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  • Comparison of ZEST T1 and gobii 4.5″/4″ Smartphones

    Comparison of ZEST T1 and gobii 4.5″/4″ Smartphones

    The entry-level smartphone landscape is changing in South Africa. There is an influx of reasonably priced entry level smartphones hitting the market at the moment, and it won’t be long before we see the illusive (decent spec) entry level smartphone hitting the market at around R500.

    Personally I have been on the hunt over the last couple of months to find this phone, specifically to distribute to the rural markets, as there is still a huge gap there waiting to be filled. Having said that, nothing amazing has come up and even though MTN launched the Steppa and Vodacom has a basic smartphone on the way for around $45, nothing is blowing the “basic-entry-level” market out the water.

    Having said that, there have been 2 interesting brands launched over the last couple of weeks. Kalahari introduced the gobii range of smartphones recently with 2 different models(4″ gobii smartphone IIP (R999) & 4.5″ smartphone IVP (R1,699)), and the guys from Afrihost hooked up with the team from Zest Mobile to launch the Zest T1 smartphone (R2,599/R1,999 launch price Update: Just been informed that the R1,999 price is standard Edit: 21/7: Pricing has been put up again to R2,499) next week.

    Both brands of phones run a fairly new version of Android (Jelly Bean & Kit Kat) and have decent specs in the hardware department. Both phones are dual sim, which means they come with a pre-installed sim card with data loaded on. Afrihost give you a 1GB data bundle per month, while Kalahari give you a 200MB Cell C bundle per month.

    Here is a spec comparison of the 3 phones.

    phones

    All in all, it’s an interesting “war” to be watching, as ultimately it means an uptake in Smartphone usage in South Africa, and giving people access to content they never previously had! That’s the winner :)

     

  • How to earn Discovery Vitality Points with your iPhone 5s (For Free!)

    vitalityDiscovery Vitality is an interesting concept, which often leaves many people frustrated. The aim of the programme is to get to Gold (Diamond after 3 years of Gold) otherwise, basically, your life sucks. You don’t get good travel rewards, you don’t get money back on your credit card, and if you have a life policy like me, you premiums basically increase dramatically, if you not on the coveted Gold Status. All while paying an additional premium every month for these “benefits”.

    So, how do you get to this magic gold status? Discovery markets it as “Discovery Vitality is the wellness programme that rewards you for getting healthier“.
    Which means a barrage of online & real-life tests (which actually end up costing you money) and then a few other cool products and initiatives which allow you to earn points.

    One of the new ways of earning points is by owning a Fitbit device. The Fitbit device is recognised as one of the Discovery Vitality Living Vitality “Wellness Devices” which allow you to accumulate points for any physical activity you may do. Fitbit, which is it actually really a step counter counts your steps, converts it to Kilometers, and works out calories. There are a range of devices starting at around R600 (for the Fitbit Zip).

    fitbitBut. There is also a Free Fitbit app. The app is designed to sync with the Fitbit devices to show you a graphical representation of your steps you made with your Fitbit. Having said that, the Fitbit app on the iPhone 5s, ALSO acts as a Fitbit device. Yip, no need to spend R600 on a Fitbit device. If you have an iPhone 5s, it *IS* your Fitbit device, and can count your steps, kilometers and calories. Thanks to the new Apple M7 Chip in the iPhone 5s, info from all the sensors are stored in a chip and are accessible to apps, without using too much battery. And according to a few reports is also pretty accurate

    So, what that means is that you can in fact link your “New Fitbit device” (ie. your iPhone 5s) can also link to Discovery and earn you points in the same way your paid-for Fitbit device would. For Free!

    To sign up and register your iPhone5s “Fitbit Device” as a new device follow the below steps:

    1. Download the Free Fitbit iPhone app onto your iPhone 5s
    2. Sign up in the app and select to use the iPhone as a tracker (ie. you don’t have any Fitbit devices)
    3. Go to Fitbit.com and complete your registration and log into your Fitbit account
    4. Sign into your Discovery Account
    5. Go to Discovery Vitality Living Wellness dashboard (https://www.livingvitality.discovery.co.za/lv/dashboard)
    6. You can login with your Discovery details (click login) or register for the first time. It uses your Discovery credentials to log you in
    7. Once logged in go to Wellness Tools -> Devices and click on Fitbit (scroll down a bit)
    8. Click on the “Go To Fitbit” button
    9. Log into the Fitbit.com site and allow access for Discovery to use your Fitbit device

    And that’s it. They will import the previous months history (if you have it on your phone) and allow you to start earning points. The “rules” on Discovery say you earn 150 points for every 10,000 steps you do, and 50 more points if you do over 12,500. 10,000 is pretty easy to do every day if you keep your phone in your pocket most of the time. That said, I have earned my points a lot “faster” than that ;)

    [app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fitbit/id462638897?mt=8″]

     

  • Twitter 101: How to remove your locations from all your tweets

    Twitter 101: How to remove your locations from all your tweets

    Twitter has an annoying feature, which could sometimes land you in hot water if you not careful, by allowing you to tag your tweets with your location information. This is usually enabled by default on your twitter account, and most mobile apps include this information when sending a tweet. The information is fairly accurate, and can almost pinpoint your location exactly using the GPS on your mobile phone. So whether you tweeting from the office or home, you can be traced if you leave this option enabled.

    But, Twitter does indeed give you an option to turn this off, and disable your account from ever tweeting your location. They also offer you the ability to delete ALL historical locations from tweets, still keeping the actual tweets.

