African developers, partners top 2,600 participants @Facebook's annual F8 confab

ITRealms:

Facebook played host to over 2,600 participants at its annual F8 conference in San Francisco, United States of America, with African developers topping the chat, reports ITRealms.

This, ITRealms gathered that African partners of Facebook were part of the participants in the two days of new products, tools, interactive demos and speakers to help developers build, grow and monetize their apps.

ITRealms reports that Facebook, with its global reach and scale included African developers in its beta testing programme for the launch of new global products and features as it increases presence and deepening partnerships on the continent.

Also, ITRealms reports that over 70 per cent of Facebook’s developer partners are located outside the United States and about a third of the attendees at F8 joined us from abroad.

“We believe that local entrepreneurs and developers will be the ones to meet the needs of their immediate community, and we are working with developers to know how we can support them in doing so,” says Emeka Afigbo, Strategic Product Partnerships Manager at Facebook.

At Facebook, he said, they listen to developer partners in Africa, and has strong showing for F8 is a reflection of this commitment to doing more with partners across the continent to help them build products and businesses.

African developers who partnered with Facebook to launch products at F8 include Afrinolly (Entertainment, Nigeria), GumTree South Africa (Classifieds, South Africa),vZikoko (Entertainment, Nigeria), Jobberman (Jobs, Nigeria/Ghana), The Net (Entertainment, Nigeria) and My Music (Media, Nigeria).

In addition, this year Facebook brought F8 to developers around the world through F8 Meetups hosted with tech hubs around the world. In Africa, we hosted F8 Meetups in Nairobi, Lagos, Cape Town and Morocco where participants watched the sessions in San Francisco.

Two developer teams from Malawi won a developer challenge supported by mobile operator TNM Malawi and Facebook, and were featured on F8's international stage. Maternitech, founded by three 22-year olds – Walter Moyo, Thandie Magasa, and Daniel Mvalo, provides educational information aimed at combating Malawi's high under-18 pregnancy rate. The team was featured in an international livestream interview.

Talk To Me, an app created by 10-year old Panashe Jere, who learned to code at a Coding for Kids session at Malawi Hub. This app converts input text into voice so children always have someone to talk to. Both teams were congratulated by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg personally for their achievements.

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Nigerian Team Charis shines @ Technovation 2015, wins $10,000

ITRealms:

Young women from Nigeria and India are celebrating their entrepreneurial success after being awarded $10,000 each in seed funding for their mobile app ideas at the 2015 Technovation World Pitch Competition recently in San Francisco, United States of America (USA), reports ITRealms.

Investigations by ITRealms, showed that estimated 400 apps were submitted to Technovation from 28 countries.

These 400 apps, ITRealms gathered were narrowed down to top 10 finalists from Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States, whose teams were flown into San Francisco for a series of events which culminated in the two day World Pitch Conference.

According to Events and Engagement Director, Technovation, Allie Holmes, on June 24, all teams pitched their apps to an audience of tech professionals and a panel of judges from Yahoo, Yelp, Google, Hackbright Academy and the Salesforce.com Foundation, and on June 25 learned with two teams awarded $10,000 each to develop their app and bring it to market.

“This year, the first place awards went to Team Charis from Nigeria (High School Division) and Team Pentechan from India (Middle School Division),” Holmes said.

ITRealms further showed that High School Winners, which is Nigerian Team Charis took first place in the high school division for their app “Discardious,” a mobile solution to the problem of improper waste disposal in Nigeria.

Team Charis’ members are Nmesoma Ogbonna, Sonam Kumar, Charlotte Takem, Praise Emem David-Oku, and Grace Akpoiroro, all of whom attend iKapture Afterschool Academy. They were mentored and coached by Yemurayi Chinyand and Grace Ihejiamaizu.

Also, the second place was awarded to Team WoCo, a team from Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, for their app PraisePop. Team AMEKA from Winchester, MA took third place for their app Safeguard Driving.

For the Middle School Winners, which Team Pentechan from India emerged first place for their app “Sellexo”, an online marketplace for users to buy and sell dry waste.

