Microsoft Pakistan Inspires Young Girls Towards IT Professions

Microsoft Pakistan recently conducted DigiGirlz Camp 2013 to foster Information Technology related education among young women of Pakistan.

DigiGirlz is a Microsoft Youth Spark Program which is a signature platform to invest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education for young women and build a pipeline of future workers ready for the challenges of the global economy.

The Microsoft DigiGirlz High Tech Camp was developed to provide girls with a better understanding of what a career in technology is all about. This exciting experience provides high school girls with opportunities to learn about careers in technology, talk with Microsoft employees about their life experiences, and enjoy hands-on computer and technology workshops.

The camp includes experiential work with robotics, demonstrations of the use of simulation technology, experiences with technology like Windows 8 touchscreen slates, sessions on branding to teach the girls the importance of branding themselves the way they want to be known, speed networking sessions with Microsoft employees, Geoteaming Scavenger Hunt and many other unique experiences highlighting teamwork.

Speaking on this occasion, Amir Rao, country manager, Microsoft Pakistan said, “Today Information Technology is an inherent part of our society; it impacts all elements of society and infuses every aspect of the society and thus forms the basis of modern innovation .For that, DigiGirlz as part of our Youth Spark program helps provide young women with the skills they need to be able to fill the jobs of today and tomorrow and to be able to understand the impact they can have on the future society they belong to. This program aims to encourage and support young women to pursue education in high demand areas such as computer science, build their skill set and to incite them to find jobs in the IT sector in which they can have an essential role and contribute heavily in its growth.”

This was first ever Microsoft’s DigiGirlz camp in Pakistan.

The New ThinkCentre Edge 62z is a Budget AIO PC from Lenovo

Budget All-in-one PCs. How often do you spot machines with both of those traits on the market? The answer’s obvious: not often. But Lenovo is here to break the ice once this time, offering the ThinkCentre Edge 62z.

The new AIO PC will be available at a (relatively) low cost of $549 or around Rs. 60,000. Instead of hardcore gamers, this system is targeted mainly towards offices and moderate users.

The specs

The machine will come with an 18.5 inch LCD display. That is said to be 65 percent less space-consuming than a 20 inch monitor.

Inside the machine beats an Intel Core i3 processor, but you can go all the way up to a crème de la crème Core i7 one. The amount of RAM you can get tops out at 8GB, and for the hard drive, 1TB is the limit.

The number of USB 2.0 ports (C’mon its a budget system after all) set is 6. A DVD burner is added in the mix too. Above the display, there’s a webcam. The ThinkCentre Edge 62z also comes with Integrated Intel HD Graphics.

An interesting thing to note here is that this thing comes with Windows 7. Its not the latest version but will be fine enough for a PC with no touchscreen. And a bit old hardware. The PC will be released in May for $549 or around Rs. 60,000 this year.

BlackBerry Reports Profits and Loads of Optimism

BlackBerry has finally announced its quarterly earnings after its name change. The new report comes with good news and hope of the arrival of better times.

To start off, BlackBerry said it earned profits of $94 million on $2.7 billion revenue, which may sound tiny compared to the 10 or even 11-digit figures of the industry leaders but is none-the-less a good start.

The no. of devices sold topped out at 6 million but out of those only around 1 million were BB10 products, namely the Z10. It is worth noting however that the Z10 has only just been launched on some crucial markets. Over 370,000 units of the PlayBook tablet were sold too.

Not everything is as rosy though. The company has said that its total no. of subscribers actually dropped, from 79 million to 76 million. A good bit of news however was that 55 percent of people coming to BlackBerry were coming from other platforms, while only the remaining ones were first time smartphone owners.

That surely is a good news as it indicates that the company has finally started to incur some pressure on the competition.

As it is turning out, the fight between Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 will be the one to watch out. Both the companies, BlackBerry and Nokia (because WP is essentially about Nokia) have shown good, encouraging progress towards better times and will be ones fighting to get the third spot behind iOS and Android, or the spots above it in the long run, who knows.

