com REGIONAL DIRECTOR, WEST AFRICA RICHARD BOATENG, PhD richard@pearlrichards.org EDITORS JOSEPH W. MUNUULO, RUKUNDO NSHAKIRA DESIGN & LAYOUT ALBERT MUCUNGUZI, BRYT KAKURASI REGIONAL COORDINATOR (Western Uganda) EMILY TUSINGWIRE (+256 702698361) emily@pctechmagazine.com SALES, MARKETING & DISTRIBUTION WYCLEF RUSHAJU (+256 703 473073) DONNELL TWINO (+256 711 585 756) STAFF WRITERS/CONTRIBUTORS TIMOTHY RUBASHEMBUSYA, DAN B. ATUHAIRE, JOANNE KASSE, MICHAEL OUMA WILSON KUTEGEKA INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENTS Rwanda: Sangwa Emmanuel (+250 783 629198) Kenya: Michael Ouma (+250 7 83 629198) Email: benomnta@yahoo.com Ghana: Michael Nkum, P. O. Box AF 281, Adenta-Accra Tel: 0201877810 Email: mikey3108@hotmail.com Nigeria: Abdulkabeer Ishola abdulkabeerishola@gmail.com +234 (0) 8055729119; +234 (0) 7061362080 PUBLISHER PC Tech Communications Ltd P. O. Box 32180, Kampala, Uganda +256 712 619812 / +256 774 143720 editor@pctechmagazine.com www.pctechmagazine.com PRINTED BY: MPK Graphics Ltd., Kampala, Uganda +256 392 961 551 © COPYRIGHT 2010

PC Tech Magazine is published 12 times a year by PC Tech Communications Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in parts without written permission is strictly prohibited. The name PC Tech Magazine is a registered trademark and is property of PC Tech Communications Ltd.

DISCLAIMER

While every care is taken in the preparation of this magazine, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of information herein, or any consequence arising from it.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

he Internet has changed how consumers buy and organizations market in today’s economy. The promise of the Internet in the marketing function of organizations is seen as direct dialogue with customers and enhancing opportunities for branding initiatives, product customization, and relationship building with customers. It is becoming an increasing norm for organizations to achieve this objective of understanding customers and their needs by forming or building a community of its customers or potential customers Joshua Twinamasiko joshtwin.com online. +256 774 143 720 We at PC Tech Magazine have benefited from a fast growing online community of readers, fans and technology enthusiasts including over 2,500 Facebook members and our website which is currently ranked as the 22nd most visited website in Uganda and 90,405th in the world. This month Albert and Richard take you through the basics of building your own online community. What do Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison have in common? They are all stinking rich and college dropouts! At one of America’s most high-status institutions, Larry Ellison (currently the 6th richest man in the world) is said to have given a rather controversial commencement address. There has been a lot of excitement in the Telecom industry, with so many promotions, tariff cuts and special offers. There are also so many mobile phones to choose from. Due to public demand, we have put together some tips to help you spot a fake mobile phone and identify the genuine item. Facebook competes quite favorably for time in many of our lives, in some cases taking up more time than it should of our working hours and life in general. However, despite spending so much time “Facebooking”, many of us do not know how Facebook works. We share with you how you can ensure that your information and photos are seen by the intended people only, not the whole world by customizing privacy settings. On a lighter note, did you know about Obama’s crush? In response to readers’ feedback, We have made our Leisure section more or Leisure and less of Tech. I hope you enjoy it. PC Games are among the most demanding software that a typical user will ask their computer to run. So buying a PC with gaming in mind is abit different from buying one for your grandmother, that’s why we have put together something to guide you as you shop. Please continue to give us your thoughts on it and the rest of the magazine because we would like to make every edition better than the previous one, of course for your enjoyment. Thank you for reading PC Tech Magazine.

OPINION

Oracle CEO Urges Students to Drop out, Start up

BY TIMOTHY RUBASHEMBUSYA hat do Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison share in common? Well, they are all stinking rich and college dropouts! At one of America’s most high-status institutions, Larry Ellison (currently the 6th richest man in the world) is said to have given the following speech as the commencement address! I’ll leave it to you to check its verity but why bother – you know too much already! Just sit back and enjoy. "Graduates of Yale University, I apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but I want you to do something for me. Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 thirty years from now; odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude. "In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers. "You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence 'Larry' Ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence "Larry" Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not. "Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college dropout, and you are not. "Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not. "And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not. "Hmm... you're very upset. That's understandable. So let me stroke your egos for a moment by pointing out, quite sincerely, that your diplomas were not attained in vain. Most of you, I imagine, have spent four to five years here, and in many ways what you've learned and endured will serve you well in the years ahead. You've established good work habits. You've established a network of people that will help you down the road. And you've established what will be lifelong relationships with the word 'therapy.' All that of is good. For in truth, you will need that network. You will need those strong work habits. You will need that therapy. "You will need them because you didn't drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. Oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to No. 10 or No. 11, like Steve Ballmer. But then, I don't have to tell you who he really works for, do I? And for the record, he dropped out of grad school. Bit of a late bloomer. "Finally, I realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, 'Is there anything I can do? Is there any hope for me at all?' Actually, no. It's too late. You've absorbed too much, think you know too much. You're not 19 anymore. You have a built-in cap, and I'm not referring to the mortar boards on your heads. "Hmm... you're really very upset. That's understandable. So perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. Not for you, Class of '00. You are a write-off, so I'll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000-a-year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago. While at Harvard in 2004, "Instead, I want to give hope to any underclassmen here Mark Zuckerberg founded today. I say to you, and I can't stress this enough: leave. Pack Facebook with the help of your things and your ideas and don't come back. Drop out. his roommates and computer Start up. science student Andrew "For I can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you McCollum. Zuckerberg down just as suredly as these security guards dragging me dropped out of his studies off this stage are keeping me dow..." to run the company. He’s

Timothy Rubashembusya, a graduate of Statistics, is a senior writer and editor of PC Tech Magazine’s Leisure Section

EDITORIAL

Are qualifications irrelevant?

Bill Gates is the world’s richest man, which isn’t bad for a Harvard dropout. Gates founded Microsoft - which owns MSN - in 1975 and the company went on to change the face of personal computing. Last year, he stepped down from his responsibilities at Microsoft to concentrate fulltime on his philanthropic activities with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Apple, the iPod and Pixar owe either all or a significant part of their success to Steve Jobs - but the man himself dropped out of university after one term. Of course it helps if you already know what you want to do with your life. Jobs had already been to after-school lectures at Hewlett-Packard and worked there in the summer. At 21 - after working for Atari and heading to India for a spiritual retreat - he founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and the rest, as they say, is history.

now the chief executive of Facebook - a company valued at $15 billion when Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

YOUR LETTERS

INBOX

Please send your letters to: The Editor PC Tech Magazine P. O. Box 32180 Kampala, Uganda editor@pctechmagazine.com For users of PC Tech online, you can send us your comments by filling the contact us form on the website, or by sending e-mail to: inbox@pctechmagazine.com

More of PC Tech Educate Start up competitions in secondary schools I would like to commend the efforts of the whole team that works hard to make sure that the magazine gets to the people that need it and being a regular reader of both the magazine and website it has been so informative and entertaining. what i would like to see in the magazine is more of the pctech educate project updates so students in secondary schools can get involved alsi would like to suggest that in the product reviews, the shops where we can buy the products be quoted. nice work. Tumusiime Patrick Ntare School, Mbarara

A few suggestions for improving website Hi guys. Job well done. I would like to see a few changes on your website: 1. Keep us posted on the latest stuff. eg in the world of technology. 2. Reply to all our posts so we dont feel like we are in the room with a robot. or a feeling that this just a system to get us writing to them. 3. People are not fans of forums so lets resort to wall as our chat board. 4. You can also opt for multiple admins who will later add their own frieds and friends of theirs friends, this will grow the group to millions, hence having a large participating crowd. This is good for the company i guess. I am a computer support technician, please give me a chance to write an article in your magazine too. Thank you. Dag Atle Svanoe saintesmile@gmail.com

Just a note to say a big thank you for giving us credible information about technology in relation to gadgets. Now my humble request, let me call it an innovation is that I wish you started up some computer skill competitions among the schools where PC Tech Magazine is the leading magazine.These competitions can be held among different schools or students of the same school. For the terms and conditions, competitors can first subscribe to PC Tech Magazine and then are valid for the competitions. In addition, these competitions can be held termly or monthly. For sure if you work on this, our magazine shall become a dominant factor in all the schools around. LETTER OF THE MONTH

Ainebyoona Patrick nbnpatrick7@gmail.com Editor: Congratulations Patrick! This a great idea which we have decided we are going to implement. We shall be glad to discuss it with you further as we plan for it in the next academic year. Come pick your phone from our office any time during working hours.

Editor: Thank you Patrick and Dag for your letters. Patrick you will see more of PC Tech Educate in the next academic year. Dag we make effort to reply posts and messages on our website, and to update it hourly. We shall howwever step up the effort. You can submit your article anyime before the 15th of every month.

The PC Tech Letter of the Month Competition is sponsored by UGANDA TELECOM. Best Letter wins a fully connected mobile phone!

WRITE IN AND WIN 6

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

Orange internet is fast I have been hearing how fast internet is on new models of modems, such as the one for Orange, but I had been reluctant thinking that it was the usual talk that I had got used to. Finally I was convinced to buy a modem for Orange, which I did and I have ever since discovered for myself that it is the fastest internet that has ever been experienced in Uganda. I however want to appeal to the relevant people to reduce the price of the modem because it is very expensive and it prevents many people from buying it and using the internet which is

fast.

This is a wonderful innovation! Please keep it up. Charles

Odur Andrew Kampala

SMS Inbox hi pc tech.

Congs pc tech! this is so wonderful. Carol

You guys Rock! Derek

Building Africa by Africans for Africans. The strenght of the continent is our pride. This is a good gem, keep us on great Ambassador and for PC Tech. Latif

Wow! PC tech is so cool! a big well done to the editorial crew Emma

Nokia Ovi Suite: Designed from a clean slate, Nokia Ovi Suite offers a new, more user-friendly approach to Nokia PC software.In addition, this software is considerably slim and fast.The completely new user interface gives you easy access to your important files and information as all the functionalities are available within one window.

up to 500 percent, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM user friendly and easy to use.

eScan Internet Security Suite

Ashampoo Burning Studio 10 is the all-round tool for all CD, DVD and Bluray disc burning tasks. The main focus of the faster, more powerful premium version is even better authoring capabilities for building video and audio discs using the latest formats. HD and Full HD video are now fully supported for Blu-ray discs, and all the encoding is handled by Ashampoo Burning Studio 10. The new integrated editor creates DVD and Blu-ray video discs with automatically generated or self designed menus. Each menu page can use a different theme and background music.

solution designed for home and small office users is a comprehensive Anti-Virus and Content Security Solution that provides complete protection to your computers against objectionable content and security threats, such as Viruses, Spyware, Adware, Keyloggers, Rootkits, Botnets, Hackers, Spam, Phishing Web sites, and range of information security threats.

Internet Download Manager is a tool to increase download speeds by

Introducing the PC Tech SMS Helpline To ask a question about your computer, mobile phone, TV, vehicle... anything about technology Type PCHELP <space> YOUR QUESTION then send to 8198

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

INBOX

You can let us know your views and opinions through the email, inbox@pctechmagazine.com, www. facebook.com/pctech, www.twitter.com/pctechmagazine, www.pctechmagazine.com/discussion/forums, or by SMS: Type PCTECH <space> YOUR MESSAGE then send to 8198

“

Quotes

“We are not competition-focussed.”

AUSTIN OKERE, Founder and CEO Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) responding the a question on what the company thought about the nature of the competition in Uganda. CWG opened up a regional office in Uganda last month.

“So... this makes the third technology magazine launched is as many months? Did I miss the ‘How to build a technology Magazine’ Seminar?

SIMON VASS, Technical Manager, E-Tech Uganda responding to an email post on I-Network forum about the launch of PC Tech Magazine earlier in 2010.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN, German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.” JOHN TUDOR.

“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”

BILL CLINTON, The 42nd president of the United States of America in one of his speeches as President.

“What is dangerous is not to evolve.”

JEFF BEZOS, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Amazon.com.

“... this is the first professional tablet.”

MIKE LIZARDIS CEO Research In Motion RIM, talking at this year’s Blackberry DEVCON unveiling the Blackberry PlayBook, a 7-inch tablet.

“I can’t help but be proud that my first act as CEOelect of Nokia is to give you a million dollars.”

STEPHEN ELOP Nokia’s CEO Elect, awarding the amount to Kenya’s Virtual City Ltd., which develops software that helps small distributors and retailers run their business with the help of mobile phones.

“The web is at a really important turning point right now. Up until recently, the default on the web has been that most things aren’t social and most things don’t use your real identity. We’re building toward a web where the default is social.”

MARK ZUCKERBERG Facebook co-founder and CEO on unveiling a box of new tools on April 22, 2010

PC TECH | NOVEMBER2010 | pctechmagazine.com

Did you know? Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! Email address got hacked! The Sarah Palin (pictured) email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when the Yahoo! personal email account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker, David Kernell, had obtained access to Palin’s account by looking up biographical details such as her high school and birthdate and using Yahoo!’s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin’s email on 4chan’s board. This unauthorized access was ultimately prosecuted in a U.S. federal court as four felony crimes punishable by up to 50 years in federal prison. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, is the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis. He was charged in October 2008 in federal court. The four separate felony counts were: intentionally accessing an account without authorization, identity theft, wire fraud, and anticipatory obstruction of justice. Kernell pleaded not guilty to all counts. After several delays, a jury trial began on April 20, 2010. On April 30, 2010, the jury found Kernell guilty on two counts: the felony of anticipatory obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized access to a computer. He faces a maximum 20-year prison sentence on the first charge and a one-year sentence on the second, but is unlikely to be sentenced to the maximum. Sarah Palin posted a note on her Facebook page stating that she and her family were thankful the jury had rendered a just verdict. Kernell’s sentencing was to occur on September 24, 2010, but was delayed one month pending an appeal.

Orange expo comes to Uganda! TOP STORIES

NEWS

Company to showcase both “present and future” products

range Uganda will bring to Uganda the first ever technology expo that will show case a range of products and services, new innovations, lifestyle and future products. At the Orange Expo, Ugandans, will have a chance explore and experience a variety of different technology initiatives from Uganda and rest of the world. The Orange Expo will be taking place for three days, from 5th to 7th November 2010 at Hotel Africana, People’s Space. The Orange Expo will be divided into three main sections; Orange Products and Services: This section will mainly consist of what Orange Uganda has to offer in the market. The products and services will include different business packages, a variety of handsets, video streaming, live demonstrations, data and voice

offers just to mention but a few. Lifestyle, innovations and future products: Orange will also showcase interesting innovations like the fleet live which is an easy solution for vehicle security and fleet tracking. Others include Mobile TV that allows customers to watch TV everywhere using a mobile phone and a Watch-Phone, a product

from LG that has got all the functionalities of a mobile phone. Orange promises this to be an experience not to be missed. There will be music entertainment by Quela band, Cindy and Peter Miles. A gaming area for children and adults, as well as daily prizes to be won. Commenting on the announcement, Orange Uganda CEO-Mr. Philippe Luxcey: “We believe that Orange is much more than a telecommunications provider, our products and services should allow Ugandans to share lasting connections and experiences.” Orange promises lots of surprises during the EXPO with lots of spot prizes up for grabs including i-Phone 4, USB modems, crazy phone deals, date packages, airtime, and lots more.

