It was the second time I was hearing it in as many weeks. The first story came from a friend, the second from my 71 year old mother. A young lady called, introduced herself using what I will immediately assume was a fake name. Said she was calling on behalf of Digicel, please note my mother is a LIME customer and has been since it was called Jamaica Telephone company, well because she worked there for 30 years too. The young lady then went on to say that they are doing a survey and at the end they will get a SIM card with $5,000 worth of Digicel credit on it. My mother said, but I have no use for that as I am a LIME customer but my daughters have Digicel phones, so go ahead.
Get the 411 on the premier community for Jamaican web entrepreneurs, start-ups and enthusiasts from the lady in charge. Ingrid Riley, founder of Kingston Beta, talks to us about the event at its recent debut at new venue, Spanish Court Hotel. SociaLingua is the official online media partner of Kingston Beta. Be sure to check out our photos from the last event!
The Information Communication and Technology (ICT) sector is another of the priority industries within Jamaica’s National Export Strategy (NES) through which the country can benefit from increased inflows of foreign exchange and potential investors and participants can acquire additional earnings.
In a continuation of the Sunday Finance series looking on the priority industries under the NES and the opportunities that exist therein, the focus shifts this week to the ICT sector, which has generated net foreign exchange earnings of approximately US$199.2 million for Jamaica between 2001 and 2005. Exports from the call centre industry alone is estimated to be between US$300-400 million from the 22 contact centres operating in Jamaica. However, only four of those firms are local companies which means that profits are often expatriated from Jamaica. more
Google is now shipping more than 60,000 Android devices per day and the number has more than doubled over the last quarter, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told the GSM Association Mobile World Congress earlier this week.
“If you look at my thesis of the three intersection points – computing, connectivity and the cloud – that are changing the technology world today, we decided to move the ball forward at Google by releasing a set of products generally known as Android, which many of you are familiar with,” Schmidt said.
“We wanted to do this to build a platform ecosystem but also to service as a catalyst to bring along a new model of how people consume information and it’s working remarkably well.”
Schmidt said that Google now has more than 65 technology partners, 26 devices, with 59 operators in 48 countries and 90 languages so far. “And I would say that’s just the beginning. More
Do you still need a reason to come up with a social media strategy? New data shows an important shift in web traffic patterns.
Remember last year’s big news about the power of social connection: that friends could make you fatter, happier, and even sexier? Whether you’re a believer or not, new data now says friends will make you visit websites that may make you any of the above.
According to analysis firm Compete, Facebook is now the top source of traffic to entertainment and news portals, besting even the ubiquitous Google. It may sound like just another data point in the ocean, but it hints that the good old days of search may be gone – replaced by the power of a person’s social network to determine what sites are worth a visit.
The Jamaica Government will soon insist that persons who purchase cellular phones and sim cards provide identification in order to reduce the possibility of such phones being used in the commission of a crime.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding said he has already asked the attorney general for advice on the matter, and that he was prepared to ask the Parliament to enact legislation in this regard.
LIME Jamaica incurred a $351-million net loss for the three months to December 31, 2009 compared to a $33-million net profit in the comparative quarter in 2008, as costs associated with financing, depreciation and amortisation increased 70 per cent.
So like the Jamaica Observer, the Jamaica Gleaner has pretty much tweaked a premium WordPress template to relaunch a new look website that’s more social and ad friendly. The Jamaica Gleaner launched their new look website this evening. Funny when The Observer launched theirs we said wow, to the Gleaner website we managed… ahmm oookkk.
But my fellow tech entrepreneur Colin Scott puts his own candid spin on it in an email discussion this evening and I had to share it. In essence, who needs the “pretty” when you’re making money. “Ok, Ok So we don’t like it but we are still forgetting the #1 rule…. “They DONT CARE IF YOU LIKE IT” ..its a revenue decision.So lets critique it from a revenue perspective.
Facebook hits 100 million mobile users – puts chat on all IM clients 11.02.2010 Social-networking player Facebook is now being used by more than 100 million mobile phone users around the world. The company today unveiled a new feature that allows people to use Facebook chat within various instant messaging (IM) clients using the Jabber protocol. Facebook has reached the 100-million mobile device milestone just six months after it revealed that 65 million people were using it on their mobile devices. More
