This emerged against the backdrop of the increasing cases of kidnapping in Lagos, a menace that has defied efforts by the police and other in the state.

While making enquiries about police effort in tracking kidnappers through the security cameras in the state, a police source at the State Criminal Investigation Department told our correspondent that security cameras had never been used in their investigations.

“The only time we make use of CCTV cameras is when our investigation takes us to a hotel or mall with security cameras. But if it is a crime committed on a Lagos road, forget it,” the source said.

Governor Babatunde Fashola had stated in January 2009 that the 10,000 cameras the state planned to install were to help to reduce crime in the state.

At a demonstration event, Fashola said the number of policemen in the state was inadequate considering the number of people in the state.

He said at the time, “Eighteen million people cannot be protected and policed by 33,000 people. This is impossible. No matter how much we try to increase the number of policemen, we cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result.

“In an information technology-driven world, we have to be counted as one of those states and communities which will adopt best practices. Cameras, sensors, tracking devices are the nerve centre of these facilities that would assist men and officers of the police force, fire service among others to do their duty much more effectively.”

The project was to be funded by the Lagos Security Trust Fund while the cameras were supposed to be managed remotely through a central security command unit. Four years after this announcement was made, the state has not had a taste of those promises.

Our correspondent contacted the state Commissioner for Information, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba, on why the cameras have yet to be installed as the governor promised.

Ibirogba simply said the matter was out of the hands of the state government.

He said, “The problem with the issue of security cameras has nothing to do with the state government.

“When we were about to embark on their installation, the Federal Government contacted us and said we needed to stop. The reason we were given was that the FG had a scheme in the pipeline, which involved the installation of security cameras all over major cities in the country.

“According to the Federal Government, Lagos was going to be in the first phase of the project. That was why we stopped our own project.

“But we have since written a letter to the Federal Government, asking it to tell us those locations where the cameras will be installed so that when we begin to install ours, we would not duplicate locations. That is where we currently stand.”

A state government official, who is also familiar with the issue, said the Federal Government’s negative attitude to it might be political.

“We all know the security cameras issue may remain buried as far as the Federal Government is concerned. If you think the Federal Government is overly concerned about Lagos, a state that is not controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party, then you are naïve,” the government source said.

Efforts to get the Presidency’s reaction did not yield positive result on Thursday as the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, could not be reached on his not pick the calls made to his telephone line.

Culled from Punch

windows xp defalt photo

Mr.Charles O’rear took this picture on a drive to napa valley and later this was bought by Bill Gates to make it the default theme of windows XP.

An advertorial published in a national daily by a group named, ‘Osun Salvation Forum’ alleging financial misconduct in the office of the Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola over the purchase of 16 GB Secured Digital Memory cards, has led to an unusual interest in the product in Osogbo, the state capital.

BIOREPORTS checks at the two major stores selling computer materials, Uncle Joe Photo Company and SLOT revealed that inquiries and sales has gone up like never before, as curious customers, in large numbers, kept coming to know the actual price of the product. While our reporter was at Slot Ltd, one of the staff asked “is there any announcement directing the usage 16gb memory card? I am surprised that everybody is just trooping in to buy 16gb, 1gb has always been the choice of the few people who buy Memory cards here, but todays demand for 16gb is a little strange, this very unusual, we only have few left now” While the Osun Salvation Forum claimed that the card goes for a maximum price of not more than N500 naira in the open market, BIOREPORTS bought two 16 GB cards one at SLOT for N4000 and the other for N3000 at UNCLE JOE PHOTO COMPANY in Osogbo on Tuesday. Further checks online shows that nobody sells 16gb memory card less than N2,0000 in Nigeria. Our findings showed that the purchase of the cards at N1500 was a good bargain by the government and an indication of prudent management of scarce resources by the Aregbesola administration.

The allegation also sparked off massive online fireworks between the supporters of Can and PDP in the state of Osun.

A staunch PDP, Engr. Akintunde Bello Sheriff in one of his comments said “This our oga at the top in Osun na something else now. He just dey kolo rich everyday through advanced stealing”.

In his response, Hon. Bola Ilori who is Aregbesola’s SA on Environment posited that “Martin Luther King Jr. said “nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” PDP alleged that Aregbe approved the purchase of 20,0000 pieces of 16gig SD card for N1,500. They even called it emo! They went ahead to state that the said card is sold for N500 in the open market. However, all findings in Nigeria shows that nobody sells the card less than N3,000 in fact Osogbo Slot ltd sells it for N4,000, I bought one there today and you can also go there.

N1,500 x 20,000 = N30m. If Aregbe is to approve the market rate using Slot Osogbo, it would have cost Osun N4,000 x 20,000 =N80m. So Osun has gained N50m by this approval. So what this has proved is that Aregbe is very prudent and has Saved Osun”

The other leg of the OSF claim was that a personal assistant to the governor is not statutorily recognized to raise a memo or re-validate same.