PC Tech Magazine launched in Ghana

C Tech continued to live up to its reputation as the continent’s fastest growing technology magazine by successfully launching in Ghana. On September 24th, a team from PC Tech Communications, Uganda, and joined their Ghanaian counterparts to launch that was then called the International Edition. Management later decided that the local edition was going to be merged with the International Edition to make one continental magazine, monthly. The function, which was attended by delegates from Benin, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and the host nation, Ghana was also graced by representatives from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ghana on the last day of the Ghana Graduates Conference. The conference, Organized by PearlRichards Foundation, Ghana was themed - “My Dream for Ghana”. The objective of GGC 2010 is to explore the contributions to

Albert Mucunguzi, speaking at the launch!

socio-economic development in Ghana (and Africa) from the perspective of undergraduate and postgraduate scholars and/or scholars in the early years of their professional careers. It provided be a space for discourse and debate on novel approaches to building a better Africa. The audience that attended included students, faculty, educators and government agencies

concerned with education and business development. Speaking at the launch, Founder and Executive Director, Albert Mucunguzi explained that PC Tech is not a publication that is limited by national boundaries. “Today we’ve launched here in Accra, and months from now, you’ll see us on the news-stands in Johannesburg,” he said. When asked the secret to the rapid growth, Mr. Mucunguzi explained that PC Tech is run alongside other “societyempowerment” initiatives. “When we launched in Uganda, we introduced the ‘Educate’ initiative, and we’ve been busy donating magazines to Ugandan Schools. Through Digital Learning Africa, we’ve created a platform for academic sharing by both students and educators,” he explained. “Our job now is to consolidate these initiatives, as well as expand our scope to cover more African countries.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

UGANDA

TOP STORIES IN BRIEF

Charbel Fakhoury, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf

- Improved facial recognition - Photo Gallery facial recognition is improved significantly and works more quickly. - Larger movie uploads - Movie Maker will upload higher resolution movies to SkyDrive (480x640 vs. the previous 320x480). - Higher bit-rate movies - Movie Maker now supports higher quality (bit-rate) content. - Better spell-checking - Writer has significantly improved the quality of its spellchecking. - Better integration with Office - Writer is much better at retaining all formatting when you copy and paste from Word and other Microsoft Office programs. - Better handling of Gmail - Mail now automatically handles Gmail’s spam and trash folders properly. - Faster web filtering - Family Safety web filtering is 35% faster than in the previous version.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

Nigeria: MobiTel debuts 4g Technology

obitel Limited has debuted with the launch of its Fourth Generation (4G) broadband access for data and voice services. With this launch, Mobitel is acclaimed first national 4G network operator in the country by optimising its 2.3 Giga Hertz (GHz) spectrum and using Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WWIMAX) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies. Speaking at the launch in Lagos, the chief executive officer, MobiTel, Mr. Johnson Salako, said that they are deploying 4G-enabled broadband and voice services across the country, in partnership with leading global technology providers such as Vocaltec, Alvarion and DragonWave.

Read Full story pctechmagazine.com

WORLD

African youths on their way to Johannesburg for the Digital Natives workshop Kerryn McKay, Samuel Tettner and Daniella White JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

NEWS

Can African youths be Digital Natives? T

his is the question at the heart of an exciting workshop entitled “My bubble, My space, My voice” which will be held on the 7th – 9th November 2010. A group of intrepid and inquisitive Africans will make their way to Johannesburg, South Africa to explore and analyse how they use the tools and platforms at their disposal to create social change in their environments. Twenty individuals were selected from over 350 applications from across Africa. The selection process was rigorous and the selection team, consisting of people from CIS, Hivos and The African Commons Project were faced with the tough task of elimination in order to give structure to the workshop which will run over three days. A concentrated group was ultimately selected from diverse countries such as Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The workshop is held under the auspices of the “Digital Natives with a Cause?” project, a knowledge programme which is the result of a partnership between the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS, Bangalore) and Hivos (The Netherlands). The programme was initiated a year and a half ago as an inquiry into the emergence of the phenomenon of ‘Digital Natives’ - youth that have grown up in a world of technology and its practices. This study has found relevance in scholarship, NGO and civil society practice and legal and policy infrastructure discourse. The first part of the project started as a scouting study which looked at grey and published literature, grass-root practices and the policies that government and corporate stakeholders were developing around the rise of the Digital Natives. The scouting study developed a new framework of looking at Digital Natives that challenge the available discourse by identifying knowledge gaps in the field. The primary motivations for both partners involved in the project was to understand the scope and the breadth of this new field and also to look at the potentials for social transformation and political practices in the young peoples’ interaction with digital and internet technologies. The scouting study is available online at http://www.cis-india.org/ publications/cis/nishant/dnrep.pdf/view The project also aims to give digital natives a voice, by incorporating a first-person narrative of the use of technology by youth. A book containing several case studies of varying cultural backgrounds and diverse methodologies will be compiled. The case studies will be the result of 3 workshops, of

fruitfully with their immediate environments. Despite some challenges in the lead up the event that saw some participants blocked from which the African workshop is the second in the series, that are being conducted across the entry into Taiwan, the workshop participants were eager to connect with each other. The developing world. result was a ‘secret group chat’ via IM with the The kickoff workshop was held from 16 -18 missing participants, which was soon coined August in Taiwan at the Institute of Ethnology their coup d’état – and a perfect example of at Academia Sinica in Taipei. The workshop, Digital Natives in action. titled ‘Talking Back’ brought together twentyUltimately, the workshop provided the two Digital Natives from regions as varied chance for Digital Natives to reflect upon their as Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Jakarta, own practice and examine what it means to India, China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Moldova and be a Digital Native in emerging societies in Thailand. Asia. As Shah concluded, “The workshop Director of Researcher at the Centre for was helpful in not only challenging the Internet and Society in India, Nishant Shah, existing North-West centric understanding explained the motivation behind the title of who a Digital Native is, of the workshop: “What but also threw up new ways does it mean to Talk Back? of thinking about how the Who do we Talk Back young relate to digital and against? Are we alone in internet technologies. The our attempts or a part of a conversations that started larger community? How do in the workshop continue we use digital technologies online as new exchanges to find other peers and and dialogues happen across stakeholders? What is the time zones and lifestyles.” language and vocabulary The second in the series we use to successfully of workshops will be held in articulate our problems? Africa, and is being hosted How do we negotiate with by the African Commons structures of power to fight Project in partnership of CIS for our rights? These are and Hivos. Kerryn McKay, the kind of questions that director at The African the workshop poses.” PC Tech’s Albert Mucunguzi will be on of the six Ugandans Commons Project, explains: Using an ‘unconference’ ‘these workshops serve to at the Workshop in Jo’burg methodology, the workshop document the first-person focused on uncovering ways narratives of the digital natives. through which Digital Natives They also provide exercises through which have managed to circumvent authorities the participants can learn how to converse in order to make themselves heard. The meaningfully with other young users of workshop also dwelt on what kind of support technology in the region.’ structures need to be developed at global A final workshop will be held in Chile, levels for Digital Natives to engage more South America in the spring of 2011.

Participants at the Taipei workshop

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

2nd Generation

GADGETS, TECHNOLOGY

WHAT’S NEW

SanDisk Cruzer USB disk

New Tech Gadgets and concepts. By Joshua Twinamasiko G.

Experience reliable, portable storage with a SanDisk Cruzer USB Flash Drive. Why leave your photos, videos and music at home when they’ll fit in your pocket? Trust the minds behind flash memory to make it easy to store, transfer and share your digital files wherever you go. With up to 32GB of storage, these drives are built to handle the real world’s bumps and turns-so you can count on them to help you share plenty of photos, videos and other digital favorites wherever you go.

Platronics Savor M1100 Now this particular Bluetooth headset is more than just a headset. You can listen to email and incoming messages without a PC, and at extra cost you can reply and have the unit convert your speech to text. You can use it to listen to news, sports or weather updates from sources such as CNN and Yahoo (PC Tech coming soon) with a smartphone app. Then you can answer or reject calls without touching it: Just say “answer” or “ignore” as a call comes in.

The new Macbook Air This year, Apple completely redesigned the 13-inch MacBook Air, adding an additional USB port, upgrading the graphics to use Nvidia’s GeForce 320M, expanding the battery capacity, increasing the screen resolution (from 1280x800 to 1440x900), and moving exclusively to a speedy, “instant-on” solid state flash drive for storage. Apple also shaved off a tenth of a pound of weight and two millimeters of thickness from the 13-inch model, while also introducing a new 11-inch model with a 1366x768 screen that drops an inch of width, nearly an inch and a half of depth, two millimeters of thickness, and 0.7 lbs from the original design. In general, Apple’s MacBook Air offerings reestablish the notebook as a less powerful but far more mobile form factor contrasted with the full sized desktop, which is what notebook computers used to be in the ‘90s. Over the last decade, notebooks generally became powerful enough to serve as both a desktop workhorse and mobile enough to last as a battery-powered portable system. Neither Dell nor Hewlett-Packard nor Sony have laptops that compete directly with the 2.3-pound, 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Is this a new market segment that those three laptop leaders and others will have to address?

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

The PowerShot SX210 IS is aimed at users who demand a considerable amount from a point-andshoot camera, featuring a 14.1-megapixel CCD sensor, a 14x zoom lens and vmany manual controls. Its lens can take shots from a wide angle of 28mm, right up to a tele-zoom angle of 392mm. This is even more far reaching than Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TZ10. The Canon also has a wider aperture range from f/3.1 to f/8.0 and its shutter speed ranges from 15sec to 1/3200sec. With such a versatile range of photographic parameters, the SX210 can take great shots in just about any situation – and it will even perform reasonably well in low lighting. However, the physical design of the camera makes it uncomfortable to hold and difficult to use. The zoom rocker is tiny and hard to move, and the mode dial is located on the rear of the camera (instead of the top).

WHAT’S NEW

Canon PowerShot SX210

OCZ’s USB 3.0 / SSD external HD OCZ seems to be leading the fight to kill the spinning hard drive as of late. After releasing the first 1TB Solid State Drive, TweakTown reports that OCZ is giving the external hard drive market a huge speed upgrade. Their newly-released Enyo line of hard drives combines the performance of USB 3.0 with the speed and reliability of solid state memory in a trim and sleek aluminum package that has the potential to really shake things up in the external hard drive market. The Enyo boasts read speeds up to 260 MB/sec and write speeds up to 200 MB/sec. A full 256 GB back up lasts only 12 minutes instead of the 2.5hrs over USB 2.0. Does that give you an idea of how much time savings we are talking about? No word on pricing yet, but expect it to be steep. This is a combination of two relatively new technologies, what many consumers would call bleeding-edge, and the price will likely reflect that. However, as more USB 3.0/SSD devices roll out, expect prices to behave much like other storage medium markets and drop precipitously once more manufacturers start releasing similar products.

The Magic Mouse Ok, this one is not new, it has been around for almost a year, but having spent the last month with it in my palm made me feel it deserves mention here. It has multi-touch capability, and 360 degree scrolling. The only problem is that its meant for Mac only, and I had to go through quite some trouble to get it working with my Windows 7 netbook.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

WHAT’S NEW

Blackberry Playbook Last month Research In Motion (RIM) announced their latest offering, the Blackberry PlayBook. The tablet which RIM CEO, Mike Lazaridis described as “the first professional tablet” has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 multi-touch screen, a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and either 16GB or 32GB onboard storage capacity. The PlayBook sports a 3MP front facing camera and a 5MP rear camera. It has got a microUSB jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an HDMI port. No word on when it will be available and at how much, but it looks quite promising! We can’t wait for it to hit the stores.

Nokia N8: iPhone killer? Nokia’s flagship device, the N8 is pretty much everything a flagship device can be. However, the most exciting part of the N8 is its imaging capability. 12 megapixels with autofocus, Carl Zeiss optics, a Xenon flash, face recognition and a wide angle lens guarantee crystal clear images. The N8 has the largest sensor ever used in a mobile phone. The N8 is better than the iPhone in many ways, including price, camera, xenon flash, video calling, memory, HDMI and Dolby Surround Sound.

NEC’s green MultiSync Monitor NEC has launched their new very own generation of desktop monitor that’s so green that it may have came straight from the Mabira forest. The 23-inch NEC MultiSync EX231W is a true High Definition and environment friendly LED-backlit monitor that delivers the best in design and functionality. Backed by technology that emphasizes eco-responsibility and energy efficiency, the new EX231W drains less power, produces less heat, uses less packaging materials, weighs less and made use of recycled plastics and non-hazardous materials. The 23-inch NEC MultiSync EX231W HD LED-backlit LCD monitor additionally features a fully adjustable quick-release stand that can raise up to 110 mm and pivot, tilt and swivel functions to tailor to your viewing and comfort preferences.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

available flying machine

WHAT’S NEW

Martin Jetpack: The world’s first commercially The Martin Jetpack is the world’s first practical jetpack. It consists of a purpose-built gasoline engine driving twin ducted fans which produce sufficient thrust to lift the aircraft and a pilot in vertical takeoff and landing, enabling sustained flight. The Martin Jetpack is creating a new segment in the aviation and recreational vehicle markets. Initially designed with the leisure market in mind, commercial demand for the Martin Jetpack has seen the research and development programme focus on readying the product for use in a number of sectors including emergency response, defence and recreation, with numerous applications in each sector. The Martin Jetpack will set you back a cool $100,000 (UGX 230 million), but it may be a very long time till it is available for purchase in Uganda.

LBO’s screenless touchscreen Imagine a restaurant where you browse the menu by touching an interactive tablecloth. Or shops with touchscreen walls that let you check what’s in stock and place orders. These are among the possibilities offered by Light Touch, a miniature projector invented by Cambridge company Light Blue Optics, which can turn a flat surface into a 10.1” touchscreen. The device -- which measures 98 x 35 x 165mm -- uses laser projection to display images such as web and video content with a 480- x 800pixel resolution. Its horizontal infrared sensor detects finger motion and location, adding touch interactivity to the displayed image. “Light Touch can become a multimedia ordering system in a restaurant, a wipe-clean germfree keyboard to use in hospitals or a touchscreen in the kitchen to shop online,” says CEO Chris Harris. “It has the potential to bring wireless virtual touchscreens to every surface.”

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

COVER STORY

Just like so many Facebook users, Ugandan Law Student, Daniel Bwambale uses a catoon figure as his profile picture

Lida Samadi, an Iranian software developer can share real-time updates with the rest of the PC Tech Fans on Facebook

Building an online community An online community is a virtual community that exists online whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership rituals. It can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as blogs. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life.