Team Pentechan’s members are:  Anupama Nhavalore, Navyasree Balamuralidhar, Sanjana Vasanth, Mahima Mehendale, and Swasthi P Rao all of whom attend New Horizon Public School in Bangalore, India. Team Pentechan was mentored and coached by Pratheeksha K. S., Dipika Rajendran, and Aravamudhan Narayanan

Team AAT from New York City took the second place prize in the middle school division for their app ConcussionChecker.

The two first place teams will receive $10,000 in seed funding to continue developing their app and bring it to market when they return home.

All World Pitch events were sponsored by AVG, CA Technologies, LinkedIn, Rackspace and Yahoo. 

+ITRealms DSA +Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) 

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IFC invests $20m on Planet Labs’ doves for earth imagery

ITRealms

   

 

International Finance Corporation (IFC) has invested $20 million (N3,971,000,000) in Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based company that deploys small, low-orbiting satellites to photograph remote and emerging parts of the world to help with disaster response, agriculture and urban planning, ITRealms reports.

IFC is a member of the World Bank Group with interest in Venture Capital thus providing equity financing to early and growth-stage companies across technology-focused sectors including consumer internet, resource efficiency, and healthcare and education technologies.

Planet Labs’ fleet of nano satellites, called “doves,” could be deployed in clusters to capture earth imagery faster and less expensively than traditional satellites, whose data-rich images are often inaccessible to communities and businesses in developing countries.

Nikunj Jinsi, Global Head of Venture Capital at IFC, informed ITRealms,“Satellite imagery is an important tool for economic development and disaster risk response, and Planet Labs’ data sets can help bridge the information gap many emerging markets now face. IFC’s investment will help ensure more companies and communities in developing countries have the information they need to grow in a smart and sustainable way.”

Up-to-date satellite imagery can inform strategic decisions about how to manage forests, water resources, coastal zones and farmlands, including choices about crop use. Planet Labs’ earth snapshots can also track pollution and enable fast, targeted responses to both man-made and natural disasters.

ITRealms learnt that IFC’s equity stake is part of a $118 million, about N23,428,900,000 fundraising effort for Planet Labs, which has also secured funds from Data Collective VC, DFJ, Capricorn Investment Group and others. Just as the proceeds will be used to finance manufacturing and deployment of satellites, ground stations and technical equipment, and to support business growth and sales.

Cyriacus Nnaji /GEE

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Apple’s OS X Yosemite debuts

ITRealms:

Apple Tuesday in the city of San Francisco in the United States unveiled its OS X Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new continuity features that make working across Mac and iOS devices more fluid than ever, reports ITRealms.

The new Today view in Notification Center, ITRealms gathered, gives users a quick look at everything one needs to know, all in one place; iCloud Drive is located within the Finder and can store files of any type; and Safari has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips.

While the Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever; Handoff allows an activity on one device and pass it to the other; and Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Yosemite even gives you the ability to make iPhone calls on your Mac.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering  says Yosemite is the future of OS X with its incredible new design and amazing new apps, all engineered to work beautifully with iOS.

 “We engineer our platforms, services and devices together, so we are able to create a seamless experience for our users across all our products that is unparalleled in the industry. It’s something only Apple can deliver.”

With Yosemite, OS X has been redesigned and refined with a fresh modern look where controls are clearer, smarter and easier to understand, and streamlined toolbars put the focus on your content without compromising functionality. Translucent elements reveal additional content in your app window, provide a hint at what’s hidden behind and take on the look of your desktop. App icons have a clean, consistent design and an updated system font improves readability.

The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know with widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. You can even download additional widgets from the Mac App Store to customize your Today view. Spotlight now appears front and center on your desktop and adds new categories of results, so you can view rich suggestions from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

Built right into the Finder, iCloud Drive stores files of any type in iCloud. iCloud Drive works like any other folder on your Mac, so you can drag documents into it, organise them with folders and Tags and search for them using Spotlight. With iCloud Drive, you can access all your files in iCloud from your Mac, iPhone, iPad or even a Windows PC.

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