As part of its ongoing commitment to cutting-edge software development for the MXit platform, Maxxor recently conducted an indepth survey of its core users. The research exercise was funded by Microsoft South Africa and the results provided some valuable insight into the preferences of MXit users and what apps they want to see available on the social network.

Kethan Parbhoo, Equivalent Programme Lead at Microsoft South Africa said, “We funded the research to help Maxxor understand its customers even better. The results will help Maxxor prepare a roadmap for future product development.”

Maxxor, a software development company, has been developing games for the MXit platform for more than two years and they’ve entertained well in excess of one-million MXit users with at least one of their apps to date. As Adrian Frielinghaus, Head of Online Games at Maxxor, explains, “One of the things we’re asking ourselves is, ‘What apps, besides games, do MXit users want?’ We ran a survey amongst our players and received an overwhelming response – almost 30,000 people completed a 30-question survey. That must be some kind of world record for mobile research, and the results offered us some unique insights.”

As it turns out, MXit users don’t care too much for news headlines.What they do care about is hooking up, having fun, and finding out what their favourite celebrity got up to last night. Therefore in order to appeal to this unique market, MXit app developers need to continually create content that amuses, entertains and connects its users.

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YoungAfricaLive (YAL), developed by Praekelt Foundation and hosted by Vodafone, has launched in Kenya and is a substantial addition to the award-winning mobile community portal’s presence in East Africa which commenced when YAL Tanzania launched on 1 December 2011.

Launched by Praekelt Foundation in 2009 in South Africa, YoungAfricaLive started out as a way of providing young South Africans with free access to information on love, sex and relationships in a time of prevalent HIV/AIDS in Africa, through their mobile device. It has now developed into a community of young adults who engage with another to gain reliable information, discuss issues, have fun and gain the support and input from their peers.

A 2005 study showed that 60% of Kenya’s unemployed are under 30, and where UNICEF statistics reveal 20% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day. In addition, research published by the World Bank indicates that 6.3% of Kenya’s population of 40.5 million is HIV positive, many of whom are young adults. These results indicate a strong need for support and engagement for and among the youth population of Kenya around HIV/AIDS and unemployment.

In bringing the vibrant mobile community to Kenya, Praekelt Foundation has partnered with leading integrated communications firm, Safaricom which now allows young Kenyans to share and discuss the issues they confront daily, via their mobile phone. Safaricom has invested heavily in bringing Internet access to the Kenyan people. According to government data, nine out of every 10 Kenyans who access the Internet regularly do so through the Safaricom network.

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With MTN surging to 5,7 million mobile money customers, FNB topping 3 million users, MPesa voted as one of the top five mobile inventions, and 37% of South Africans with a cell phone already using mobile banking services, mobile banking is surging ahead with rapid speed.

So now that major banks, telcos and other service providers have taken the initial steps in developing technologies, strategies and infrastructure for mobile banking, what is the next phase for mobile financial services? Customers are not just hoping for, but expecting more sophisticated services such as location-based services, corporate mobile banking, remote deposit capture and most importantly, mobile payments.

Smaller and more recent entrants into the mobile banking industry learn from bigger more established financial institutions and service providers. It also doesn’t end there: as competition increases, these newer entrants also look to gain competitive advantages by implementing more superior and advanced mobile banking services. Interoperability between all major role-players brings us to the issues of regulation. Taking a closer look at laws and regulations that govern the mobile banking industry we analyze possible issues, loopholes and inadequacies in existing regulation during the three day event.

With senior executives from across Africa addressing the conference, attending will give delegates the perfect opportunity to interact with banking professionals who are in charge of mobile banking and mobile payments. Other executives include professionals from telcos, mobile operators, emerging application developers and key industry analysts.

This year’s event with a revamped programme offers a comprehensive and multi-facetted agenda relevant to all professionals in the mobile banking industry. The conference features 28 top class speakers, 10 panelists, 2 panel discussions, streams, and an adjacent exhibition.

Event Details:

When: 13, 14 & 15 March 2012

Where: Indaba Hotel, Fourways, Johannesburg

For more information click here.

Design Guru is a design & development agency based in Somerset West, Cape Town. It was founded by Creative Director/CEO Jorge Brunner in 2007, and has grown from a single employee to a fully functioning team of 12. This group of talented individuals consists of a creative team of designers, a development team as well as a managerial team. Each of their creative staff offer an array of dynamic solutions and are prepared to work side by side with their clients to ensure that their visions are met. The team creates digital designs that engage their client base and evolve their brand communication. Some clients that have been acquired thus far include; PlayboySA, Riaan Manser, Triggerfish, Andrew Neethling, Hidden Pixel and GraySwan just to name a few.

In order to carry out these tasks, Design Guru finds itself comfortably situated within the CBD of Somerset West. The agency located within the Fairview Centre, has an eclectic mix of industrial rawness and clean modern surfaces. The exposed industrial sections create linear perspectives that compliment the clean white and black walls with a quirky juxtaposition. Wall art pieces, hints of vibrant colour and a closed off brainstorming and relaxation area ensure that the  environment has an inspiring and creative feel.

The open-plan office consists of three main sections: the entrance to reception where clients are welcomed and introduced, the main meeting room that doubles as a photographic area, and the team’s designated work area complete with a recreational section with couches, a foosball table and design inspiration magazines and books. The work area ensures that the Design Guru  team has an efficient environment to tackle the selection of tasks delegated and also a comfortable space to unwind and recharge the creative mind.

BandwidthBlog loves the iconic Banksy image on the door and splashes of bright colour.

Thanks to Design Guru for providing the photographs.