Allied Bank to Get TPS IRIS Multi-Channel Enterprise Switch

TPS, a cards and payment solutions provider, has announced that Allied Bank Limited has decided to upgrade to TPS’ next generation multi-channel payment solution ‘IRIS’ to support its ambitious growth strategy.

Following a detailed switch selection process, where solutions for both in-house and outsourcing models were evaluated, Allied Bank has selected IRIS as its in-house payment switch because of IRIS parameterization, scalability, reliability and supporting cost-effective growth.

IRIS is a sophisticated payment application that offers one window solution for transaction processing, debit and prepaid card management, ATM controller, Transaction and ATM network Monitoring, Integrated Channel Management and ADC CRM.

Supported by IRIS advanced features, Allied bank can accelerate the execution of its far reaching strategy, including upgrading the network to support chip-cards, advance its mobile banking initiative, while providing value-added services to its accountholders. The bank will also benefit from a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), increased speed to market and facilitate in channel growth. Additionally ABL will use Instant Card Issuance capabilities, comprehensive Point of Sale (POS) and other payment products.

TPS has been associated with ABL since 2003 when it was selected by the bank to setup a transaction switch ‘Phoenix’ and other peripheral applications. In the span of 9 years, TPS technology has facilitated bank to scale and handle ATM network of 700+ ATMs and process the card life cycle of over a million debit cards.

To smoothly execute this upgrade project, TPS and Allied Bank has assigned a dedicated team consisting of highly motivated and trained senior personnel to manage this challenging and strategic project. All assigned resources will work as a closely-knit team with the aim to successfully deliver this project timely.

“At Allied bank we aim to offer innovative solutions and value added services to our customers. To meet this objective we plan to fully utilize IRIS scalable and modular architecture and features by rolling out new products and services, meeting customer’s requirements and expectations within shortest possible time. Our strategic partnership with TPS will contribute in our technology transformation and enhancing our service capability and to offer convenience and exclusive services to our customers,” said Mujahid Ali, Group Chief, Information Technology, Allied Bank Limited.

“It gives us immense pride to be a trusted partner of ABL, and be a part of ABL’s continuous retail payment growth initiative. We greatly value ABL’s confidence and trust in us and we are certain that the partnership of TPS and ABL will deliver long term benefits.” said Muhammad Sohail, CEO, TPS

Easypaisa and UBL Omni Termed as Global Leaders in Mobile Banking

Telenor’s Easypaisa and UBL Omni have been identified as a sprinters in a Global survey by the GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme.

The survey, titled Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey, analysed the state of the mobile money industry in 2012 and illustrates key findings from the programme’s Mobile Money Deployment Tracker, a database that monitors the number of live and planned mobile money services for the unbanked across the globe.

The annual survey was developed to quantify the state of the mobile money industry and to enable mobile money providers to benchmark their performance.

The findings from the 2012 Global Mobile Money Adoption Survey counted 30 million active mobile customers, 224 million transactions and USD 4.6 billion transacted on mobile money in June 2012.

While these numbers indicate increasing industry maturity, mobile money remains a two-tier landscape. There are just 14 fast- growing services or GSMA Mobile Money Sprinters while the rest are struggling to gain traction or young services still at a very early stage.

The findings of the survey which were carried out in June 2012 were released at the GSMA Global Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona last month.

Both Easypaisa and UBL Omni, mobile banking solutions from Pakistan, were identified as a “sprinter” because of their rapid growth, along with 12 other mobile money or branchless banking deployments around the world.

As of today, globally there are about 150 deployments with a total “registered” agent base of just over half a million.

Unlike most of mobile banking solution providers that are MNO, UBL omni is the only bank that was included in Sprinters’ list.

LG to Introduce Eye Recognition Feature in Optimus G Pro Smartphone

Smart Video, a new multimedia UX feature from LG will be unveiled for the first time in the Optimus G Pro.

Smart Video takes viewing videos on mobile devices to a whole new level of convenience with eye recognition that eliminates the need to manually control playback during the viewing experience.

Through the implementation of advanced eye recognition technology, Smart Video recognizes the position of the viewer’s eyes and automatically plays or stops the video without any manual input from the user. When the viewer’s eyes are no longer focused on the smartphone display, the front camera recognizes this and immediately pauses the video automatically. Once the user’s gaze returns to the smartphone, the video resumes playback from the point last viewed.