ALBERT MUCUNGUZI & DR. RICHARD BOATENG

he Internet has changed how consumers buy and organisations market in today’s economy. The promise of the Internet in the marketing function of organisations is seen as direct dialogue with customers and enhancing opportunities for branding initiatives, product customisation, and relationship building with customers. As it becomes increasing important for organisations to extend their reach to more customers through the Internet there is also the complex difficulty of being dynamically responsive to the changing needs and preferences of customers in this new medium of marketing. Identifying and understanding the needs of customers does become necessary. Hence, it is becoming an increasing norm for organisations to achieve this objective of understanding customers and their needs by forming or building a community of its customers or potential customers online. DEFINITION An online community is defined as set of

interwoven relationships built upon the foundation of shared interests. These shared interests can refer to a diversity of topics, activities, or commonalities which bring people together online. These communities have proved to have contributed to success of online firms Facebook.com, and Amazon.com. While some organisations have extended their online and offline presence through online communities, other organisations have originated as online community focused on a shared interest like eBay, thus without the Internet or an equivalent communication medium these organisations may not exist. In both instances, there is objective need for the underpinning organisation or administrator of the community to understand its members or potential members in order to create value for the community. Specifically communities may be categorised to be oriented around three main interests; Information-driven, activity-driven, and commonality-driven. Within informationdriven community, the primary interest on members is the sharing of information – actionlink.org.uk; for Activity-driven

iCitizenForum is an Award-Winning Online Community

community the primary interest is the shared activities – eBay; and for the Commonalitydriven the primary interest is the common attribute or characteristic – community of practitioners, dta.org.uk. The value created within these communities is defined by the benefits to its members to a larger extent, and to the founding organisation or administrator of the communities. The community creates this value by satisfying needs of members which are is not be available individually and hence tends to be unique. The value is thus generated from the interrelationships between users and the administrator or founding organisation. The interrelationships can be characterised as three identifiable patterns from which value can be created and transferred within the community; • User-to-user: User generated content such as member-written articles, opinions, advice, and sharing resources.

• Administrator-to-user: Administrator created content such as news, issues, exclusive research and reports and featured articles and interviews with practitioners or special guests.

COVER STORY

• User-to-administrator: User

generated such as revenue from product sales or trading, content fees, commissions, advertising sales.

User-to-Administrator: 1. Membership fees 2. User-content fees -websites 3. Activity participation fees 4. Commission fees 5. Advertising fees

hough these benefits or value proposition may seem easily identifiable and achievable, creating a successful community which leverages these benefits is not an easy task in reality. This would require the dedication of founding participants of the community to create and sustain interest.

User-to-User: 1. User-generated content (information/comments) 2. User Blogs and Spaces 3. Relationships/support/ conversation

GETTING STARTED Administrator-to-User: 1.Administrator-generated content (news/articles/ editorials/publications) 2. Mailing Lists and Newsletters 3. Web casts of guest speakers/practitioners 4.Offline projects, events and conferences for members 5. Training programmes, help and support services.

Building a website into a vibrant community filled with many contributors is very difficult and it nay be impossible to break down the exact steps. Below, we’ll try to put together some of the basic ones: 1. Make sure you really want to do this

Value Transfer in Online Communities

ou know how interviewers ask someone who has lived a full life and they’re near death, if they could re-live their life again, what they would do different? You have to ask yourself that before you lift a finger building a community. Are you ready to be a leader? Are you ready to do all the work necessary to create not just a normal, engaging website, but one that many others can use? Are you ready to spend every waking moment watching it? Are you ready to stay up all night re-coding main areas of the site after someone hacks the files? Are you ready to keep it up, day in and day out for as long as you can stand it? I can’t underestimate how much time you will spend on a community website. It will take longer to create, often months to get rolling, with constant tweaking and twiddling of the code to keep everything running smoothly This is the most challenging point in the list, but it’s good to get this one figured out before you plunge full speed into new development. 2. Have both a compelling idea and compelling content

here are lots of possible reasons to start a community, but generally it’s good to focus on a specific topic. Having a specific topic means you’ll have an easier time explaining your site’s purpose, and quickly find like-minded people to contribute their thoughts and content to your community. The PC Tech online community was easier in this sense because we already had our theme: Technology. Some Facebook users referred to our Facebook page as their “local geek community”. At that time, we had just under

1000fans, mostly from Uganda. But still, we felt we needed to have a community on the website: first because we wanted to offer some premium services (SMS, restrictions in some content items, e.t.c), and also because we could do it! I guess having comments and allowing others to post was a compelling enough idea that lead to a busy site. Compelling content is more important than you probably think. The most welldefined group purpose, with lots of motivated members, will go nowhere unless there is something to draw everyone together and get people contributing. This rule could go for any site really, but it’s important to have the best possible writing, design, photography, etc. that you can, and update as often as possible. This is where community sites can excel over single person operations. With a diverse enough membership, you can have an expert artist, fantastic writers, great photographers, and senior programmers to build the best community site imaginable, and everyone pitching in can update the content on a frequent basis. It’s not exactly easy to get big membership numbers on which to draw for ongoing content, first you have to convince people to join your site, and contribute or comment on other work, and for that you need to start with good content. It’s sort of a Catch-22, but once Facebook will offer you an opportunity you get a group of to reach people who would otherwise members creating good content, it not be able to sign up on your site!

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

creates a strong positive feedback loop that leads to growth, popularity and quality. 3. Seed content sets the stage

n the early months of a community site, it’s important that there is good content there, and that the comments or audience interaction are as close to optimal as possible, so that others reading the site can get a feel for how they are expected to act. If you’re building a site that covers politics and you’re dreaming of lively debate with a specific slant, make sure your first few articles, essays, or threads cover a good topic, and that some discussion follows where users (more than one) are debating things in an intelligent way. New members will see what is currently on the site, and react accordingly. If there is considerate and helpful criticism, others will usually follow. If there are “first posts!” and posts making threats on other members, other such garbage will follow that as well. If it’s a company discussion forum, set up some threads and have some friends start discussions. If it’s a community of airplane enthusiasts, try and find 2 or 3 people to help start the site off the same way, by finding content and discussing it in a proper manner. You’re not shooting for having hundreds of fake discussion posts with no one, you’re just trying to convey a code of conduct by starting with things you can use as examples, and new members can follow. 4. Create some basic guidelines and be as fair as possible When you’re the administrator on a community site, it’s important that you set the examples to follow. Post regularly and intelligently, and keep a high profile on the site so others know of your presence (this keeps some troublemakers away, since they know that the site owner will quickly catch wind of their mischief ). Follow the Golden Rule, treat

5. Have a place to talk about the site, somewhere on the site

t can be a brilliant idea to have a special section designed to talk about issues around the site: bugs and features users wish for, or any etiquette that may have been breached. 6. Spread the work out as much as possible If it’s possible, have a few trusted friends act as moderators and administrators and allow people to contribute and streamline the code that runs the site. When the day-to-day maintenance can be spread out among several people, it’s okay if someone goes on vacation, gets busy with work or gets ill, or takes some time off from the site. If lots of new features are being requested, several people can work on them, and debug them faster. This situation isn’t always possible, and there are only a few projects that come to mind, such as evolt. org where a sizeable,

diverse group keeps a site running. 7. Deal with troublemakers as quickly and nicely as possible If you’re running a community site of some sort, there’s a good chance that people are going to try and mess with it, push the envelope, and hack at it for no good reason. The important thing for you to do as the administrator is deal with problem members as soon as possible and as carefully as possible. If you act rashly, or too strongly, you may incite a casual hacker into a full-blown making-yourlife-a-living-hell type of hacker. You want to defuse any situation before it gets out of hand. Start by emailing the person as soon as you can (but give yourself a little time to think, don’t send anything too rashly or in the heat of the moment), and asking them gently if perhaps they didn’t catch the guidelines pages, or that you’d prefer if they did their thing in a different way. Be careful of your wording in these emails - you don’t want to sound threatening or patronizing in any way. You might want to have a friend review the message before sending it to make sure it’s neither of those things. A short email reminding a trouble-making member of the error of their ways can usually take care of 90% of problems. Even if a member is doing something obviously malicious, they’ll usually stop when called on it. If that doesn’t stop the problem member, the next thing to do is enforce some sort of penalty. This would usually be something like taking away posting rights or moderation rights, posing some new limit on their participation in the site. You will probably want to email them, letting them know what you’ve done, why you’ve done it, and most importantly what they can do to get the ban

lifted. Hopefully, you’ll never need to proceed after these first two measures, because a situation can quickly escalate into a war of willpower. If you have to start banning members, doing so will prove quite difficult. You may take all rights away from their account, block their IP address or range of IP addresses, and/or remove their contributions from the site. There are trickier means of hiding a problem user’s activity from the rest, but I won’t go into that here. It’s not a path you’ll ever want to take, and no one “wins” in the end; it’s just a big waste of energy for all involved. The bottom line is to stop unsavory behavior by defusing nasty situations as early as possible, in as nice of a way as possible.

COVER STORY

others as you would like to be treated, and watch for unsavory patterns that form. If you catch something that’s happening with some regularity, and you’d like to see it stop, make it part of the rules of the site, and explain somewhere why people shouldn’t do it (start by putting a pointer somewhere near the posting forms, so curious contributors can read them if they like). Keep track of these rules, and put them somewhere people can easily find them on the site. When you have to enforce them, be nice about it, and show people the rules and how they broke them. The world isn’t a black-and-white place, so a lot of things will be up to your judgement, but explain as fully as you can why you chose to enforce a certain thing, and point out what the person can do to prevent it from happening again. What users of a community don’t want to see is a headstrong leader who rules with an iron fist, and seems to take pleasure in enforcement. Users also don’t want to see a leader that changes his or her mind from day to day, enforcing rules with some users, while letting friends or long time members get away with murder. Users don’t want to be yelled at publicly when they make their first mistake, and they want to be given second chances. Fairness and consistency are key practices when you’re running an online community.

8. Highlight the good, recognize the work of others I’m still searching for the perfect way to do this, but you’ll encourage good contributions by recognizing and highlighting the best your community has to offer. This is especially true when your community is larger, and you need something to point to as a casual “Hall of Fame” that new users can take their cue from. This can take many forms, you can use voting/ moderation to let the community pick its favorites, you can utilize some sort of Brownie Point system where members earn credits for good contributions which are displayed somewhere (an ego stroking stop, basically), or if you’re lacking the extra technology just keep track of them by hand in a “Best of” setting. Building an inviting place that attracts users and maintaining high quality content on a bustling community site is far from easy, but these key points should help get you going in the right direction.

The PC Tech Discussion forum has over 300 registered users. This post, adoption of Power Line Communication, started by Joseph Munuulo is the most popular topic so far! Visit pctechmagazine.com/discussion/forums for details.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

Yes, you need that

REPORTS, ANALYSIS

FEATURES

Anti-virus software BY DAN B. ATUHAIRE

So your computer has been running the same antivirus for the last couple of months, and you now feel like you have to change it? Well, you don’t to change just for the sake of changing. Just because you saw a different antivirus application on your office neighbors’ PC doesn’t mean you join the bandwagon. You need to have a sound reason for doing so. The misconception most PC owners have with antivirus applications is thinking that one antivirus will have their PCs safe and secure from potential virus attacks. A computer virus, for the uninitiated, basically refers to a malicious software program that is designed to replicate itself by copying itself into the other programs installed in a computer, often adversely affecting the computer’s performance. The replication could be on the computer itself, or may also spread across other PCs on the network. The word virus may also collectively be used to refer to all forms of malware, worms or Trojans. The bottom line is that most/all of these malicious applications have a hugely negative impact on the computer’s performance. Viruses can infect desktop computers, laptops and network servers and pose one of the most serious Internet security risks. Sources of Viruses Most viruses come from email, web sites, downloaded files and loadable media, such flash disks, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and DVDs. The viruses replicate themselves onto the machine when a user either copies/executes the infected files from such media to their PCs, or downloads infected internet files without scanning on the contents. The commonest source is through spam e-mails that have been sent to unsuspecting readers. Other potential sources are through picture based pages-such as pornographic websites, as well as most sites that have downloadable video content. Beware of sites that offer free music/video content streaming, lest you stand a high risk of getting such malware. The effects of a viral infection on a PC can be pretty unpleasant and may include some/all of the following:

• Disabled access to certain computer programs and files. Programs like Microsoft office suit (Ms Office, Excel and Access) usually get corrupted, while certain operating system applications like system restore tend to get disabled, making it difficult to restore an already messed up system! • Addition, modification or deletion of files or corrupting of the hard disk. Certain types of malware (such as worm) eat up storage space and slow down the computer, but won't alter or delete any files. • Using unsigned-out E-mail addresses to send virus-infected emails to unintended recipients, clients or other devices (if the PC is on the network). • Sending of unsolicited, bulk email (spam) to those in one’s mail address books and other users if the computer has an internet connection. Are Antiviruses the Way Forward? The answer is Yes and No. Yes, because installing the right antivirus will help you get rid of most malware, and No because having an antivirus that is not properly configured can have adverse effects on the computer’s overall performance. Avoid installing more than once strong antivirus on the same PC as it would compromise your machine’s general performance. Applications like Kerspersky, McAfee, e-scan and Symantec are some of the most effective antiviruses, but they are also quite resource intensive. Such applications may be co-installed with much lighter malware protection utilities, such as the USB protection utility or Avira. On the other hand, do not overly rely on a single antivirus installation as it may not be able to detect certain viruses/malware. You should regularly update your antivirus to keep abreast with ever changing virus world. Various viruses, worms and Trojans are always being built each day, so having regularly updated anti-virus installations would really go a long way in securing your PC. A periodic complete scan (such as a monthly scan schedule) with different updated antivirus applications would also strongly support your cause.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

By Kasse Joanne the anti-virus software is obviously useless to that user. Other ways to detect viruses Some antivirus-software will try to emulate the beginning of the code of each new executable that is being executed before transferring control to the executable. If the program seems to be using self-modifying code or otherwise appears as a virus (it immediately tries to find other executables), one could assume that the executable has been infected with a virus. However, this method results in a lot of false positives. Yet another detection method is using a sandbox. A sandbox emulates the operating system and runs the executable in this simulation. After the program has terminated, the sandbox is analysed for changes which might indicate a virus. Because of performance issues this type of detection is normally only performed during on-demand scans.

