africa

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has still not fully restored e-mail, messaging, and Web service to more than 10 million customers in Europe, the Middle East, parts of South America, and Africa after a disruption at one of its network operation centers yesterday.

A BlackBerry outage, which began on Monday around 10:20 a.m. BST, has resulted in limited access to e-mails, Web browsing, and messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger, otherwise known as BBM.

Late yesterday, RIM said it had resolved the issue. But this morning, millions of BlackBerry subscribers woke up to find their service was still … Read more

Check out these keycap sculptures made by South African visual artist and cultural activist Maurice Mbikayi. Trained in graphic design and visual communication at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in France, Mbikayi's unique mixed-media collages and the keycap skulls represent the artist's thoughts on the impact of technology on Africa and the Earth's dependence on natural resources.

Mbikayi sourced the keycaps from piles of discarded technological remnants left around the streets of South Africa and are used in his works to question their original destination and intent.

Click through the break for more pictures of Maurice Mbikayi's works of art.… Read more

The first world is fixated on smartphones that can handle videoconferencing and first-person shooters, but Google and Orange announced a service today that's geared for a population whose phones only have that most basic of data-transfer abilities, text messaging.

Google and Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom, announced a partnership today to bring a service called Gmail SMS Chat to four additional countries in Africa--Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, and Niger--and to launch it as a trial program in Egypt. The service already is available in Senegal, Uganda, and Kenya, but will reach the new countries in … Read more

Here's what I can tell you about the drinking water situation in the tiny Rwandan village of Mwite. The few closest spring catchments--basically cement basins with a pipe of flowing water--are working, but not producing as much water as they should. The catchment further to the west, a handmade system nearly a century old, is no longer functioning, so the best bet will probably require a walk to the northernmost safe water source in the area, the newest cement-encased spring catchment, built in 2007.

I didn't speak to anyone in Rwanda for this story, or to anyone who had recently been to Mwite, north of the capital city of Kigali, but I can confidently relay details about the water situation in that far-flung rural village thanks to...what else? An Android-based app.

The agencies and nonprofit organizations that work to ensure that places like Mwite have clean drinking water will tell you that infrastructure is just one challenge, among others being highlighted today on World Water Day. After the pipes and pumps are installed, there's the never-ending task of monitoring and maintaining thousands of sites spread across the challenging terrain of places like Rwanda, Liberia, or Bolivia.

For years, teams would go into the field with pounds of paper questionnaires, cameras, and maybe an expensive GPS, and gather data on individual sites--all of which would then be stuffed in a file cabinet somewhere back in the capital city, spending most of its time collecting dust.

Today's high-end smartphones combine all those monitoring tools into a single, inexpensive, convenient device that not only collects data on water projects but can also analyze, map, and share it--tasks that would have in many cases taken an unthinkable amount of time just a year ago.

That's when Water for People, a Denver-based nonprofit working on water and sanitation projects in 11 countries, started thinking about an easier way to monitor its projects. The group brought in developer Dru Borden of Gallatin Systems to design an application that could handle survey results, photos, and geolocation data in a single package. The result is Field Level Operations Watch, better known as FLOW. Water for People deployed a team equipped with smartphones loaded with FLOW for the first time in Rwanda last August. … Read more

Just as the World Cup was getting underway last week, the Associated Press ran a story about vuvuzela horns that probably didn't register with most people outside of South Africa.

It does now.

These tuneless plastic horns are found to emit a sound--make that noise--equivalent to 127 decibels, according to a study issued by the hearing aid manufacturer Phonak. (If you want to hear a sound sample, click here. For the sake of comparison, Phonak noted that the sound from a drum was 122 decibels, while that of a referee's whistle came in at 121.8 decibels.

According … Read more

Every four years the sports world is graced with the largest soccer tournament on Earth. This year the World Cup will be played on African soil and to celebrate the games we're taking a look at EA's 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.

Jeff: There's something special about EA's FIFA World Cup games. For the most part the action is relatively similar to FIFA 10, but perhaps it's the overall presentation and sense of realism that allow the game to assume its own identity.

Sure, there are a few new features in 2010 FIFA World Cup; you can now play the entire tournament online and there are some new penalties that get called during the action. A few trite coach cutaways aside, FIFA World Cup really does nail the feeling of excitement associated with the world's greatest sports tournament and is ultimately where the game shines the most.

Those looking for something completely unique from a gameplay standpoint may be disappointed as there aren't too many improvements found here. You may spot a few new replay angles here and there, but the game doesn't up the ante as much as we saw in 2006's Germany World Cup game.

We definitely feel 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa is among the most accessible of games simply because of its international appeal and the amount of coverage the actual tournament gets here in the US. Casual soccer fans who may not be in line to buy FIFA each year definitely should give 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa a look as it simplifies the soccer experience unlike the traditional yearly FIFA effort.

David: EA Sports has learned through its market research that its World Cup-branded FIFA titles tend to appeal to less hard-core video soccer players who are simply inspired by the World Cup to buy the game. Thus, EA tries to make it more accessible to novice players while not offending advanced types. An example of this option is the new two-button control scheme that simplifies the whole passing and shooting situation for those who aren't ready to deal with a layered control scheme.

… Read more

This week on preGAME we bring you the video game version of the world's greatest soccer tournament, the World Cup. On today's show, Mark and Jeff will play a half of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.

But first, we'll try and unravel the mystery behind a recent Capcom trademark request for the name "Mega Man Universe." While dozens of ideas race through our heads, we can only assume that this next-gen iteration of Mega Man might bring us the first-ever massive multiplayer online game in the franchise.

If you've ever wondered what a … Read more

You could be responsibly green and take your old TV to Best Buy to be recycled. Or, like Sam Todo, you could be responsibly geeky, taking the telly apart and turning it into a walking humanoid robot!

Todo, a student from Africa's Togolese Republic, constructed "Sam10" almost entirely from old television sets, as you'll note from the antenna popping up behind the little guy's head. Todo aims to make the robot fully automatic, so it can greet people, avoid objects, and calculate the distance in front of it.

The robophile also says he also wants … Read more

A solar-charged light might seem like just another green gadget to the average American, but for families in rural Africa, it could prove revolutionary.

Product design consultancy Plus Minus Design is vying to replace unsustainable and potentially dangerous lanterns in the homes of off-grid Africans with the Solar Pebble. Engineered with the economic constraints of developing-world citizens in mind, the Solar Pebble will provide one hour of LED light for every two hours of charge, and will cost only $2.70 to manufacture.

Plus Minus Design, based in Leeds, U.K., was founded by three undergraduate students at the University of Leeds. While studying product design and engineering, Adam Robinson, Henry James, and Tom Eales were given the opportunity to work with SolarAid, a charity in the U.K.

SolarAid, which works to fight poverty and climate change, worked with the students to develop a solar-powered alternative to kerosene lanterns. Those lanterns, commonly used in rural Africa, draw 20 percent of an average Malawian family's income, SolarAid said, and pose respiratory health problems, as well as create fire hazards. … Read more