In addition to the Smart Video feature, Optimus G Pro will also be equipped with the world’s first Dual Camera function. The Dual Camera feature is an extension of the Dual Recording feature which debuted on the Optimus G Pro introduced in the Korean market last month. Dual Camera simultaneously captures photographs using both the front and back cameras for a picture-in-picture composition. Users can now be a part of the story, not just observers.

The Smart Video and Dual Camera features will be introduced as a part of the Value Pack upgrade which will be offered for the Optimus G Pro in the Korean market next month. These features will also be made available in other markets too.

IBM Technology Breaks Barriers for Deaf Children

At first sight, children at the Deaf Reach School (DRS) in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Karachi are like any other school going children. They enjoy playing cricket, are excited to receive visitors and love going to computer class.

The difference is that all of these children are deaf, and many are attending school for the first time. Apart from the most rudimentary sign language, the students at DRS have not had an access to a medium that allows them to communicate with the rest of the world.

The school, along with teaching English, Mathematics and Science, coaches these children and their parents in sign language.

DRS, a project of Family Educational Services Foundation (FESF) recently received 10 Young Explorer units through IBM’s KidSmart Programme – a worldwide initiative that uses technology to more effectively introduce children in early-year settings to essential skills and knowledge. As an added benefit, it enables children to become more comfortable with technology.

The Young Explorer (YE) is a computer housed in brightly-colored, child friendly Little Tikes furniture, equipped with award-winning educational software to help children learn and explore concepts in maths, science and language.

The YE units are specially designed for children aged three to five with a focus on creating a positive impact on preschool learning and teacher training in line with government education agendas.

Technology already plays an important part in delivering lessons at DRS. Multimedia used during class speeds up the learning process together with making the curriculum more fun and interactive. IBM’s KidSmart programme will augment DRS’s ICT setup helping children learn important socialization skills, preparing them for future success in school and help level the playing field while ensuring all children have access to educational tools.

Students at DRS have started using the Young Explorer units collaborating with teachers where the software provides verbal instructions or comments. ‘At Deaf Reach Schools, technology is a key component to enhance learning. The KidSmart program has had a significant impact in our students’ lives, providing easy to use IT access and visual input allowing them to fully participate in learning activities. Students wait in anticipation for their sessions to start on the individual KidSmart stations, and they fully engage in creating graphic design art work, learning math, and developing improved computing skills.’ Richard Geary, Executive Director, FESF.

‘Today, with rapidly changing technology, unlimited internet access and dynamic educational resources, there are many options to provide education for students with special needs. Embedding modern technology in curriculums, like the KidSmart programme, provides tremendous opportunities for education, offering hope for a better future.’ Adnan Siddiqui, Country General Manager, IBM Pakistan and Afghanistan.

5 Best Ways to Make Good Money by Promoting Amazon Products

Keeping in mind the economical condition of Pakistan where thousands of people are unemployed and have no source of income at all, internet is an alternative which comes to mind whenever you think about possible sources to earn some money.

However people totally misunderstand the concept of making money online. Let me tell you, it is possible and you can make healthy amount of money (more then what a salaried person can expect) but for that you need to understand that money never grows on trees. All you need to do is to learn as much you can, work hard, understand the basic concepts and research and then deploy your techniques and keep experimenting.

Most importantly take it as a business just like any other real life business.

There are many ways you can make money on the internet for example freelancing, affiliate marketing, selling etc. But I am going to get you through the affiliate marketing, an area of my own interest.

If you are a newbie and want to earn quick money online, I suggest you try promoting physical product instead of digital products. Now, there are many physical products vendor out there, but the most popular one is Amazon. It is better for you to use Amazon as a starter instead of Clickbank.

So, I will tell you why you should promote Amazon products. That’s because it is easy to make sales when you promote Amazon product, as long as you drive enough traffic to your landing page. Here are 5 best ways to make good money by promoting Amazon products:

P.S. I am assuming that you understand the terms such as affiliate marketing, blogging, adding affiliate links in your posts and so on.