    To do this, simply log into your twitter account on the web, and go to Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Untick the “Add a location to my tweets” checkbox, as well as clicking the “Delete all location information” button. Shortly thereafter all tweets that ever had a location attached to them, will no longer have this info, and you can breath easy again…

    sillybilly

    Simple eh ;)

  • Why the @ILuvDBN & #WeLoveDurban campaign is a HUGE Fraud and Scam!!

    Why the @ILuvDBN & #WeLoveDurban campaign is a HUGE Fraud and Scam!!

    Yesterday the lead story on front page of the Sunday Tribune was about how a certain Durban Digital Media company, was paid R500,000 for a social media campaign called We Love Durban.

    The campaign forms part of a global campaign, called the “Earth Hour City Challenge” by the WWF encouraging cities around the world to tweet on sustainable living. The city with the most tweets, tagged with a dedicated hashtag, by the 27th March will win the competition. To be honest, I’m not really sure what the “prize” is though, except maybe a badge on a website.

    I’m not going to going into the nitty gritty of the shambles of being paid R500,000 for the social media campaign. Mark Smith has already written a pretty comprehensive in depth look into it.

    But, what I am gonna do, is look at how I Luv DBN has been manipulating votes, by creating FAKE twitter accounts to gather more votes. It seems they using an automated BOT, called TweetAdder v4, which adds fake accounts and tweets automated scheduled tweest,

    So, if you do a twitter search on the hashtag #WeLoveDurban, I noticed a number of accounts JUST talking about #WeLoveDurban. When going into these accounts, I saw this is ALL they spoke about. An random example in case is @Alixking2070C, who has posted 155 tweets in 1 WEEK, ALL of them tagged with #WeLoveDurban.

    alexking

    Alex King, who lives in Arizona, really LOVES Durban. But she also has 91 followers, and follows 331 people. If we click onto her followers, I see a number of accounts that look rather suspicious.

    followers

    When I clicked onto 3 random followers, they ALL have a similar number of followers, and ALL tweet about #WeLoveDurban

    emmaleenamelayne

     

    Even though this is a fairly small “sample” of people and accounts, I am confident that the large majority of the tweets for this campaign, for the Durban entries, are fake. I have also heard from a number of people that they too have noticed this dodgy behavior and seen similar activities across the brand. They have also stolen a number of images on Instagram and reposted them themselves, without any accreditation.

    This is unacceptable for a worldwide competition, which has a global following, and I really trust the WWF, who is behind this competition does some thorough investigation and analysis to ensure that all tweets are legitimate and non fraudulent before announcing the winners!

    Disclaimer: The above views are my own personal views, and even though I have been contacted (numerous times) by the Agency responsible for this scam, I have declined to take part due to my suspicion around the brand and campaign.

    Update: 17 March 20:35

    Since this post was published earlier today, a number of fake accounts have been deleted. This is proven by the fact that you can no longer any of the above mentioned accounts. As I said above the above accounts were just a sample. 

    The I Love Durban campaign also posted a blog post earlier denying the allegations of the excessive funds as well as claiming “Cyber-Bullying” tactics which were used in the above blog posts. I wish to state that the post is not intended as a “Cyber Bullying” or defamation post, but merly a post stating some of the facts found from proven research. Unless the above facts are proven to be false, I will stand by my above findings. 

  • South African Sony Xperia Z2, Z2 Tablet & SmartBand Launch

    South African Sony Xperia Z2, Z2 Tablet & SmartBand Launch

    0_Xperia_Z2_Black_Front_ColorrangeI had the awesome opportunity to join the guys & girls from Sony South Africa on Monday night, at the launch of the new range of very (very) cool Sony Xperia products.

    The evening opened with a couple of drinks & snacks and networking, which was then followed by a “theater production” involving actors introducing the devices & some amazing dancers with some awesome moves.

    The launch of the Sony Xperia Z2, Z2 tablet & SmartBand products come just over a week after they were launched at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona.

    The Xperia Z2 devices are a new generation model of the successful Xperia Z products launched last year. Except, this years model gets a VERY well deserved and decent spec update.

    The Xperia Z2 phone offers wide variety of features including a 20.7MP camera, 4K Steadyshot video recording, 5.2” Full HD TRILUMINOS display AND is fully waterproof. Throw in the standard Sony Walkman, Movies & playstation apps and you have a full offering smartphone. But, the kicker for me was the 3200 mAh battery which can offer up to 720 hours of standby time.

    We got to play & test the devices after they were launched, and I can honestly say, the Z2 is a fantastic phone. When the Xperia Z was

    30_DK39

    launched last year, I was convinced it was the one phone that could push me to move to Android OS, and after seeing the Xperia Z2 I am even more convinced. I’m sure one day I will take the plunge :)

    The Z2 Tablet is a mirror image of the phone, and offers pretty much the same functionality (bar the camera) The one thing I noticed about the tablet was it’s weight. Really light, and comparable to the iPad Mini’s weight.

    4_SmartBandThe other gadget that was launched at the evening, was the new Sony Smartband. The Smartband is essentially a band you wear onyour wrist, which tracks your life. And every move you make. The band syncs with the Xperia Z2 and gives you an overview of your every day life.

    Overall, I am really impressed with the Xperia Z2. It beats some of the other Android devices which are on offer at the moment, and the OS offers loads of functional which isn’t on your standard Android OS. Local availability and pricing hasn’t been announced as yet, but we should be looking at around an April Launch. Who knows what may happen then :)

    Stay tuned for a review coming soon…