Kaspersky Virus Watch reports n antivirus software is a computer program that can be used to scan files or documents to identify and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware) that may cause infection. Methods used to identify the malware include: • Examining files to look for known viruses by the help of a virus dictionary. • Identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection. Most commercial anti-virus softwares use two approaches: Virus dictionary approach In the virus dictionary approach, when the anti-virus software examines a file, it refers to a dictionary of known viruses that have been identified by the author of the anti-virus software. If a piece of code in the file matches any virus identified in the dictionary, then the anti-virus software can then either delete the file, quarantine it so that the file is inaccessible to other programs and its virus is unable to spread, or attempt to repair the file by removing the virus itself from the file. To be successful in the medium and long term, the virus dictionary approach requires periodic online downloads of updated virus dictionary entries. As new viruses are identified “in the world”, civically minded and technically inclined users can send their infected files to

the authors of anti-virus software, who then includes information about the new viruse difinitions in their dictionaries. Dictionary-based anti-virus software typically examines files when the computer’s operating system creates, opens, and closes them; and when the files are e-mailed. In this way, a known virus can be detected immediately upon receipt. The software can also typically be scheduled to examine all files on the user’s hard disk on a regular basis. Although the dictionary approach is considered effective, virus authors have tried to stay a step ahead of such software by writing “polymorphic viruses”, which encrypt parts of themselves or otherwise modify themselves as a method of disguise, so as to not match the virus’s signature in the dictionary. Suspicious behavior approach The suspicious behavior approach, by contrast, doesn’t attempt to identify known viruses, but instead monitors the behavior of all programs. If one program tries to write data to an executable program, for example, this is flagged as suspicious behavior and the user is alerted to this, and asked what to do. Unlike the dictionary approach, the suspicious behavior approach therefore provides protection against brand-new viruses that do not yet exist in any virus dictionaries. However, it also sounds a large number of false positives, and users probably become desensitized to all the warnings. If the user clicks “Accept” on every such warning, then

FEATURES

How does Antivirus Software work?

Issues of concern Macro viruses, arguably the most destructive and widespread computer viruses, could be prevented far more inexpensively and effectively, without the need of all users to buy anti-virus software. I would advise users to stop downloading and executing unknown programs from the Internet, as this would slow the spread of viruses, without the need of anti-virus software. Computer users should also not always use the administrator account. If they would simply run in user mode then some types of viruses would not be able to spread. The dictionary approach to detecting viruses is often insufficient due to the continual creation of new viruses, yet the suspicious behavior approach is ineffective due to the false positive problem; hence, its hard for anti-virus software to conquer computer viruses. There are various methods of encrypting and packing malicious software which will make even well-known viruses undetectable to anti-virus software. Detecting these “camouflaged” viruses requires a powerful unpacking engine, which can decrypt the files before examining them. Unfortunately, many popular anti-virus programs do not have this and thus are often unable to detect encrypted viruses. However with constant update of the antivirus engine database, some infections can be detected before crashing down the whole computer.

SEND FREE SMS From the Internet www.pctechmagazine.com/sms

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

FEATURES 26

Social media impact on our community BY WILSON KUTEGEKA SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, UGANDA

friend of mine one time asked me, why you are on Facebook is it that you got a lot of time on you. Well I had just one answer, am on facebook, twitter, linkedin and others because that’s where people are? And I believe we need people especially those we can interact with in many ways. I do know that a couple of people still think otherwise about these social networking site, well I can’t disagree with them 100 percent. While socialnetworking sites are changing the way people stay in touch, e-mail or phone calls are still an important way to communicate. However, Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, etc are changing the way people communicate, do business, advertise etc. My thinking is that this medium is here to stay and if you don’t educate yourself on how to use it, you will be left out. The above mentioned sites along with countless others can help you get anything and everything you want; new business contacts and relationships, referral sources and more business. With the explosion of social media platforms, word-ofmouth marketing is easier than ever. Information has the capacity to travel at a business velocity never before seen. Communities of practice, professional networks, email, and SMS are among the tools that enable multi-channel access for

individuals (employees, customers, partners, and suppliers). We are finally a part of the long-promised global virtual and collaborative work environment. Online communities and professional networks have arguably changed the way we do business and are, in themselves, new ecosystems, virally creating communities within communities beyond the control of most companies to manage. Professional networks facilitate vast interactions, connections, and networks of people by enabling collaboration anywhere and at any time. Most business managers are already racking their brains trying to think of ways to unlock the power of social networks. More likely than not, your organization is no exception. If you are in sales or a small business owner and haven’t plunged

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

head first into social media marketing, then you are behind. Your competition is already using these platforms to educate the public about what they do and what kind of business they are looking for. Big companies that offer public emails such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google have been streamlined for speed and designed to let people easily send or receive Facebook updates or Twitter messages directly from their inboxes. Phone manufactures are also incorporating such capabilities.

FEATURES

Media Media show show all all media media houses houses under under one one roof roof

Media show

OCT OCT22ND-23RD 22ND-23RD2010 2010 IMPERIAL IMPERIALROYALE ROYALEHOTEL HOTELKAMPALA KAMPALA You cravehouses for answers, ideas & innovations all media one roof You crave for answers,under ideas & innovations

See all the media channels in the biggest media exhibition. See all the media channels in the biggest media exhibition.

19TH - 20TH November OCT 22ND-23RD 2010 2010 Print Media | Radio Stations | TV stations

Organised by: Organised by: Royalway Media Ltd. R oyalway Media Plot 4 Pilkington RoadLtd. PlotBox 4 Pilkington Road P.O. 70348 Kampala P.O.0772Box 70348 Kampala Tel. 464 686 Tel. 0772-686 464/ 686 0702-464 0782-545 572 0702-464 686 / 0782-545 572

BOOK BOOKYOUR YOUR RoyalWay Media Ltd SPACE NOW: SPACE NOW:

Email: sales@mediaexpo-ug.com | web: www.mediaexpo-ug.com Email: sales@mediaexpo-ug.com | web: www.mediaexpo-ug.com Organised by:

Royalway Media Ltd. Plot 4 Pilkington Road P.O. Box 70348 Kampala Tel. 0772- 464 686 0702-464 686 / 0782-545 572

BOOKYOUR SPACE NOW:

Email: sales@mediaexpo-ug.com | web: www.mediaexpo-ug.com pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

REVIEWS

Internet Security Suite 2010

Reviews is the section where you find professional assessment of products/software. It was introduced to guide individuals/organizations in making IT decisions in choosing among the various options in the market. This month we were impressed by eScan Internet Security Suite. To submit your feedback, please use the email: reviews@pctecmagazine. com

Realtime protection

By Joshua Twinamasiko G.

PC Tech got complementary copies of the latest iteration of eScan Internet Security Suite. I immediately installed mine as I had been running without any security software. The installation was easy, it was up and running in a short time. EScan Internet Security is relatively straightforward in its approach. Its design is simple and non-flashy. It features real-time virus scanning, which scans files, emails and websites, looking for those trojans,

spyware and adware that might threaten your computer. Then there’s also the real-time content scanning that checks your email bodies for confidential data, file size, prohibited content and so on. The heuristic scanning tracks the evolution of viruses so as to keep you up-to-date with what is going in on. Its antispam feature blocks spam and phishing emails using advanced spam blocking technologies. It also has a neat feature of data theft prevention with USB control, which prohibits

Publishers Description eScan Internet Security Suite is a comprehensive AntiVirus and Content Security solution that safeguards your computer from Viruses, Spyware, Adware, Malware, Keyloggers, Hackers, Spammers, Phishing, Objectionable content and many more similar threats. • Real Time Virus Scanning of your computer, includes scanning of emails and websites. • Includes Anti Spyware/Adware. • Real Time Content Scanning of all emails and websites. • New “MWAV (MicroWorld AntiVirus) Utility” with Spyware and Adware detection and removal and registry repairing.

• Intelligent Parental Control. • Powerful Spam-Blocker to prohibit Spam mails blocks image and PDF based Spam. • POP Up Filter - Can be setup to block POP UP Ads. • Privacy Control, where Internet history files will be cleaned at regular intervals. • Remote Access File Rights, restriction of creation & modification of specific file types in a user specified folder. • ‘TCP Connections’ an inbuilt Network Monitoring Tool that examines TCP/IP activity on Windows computers. • Automatic Hourly Internet Updation.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

intensive processes like scheduled scans from running on battery power so as to conserve your battery time for your work. eScan 11 provides a new Folder Protection feature facility by which you can protect specific files and folders from being modified or deleted. The main advantage of this feature is that it prevents the specified files from being infected by malicious software. In addition, the files and folders that are protected cannot be deleted unless the folder protection is turned off. This helps you to safeguard your confidential data from infections due to malware. eScan Internet Security Suite automatically checks and downloads critical patches for the Windows® operating system from the Microsoft® Web site. It thus prevents malware from exploiting vulnerabilities, existing in your operating system. eScan 11 prevents data theft and Virus infections through USB and Fire-

K8thANovember M 2010, P A5.30pm L atA MTN Uganda, Nyonyi Gardens Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. Mobile Monday Kampala is pleased to announce that its next meeting, on the theme, Simple, Low-cost Solutions, the Gist of M4D, will be hosted by Grameen Foundation and held at MTN Uganda Nyonyi Gardens on Monday 8th November, starting at 5:30 PM. We've got a great MoMo lined up with an international panel of speakers with a bent on inventing the future, chaired by Grameen’s Sean Krepp. MoMo CEO and President, Jari Tammisto will be giving the opening remarks and introducing keynotes. FrontlineSMS and Kiwanja.net founder Ken Banks will give a keynote on "Mobiles4Development: The FrontlineSMS Experience". Matt Berg, presenting over Skype, will give a keynote on “ChildCount+, Facts for Life SMS”. AppLab's Olga Morawczynski will present “Tthe

FinLit Project: Enhancing Access to Banking Services in Rural Uganda, and Professor Andy Dearden’s “Integrating Mobile Data Services Into Existing Information Ecosystems” will explain how understanding the complex and intricate network of resources of those working in a typical village is key to making M4D an effective tool. TNO's Jenny de Boer will present a fascinating project of innovation and invention in “MobiScopy: Remote Diagnosis by Mobile Microscopy!”. Our meeting will be in conjunction with the Karlstad and Makerere University-organized conference, M4D2010. Ken Banks says, “I’d go with the kids’ instinct over an adult’s any day.” Matt Berg, “We’re now realizing the full potential of using mobile phones for improving people's lives. I'm fortunate to be part of an amazing community working to change the way we

based devices. It includes the Application Control, which helps you to block or permit applications from running on networks and stand-alone computers. eScan 11 includes a set of predefined access control rules that you can customize as per your requirements. Firewall that has been enhanced for seamless integration with your operating system. In addition, it includes the Network Traffic Monitor that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic. In also provides users with the option to block the execution of network-based executable files, thus preventing the spread of infections within networks. In addition, eScan 11’s product Installation CD comes with a set of installation setup files and bootable Rescue Disk. The bootable Rescue Disk enables you to clean boot the computer if the operating system fails to load on it.

address key development challenges." Mobile Monday, or MoMo, is a global network of mobile industry professionals, visionaries, developers and entrepreneurs, in over 100 cities around the world. Each city chapter discusses issues specific to the local needs in monthly forums, and given the global nature of the mobile industry there is also an exchange of ideas and speakers from around the world. I am also delighted to report that MoMo Kampala and MoMo Nairobi were well represented at the 10th Anniversary MoMo Summit just held in Helsinki and Tallinn. Our MoMoKla Peer Awards finalist, Revence Kalibwani, was a real hit with the audience of 350 MoMo enthusiasts and jurors with his fireside chat style presentation, and led the race for the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid startup category – until another Ugandan, Alex Nyika, won the competition, with iCheki, a mobile phone software solution designed to help users of public transport in to track matatus coming their way (iCheki is Swahili for “I see”). Complimenting our East African delegation was fiery orator and iHub project manager Jessica Colaco with Ushahidi programmer, Linda Kamau from iHub, and lead organizer for MoMo Nairobi, John Wasonga,. Reporting on the Summit for the Daily Monitor was Walter Wafula, and yours truly gave a presentation from the Soapbox during the Mobile Brain Bank event. Together I’d say we made an impressive positive impact on the event; yea, we were very cool! You definitely want to be there for MoMo Summit 2011.

For more information: danielrstern@gmail.com or

www.momokla.ug

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

REVIEWS

any unauthorised used of USB based portable storage devices such as flash drives. Its firewall and traffic monitoring tool displays TCP/IP activities on your system using the in-built Network Monitoring Tool and it also has logs and extensive reports that provide consolidated activity reports for review and analysis. It’s by far the cheapest option on our list and the newest kid on the block, but it works hard to protect your PC without straining it. It will be interesting to see how the eScan Internet Security Suites develop over the next few years, but for now the future is bright. eScan 11 includes an advanced Game Detection feature that automatically detects the start of a game in full screen mode and prevents all eScan notifications and alerts from being displayed. You can thus enjoy an uninterrupted gaming experience Another nice feature is the laptop mode which when activated will prevent memory

YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE

SHOPPING

How to spot a fake mobile phone

Joshua Twinamasiko G. once bought a fake Nokia N95. He shares here a few tips to help you spot a fake next time you go shopping for a phone.

Spot the difference: Left is a Chinese version of the Blackberry Bold on the right. If you do not know the real one, you may comfortably buy the fake.

The telecom industry is very exciting right now with tarrif cuts and promotions from all service providers. There has probably never been a better time in Uganda to own a mobile phone than now. I personally have 4 SIM cards because I want to enjoy all the offers. Much as it is a good time to own a mobile phone, buying one is not quite an easy task, especially if you are looking for a more than basic phone because there are so many brands and variations available for you to choose from. The choice between Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung or iPhone is difficult enough; add a few Chinese knockoffs in the mix and it is officially difficult for an average Ugandan to buy a mobile phone. However, the issue at hand right now is to help you buy a genuine phone, no matter which brand or model you choose because for every popular phone model, there is a similar, low quality counterpart. The other day a lady walked into an MTN customer service center to have her Blackberry Bold set up only to be told that it is not a real Blackberry. The “Chinese” one is usually close enough to the genuine one to fool an unsuspecting shopper, but if you are aware of the possibility of buying a fake, then you can be able to tell whether you are buying the real thing or not.

Do your homework A friend of mine who works in a bank told me that in their trainings and orientations they are trained to know the genuine bank notes well, so that no matter what variation of fake notes they encounter, they will be able to tell that it is not the genuine one. I think it’s the same with mobile phones and many other devices. You need to know the genuine one so that you can spot anything that is not the real thing. If you are going to spend lots of your hard earned money on a mobile phone, it is highly recommended that you do your homework before walking into any shop. Ask around, if possible look at friends’ phones, look at the manufacturer’s website and have a good idea about the phone that you want to buy. Giveaway signs There are many variations of the knockoffs, but they usually have some characteristics that distinguish them from the genuine ones. Here are a few. Price: Is it much cheaper than the one your friend bought a few weeks ago? Many of them cost much less than the genuine ones. For example an iPhone 4 at UGX 400,000 is definitely not a real iPhone.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

SHOPPING

Weight: Knockoffs are usually considerably lighter than the genuine ones. The touch screen icons: If it is a model with a touch screen, the knockoff will have icons at the bottom of the screen which are not on the genuine one. The Operating System: Phones usually run an operating system that is unique to that manufacturer such that different phone models of the same manufacturer will have some features similar, even if they are far apart on the feature scale. For example the default welcome screen of Nokia phones is the same. So if it looks different from the usual, look out for the other signs. Graphics: The graphics of the knockoffs are usually poor. Dual SIM: Many knockoffs are dual SIM phones. Much as there are genuine dual SIM phones, there are many single SIM phones that have dual SIM knockoffs. For example, an iPhone with dual SIM capability is not a genuine iPhone.

