Mac-Jordan Degadjor's Blog

Internet giant; Google intends to invest in innovation and get more users online by developing an accessible, relevant and sustainable internet ecosystem. According to the Policy and Government Relations Manager for Google Africa, Ory Okolloh, this will bring about merging innovations technology and the productive technology. Speaking on Friday at the interactive sessions at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, Ory said this will cater for the rising generation of innovative entrepreneur’s activists and policy makers [...]

The Google Africa team is thrilled to announce their 3rd annual g|Ghana, happening from March 19-20 at the Alisa Hotel, Accra. They’re looking forward to engaging with the community of developers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs who are as passionate about technology as they are. Day 1: Developer and Webmaster Day 1 will focus on hands-on training from Google engineers specializing in popular tools such as App Engine, Android, Maps, Google+ and Webmaster Tools. There will also be advanced labs for [...]

In a recent market survey complied by Website-Monitoring.com, a few key trends about Google+user demographics were revealed.  The most eye-opening stat:  67% of all users were male.  The company believes the fact that Google+ is closely integrated with other Google products popular with young men, namely Android and Gmail, make it appealing to the men. This of course is the exact opposite of most social media networking sites. Women hold the slight majority of users on Twitter, a 55% majority on Facebook, and a [...]

Mocality – a business directory start-up by Stefan Magdalinski with a Kenyan-wide coverage accuses search-engine giant; Google of antitrust-style behavior with its Google+ search integration. You should read Mocality’s blog post about the situation in full, but below is a summary: As we all know, there are no Kenyan Yellow pages, so the business directory from Mocality was crowd-sourced; paying over Ksh. 11m (over $100,000) to thousands of Kenyans to help create and validate its database of business & ventures in [...]

Re-blog From Brian Solis Blog: “For the first time ever in a single day we had 500 million people use Facebook” – Mark Zuckerberg For those who focus on the debate between Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter are missing the true story. Today at Facebook’s f8 developer conference we were reminded about what the story really is…you and me. No, it’s not about features, capabilities, or the number of users. We were reminded about the power of something much more [...]

As an avid TweetDeck user, I have always wanted to share links from my blog-posts and other interesting articles on Social Media, ICT4D, African Tech, Mobile Entrepreneurship, Gender Issues and Photography with Google’s URL Shortener; Goo.gl After much digging and research, I came across a link/API which shortens all links in TweetDeck using goo.gl. Please find more details below: Start your TweetDeck client Go to TweetDeck “Settings” by clicking wrench icon in the top right corner Select the tab “Services” [...]

Yesterday, while tweeting my heart away as I normally do in the mornings, I came across an interesting link referring to a new social networking service from the search-engine giant; Google called Google+. Google+ is the search giant’s all-in attempt to add a social layer onto their other products, and the engineers in charge describe it as an extension to what Google’s already doing in the social scene. They are emphasizing on privacy in differentiating the new social service from [...]

Somewhere in February, 2011; Zeitgeist & Google announced the commencement of applications for the Young Minds Video Competition 2011 via this website: http://www.zeitgeistyoungminds.com/ which saw young people between the ages of 18 and 24; passionate about making a difference in your community apply. Google has always championed innovation and is proud to help young people showcase their ideas and achievements. Zeitgeist Young Minds is an incredible platform for future world-changers to meet some of the most powerful and inspiring people [...]

Google Nigeria recently appointed Ms. Juliet Ehimuan, the former General Manager of  Strategic Business Units at Chams Plc as its Country Manager for Nigeria. Responding to her new appointment, Joe Mucheru; Google’s lead for Sub Saharan Africa said: “Google sees great potential in the Nigerian market. We are excited to have Juliet Ehimuan bring her expertise and knowledge to help fulfill that potential.” “It’s a very exciting time to be joining Google where, amongst other initiatives, I will be helping [...]

  Cross-linked at Future Challenges Organization‘s blog With the current state of innovation spreading across the African continent; what we need exactly as social entrepreneurs and change-makers is the space to network, share ideas and work on projects that become businesses and profit-making ventures. I’m very happy to say, this space is here for the African Tech Community as at today. Google has chosen South Africa’s Cape Town as a pilot township for its new technology incubator called Umbono which [...]

The success of Ushahidi as both an activist organization and as a technology startup is one that is widely recognized as Africa’s first big ‘garage’ startup success story. The organization was born out of the 2007 post-election unrest in Kenya when Ory Okolloh put out a call to map citizen reports of violence. Erik Hersman, David Kobia and Juliana Rotich all heeded the call and Ushahidi.com was born. In a blog post – Stepping Down as Ushahidi Executive Director; Ory [...]

[White African] There’s a new service coming out from Google, tentatively called “Baraza”, which is the term used for meeting place in Swahili. It’s a service focused on creating ways for Africans to interact and share knowledge by asking and answering questions, many of them hyper local, or of regional interest only. Google Baraza is accepting alpha testers right now, you can sign up to try out the new service at this link.Q&A websites like Baraza aren’t new, perhaps the [...]