South Africa's MTN launches Mobile Insurance Program

South African mobile phone giant, MTN, has joined with an insurance company to launch a program in Ghana that will allow subscribers to pay for life insurance through their mobile phones.

Phone banking has taken off in Africa, where the impoverished majority can't afford the costs of traditional banks, including account fees and bus fares to get to town from villages to visit the banks.

More Ghanaians have mobile money accounts than bank accounts, said Jeremy Leach, a divisional director of Hollard Insurance Group. South Africa-based mobile phone giant The MTN Group is partnering with the group to increase Ghanaians' access to life insurance, he said.

Mobile banking users send and receive money through their cell phones.

Leach said Hollard approached MTN to establish a plan where Ghanaians can pay premiums as low as one cedi ($0.65) per month on their mobile phones through MTN's mobile banking system.

"Ghana has a fast-growing market and is one of the fastest growing countries in Africa," Leach said. "One of the things that was pleasing when we got there was that we thought we'd have to do a lot of consumer education, but what we found was that the national health insurance had been rolled out so there was increased awareness."

Ghana has 9 million MTN mobile subscribers, 2 million of whom have joined the mobile banking program launched in July 2009. Mobile banking customers can buy the insurance using menus on their cell phones. They need a valid mobile money account to sign the application form, but medical or other documents are not required.

The program is only in the pilot stages limited to a number of service centers, Leach said, adding that the full rollout will occur within months.

Pieter Verkade, MTN's mobile money executive, said: "What we believe is it's a whole new area for us, as well as insurance companies. We are bringing these kinds of products to a market where they before would not have access to these projects."

Verkade said MTN is looking to expand its mobile banking services in regions such as West Africa, where there is a lot of demand. Already, MTN offers Rwandans the ability to purchase prepaid electricity through their cell phones.

"It's certainly doing a bit to improve the whole economy's income and the way people can interact by providing them financial tools they didn't have before," Verkade said. "In that respect, it's some kind of a revolution."

Google launches new online magazine: Think Quarterly

Google's has launched its own full-length online magazine, a quarterly publication whose aim is to create a "breathing space in a busy world."

The first edition of Think Quarterly, based out of the UK, is a 68-page dive into the world of data and its impact on business. The first thing most people will notice is that it's a visually stunning piece of work. It's a rich Flash app with Google's quirky sensibilities and the in-depth writing you might find in BusinessWeek or Salon. Google's quarterly magazine is edited and designed by creative agency The Church of London.

The articles are thought pieces about major business and technology topics from a variety of freelancers and contributors. Google was able to snag Simon Rogers (editor of The Guardian's Datablog), Ulrike Reinhard (editor of WE Magazine), and other journalists for the project. Many of Think Quarterly's articles feature interviews with Google executives and technology leaders. Some of the people featured include Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian and famed psychologist Peter Kruse.

"At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten 'killer application' – the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest," Matt Brittin, Google's managing director of UK & Ireland operations, said in Think Quarterly's introduction. "We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service."

"But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It's a place to take time out and consider what's happening and why it matters."

It's unclear whether the new online magazine is another sign that Google is entering the media business or whether it's just a project to feed the company's intellectual curiosity. Google doesn't describe its newest project as a magazine or a publication. Instead, Google calls it a book on its website and a "unique communications tool".

T-Mobile shows G2x Dual-Core 4G Smartphone

Despite the news of AT&T acquiring T-Mobile this week, T-Mobile's showing some solid phones at this Spring's CTIA mobile conference. The latest of the bunch, the T-Mobile G2x, is a dual-core beast that runs on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network with 4G data speeds.

The name is a bit misleading-this is not an HTC phone. The G1 and G2 were designed by HTC, but the G2x is an LG phone. And it looks familiar, it is because it is essentially a T-Mobile version of the LG Optimus 2X, which was seen in Vegas at CES 2011.

In addition to the G2x, T-Mobile has announced that it is expanding its network as well as double the speed to achieve a theoretical download speed of 42 Mbps. Customers in Las Vegas, New York and Orlando will be the first to experience the faster speeds.

T-Mobile is showing off a few other 4G products at the show including the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, the T-Mobile Jet 2.0 laptop stick, the T-Mobile Rocket 3.0 (the first 42 Mbps-capable product) and the ZTE-manufactured T-Mobile 4G Hotspot.