Which iPhone is the real one?

One of the best ways to minimize the chances of buying a fake is to buy from a reputable dealer, especially an authorized distributor. They will stock phones that they have acquired from the manufacturer, and will guarantee you that the phone will work as intended. The prices of the authorized distributers are usually abit higher than the shops down the street, but from experience you are better off spending that extra money.

Blueberry?

Is the iPhone being sold at a price that is too good to be true? Less than a third of what Orange is selling at? Maybe its not an iPhone afterall?

* Are you wondering whether you are going to pay for a genuine Blackberry? If it is a Blackberry why is it called Blueberry? or Brackberry? * If the external appearance checks out, check the IMEI code and PIN which are usually found in filmware handled, packing boxes, and stickers stuck in the battery compartment. To see the PIN and IMEI, click Options and select the status, press the Shift key + ALT + H simultaneously. IMEI number and PIN of an original Blackberry will match those listed on the sticker outside.

Genuine Nokia * Press *#92702689# you will get the registration date and date of repair, you can also assure its orginal nokia phone * Fake phones usually don’t have the “Nokia Care” tamper-proof warranty sticker on the charger, battery, memory card or data cable. If they do have the sticker, chances are this is poorly printed. Look at the two batteries on the left.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

Dialing into Wealth Conversations on Technology, Business & Society

RESEARCH

Mobiles & Market Women in Ghana

Conversations on Technology, Business and Society is a journal which explores ways in which organizations and society is affected by technology. It is published as the academic research journal of PC TECH Magazine. Articles for the journal are publicly accessible online through this website. This journal features contributions of summaries of thesis and essays of undergraduate and graduate students and young practitioners. Submit paper/ essay/viewpoint: email: editor@pctechmagazine.com

RICHARD BOATENG, PhD International Center for IT and Development, Southern University, USA

Revised for magazine print to communicate to practitioners, policy makers and mobile for development actors. Originally published as Boateng, R. (2010). Enhancing Micro-Trading Capabilities through Mobile Phones: The Case of Women Traders in Ghana, International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 9.4, 20(1), 2-8. ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of mobile phones on the micro-trading activities of women traders in Ghana. The research develops a conceptual model analyzing the impact of mobile phones on pre-trade, during-trade and posttrade activities. A case study approach is adopted and the findings suggest that traders primarily use mobile phones to communicate and exchange information in pre-and post-trade activities. A few traders innovatively also use them to manage customer details and scheduling deliveries in during-trade activities. This innovative use of mobile phones is a function of their pre-knowledge which may have been developed through formal education and/or social networks. Improving information management through mobile phones directly or indirectly contributes to the economic empowerment of the trader. The study concludes that developing the capabilities of the poor to use basic mobile functions and services, beyond voice calls, should define the agenda of future research, polices and strategies towards the “mobiles for development” movement. The conceptual model developed may inform future research in mobile phones and micro-trading activities. Keywords: Mobiles Phones, Development, Micro-trading, Developing Economies, and Ghana

INTRODUCTION

here has been a tremendous growth in mobile phone ownership and use globally. Statistics from the International Telecommunication Union [1] tend to suggest that mobile phone subscribers currently constitute 60 percent of the world population. The report also suggests that there are now more mobile phone users in the developing world than in the developed world. In countries like Ghana, it is estimated that, there are 50 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, and further, the ratio of mobile cellular subscriptions to fixed telephone lines is 80 to 1 [2]. The rapid diffusion of this relatively low-cost technology has spurred a development agenda questioning how mobile phones can be harnessed more effectively for socio-economic development in developing economies and other resource-poor contexts. Initial efforts to finding answers to these questions can be analyzed from two perspectives: the practitioner and academic research perspectives. The initiatives of mobile network operators, banks, entrepreneurs, governments and development agencies characterize efforts from the practitioner perspective. These efforts tend to focus on the design and adoption of mobile applications for micro-finance activities or to enhance access to financial services [3],[4]. Efforts addressing the impact of mobiles on development concerns and needs – combating poverty and stimulating economic growth – are quite few. This imbalance is also reflected on the academic research front [5]. There is a preponderance of research studies documenting the business models which characterize the initial efforts of practitioners, mobile operators and banks. Academics are yet to catch up with studies seeking development solutions through mobile phones [5],[6]. Some of the few studies making strides at correcting the imbalance argue that there are

complexities of factors which affect the poor and hence, make it challenging for researchers to conceptualize the associated needs and impact of mobile phones with one theoretical model or theory . This often contributes to the blurred distinctions between amplification and transformational effects and also between social and production (business) spheres in adoption and usage [3]. Thus, future studies will have to draw on a more comprehensive approach to evaluate the multi-stranded impact of mobile phones on the livelihoods of adopters. This paper responds to this call for research. The paper investigates the impact of mobile phones on the micro-trading activities of women traders in Ghana. Extant literature has fairly covered studies on the mobile phones usage and mobiles for development in sub-Saharan Africa. The studies include mobile phones and fisherman and farmers in Ghana [8]; mobile phone sharing practices in Ghana [9]; mobile phones and development in Nigeria [6],[10]; and mobile phone ownership and social capital in Tanzania and South Africa [11]. Despite these studies there is a call for more studies to test earlier findings in different contexts and in different micro-economic activities in order to contribute to better understanding of the impact of mobile phones in developing economies. The underpinning research question is: What is the impact of mobile phones on the micro-trading activities of women traders in Ghana? The paper is organized in six sections. Section one covered the introduction of the paper. Section two examines mobile phones and micro-trading to develop the research framework for this study. Section three presents the research methods for the study. Section four presents the case studies of two women traders. The analysis of the cases studies are presented in section five and the conclusions and directions for future research are discussed in section six.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

Transaction cost theory is arguably the most commonly used theory in studying issues relating to assessment of the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on commerce or trade. Transaction costs, described as “the costs of running a system” [15, p. 19], consist of two types of costs: coordination costs and actor motivation costs. Coordination entails all the information and communication related costs before, during and after a transaction. This includes the cost of searching for products, services, sellers, and buyers, and negotiating and ensuring contract compliance and post-contractual agreements. Actor motivation costs entail the costs of having incomplete or asymmetrical information and imperfect commitment in a transaction. These costs affect decision-making and enforcement of compliance mechanisms, and contribute to the loss of contracts and contractual disputes. It is suggestive from the transaction cost perspective that trading is primarily about information. It involves the sharing and communication of information which leads to the exchange goods and services, and the management of relationships between parties involved. Hence, participants in a transaction seek for innovative ways to minimize costs in acquiring, assessing and communicating information for pre-trade, during-trade and post-trade activities. As a technology, product or service, mobile phones have a potential impact on how trade is conducted. Mobile phones consist of features which offer opportunities for diverse functionalities and applications. Extant research in relating mobile phones and commerce have noted features and attributes including personalization, ubiquity, localization, immediacy, and instant connectivity. Ubiquity highlights easy access to information in real time as well independent communication based on the user’s location. Buyers and sellers become relatively accessible and can be contacted anywhere at any time. It also gives them the choice to limit their accessibility to particular persons or time. Personalization works in relation to obtaining new information to create services which helps customize the end-user experience. Localization makes it possible to know where the customer is at a particular moment and to create a match between services, customer’s location and preferences. The combination of these features and attributes of mobile phones in transactional activities in trade has the potential of generating strategic, relational and operations benefits for the trader. These benefits are related to the posited benefits of using ICTs in commerce or trade [21],[22]. However, in this paper, the mobile phones are the form of ICTs being

discussed. Operational benefits are associated with the reduction in coordination costs in delivery of products, goods and services in the market place. Traders will be able to communicate directly with potential customers and trading partners on the availability of goods and services. Information on the quality, quantity and delivery times of goods can be exchanged. This may contribute to reduction in costs of searching for goods, services, buyers and sellers; reduction in delivery and inventory costs especially for perishable products; reduction in risk in frequent long journeys for goods; and increase in the timeliness in decision-making, negotiating and fulfilling transactional terms [8],[10]. Achieving operational benefits can build up to relational benefits. Relational benefits are associated to the benefits of improved communication and relationships between actors involved in a transaction. The ubiquity, localization and personalization features of mobile phones can lead to disintermediation where traders may bypass or avoid, ‘middlemen’ and shorten distribution channels to transact directly with potential customers and trading partners [10]. This improved and direct communication may increase the motivation and confidence and understanding between traders and their customers and trading partners. These relationship benefits may build up to strategic benefits. Strategic benefits are associated with benefits which increase the market “reach” (access new markets) and the performance of traders. Operational and relational benefits can build up the trust for market participants to engage in long term relationships in the good of all [23]. These benefits include the deepening of relationships loyalty and retention between traders and their customers and trading partners; product and service differentiation and personalization; and increase in the “reach” through improved reputation, recommendations and referrals. In effect, increase in market reach could stimulate the growth and performance for the trader. Beyond the benefits obtained from using mobiles phones, the next question to

be asked, is the potential impact or effect on trade. From the mobile phones for development perspective, mobile phones are conceptualized to have three effects on its adopters – incremental or amplification, transformational and production [6],[24]. Incremental effects characterize benefits from using mobile phones to improve what traders already do. These include the communication and information exchange with customers and trading partners through use of voice calls and text messages. Transformational effects characterize benefits from using mobile phones to create something new – opportunities and access to services and support which were not previously available or readily accessible. These effects include the use of mobile phones to access new services such as mobile banking, mobile advertising, mobile Internet and other related locationbased services. Production effects characterize benefits from not using mobile phones but trading or selling mobile phones and related services. Production effects may also contribute to transformational effects in the livelihoods of micro-entrepreneurs or retailers engaged in production activities. Examples have been documented in studies on new livelihoods of women in the Grameen Village Payphone initiatives in Uganda, Bangladesh and many others engaged in re-selling airtime vouchers and pre-paid cards [7]. With regards to market traders, we are more likely to expect incremental and transformational effects. Production effects may be experienced by traders who engage or expand their businesses to engage in the re-sale of airtime vouchers and pre-paid cards. In summary, regarding micro-trading, traders may use mobile phones in pre-trade, during-trade and post-trade activities. This application of mobile phones in trade may generate operational, relational and strategic benefits which may have an incremental, transformational and/or production effect on the micro-trading activities of traders. Figure 1 illustrates this summary in a conceptual framework of the impact of mobiles phones on micro-trading.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

RESEARCH

II. USING MOBILES PHONES IN MICROTRADING

RESEARCH

III. RESEARCH METHODS The study seeks to investigate the impact of mobile phones on micro-trading activities of women traders in Ghana. An exploratory case study approach was adopted since it strongly supports the research objective set at the beginning. This research also sought to benefit from the rigors of designing, collecting and analyzing data as discussed by De Vaus. The data was collected over a two-month period; from October to November, 2009. Two sets of interviews were conducted. The first set of interviews was conducted with women traders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 women traders in two markets in Accra, capital city of Ghana. Two traders were selected from the 17 women traders for an in-depth study of their microtrading activities. The second set of interviews were conducted with the two of the marketing personnel of one of the five mobile network operators in Ghana and two resellers of mobile pre-paid cards and mobile accessories. There are currently 5 major network operators in Ghana, namely: MTN, TiGO, Zain, Kasapa, and Vodafone. The interviews were conducted with marketing personnel from TiGO and resellers of prepaid cards and mobile accessories with respect to the services that have become beneficial to market traders. The interviews in both sets of interviews were recorded and transcribed, with copies of transcribed interviews and further discussed with the interviewees to check and resolve discrepancies. The approach to analyzing the case study was primarily by use of patternmatching logic as explained by Yin [30]. We sought for results that can strengthen the validity of our theoretical framework (Figure 1), further by scrutinizing the context of the case and detailing findings to provide answers to the research question. IV. CASE FINDINGS A. Case A: The Tomato Retailer Aunty Akosua (hereafter referred to as AA) is a tomato retail trader at the Makola market in Accra, Ghana. She has a junior high school level of education and has been working as a tomato retailer since June 2008. AA works with Jane who serves as an intermediary between the farmers in the villages and her. Jane buys the tomatoes at a wholesale price from the farmers and AA retails them at the market. Prior to owning a mobile phone, communication between AA and Jane was constrained by distance. The limited access to Jane often contributed to poor inventory management, where AA could be out of stock of tomatoes for a week. In such scenarios, AA had to buy from other wholesalers, and that increased her coordination costs. She was then advised by a friend to get a mobile phone for Jane and herself, in order to enhance communication and reduce the cost and risk of frequent long journeys. In December 2008, AA purchased a used Samsung D500 for herself and a Nokia 3315 for Jane. The cost of Jane’s mobile phone was deducted from her

earnings from trading with AA. They are both using TiGO as their service provider. The cost of the mobile phones is shown in Table 1. Table 1 Cost of Mobile Handsets Used by Traders

Mobile Handset Model

Cost of New Handset (USD)

Cost of Used Handset (USD)

Samsung D500

35-70

20-35

Nokia 3315/3310

20-25

The availability of text messaging function is an added advantage for AA, since it is cheaper to send a text message than making a voice call. She uses text messages alongside voice calls to communicate more frequently with customers. She opined that “Most of my customers are in the working class, meaning they do not have much time to come to the market. I therefore call or text my customers periodically and ask them if they are in need of any tomatoes and then I deliver to them at their offices before they close”. The mobile phone enables AA to keep a record of the contact details of her customers. Other tools like calendar and alarms on the mobile phone are also used by AA. She notes that, “Some of my customers have even scheduled with me the specific days for which they will need my tomatoes. I have therefore placed it on my phone as a reminder so I don’t forget them. Therefore, I do not need to be at the Makola market everyday but still make my money”. The improved communication and information management has improved her relationship with her customers and suppliers. B. Case A: The Maize Retailer Maize is a seasonal produce which requires cost-saving techniques in its trading activities. The old dry maize is preferred to the fresh one, for this reason planting and harvesting are well planned by farmers. Maize wholesalers buy produce from farmers in villages and sell to retailers in Accra, the capital city. Grace is a maize wholesaler who has four retailers in Accra. She has a primary school level of education and learned the trade from her mother. She uses two Nokia 3310 mobile phones and subscribes to MTN and TiGO network services. The mobile phone has made it easy for her to carry out her transactions more efficiently. She does not have to travel frequently to do her business unless she has to go round to collect her payments. This she does once in a month. Grace explains that, “I don’t need to come to Accra to supply the maize; all I do is take the orders on the phone and hire a truck to send the commodity. I don’t have to put my life at risk by making unnecessary journeys”. Mobile phones make Grace more accessible to her customers which enhance