1. Focus On Squidoo

Why should you focus on Squidoo? That’s because it’s free and you have all the tools necessary to promote Amazon products on Squidoo. Moreover, if you can set your lens right, it will look attractive and interesting for your readers. You know that website design is one of the most important factors that will improve your conversion rate.

Squidoo offers nice website design, and it will definitely help you to boost your conversion rate for your promotion. Just pick a product to promote from Amazon and write a simple review for that product. Then, publish your review on Squidoo. Don’t forget to add interesting images and videos to enhance the look and feel of your review article (i.e. Squidoo lens).

2. Build A Review Website On Small Niche

Pick a small niche. For example, you can pick digital photography as your niche. Then, what you need to do is to build a review website around this digital photography niche. You can call this website: digital photography review. Here you will publish around 30 product reviews related to your niche. So, in this instance, you will write about cameras, video camcorders, and so on. The next thing that you need to do is to drive traffic to your website using various means of traffic building. Don’t forget to make your website stand out from the crowd by using an attractive design and a good logo for your website.

3. Create A List Of Best Products

You can create a list of best products around certain product category, such as 10 best cameras under $500, best LED TV under $300, and so on. When you create a list of best products, you are promoting multiple products in one article. In this way, you will increase your chance of success in generating sales from your promotion. Also, you can create a list of best products related to specific target market, such as best video games for kids, best fitness equipment for men, and so on. Additionally, you can create a list of best products based on current event, such as best Valentine gift ideas, best Christmas gifts, and so on.

4. Create Comparison Article

People usually compare multiple products before actually choosing the one to buy. So, for example, you can compare two different products by stating its positives and negatives side by side, such as Samsung LED TV vs. LG LED TV. Of course, you need to compare specific product name in order to get the best result from this method. Then, you can publish your comparison article either on free blog or your own website. Just make sure to create comparison for popular products so that there are enough people that will read your article.

5. Small Niche Blogging

The last method to earn money from physical product is by creating a small targeted niche blog. For instance, if you really like playing golf and want to promote some golf products to your readers, then you can create a small niche blog about golf. In this blog, you will update it with good tips related to golf. Also, in this small niche blog you’ll create a page where you will recommend many golf products to your readers. You are going to establish yourself as an expert while your readers will be following your recommendation.

These are the best ways to earn money promoting physical product. It is one of the easiest ways to earn money online, and you shouldn’t miss this opportunity. Follow the tips above to make your first income online.

BlackBerry 10 Apps Touch the 100,000 Mark

A great news for the fans of the BlackBerry 10 platform is that the number of apps in the BlackBerry store has just reached 100,000. Of course, numbers don’t tell the whole tale but still its quite an achievement for a store which came into existence just 7 weeks prior to reaching the milestone.

The news also came just a day before the Z10 smartphone hit the all-so-important US market.

The milestone was achieved sooner than any of the platform’s rivals including Windows Phone, which is currently being declared its biggest competitor. Unlike Microsoft’s platform though, it at least had 70,000 apps to its name prior to its release including the abysmal Android ones. Windows Phone app market still has an upper hand in terms of quality apps and at the end of the day, they are what matter most.

With apps increasing at such a fast pace, its easy to see that even developers thinking or at least hoping that BlackBerry will make a comeback and capture the market as it once did.

Martyn Mallick, Vice President of Global Alliances at Blackberry mentioned that the response to the BlackBerry 10 platform and applications has been outstanding. Customers are thrilled with the applications already available, and the catalog just keeps growing, now with more than 100,000 apps. Top brands and application providers are joining us every day and are seeing the benefits of being early supporters of the new platform.

Telecom Consumers Registered 33,310 Complaints With PTA During 2012

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has said that it received 33,310 complaints from users against telecom operators during FY2012, out of which 99 percent complaints were addressed and resolved.

PTA said that telecom consumers registered these complains through various channels, i.e., online, email (complaints@pta.gov.pk), hotline (0800-55055), written complaints and faxes sent to PTA headquarter addresses and zonal offices.

These consumer complaints were against cellular operators, fixed line, wireless, broadband, LDIs and other telecom licensed operators.