World’s Top 2 richest men to visit India this week

Two of the world's richest men, software pioneer Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett, are set to visit India this week to persuade the country's super-wealthy to part with more of their cash.

The pair made headlines last year when they said they would seek to get fellow billionaires to commit half of their wealth to good causes as part of the "Giving Pledge". So far, 59 rich Americans have taken the pledge.

But while charitable giving is widespread in countries such as the United States, it is less well established in developing nations such as India and China, where Gates and Buffett went in September on a similar mission.

The former, in an open letter in the Times of India newspaper, said he and Buffett plan to sit down with some of India's affluent business leaders "to talk about our own enthusiasm for philanthropy and the impact it can have".

"We come not as preachers, but more like cheerleaders," said Gates, just a few months on from the billionaires' high-profile China trip, where they wined and dined the country's richest industrialists to promote charity.

Fast-growing India is home to some of Asia's richest billionaires, making it "an exciting time to be having this conversation," added Gates.

But while there is no shortage of billionaires for Gates and Buffett to meet, it may not be the easiest of missions.

India's booming economy - growing by nine percent annually - has 55 billionaires with an average net worth of $4.5 billion, according to Forbes, the third-largest pool of billionaires after the United States and China.

Yet rich Indians are often criticised by local media for a reluctance to part with their cash. In fact, India's wealthiest social class has the lowest level of giving - just 1.6 percent of household income compared to 1.9 percent for the country's middle classes, according to global consultancy Bain and Company.

A $2 billion education donation by high-tech tycoon Azim Premji late last year was a rare exception - and shone a harsh light on the patchy philanthropic track record of India's wealthy.

Arpan Sheth, a consultant for Bain who is author of a recent overview of Indian philanthropy, said the country's charitable potential is huge. "Should individuals in India, particularly the well-off, be giving more? And can they afford to make more and larger donations? The answer to both questions is, 'Absolutely yes'," he said.

Philanthropic activity has failed to keep pace with growing riches, partly, Sheth believes, because the rapid accumulation of individual wealth is still a relatively new phenomenon.

"We have a history of scarcity and so it takes a while to build confidence that the future will be better on a sustainable basis and let go of newly earned wealth," said Sheth. There is also a suspicion that charities are badly managed and so donors fear their contributions "won't be put to good use or are at risk of being misappropriated," Sheth added.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity set up by the software tycoon and his wife, was tight-lipped about the visit, citing security.

According to India's Business Standard newspaper Gates, his wife and Buffett would hold talks with the country's wealthy on Thursday in New Delhi.

There is no doubt that the need to help India's teeming poor is glaring. Some 42 percent of Indians, or 455 million people, live on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. India's statistics on health, infant mortality and malnutrition are worse than those for some countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

There are signs, though, that India's billionaires are waking up to the urgent need to bridge the yawning gap between rich and poor in the country of 1.2 billion people.

India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, who heads the country's largest private company Reliance Industries, warned earlier this month that "there will be no peace" if people are "discontented, deprived, unhappy and therefore angry."

Opera unveils new mobile browsers

Opera Software has unveiled a new versions of its Mini and Mobile wireless browsers, improving tablet support and features like scrolling, zooming and sharing.

The new versions feature a share button, so you can easily post, tweet, or share info on Facebook, vKontakte or My Opera.

According to Web analytics firm StatCounter, Opera is the world's most used mobile browser ahead of Apple, Nokia and Google's Android, controlling 21.6 percent of the market in March so far.

The iPhone, Nokia and Android browsers all have 15 to 19 percent market shares.

BlackBerry Playbook to sell at $499

Research In Motion has announced that its much-awaited iPad rival, the BlackBerry PlayBook, will sell at a starting price of $499 in the United States and Canada and will be available in more than 20,000 retail outlets.

RIM plans to sell the PlayBook through retailers and wireless carriers including Best Buy, AT&T, Verizon, Radioshack, Sears Canada and Walmart.

Best Buy said the PlayBook will be available at its stores from April 19.

China blocking Gmail services

Google has said that the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program, amid an intensified Internet crackdown following widespread unrest in the Middle East.

Google Inc. said its engineers have determined there are no technical problems with the email service or its main website.

"There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," the company said.

China has some of the world's strictest Internet controls and blocks many popular social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The government has intensified those efforts after pro-democracy protest erupted across the Middle East in January.