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In a post-recession climate, commercial software continues to lose traction in favour of Free and Open Software Solutions (FOSS), particularly in the corporate environment. However, with a lack of support available both locally and internationally, companies are left having to fend for themselves, or forced to pay handsomely for specialised technical support.
South African development company, Snapt, has launched a series of revolutionary user interface tools that effectively utilise this open source software to provide powerful and economical solutions for corporate clients. Snapt’s high-end customized open source software tools are not only easy to use, but at the same time offer the kind of support and reporting traditionally associated with commercial software offerings.

Despite being relatively new to the market, it hasn’t taken long for Snapt to get noticed by some heavy hitters at both a local and international level, with NASA JPL, EuroVPS, and NeoAssist already among their pedigreed list of clients.

The company’s two initial software offerings – Snapt HAProxy and Snapt Squid – have been built with business in mind, and afford enterprises the ability to effectively manage server capacity, as well as to maintain and monitor network systems and intranets.
“Our mission in the creation of Snapt was essentially to make open source software accessible and useable for big businesses,” says Dave Blakey, CEO of Snapt. “The user interfaces we’ve created can empower enterprises to really harness these existing frameworks, and ultimately manage them in the same way they would with commercial software, but at a fraction of the cost.”

In addition to an impressive clientele, Snapt has also managed to garner the support of 4Di Capital, a venture capitalist firm who immediately saw the potential of the company to deliver real return on investment for corporate firms.

“We immediately identified with the opportunity to make FOSS network and server applications more accessible to a broader market,” says Douglas Cherry, a partner at 4Di Capital. “Snapt offers a rich supplementary layer of value-added functionality, delivery and management capabilities, and we see it as being perfectly positioned to present an advantageously disruptive product to the network and server management space.”

With on-going investment and support from some of the world’s biggest brands behind them, Snapt’s future is bright, and, according to Blakey, this is just the beginning of the journey.

“The potential of FOSS is unlimited, and we’re always looking to deliver an increased range of enterprise-ready offerings to a broader market,” says Blakey. “The need for such solutions is apparent, and we will continue to devise unique, user-friendly interfaces to efficiently and cost-effectively service the full spectrum of corporate requirements.”

Pretoria based online company SnapBill is a billing system aimed at small and medium sized businesses requiring automated subscription or recurring billing with payment collection facilities. Unlike many other billing solutions, SnapBill fully automates direct debit orders via a variety of payment gateways.

SnapBill offers a comprehensive mix of invoicing, billing, client management and payment collection features and can be fully customised for your branding . It has integrated service provisioning functionality so you can add and sell your own services while it fully automates your recurring and subscription billing.

SnapBill is secure, automated and always available. Use it anywhere in the world, from any web enabled device and at any time.

SnapBill was developed by South African entrepreneurs Jaco van Wyk and Josh Yudaken. It grew out of the need they had for a billing system at Lusion Technologies, their web and reseller hosting business. The main goal behind SnapBill was to bring affordable enterprise level billing to any business. Snapbill was launched in beta form in Mach 2010 to local businesses and after thorough user testing and extensive detailed refinement, was launched internationally in March 2011.

“We are uniquely positioned amongst other billing solutions in the sense that SnapBill provides a highly customisable, out-the-box, billing and client management solution,” says co-founder Jaco van Wyk. “We do have an API available but our focus has been on providing businesses with a system they can immediately put to use.”

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How do the different South African App stores compare? Apposition Consulting decided to monitor and track one of their apps called ExpenZa on the Android Market, Vodacom App Store and Samsung App Store. This is a summary of their experiences and while not necessarily applicable to all apps, does raise some interesting points.

ExpenZa is a free Android app and automates expense tracking by intercepting the expenditure SMS message sent by your bank. It uses the information contained in the SMS message to automatically populate your expense list. ExpenZa can also be used without a bank’s SMS service by manually adding expenses, for keeping track of the cash in your wallet for example. The app allows the user to create a monthly budget with different expense categories and a budget amount for each category. The total spent for each category is shown which gives the user a continuous overview of their spending throughout the month. This helps them to make adjustments necessary to keep to their budget.

All the app stores were configured to allow only downloads from South Africa. The app also went through five updates during the period under study. This was mostly to add the functionality to recognise a larger variety of sms’s, but some additional features requested by users were added (e.g. to be able to import historical sms’s from your inbox) and the un-escapable bug fixes. What is encouraging is the amount of user feedback received as well as the variety of users who forwarded sms’s not currently recognised by the app to be included. App downloads were tweeted daily from their account (@AppositionC) with hashtag #MarketDownloadChallengeZA.

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You are kindly invited to the first Girl Geek Dinner Cape Town event of 2012 taking place this week.

The event will welcome guest speaker Catherine Lückoff:

Catherine Lückhoff is the Head of Brand Strategy for Bozza.mobi, a mobile App which offers artists, filmmakers and entrepreneurs a mobile platform through which to distribute their content. Before Catherine joined Bozza she was the founder and CEO of one of South Africa’s leading communications and PR agencies; Mango-OMC. Catherine just doesn’t see things the way others do. And she brings that ability to shift perspective to her work, where she continually marries tried and tested methods with radical new ideas, which is how she has built Mango-OMC into one of the country’s top PR agencies.

She was also named as one of 38 emerging tech entrepreneurs to watch in the Old Mutual Do Great Things Guide.

When: 26th January 2012

Time: 7pm – 11pm

Where: Cape Royale Hotel, 47 Main Road, Green Point, Cape Town

Cost: R165 for a cocktail dinner and goodie bag. (Drinks for your own account).

To RSVP or for more information click here. Places are limited!