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

their confidence in trading with her. Grace mentions that “Supply of maize is controlled by monitoring prices on the market. Prices determine how much goods should be supplied at a point in time. I am able to send simple text messages to inform customers on maize prices and delivery times. Customers are also able to monitor the trucks that bring the commodities to the Makola and Madina markets in Accra. This enables the customers to plan for contingencies”. The timely delivery of trade information enhances decision-making in transactions and therefore contributes to reducing actor motivation costs. Without mobile phones, it would be difficult for Grace to co-ordinate activities more readily. V. DISCUSSION This section discusses the case studies to understand how mobile phones are used in micro-trading activities; the benefits obtained; and the impact on the micro-trading activities. A. Mobile Phones and Micro-Trading ut of the 17 women traders interviewed, 88 percent noted that they used mobile phones for pre-trade activities; 18 percent used them for duringtrade activities and 82 percent used them for post-trade activities. The findings suggest that traders tend to find mobile phones to be more useful for pre-trade and post-trade activities. The traders adopted mobile phones because of the perceived benefits obtained by other traders and their competitors. Pre-trade activities include ordering goods directly from farmers or through intermediary wholesalers and informing customers on the availability of goods. Post-trade activities include contacting customers to follow-up on services provided and address inquiries and complaints. On the other hand, the 18 percent of traders who used mobile phones for during-trade activities had at least had some of primary level of education, which perhaps contributed to their ability to identify and integrate other mobile functions into during-trade activities. During-trade activities include scheduling the supply of goods through the calendar tools; calculating sales and purchases; and calling employees in other marketplaces to monitor the demand for goods and pricing strategies of competitors. These traders also often received help from friends, relatives and sometimes customers in learning some of the functions of mobile phones. This ability to identify basic functions in mobile phones and integrate them in trading activities is arguably a function of the some level of education and the perceived ease-of use the mobile phones they owned. The perceived ease-of-use was influenced by the mobile literacy of the trader which stemmed from informal education through social networks. These interrelationships between technology adoption and use and owner/adopter characteristics are consistent with findings from previous research [3],[27]. The informal education through social networks, however, iterates the blurred distinctions between the

B. Benefits Obtained

to ‘favorites’ and ‘friends and family’ are primarily used by most small businesses and micro-enterprises to communicate with key customers. Therefore even though some retailers earn low incomes, they still find it beneficial to own mobile phones by keeping the cost of owning and operating the mobile phone low. In Case A, AA had to purchase two mobile phones – one for Jane, her employee, and the other, for herself – and subscribe to the same mobile network. Thus, the use of the mobile technology in trading is determined by the readiness of the actors in the transaction to own/access and use a mobile phone. This readiness partly defines the benefits obtained. These findings are suggestive of the second lesson: Lesson Two: In micro-trading activities, the benefits obtained by the trader tends to be partly influenced by the extent of mobile phone usage by the trader and other actors – customers and trading partners - in the value chain.

engaged in the selling of mobile services and accessories. They intimated that the retail of mobile pre-paid cards is highly patronized by mobile kiosk entrepreneurs, street vendors and hawkers. This is not an attractive business venture for market traders who traded in food stuffs. The nature of micro-trading activities therefore led to primarily incremental effects on trading activities. These findings are not far from that of previous research which highlights the absence of transformational impact and more of the presence of additive or incremental impact in the adoption of mobile phones in resourcepoor contexts. However, while transformation effects may not be evident in the trading activities, they may be evident in exploring the impact of mobile phones from a more multi-stranded perspective. A multi-stranded impact of mobile phones may include assessing its impact in empowering individuals economically (income, decision-making power and control over economic transactions) and socially (widening network of beneficiaries and gender roles). Economic empowerment is evident in both case studies presented above. For example, Grace stated that: “…I am able to send simple text messages to inform customers on maize prices and delivery times.” AA also emphasized that: “…Therefore, I do not need to be at the Makola market everyday but still make my money”. In this respect, the findings suggest, that the women traders have gained some economic empowerment in improved income from cost reduction and increased decision-making and control in transactions with trading partners and customers. Thus, the transformational impact observed is the economic empowerment for the traders. The findings are suggestive of the third lesson is:

The benefits obtained by the traders are primarily operational and relational. Both AA and Grace intimated on how mobile phones have helped reduced the cost of coordinating their operations, reduced the risk in making unnecessary journeys, and enhanced communication with customers and trading partners. The enhanced communication with customers enabled the traders to build up a relationship with their customers in which each considers the other as a trusted party. In Case A, AA schedules the various times of customers who need tomatoes using her C. Impact of Mobile Phones on Microcalendar functionality on her mobile phone. In Trading Case B, customers are able monitor delivery Concerning the impact on trading activities, times of goods and plan for contingencies the traders primarily experienced incremental through text messages. This communication benefits. The traders predominantly used medium creates a borderless environment mobile phones to improve existing trading or redefines the “place” factor in transacting activities. These include the communication business with customers and creating more and information exchange with customers and personalized services for them. Personalized trading partners through use of voice calls services lead to deepened relationships and text messages. Little can be said about which can contribute to customer loyalty and transformational impact of mobile phones. retention. Contrary, as compared to previous research However, the extent of usage of the mobile on the mobile phones usage by fishermen and phones is mediated by affordability and farmers in Ghana [8], there is no evidence of accessibility of mobile services. Concerning the use of mobile banking services in these accessibility, poor network coverage micro-trading activities. This finding, perhaps, in rural areas where farms are located stems from the differences in the economic often affects communication with trading volume and type of transactions involved in partners. Wholesalers, like Grace, find it fishing and farming as compared to microdifficult to communicate with customers trading activities of traders interviewed in this Lesson Three: In micro-trading activities, in Accra when they travel to some villages research. The use of mobile phones for record since trading is primarily about information, to buy maize from farmers. Hence, Grace keeping of customer details and scheduling improving information management through subscribes to two mobile network operators of deliveries may also be considered as mobile phones directly or indirectly enhances and uses the operator with better network incremental effects since traders traditionally decision making, control and income coverage depending on her location. Seven keep such information in notebooks generation, and by this means contributes to other women traders interviewed also and diaries. There is also no evidence of the economic empowerment of the trader. intimated on subscribing to more than one production effects, none of the traders were network operator to take advantage of service promotions and network coverage. Figure 2 summarizes the findings in a framework of the impact of mobiles phones on micro-trading Concerning affordability, the high cost of activities of women traders in Ghana. mobile phones and the initial connection charges is another barrier. Traders, as with Grace and AA, usually purchase usedmobile phones. They also consider top-up airtime vouchers to be inexpensive since they are sold in relatively low denominations. According to the personnel from the TiGO mobile network operator, the competition in the mobile industry has increased; each network operator is in a consistent search for the best product for the market. He states that “With the concept of the triple “A”, which makes our services Affordable, Accessible and Available, the ordinary trader in Ghana has the means of getting “hooked up” to this service”. Promotional services which offer reduced costs of calls

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

RESEARCH

social and productive (business) spheres in the adoption and usage of mobile phones [3],[5]. These findings are suggestive of the first lesson: Lesson One: The innovative use of mobile phones in micro-trading is influenced by the pre-knowledge of the trader which may have been developed through formal education and/or social networks.

RESEARCH

VI. CONCLUSION

his research has generated valuable insights and lessons for research and practice. The study shows that, regarding micro-trading, traders use mobile phones for primarily pre- and post-trade activities. Some traders, though few in number, innovatively use them to manage customer details and scheduling deliveries during trade. This innovative use of mobile phones in microtrading is influenced by the pre-knowledge of the trader which may have been developed through formal education and/or social networks. The traders obtain operational, relational and strategic benefits which may have incremental and transformational effects. The type of benefits obtained by the trader tends to be partly influenced by the extent of mobile phone usage by the trader and other actors – customers and trading partners - in the value chain. Hence, the readiness of the actors to own and use mobile phones play a critical role in determining the benefits obtained by trader and also by the actors. However, while the benefits obtained primarily lead to incremental effects, the transformational effects do not directly refer to the creation of new services in the micro-trading activities, as earlier argued. They were observed as the economic empowerment of the women traders. In addition, productive effects are absent due to the nature of micro-trading activities

researched in this study. Concerning implications to practice and policy, the innovative use of mobile phones in trading activities should be encouraged. Mobile network operators, development agencies and policy makers should facilitate educational campaigns targeted at educating micro-enterprises and micro-traders on basic mobile functions and services – beyond voice call – which may enhance their business activities. Such advocacy initiatives contribute to empowering their “capability to function”. As Sen [28, p. 75] explains the “capability to function” is what really matters to the poor and non-poor person. In doing so, researchers have to also start investigating on the actual functions and services “the poor” use on the mobile phones, and perhaps, generate insight to inform the design and development of mobile phone functions and services which empower the capabilities of the poor and contribute to sustaining their livelihoods. The work of Parikh and Lazowska [29] in India has taken a step in doing so. However, there is still much to be done across the developing world. This study was limited to only the case studies of women traders in Ghana. Future research may focus on a quantitative approach using survey methods to test how the findings are reflective on a larger population of traders and in different developing economies. The conceptual framework, Figure 1, developed in this study may also be used in future research to analyze mobile phones and other micro-

trading activities such as taxis services in transportation, and carpenters and potters in manufacturing. Further research is important to develop a better understanding of how mobile phones can help sustain livelihoods in resource-poor contexts. This work is not in any way exhaustive. The findings and lessons are stepping stones towards the “mobiles for development” movement, which is rapidly expanding. The reality in practice may require more effort and further research. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to thank Daniel Opoku, Winfred Larkotey, Faustina Mensah-Kwakwa, Vera Quashie and Veronica Torbi for their support as research assistants. This work was supported in part by The Pearl Richards Foundation under a grant for Gender Development Project (www.ewuraba.com). REFERENCES [1] International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (2008). Worldwide Mobile Cellular Subscribers To Reach 4 Billion Mark Late 2008. International Telecommunication Union (ITU). [Online] http://www. itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/ Accessed 03/04/2009. [2] International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (2008). ICT Statistics Database, Geneva: ITU, [Online]. Available: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Indicators/ Indicators.aspx Accessed 13/01/2008.

SEE FULL LIST OF REFERENCES ON www.pctechgazine.com

Research News

Census: Women Closing in on Male-Dominated Fields

majors as humanities, business, education, and science. However, gender pay inequities persist, with a woman’s median earnings about 78 percent of a man’s.

Younger generations of women are closing the gender gap in science and business and now account for nearly half of those college majors traditionally dominated by men, according to a USA Today analysis of the latest Census data. In 2009, about 47 percent of science and engineering degree holders ages 25 to 39 were women, compared with 21 percent among those 65 and older. “Larger percentages of these professions are attracting women,” says Society of Women Engineers executive director Betty Shanahan. Women make up a majority of graduates in psychology and the biological sciences, but trail in engineering and computer science. “Girls see (engineering) as a very ‘white male’ profession, which it is, and they don’t get messages about how they can balance their personal lives and a very exciting career,” Shanahan says. The Census data shows that compared to older generations, women under 40 had greater parity with men in such

Video Simulations of Real Earthquakes Made Available to Worldwide Network

USA Today (09/29/10) Jack Gillium

Read More: http://www.usatoday.com/news/ education/2010-09-29-gender29_ST_N.htm

Princeton University (09/22/10) Kitta MacPherson

Princeton University researchers have developed ShakeMovie, a system that can quickly produce realistic movies of earthquakes based on computer simulations. The researchers hope that ShakeMovie can help scientists improve their understanding of earthquakes and develop better maps of the Earth’s interior. “In our view, this could truly change seismic science,” says Princeton professor Jeroen Tromp. During a seismic event, data from seismographs measuring ground motion are collected by

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

a worldwide network of more than 1,800 seismographic stations, which determine the earthquake’s location, depth, and intensity. ShakeMovie computes the Earth’s motion in three dimensions based on the earthquake data, as well as what is known about the subsurface structure of the region. The program also plugs in data capturing surface motion, including displacement, velocity, and acceleration, and maps it onto the topography of the region around the earthquake. Earthquake simulation movies will be available for download about 1.5 hours after the occurrence of a quake of magnitude 5.5 or greater.

Read More: http://www.princeton.edu/main/ news/archive/S28/51/76A35/

Robots Could Improve Everyday Life at Home or Work Cornell Chronicle (09/21/10) Anne Ju

Cornell University scientists are developing robots that can perform household chores without human intervention. “Just like people buy a car, I envision that in five to 10 years,

RESEARCH

people will buy an assistive robot that will be cheaper or about the same cost as a car,” says Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena. One of the biggest challenges is enabling robots to learn in uncertain environments. One of Cornell’s projects is a robotic arm with a gripper. The robot uses a camera to evaluate an object and determine the best way to grab it. The researchers say the technology will eventually be developed into a dishwasher-loading robot. “Although the objects may differ in appearance, they should share some common grasping patterns, and those patterns have some features that we are looking for,” says Cornell’s Yun Jiang. Other Cornell researchers are working on a robot that can find a specific object in a cluttered room. Read More: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept10/ PersonalRobotics.html

From ‘Avatar’ Playbook, Athletes Use 3-D Imaging New York Times (10/02/10) James Glanz ; Alan Schwarz

Some Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are using advanced imaging technology to influence the way athletes train, perform, and recover from injuries. The technology is a combination of the systems that capture human gestures for three-dimensional (3D) animations, and orthopedic research on the most powerful and least damaging ways to throw a ball or swing a bat. The motion-capture technique produces a digital, 3D representation that can be viewed from any direction, run forward and backward, and analyzed to calculate precise limb angles and accelerations, stresses on joints, and ball speeds. The technique has become a recognized tool for helping athletes and nonathletes recover from injuries, says New York University professor Chris Bregler. At least three MLB teams are recording their players with the hope of avoiding injuries, adjusting pitchers’ and batters’ mechanics, and even helping players in slumps. As soon as the programs become more widely known, it could set off a technology race and give younger, more technically savvy coaches an edge over traditionalists, according to some experts. One of the most sophisticated applications of the technology enables football players to practice against a virtual defense, says EA Sports’ Rob Moore. Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/ sports/03reality.html

Multicore May Not Be So Scary MIT News (09/30/10) Larry Hardesty

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers built a system consisting of eight six-core chips that can simulate the performance of a 48-core chip, as a way to test if adding more cores continues to boost computing performance. The researchers tested several applications on their model, activating the 48 cores one by one and observing the results. The researchers found that at a certain point, adding more cores slowed the system down instead of speeding it up. However, slightly rewriting the Linux code so that each core kept a local count greatly improved the system’s overall performance. “There’s a bunch of interesting research to be done on building better tools to help programmers pinpoint where the problem is,” says MIT professor Frans Kaashoek. “The big question in the community is, as the number of cores on a processor goes up, will we have to completely rethink how we build operating systems,” says University of Wisconsin professor Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau. Read More: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/multicore0930.html Compiled by Joseph Budu, PearlRichards Foundation

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

HOW TO...