PTA said that 71% of total received complaints were against cellular operators – with over 120 million subscribers base – while 27 percent out of total 33,310 complaints were against PTCL which has just 3.5 million customers.

Following graphs will give you a glimpse of complaints, their types, and share of complaints against various operators.

Summary of Consumer Complaints FY 2012

Share of Complaints by Category

Cellular Operator Wise Complaints Received and Resolved During 2011-12

Consumer Complaints Against PTCL During 2012

Effective Measure Endorsed as Digital Audience Measurement standard in Pakistan

The Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) has officially awarded Effective Measure as the industry endorsed service for digital audience measurement in Pakistan, said a release issued by the firm.

The recognition of the Effective Measure platform will give Pakistan’s advertising, publishing and digital media sectors a new level playing field to accurately assess, measure and develop their valuable digital assets.

PAS is the representative industry body of Pakistan’s advertising industry and its collective membership looks after the interests of 80 percent of the advertising spend of Pakistan.

The endorsement was awarded to Australian founded Effective Measure after a rigorous and thorough review process by the PAS Research Committee. Under PAS’s governing guidelines there will be a yearly independent audit of the service to ensure the reliability and validity of the data to ensure the highest levels of service.

“We have endorsed Effective Measure for their depth in service, technological expertise, global footprint and their guiding principles that will allow them to provide reliable and credible data to the industry” said PAS Executive Director Qamar Abbas.

Under the alliance Effective Measure will be working in collaboration with PAS to establish a world class digital audience measurement service for the Pakistan industry.

“The highest potential for media growth in the MEA region is on the digital platform, given the favourable youth skewed demographics and the strong uptake of smartphones and tablets. Pakistan plays an important role in this swing to digital platforms and advertising spend. We are excited about bringing greater digital transparency and insight into markets in the MEA territories, which we believe will accelerate growth in digital spend and awareness amongst advertisers across the region,” said Effective Measure Regional Managing Director MEA, Brendon Ogilvy.

The Effective Measure solution benefits advertisers and media owners by offering superior access to audience reach and demographic data.

“The alliance gives the dynamic Pakistan media industry, choice and diversity in selecting the best of breed solutions for managing their digital media assets, advertising spend and placement. Additionally it opens the door to a whole new layer of rich data analytics and exploration of audience behaviour across multiple digital platforms,” said Effective Measure Country Manager – Pakistan, Imtiaz N. Mohammad.

PAS members will be instructed on how to take advantage of the new measurement resources that Effective Measure provides and details will follow on how digital publishers can sign‐up with Effective Measure and get their sites tagged free of charge.

Snapdragon 600 based Samsung Galaxy S4 is twice as fast as Galaxy S III and iPhone 5, easily beats HTC One too

Yesterday we got some potentially bad news for Europe – that the Galaxy S4 version in sold in Sweden will use the Snapdragon 600 chipset instead of the Exynos 5 Octa that geeks were hoping for. The same version will be sold in North America. However, then we saw some reassuring benchmarks and now we can add one more.

Primate Labs, makers of the Geekbench app took interest in the Samsung Galaxy S4 performance and made a chart to see how the new Galaxy flagship performs. Using data from a benchmark run by Android Authority, the Primate Labs chart shows that the S4 is over twice as fast as its predecessor.

It also beats the HTC One, which uses the same chipset though at a lower clockspeed (1.7GHz for the HTC, 1.9GHz for the Samsung). As for competition from other platforms, the Apple iPhone 5 scores almost the same as the BlackBerry Z10, both with about half the score of the Galaxy S4.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, meaning it uses slightly updated Krait 300 cores compared to the BlackBerry Z10 and the LG Nexus 4. Also note that the Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark has not been running finalized software.

As Primate Labs points out, the iPhone 5 will be updated soon and the iPhone 5S will improve performance and we’ll have to wait and see how it stacks up. But the Z10 is it for BlackBerry, their other model coming this year, the Q10, uses a lower-end chipset.

Shame that we don’t have a score for the Galaxy S4 version with an Exynos 5 Octa – the Cortex-A15 cores are supposed to blow the Kraits out of the water, battery willing.