A Google spokesperson said users in China, the world's most populous Internet market, have reported having intermittent problems with the service since the end of January.

Problems include difficulty accessing the home page for Gmail and problems sending emails when logged into the service. The instant messaging function is often not working as well.

Google officials said the blocking appears to be more sophisticated than other problems experienced by users in the past because the disruption is not a complete block.

Google has had highly public run-ins with the Chinese government.

In January last year, Google announced that it would no longer cooperate with the government's requirement to censor search results for banned sites. It also complained about major attacks on its website by Chinese hackers, suggesting the government may have been instigated the attacks.

Attacks were also mounted against email accounts by activists working on human rights in China at that time.

Google moved its Chinese-language search engine to Hong Kong, which operates under separate rules from the rest of mainland China.

T-Mobile releases video of Sidekick 4G

T-Mobile really wants you to know the Sidekick 4G is coming. In a new video released recently, product manager Joe Fernandez shows off the phone's sliding mechanism and Android interface.

The new Sidekick interface is based on Android 2.2 and Samsung's TouchWiz, although it has some unique Sidekick touches, like those links on the right-hand side of the screen. Samsung's "Feeds and Updates" social-networking widget appears in the video, though.

The screen slides up with a click to reveal the 5-row QWERTY keyboard. The black version of the phone is made of a matte, soft-touch material, Fernandez said.

The Sidekick 4G is supposedly coming out "this spring". Hope we learn more about it at the CTIA Wireless trade show next week.

Google brings Video Format to IE9

Swiftly following Microsoft's release of Internet Explorer 9, Google has recently issued a plug-in for the new browser that allows users to play videos in Google's WebM video file format.

The release can be installed for IE9 running on either Microsoft Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

"They said elephants couldn't ride flying dolphins. They said that one of the world's most popular browsers couldn't play WebM video in HTML5. They were wrong," The Google Web page for the plug-in stated.

The release represents the latest installment in the ongoing saga of bringing video to HTML5, the next-generation standard for designing Web pages.

Browser makers have not reached consensus on which video format to use. While Apple and Microsoft have put their weight behind the widely used H.264, Mozilla and Opera have declined to support that codec, citing worries over eventually having to pay patent royalties.

Last year, Google acquired video-compression-technology vendor On2 Technologies, which developed the open source VP8 video codec. Google subsequently used VP8 as the basis for creating WebM, positioning it as a patent-free alternative to H.264-based formats.

While this new WebM release still requires a plug-in, it will at least allow content creators using WebM to have their creations be played on the world's most widely used browser, which may help Google attract more users to the format.

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Notebook offers 24 hrs of battery life

Computer maker Lenovo has formally announced its new ThinkPad X220 ultraportable notebook and ThinkPad X220 convertible tablet PC, incorporating second-generation Intel Core processors for plenty of computing oomph and promising road warriors up to 15 to 24 hours of battery life, depending on configuration.

“Put simply, The ThinkPad X Series has everything a modern road warrior needs without compromises - low weight, long battery life, and high performance,” said Lenovo’s VP for ThinkPad marketing Dilip Bhatia, in a statement. “We’ve refined the mobile computing experience to make it more productive and enjoyable with features like smart PC technologies and enhanced video and voice calling.”

Both the notebook and convertible tablet versions of the ThinkPad X220 feature a 300-nit, 12.5-inch high-definition screen with space-saving self-closing hinges, with the convertible tablet version getting a Gorilla Glass screen that can stand up to the bumps and scratches of mobile use. The systems use the Intel integrated graphics built into the Sandy Bridge chip, and select models will feature a USB 3.0 port for high-bandwidth connections to peripherals and storage devices. The systems will be available with a range of second-generation Intel Core and Intel vPro processors.

Lenovo says the X220s will get up to 15 hours of battery life with a standard 9-cell battery, and up to 24 hours of use by adding a new ThinkPad external battery - when configured with a ULV processor and an SSD drive, anyway. With a four-cell battery, the notebooks start out under four pounds.

Lenovo is touting the new ThinkPads as big productivity aids partly because users won’t have to wait around as long for the machines to get ready. Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 improves shut down, start up, and resume times for the systems, and a new Instant Resume function maintains wireless and network connections for up to 99 minutes during sleep mode so connections don’t have to be re-established when the system wakes up. And the convertible notebook version will notify a user if they move the tablet without having the pen in the integrated pen-holder.