LEARN

Make your Facebook photo albums private

How to access your privacy settings on Facebook If you're like many of us, you may want to share your photos on Facebook with some friends and family, but not want the entire Internet to see them. This simple tutorial will show you how to make your Facebook photos private. 1. Your first step is to make sure you're logged into your Facebook account. 2. Place your cursor over the "Settings" link on the upper right hand side of the page. Click "Privacy" in the drop-down box. 3. If you don't see a drop-down box, click on "Settings" and then click on the "manage" link in the Privacy section. Click on the "Profile" link. This page is where you edit all of your profile privacy settings. If you haven't visited it, take a moment to adjust the settings to meet your needs. For example, you may want everyone to be able to see your prior work experience for networking purposes, but only friends to see your personal info.

Once you've finished editing this page, click on "Edit Photo Albums Privacy Settings. You should see a list of your albums. You can adjust each album so that they are visible to everyone, friends of friends, or just friends. You can also make a custom setting that allows you to block specific people from viewing your photos, or allow only specific people to view an album. Here are some suggestions for determining who should be able to see your photos: • If you're afraid of pictures being stolen, set privacy to only friends and use a digital watermark. • For pictures of nature, buildings and other generic images, consider sharing with everyone unless you're concerned about your copyright. • For pictures of friends, especially those in public situations, share with friends or friends of friends. • For pictures of children, especially if they aren't your own (please ask permission before posting!), share with just friends.

Find out who has “unfriended” you Ever want to know which of your Facebook friends has committed the ultimate betrayal and unfriended you? To save face all round, Facebook doesn’t make this information public. But a browser extension called Unfriend Finder can now ensure you know who to scowl at/suck up to (delete depending on your vengeful nature) when you next see them. The script has been created by Edouard Gatouillat and is compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. All you need to do is download it (for Firefox this requires the Greasemonkey extension) and then next time you log-in you can start tracking your Facebook haters. A new “unfriends” menu appears in the left hand navigational tab under the “friends” menu and also on the top right menu alongside “home”, “profile” and

“account”. There are pop up instructions about how to use it. The extension will also tell you who has yet to accept your friend request. There are settings to adjust the appearance and language of the add-on, and you can also export the data. Unfortunately Unfriend Finder does not work retroactively, so you won’t be able to see all of the people who have ever unfriended you. However, once installed you will be able to silently monitor your social deserters. A website with similar functionality for finding out who has unfollowed you on Twitter exists, called Qwitter. Source: wired.co.uk

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

A screenshot of Mozy, one of the online backup solutions

If you’re one of the many people who have hundreds of photos stored on a camera’s memory card, it’s time to come up with a backup plan. We recommend backing up to an online backup service, a largecapacity external hard drive, flash drives, or optical media. Each type of backup has its advantages. Backing Up to an Online Service Online backup services such as iDrive or Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive can back up your entire hard drive or just your photo folders. Costs are reasonable for home users: iDrive is $5 per month, and SkyDrive offers 25GB of free online storage. Since the data resides away from your home or office, your photos are safe if disaster strikes these physical locations. Another online backup service, Mozy, provides local backup as well as online backup. Called Mozy 2X, the newest version of the service will download to an external drive at your location at the same time it conducts

its regularly scheduled scans of your computer, for $5 per month. The online backup services all work basically the same way. Once you sign up, a setup process asks you to select the harddrive folders to back up, when you want the backups to run, and how often. The service then runs an initial backup of your PC, and subsequently scans your computer automatically on your predetermined schedule to back up new data. Aside from the initial setup, you need do nothing else, as backups run in the background. Below is the user interface for iDrive. While the software for other online services may differ in appearance, all have the same functionality, giving you the ability to select folders, schedule backups at a convenient time, modify which folders will be backed up in the future, and, of course, restore. Backing Up to a Hard Drive Backing up photos to an external hard drive gives you convenient local access to your

backup. An external drive reserved just for photographs is the best way to go for simplicity and security. Check our Top External Hard Drives chart for the latest models. You can find 1TB external hard drives for under $100. On a Windows PC, you plug the external drive into the USB port; most drives require extra power, though, so you’ll probably need to plug it into the wall as well. Once you power everything up, Windows will automatically recognize the new drive, and you can simply drag and drop files to the drive. Many external drives come bundled with backup software. Though each drive manufacturer’s software package is different, they all work pretty much the same. Once you’ve installed the backup software per the hard drive’s user manual, you’ll go through a setup process identical to that of the online services described above. Again, you schedule when you want the backup to run so that the process doesn’t interfere with your work flow. Backing Up to Portable Media You can also back up files to portable media, such as CDs, DVDs, or USB thumb drives. It’s easy to burn files to optical media using drag and drop in Windows, and with smaller amounts of files scattered across different media, you don’t risk losing everything in case a piece of your storage media gets corrupted. On the other hand, you’ll need to catalog your growing collection of discs and drives if you expect to find anything later. When backing up to a large external hard drive, as described above, you can set your backup at night and forget about it until the next day. Not so if you are running a large backup to separate discs-this process is time consuming, and you need to be available to swap out discs. Source: PC World

Keep your PC running smoothly with CCleaner 3.0 Want to clean and optimize your PC? You’ve probably heard of CCleaner, arguably the world’s most popular tool for doing the job. It clears out temporary files, cleans the Windows Registry, erases browser histories, and so on. Developer Piriform just released CCleaner 3.0. The big news in this update? A native 64-bit version for use with like editions of Windows. CCleaner 3.0 also sports new icons, various interface improvements, better support for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 9, and newly added support for programs like AVG AntiVirus 10.0, Audacity, LogMeIn Hamachi, BitTorrent, and Windows Game Explorer. I particularly like the way it intelligently scans for cookies you’d want to keep, like those for Google and Yahoo. In short, the ultimate system-cleaning tool just got better. It’s still free, thankfully, though you can purchase a priority-support license for $24.95. As with any tool of this kind, I strongly recommend making a full system backup and creating a new system-restore point before using it. Better safe than sorry!

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

LEARN

How to backup your photos online and on disks

INTERVIEW

The Markets are Speaking Are you listening?

arkets Speaking is an independent international consultancy specializing in market research in Sub-Saharan Africa. The company’s aim is to contribute to the growth of businesses in Africa by making sure that its clients’ strategic decisions are supported by the most accurate data available on the market. Markets Speaking’s network of Research Assistants and Professionals enables it to assist international and local companies pin point risks and possibilities in markets prior to entry as well as evaluate existing products, services or campaigns. The services fall within two categories; consumer market research and business sector analyses. Markets Speaking’s consultants have extensive experience of implementing quantitative and qualitative market research projects within industries such as telecoms, ICT, construction and green technology. Today, the company has offices in Ghana and Sweden and is looking to expand during the next few years. Markets Speaking is owned by its partners Geraldine Joseph, Ylva Strander and Peter Quarcoopome. Markets Speaking also runs a blog, The Markets Speaking Blog, through which its consultants aim to share news about business opportunities from Africa, recommend African information sources and create an awareness of the potential in African markets. PC Tech’s RICHARD BOATENG had an interview with Geraldine as seen below. You can read more information about Markets Speaking on the website and blog below: Website: http://marketsspeaking.com Blog: http://marketsspeakingblog.weebly.com PC TECH: Hello Geraldine Joseph, you are

welcome to PC TECH Magazine. Tell us little about yourself and some of the interesting projects Markets Speaking is currently working on.

Geraldine: Thank you, great to be here! Well, to give a recap, I founded Markets Speaking in 2009 with a Swedish friend. I actually grew up in Sweden, but as a Kenyan-Romanian born in Nairobi, grew increasingly interested in working in Africa and contributing to its growth. So far, we are doing very well and it has been amazing to witness the unbelievable growth in many business sectors in Africa. Being able to support this development through delivering data that enables better decision making is fantastic. At the moment, we have many exciting projects running but due to confidentiality terms I can’t say much about them! What I can say is that we currently are involved in a huge launch of a new service in Ghana that you’ll be hearing about very soon. Our client is one of the most well-known brands in the world, so we’re much honored they chose us for this project. We’re also in a busy phase of developing our own research products and will be launching a new series of products next spring.

PC TECH: These projects are interesting, may

we ask, how does Markets Speaking develop or create such innovative services for its customers? Have you done any project for any company in the technology or telecom industry?

Geraldine: Our key to creating attractive services

is the same as for all our clients: market research! We spend a lot of time listening to our clients and trying to understand their needs, basically doing our homework. This combined with the fact that we’re all entrepreneurs at heart means we tend to focus on innovation and always trying to become better at what we do. One of the challenges in our consumer research projects is transforming field data into digital data – for now we use advanced online survey systems for administrating and analyzing our data, but we’re also investigating how we can digitalize more steps of the data collection process. To date, we have had a few different multinational telecoms and ICT companies as clients. Considering the growth rates of these important markets in Africa, it has been natural for us to approach companies in these sectors. So far we’ve been doing work in Ghana and Tanzania for our tech and telecoms clients, mainly with the purpose of supporting product development and innovation.

PC TECH: In your opinion what are the major challenges in doing business in Africa… and how do these challenges compare in other parts of the world? Geraldine: Africa is a fantastic continent from a business perspective – but, yes there are challenges as well. One of these is actually the main reason we founded Markets Speaking: the lack of available and updated market data. Unfortunately, without connections in the market you may be interested in investing in, it can prove to be very difficult to access the information you need. Many markets are also complex and hard to overview since so much activity PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

PC TECH: There is a current buzz of social networking, especially with Facebook, has your company been able to harness the potential of social networking in its businesses strategies? If not, do you plan to? Geraldine: Markets Speaking has a fan page on Facebook, a Twitter account and we run a blog. However, I definitely think we could do more in the social media area. We are likely to increase our online presence during 2011. Our decision to not spend too much time developing our online presence on Facebook, Twitter etc, is that we know that most of our clients aren’t on these channels. In time, this will change, but for now we think it’s more effective to communicate with our target group via phone/skype and meetings.

PC TECH: What do you think is the next big thing for Markets Speaking and what can we expect from your company in the near future? Geraldine: The next big thing for us will be to launch the new product series I was talking about earlier – but also to establish ourselves in more countries in Africa. We don’t have a set date for expansion, but it is likely that we’ll have offices in Nairobi as well as Lagos within the next few years!

Geradine at Accra Mall in Ghana

is going on “beneath the radar”. This activity includes anything from the unregistered companies in market places to the informal saving systems between relatives and friends that make it difficult to estimate purchasing power. Another common challenge is power shortages, but this is easier to cope with for consultancies in major cities than for large manufacturing companies. My experience outside of Africa is mainly from Europe, where it’s easier to access information in the public domain. Northern and Western Europe is generally more transparent – but on the other hand many of the markets are reaching saturation and

companies are struggling to keep market slices rather than grow.

PC TECH: How is your company addressing these challenges?

PC TECH: Is there anything you will like to tell your customers through our magazine? Geraldine:: Just a reminder that research

Geraldine: The problem in many places

in Africa is that there are so many “experts” and “trusted partners” that claim that as long as you work with them, you’re success is guaranteed in a specific market. Many African countries are also characterized by large gaps between different income classes. The top segment has little knowledge about the daily

is truly a key to business success. We’re obviously very biased, but it really is amazing how companies seem keen on investing huge amounts of money into developing new products or advertising these products without sufficient information about their market. PC TECH: Geraldine, Thanks for your time with us.

We’re donating magazines to schools every month! SEE HOW... http://pctechmagazine.com/projects/the-educate-initiative pctechmagazine.com | AUGUST 2010 | PC Tech

PEOPLE

life of millions of people in their own country. Still, you will find people in this segment who claim that they know how things work. Truth is, they don’t even know how much a bus ride in their own city costs! Markets Speaking makes a point of not calling itself an expert in other areas than market research. We are great at collecting information and cross-validating our sources – but we never assume we know anything without asking. Even our company name reflects this stance of ours – “we let the markets speak”.

SOLUTIONS

BUSINESS

Enterprise Why should there be a Critical Need to Secure the Web in your Company?

BY JOSEPH MUNUULO

he web is a dangerous place for any company or organization, regardless of its size or the industry that it serves. It is vulnerable to a growing variety of sophisticated threats and exploits. While many of these can enter an organization through the growing number of Web applications that are in use, exploits can be introduced into a corporate network by doing nothing more than surfing the Web. The Web and its applications, while very useful, also presents significant risks to organizations. The development of increasingly sophisticated threats and exploits by hackers as well as other cyber criminals, coupled with the deployment of less robust Web defences mean that Web exploits are and will continue to grow in number and severity in future. This piece discusses the key issues surrounding Web security and the need for organizations of all sizes to implement robust Web security processes and technologies. WHERE DO THE PROBLEMS COME FROM? here are a large number of sources from which Web-based threats come:

• Users install malware or compromised code on

their systems, mostly often inadvertently. This occurs when they install ActiveX controls, download codecs or various applications that are intended address some need (they perceive have some value), or respond to scare ware and fake anti-virus software.

• Another source of Web threats is the growing use

of Web-enabled smart phones. Research has found that few organizations require any sort of malware protection on these devices, making networks vulnerable to malware that enters through a mobile device. Compounding the problem is the fact that mobile devices are widely used.

• Off-network users, such as those working from

home, are another source of Web- based threats. An unprotected user using a corporate asset, such as Outlook Web Access that is not accessed via a VPN, (Virtual Private Network) or a laptop computer that becomes infected and later is connected to the corporate network, can constitute

Hackers can post innapropriate content to your website after it has been vandalised.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

a serious threat.

• Compromised search engine queries are

another method for criminals to distribute malware. This form of attack relies on users making typographical errors when typing search queries, resulting in their being presented with malware-laden sites.

• Search engine poisoning occurs when

hackers target Web sites that rank very high in search results in an attempt to target a greater proportion of users.

• Blended threats, as noted earlier, are an

increasingly common threat vector in which spam contains a link to a malicious Web site. Users will often click on a link in a spam message and get infected from the malware-laden Web site that opens in their browser.

• Related to the blended threat is a “driveby” download that occurs when a user visits a Web site and has malware automatically downloaded to his or her computer. In some cases, a user will visit a Web site and see a pop-up window – upon clicking the “OK” button in the pop-up, a Java applet, an ActiveX control, etc. will be installed on the user’s computer without their consent.

of social media applications and services makes that question more relevant and more difficult. Given the range of security threats that can be launched from social media sites, organizations need to be extraordinarily careful about their employees’ use of such sites in a work-related context.

The problem is one that absolutely must be solved. The Web and the growing variety of Web applications make employees more productive and efficient. Further, these capabilities support the greater concept of mobility – allowing employees to work from home or on the road with the same capabilities they would have in the office. Mobility in its larger context will become increasingly important as organizations look to drive down the cost of real estate, taxes and power by operating with the same number of employees, but with less office space.

THE COST OF COMPROMISE ust what are “The Web and its the costs of Web exploits? applications, while It is not easy to useful, also presents quantify these significant risks to costs partly because there the organizations.” are a variety of intangible costs that are difficult, if not impossible to measure. Consider the following examples: • Direct hacker attacks can include a variety • At a minimum, any sort of Web exploit of exploits, including hackers attacking a will require IT staff to address the issue known vulnerability in a Web browser, or as soon as possible after the problem exploiting an older version of a browser is discovered. This can lead to IT staff or ActiveX control. it is advisable that you working on weekends, the delay of continually update your browser to the various projects, rebuilding desktops, current standard on the market to safe and other costs that may be difficult to guard your self. estimate. • Insufficient authentication controls will • However, as noted in one of the sometimes enable cyber-criminals to crack examples above, malware can cause administrative accounts in order to gain easily identifiable losses, such as the loss access to sensitive information. of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars enabled by keystroke loggers that • Lastly, as Web applications often leverage will send login credentials to a malicious XML, X Path, JavaScript and JSON, those individual or organization. applications are frequently vulnerable to injection attacks using these environments. • Malware that causes the loss of customer records, such as in the RockYou Web site hack noted above, can have widely GROWING USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING varying costs. For example, some APPLICATIONS customers who learn about the exploit Organizations have long grappled with how may decide not to do business with they should – or should not – police the use a company whose Web infrastructure of the Internet and, more specifically, the has been victimized, leading to lost Web and Web 2.0 tools. The emergence future revenue. The company may

have to provide some re mediation to its customers, such as offering credit reporting services for a year or more to let customers know if their records have been used for identity theft or some other purpose. Add to that the loss of reputation that may discourage some prospective customer from doing business with a victim of a Web exploit.

• At a minimum, most or all customers

whose records have been breached will have to be notified at a cost of at least several dollars per letter sent.

BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

Web Security I

n some ways, tools and technologies that are designed to protect against Web exploits should be economically justified in much the same way that insurance policies are justified. For example, an organization will spend tens of thousands of dollars annually on various types of insurance coverage in order to prevent losses that are far greater than the cost of the insurance itself. In the same way, avoiding even a single major breach through the use of the right Web security solution can prevent losses that are an order of magnitude or more greater than the cost of the solution itself. In summary Web exploits are a serious issue for any organization and they are getting worse. Growing use of the Web and its applications, coupled with increasing corporate reliance on cloud-based systems that employees access via Web browsers, are making organizations more vulnerable to a variety of Web-focused exploits and attacks. The cost of doing nothing to address the issue is enormous. An organization’s losses from even a single Web exploit can be in the millions of dollars in hard costs, not to mention the ongoing costs of a damaged corporate reputation, lost business from existing customers that switch to a competitor, lost business from prospective customers that will no longer consider a firm that has been victimized, and loss of competitive advantage of not using Web tools securely. As a result, organizations of all sizes should deploy a secure Web gateway that will protect against Web exploits in real time, will use both cloud-based and local content analysis techniques, provide granular policy management and application controls, integrate with messaging security capabilities, and provide support to users who access the Web and Web-based applications on mobile devices.

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

OTHER THAN I.C.T...

LEISURE

Crush on

Video of the month

Obama

"Hey B, it's me. If you're there, pick up. I was just watching you on C-SPAN." Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, became an Internet hit for a video, made by BarelyPolitical.com, in which she lip-synched to her crush, then Senator Barack Obama. The three-minute video features Ettinger professing her love for him at various New York City spots: she dances on the subway, finds random strangers to dance with her in Central Park — all while crooning, "I got a crush on Obama." The video, which has been viewed more than 19,875,932 times since it was originally posted in June 2008, features lines sure to get stuck in your head like "You're into border security, let's break this border between you and me" and "You can Ba-rock me tonight."

ATM which

dispenses gold Culled from Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au)

he machine, which features cutting-edge technology, dispenses 1g, 5g, 10g, 100g and 250g gold bars and also dispenses gold coins bearing designs such as Krugerrand, Maple Leaf and Kangaroo, which are sold in gift boxes at real-time prices. Apart from the gold-plated exterior - and the fact that they are bulletproof - they seem much like any other vending machine. But instead of chocolate bars, a network of ‘’gold-to-go’’ machines dispenses 24-carat bullion. Originally designed as a marketing device for an online gold trading business, the machines have become such a success that their inventor plans to build a global network, installing them everywhere from fitness centres to cruise ships. The German

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

The way

I see it

Website

of the Month

PayScale (www.payscale.com) provides salary information for both managers and employees. You can look at average pay raters sorted by industry and size of business. pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

LEISURE

businessman behind the machines, Thomas Geissler, said their success was the result of a rush on gold, the price of which has risen from $US250 an ounce in 1999 to about $US1330 an ounce. ‘’Ordinary people are starting to see its real value,’ he said. Since the first machine was installed in May, in the lobby of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa hotel, 20 gold-to-go machines have been installed across Europe. Next month the first machines will open in the US. Mr Geissler is also meeting representatives of Harrods department store in London to discuss launching the first British machine. He plans to have launched 45 worldwide by the end of the year. ‘’We notice the sales peak whenever there are signs that the markets are wobbling. When the Greek crisis was revealed in its entirety, our sales went up tenfold. With the current troubles in currency markets, gold becomes even more attractive.’ It was no accident that the machines had taken off so well in Germany. ‘’Germans are still traumatised by the hyperinflation [of the 1920s], when people walked around with wheelbarrows full of notes, while Americans are still traumatised about the Depression.’ Mr Geissler said most customers of the vending machines were women, who tended to buy in smaller amounts. The larger pieces - it is possible to buy up to 250 grams for about €8,000 ($11,350) - are bought by ‘’well-off men, of on average 55 years of age’’. The bullion are sold in smart presentation boxes. The machines are monitored from Geissler’s company headquarters in Reutlingen, Germany, and the price of the gold is updated every 10 minutes, according to the market price. The company says its gold is cheaper than that available from the banks because its overheads are lower and the machine gold is available immediately, unlike at banks where customers have to wait for days.

REVIEWS, ANALYSIS

PC GAMING

Building your Gaming PC PC games remain among the most demanding software that a typical user will ask their computer to run. Modern games are capable of using multiple processor threads and taxing the performance of advanced video cards. The most beautiful games – like Crysis and Metro 2033 – are capable of bringing powerful computers to their knees at high resolutions and detailed settings. Moving into the world of PC gaming can be daunting at first. Unlike console systems, there aren’t just a seemingly infinite number of possible system specs but an enormous variety of manufacturers and system builders too. It’s enough to confuse anyone, but hardcore gamers know that the PC is the ultimate gaming platform because it alone offers the latest graphics and a depth of gameplay consoles simply can’t offer with their handheld controllers. But in the constantly changing world of the latest and greatest PC gaming technology new gamers aren’t the only ones who have to learn the lay of the land. Veteran gamers who are back in the market for a new gaming PC after a couple of years often find much has changed since they bought their last system. They too have to learn everything all over again. So what is the best way to navigate this treacherous landscape? I will not attempt to list in order the best gaming systems or components, but I will explain the importance of each component to guide your search.

Memory Memory isn’t as important as having an excellent GPU but it still is an essential item for a gaming rig. It’s a good idea to have at least 4GB of memory if you’re a casual gamer to support the operating system and other tasks. For intense gamers, it is ideal to have at least 8GB of DDR3 RAM. You can’t go wrong with more

Processor The CPU is the most visible component in the eyes of most buyers. Most computers are labeled – often multiple times – with the brand of processor inside them. This would lead you to believe that the processor is the most important component in a gaming computer. It isn’t – that title goes to the video card – but it does come in second. Processors have two important specifications. The first is clock speed, which is expressed in Gigahertz (i.e. 2.66 GHz). The second is the number of cores, which can range between 2 and 6. It is better to have high numbers in both, but the number of cores is slightly more important than the clock speed. However, many games are not yet fully utilizing multi-core processors, but it is best to buy one with 4 or more cores to futureproof your investment. Graphics A computer system’s video card is arguably the most

important component for gaming performance. It is the heart of the matter. A majority of your budget should be spent on the system’s graphics card for the ultimate gaming experience. A video card’s core clock isn’t everything. You should look for the number of shader units, as well as memory clock speed and GPU memory. Other factors to consider include whether you will be using the card in SLI configuration (multiple cards) or if you are planning to delve into 3D gaming. Currently, there are many NVIDIA 3D Vision-ready cards and games on the market, and the list continues to grow.

The graphics performance of a PC is the most important aspect in the general performance when used for gaming.

PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com

Storage While gaming typically doesn’t require a huge amount of storage space, it is nice to have ample hard drive space for multiple installs and files. Look for a 7200RPM hard drive to speed up basic functions with at least 500GB of disk space (1TB if possible). If budget allows, a smaller solid state drive for the system disk is a worthy option. As with memory, the hard drive you choose won’t have much impact on gaming performance. It certainly won’t increase your framerates in games. Instead, the only difference you’ll see will be in loading times. Faster loading times are nice but currently the cost of SSDs is so high that you may be able to live with a little longer loading times. Display As 3D gaming grows in popularity, a 120Hz

display is necessary to enjoy this new technology. If you’re shopping for a gaming monitor, study the max resolution, contrast ratio, and refresh rate. For gamers on a budget, 1680x1050 resolution is adequate but many affordable models support 1920x1080 or even 2560x1440 resolution. This makes a big difference when gaming for long periods of time, especially on larger displays. Make sure both your monitor and gaming rig offer up-to-date ports, such as HDMI, dual-link DVI, or a Display Port. Sound The sound card that comes with current systems is good enough, usually no need to upgrade. However, if you like you can add a multichannel audio card and a speaker set with a subwoofer to add to the gaming experience. It is wise to invest in a good set of headphones just incase the people around don’t share your enthusiasm for the games. Nothing beats rumbling bass during an epic dungeon run. Case Many gaming cases on the market today combine flashy lights with a bold, aggressive look to portray an intense gaming feel. A case marketed for gaming isn’t completely necessary, though. What is important is to ensure a chassis offers excellent cooling for expensive components. Look for a multitude of fans that offer

Velocity Micro Edge The Lx557 is a a triumph of engineering. Nestled within the highly competitive midprice range for gaming computers, this model has a lot to live up to. System Specs: • Intel Core i7 960 processor 3.20 GHz • 2 x 1GB GTS 250 in SLI graphics • 9 GB of premium triple channel memory • Windows 7 Home Premium OS • Solid aluminum flagship chassis Accessories: • Velocity Micro keyboard and mouse • Custom Lx557 drivers disk • Power cord • Extensive documentation and user’s manual • 1 Year Warrany

well-designed airflow. Top gaming cases feature hot-swappable drives, a slew of ports, and easy access to parts for future upgrades. Peripherals Gaming peripherals round out the the list of features to look for in a gaming system. There are entire product lines dedicated to gaming keyboards, mice, and headsets. Purchasing these items immediately isn’t entirely necessary, but there are a few products that are convenient for hours spent on your new gaming rig. First up is a keyboard. Look for one that offers programmable keys for one-touch gaming action. A comfortable mouse with laser precision is also nice to have.

CURRENT BEST GAMES Fallout: New Vegas Fallout: New Vegas can be thought of as a sorta sequel, gigantic expansion pack to the oh so awesome Fallout 3. If you loved Fallout 3, New Vegas offers more of it (even though no character from Fallout 3 pops up). The RPG lasts a mind boggling 60 to 80 hours, where you’ll be spendting time swooning gangsters and staying alive in post-nuclear Vegas. (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) NBA 2K11 Fittingly, with Michael Jordan on the cover, NBA 2K11 the best version of the best basketball franchise in existence. Its competitor, NBA Elite, didn’t even put out a game this year. If you like basketball, if you like sport simulation games, if you like games—this is probably the sports game of the year. (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PC) Civilization V It takes the best of previous Civilization games and improved it. It took out the rest and replaced it with faster and more sensible gameplay. It’s a Civilization that’s new and different, yet unmistakably Civilization at its best. (PC)

pctechmagazine.com | NOVEMBER 2010 | PC TECH

GAMING

memory as future applications become more and more memory-intensive. The good news is that RAM is probably the least expensive hardware cost that you will spend. Make sure if possible that the RAM you buy is DDRM3 and not 2 because DDRM3 will be faster. Many manufacturers will offer high performance memory as an option, but the performance boost will not be worth the extra UGX 300,000/= ($150) that you will have to pay.

COMPUTERS

Walugembe and Sons Computer Centre E-M Plaza Tel: +256 772 918 175 Email: walusmoses@yahoo.co.uk

PROVIDERS, JOBS, TENDERS

CLASSIFIED

IT SOLUTIONS

A growing Business Directory for all dealers in computers and accessories, and service providers in the IT Industry. Let’s help it grow!

Pixel Magic Ltd. Pixel Junction, Kisaasi Road Tel: +256 774 143 720 Email: info@pixelmagic.co.ug www.pixelmagic.co.ug Galaxy Communications Ltd. M118 Old Port Bell Road, Tel: +256 782 619 812 Email: info@gcl.co.ug www.gcl.co.ug Junction Systems Bukoto, Kisasi Road Tel: +256 782 596 388 Email: info@junction.co.ug www.junction.co.ug Tele 10 Plot 149, Kira Road Tel: +031-2-283993 Email: info@tele-10.com www.tele10.com Imaginet Plot 149 Kira Road Tel: +256 414 288 968 Email: imaginet.co.ug

VIDEO PRODUCTION

www.imaginet.co.ug Graphic Effects Ltd Printers Arcade, Nasser Road Tel +256 783 559 566 Email: graphiceffects1@gmail.com

Jam Holdings Ltd. Plot 1249, Najjera Tel: +256 712 645 947 Email: amljakt@yahoo.com

HEALTH CARE

Time Information Company Ambassador House Tel: +256 714 761 571 Email: time@time.co.ug

Real Nursing and Health Care Ltd. Come to us for professional nursing for patients in hospital or home. Ntinda - Kiwatule Road Kalinabiri Tel: 0414 286 262 info@realhealthcare.org www.realhealthcare.org

Virgo Media KM Plaza, Wandegeya Tel: +256 782 157 074 Email: info@virgo.co.ug Nasr IT Solutions Nalubega Complex Tel: +256 414 690 381 Email: admin@nasrltd.com

PC Tech Communications Ltd.

Alpha Internet Café Mabirizi Complex Tel: +256 392 966 178

is looking to partner with individuals and companies in sales and distribution of PC Tech Magazine. Interested Parties should get in touch with us preferably before 15th November 2010.

Surfers’ Delight Cafe Good Price Ntinda Tel: +25 777 912518

inbox@pctechmagazine.com or +256 774 143 720

Cyber School Technology UMA Showgrounds Tel: +256 312 278 855 Email: info@cyberschooltech.co.ug

INTERNET CAFES

Chief Laptop and Computer Dealers Ground Floor, E-M Plaza, Kampala Road Tel: +256 782 756 561 Email: hmugarura@yahoo.com

PC Tech Magazine Classifieds Get listed here and reach out to prospective clients for only

UGX 30,000 (US$ 15) PC TECH | NOVEMBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com