Lenovo says the ThinkPad X220s will be available in April with the ultraportable notebook starting at $899, and the convertible tablet starting at $1,199.

Internet Explorer 9 to launch March 14

Just after proclaiming Internet Explorer 6 needs to die, Microsoft is readying the launch of IE9, the newest version of its market-leading web browser.

Microsoft plans to debut the browser at the SXSW (South by Southwest Conference and Festivals) conference in Austin on March 14, and the browser will be available for download that same evening.

IE 9 does what no Microsoft browser has done before - embraces HTML 5. HTML 5 is the latest greatest version of HTML, the core coding language for the web. With HTML 5, rich media web sites with stronger animation are made possible.

A More Private Experience..
One of the key new features in IE9 is Tracking Protection. This feature was originally planned for IE8, but Microsoft held off on executing the software that lets customers control tracking on web sites. Essentially, Tracking Protection lets consumers filter content in a page that may have an impact on their privacy.

Here's how Tracking Protection works: Consumers can indicate what web sites they would prefer to not exchange information with. Consumers do this by adding Tracking Protection lists to IE. Anyone, and any organization, on the web can create and publish Tracking Protection lists.

In practice, this means that if you visit a news site, then a sports site, then some other web site, third-party advertisers can't build a profile of browsing activity. Although there are many benefits to building those profiles, including driving more relevant, personalized content, Microsoft is responding to privacy concerns by giving consumers a way to block that tracking.
IE9 also offers InPrivate Browsing, another feature to help consumers control what their machine remembers about browsing sessions. InPrivate Filtering was a forerunner of Tracking Protection.

A Comeback Platform..
"This is Microsoft's comeback platform. They've broken from the pack and the end result is that it's incredibly fast," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at The Enderle Group. "It's probably one of the most secure products Microsoft has ever brought out."

Beyond speed, security and privacy features, Enderle said Microsoft has something else important in the realm of web browsers: massive developer support to use the underpinning features. That means there should be a number of web sites at launch that make unique use of some of the performance and graphics capabilities of the product.

"This is probably going to be one of Microsoft's strongest launches ever and probably one of the most important IE launches since IE 3 when Microsoft stepped away from Spyglass," Enderle said. "So this is very critical one for Microsoft and one where the company is taking a pretty big risk by jumping out so far ahead of the other guys with regard to technology."

Facebook puts six to Forbes billionaire list

Facebook not only made household names out of its founders thanks to the movie "The Social Network" - it has also minted the latest crop of the richest people on the planet.

Six of the founders and investors behind the hot Internet startup made the annual list of world's top billionaires compiled by Forbes and four of them are new to the roster.

They join a list of others made wealthy by the latest gold rush on the Internet, underscoring the extent of the resurgence in a sector left for dead at the turn of the millennium.

Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg clocked in at No. 52 with an estimated worth of $13.5 billion, up from 212 and $4 billion in 2010.

Co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list at 26, Eduardo Saverin, and investors Sean Parker and Russian Yuri Milner are new to the ranks. Rounding out Forbes' "Facebook Six" is investor Peter Thiel, who has moved down to 833 from 828, despite increasing his wealth to $1.5 billion from $1.2 billion.

Created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook rocketed from an online directory for college students to the world's No. 1 social network, quickly surpassing its predecessor Friendster and dominating its rival News Corp's MySpace in popularity.

Facebook has about 600 million users and is a threat to more established big Web businesses such as Google and Yahoo for users' time and advertising dollars.

The private Silicon Valley company recently rounded up $1.5 billion in financing led by Goldman Sachs and Milner's Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, suggesting it could be worth $50 billion and setting off a feeding frenzy among investors.

Other names familiar in tech, media and Internet circles make an appearance on the Forbes list. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page both come in at No. 24 on the Forbes list, unchanged from a year earlier though their fortunes have increased to $19.8 billion each from $17.5 billion each.

In China, Robin Li, the man behind the popular search engine Baidu, is listed with an estimated wealth of $9.4 billion. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.com - a site similar to eBay for businesses' transactions - is worth $1.6 billion.

Digital Sky Technologies Chief Executive Milner, credited with beating Silicon Valley at its own game, landed on the cover of Forbes' billionaires list magazine. His firm holds stakes in the center of this generation's Internet leaders including social gaming Zynga and the online coupon site Groupon.