However, we discovered that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria empowers the Governor of a State to appoint such officers and to assign duties to them as he may deem necessary
This is clearly stated in Section 208[1-2]

208. (1) Power to appoint persons to hold or act in the offices to which this section applies and to remove persons so appointed from any such office shall vest in the Governor of the State.

(2) The offices to which this section applies are, namely -
(a) Secretary to the Government of the State;
(b) Head of the Civil Service of the State;
(c) Permanent Secretary or other chief executive in any Ministry or Department of the Government of the State howsoever designated; and
(d) any office on the personal staff of the Governor.

The appointment and functioning of the said officer falls into the category of those appointed by the Governor under Section 208[2d] of the constitution. Therefore, it is clear that the said Mr Bashorun has every constitutional capability to fully function as a public officer as may be directed by the governor that appointed him including the raising of memo.

We found out that in essence, Mr. Bambo Bashorun is eminently qualified educationally, professionally and constitutionally to function in the capacity as the personal assistant to the governor on ICT. He is saddled with the co-ordination of the Computer Tablet [Opon Imo] in the State of Osun. Mr. Bashorun holds B.sc and M.sc, Computer and Information Technology from University of Ulm, Germany; he also holds several professional qualifications such as Mcse, Mcsa, Mcp and CCNA.

It would be recalled that State of Osun is just preparing to inaugurate the Office of Innovation, Science and Technology which is designed to be headed by a Special Adviser to the Governor which makes the Personal Assistant to the Governor on ICT the highest ICT office holder in Osun government till date.

Culled from BIOREPORTS

Award-winning rapper, Ice prince, has dismissed media reports suggesting that he has turned down a lucrative endorsement deal with Globacom.

Online reports suggested over the weekend that the rapper, real name, Panshak Zamani, had snubbed a multi-million naira deal with the telecommunications giant.

‘Chocolate City’s management have moved quickly to deny the reports saying there is no truth in the matter.’

‘We were just as surprised as anybody when we read the news of Ice Prince ‘purportedly’ turning down ‘the offer’ , especially since it isnt true,’ said Tobi Sanni-Daniel, Ice Prince’s business manager.

‘Globacom is a multi-national company with an excellent track record of delivering quality. Any individual would be proud and honoured to be associated with them.

‘However to say that we have turned down an endorsement deal is false and completely baseless.’

Culled from: Naij

One of the leaders in digital media and digital convergence technologies, Samsung Electronics West Africa, has unveiled its 2013 brand ambassadors for its Mobile Division. star musician, Banky W, and Movie industry icon Kate Henshaw will be working together to raise awareness for Samsung mobile products and ultimately contribute to making Samsung phones the preferred brand in the West Africa sub-region. Henshaw was officially unveiled as brand ambassador at a media breakfast meeting organized by Samsung.

Speaking at the unveiling, Managing Director, Samsung Electronics West Africa, Mr. Brovo Kim stated that Henshaw and Banky W represent the values that Samsung has stood for over the years. “The Samsung brand stands for qualities of innovation, change, discovery, self-expression and excellence in performance. And these very same qualities are epitomized by Banky W and Kate Henshaw, whose quality and depth of work as well as versatility as artistes have endeared them to Nigerians today. We are indeed very proud and privileged to have them as our Brand Ambassadors.”

Kim further described its signing of Kate Henshaw as an opportunity for Samsung to reach out to its customers through Nigeria’s movie industry. “We want to further connect with our customers at all touch points, especially through film as it is one of the passions of people in West Africa,” he explained. Samsung plans to leverage Henshaw in its brand advertising as well as product advertising for mobile phones.

In sync with its thrust on introducing innovative, consumer-oriented, breakthrough technology products, Samsung also announced a brand new member in its Galaxy line-up with Samsung Galaxy Grand. The 5-inch display, smart dual-SIM Galaxy Grand combines the features of Samsung’s game-changing Galaxy S III and the revolutionary Galaxy Note II, which were released by the manufacturing giant last year.

Culled from: Tribune

BlackBerry’s new operating system and phones are not all they’re hyped up to be, Brian Lam of Wirecutter reports.

For starters, it has a terrible selection of apps, Lam says.

“It’s not their fault, and maybe it’s even pretty good for a new OS with over 70,000 apps available at launch, but that doesn’t matter for you because in the end, that means they’re still far worse than the Android and iPhone/iPad libraries today,” Lam writes.

For example, the OS doesn’t offer Instagram, Netflix, Spotify, and Yelp. But even with the apps it does offer, some of them are lacking in quality, Lam says.

The operating system does shine when it comes to gesture controls, but it’s lacking in the mapping area.

In short, Lam says he wouldn’t tell anyone he cares about to even consider buying BlackBerry’s new phones.

“You should not buy (the Z10) unless you have emotional and cultural reasons to love Blackberry, or some arcane enterprise reason I will not pretend to understand,

Culled from: Business

Oni also asked the court to order MTN to pay him N150bn as general damages.

MTN and NCC are defendants in the suit.

Oni, a former governor of Ekiti State, accused MTN of frustrating investigations carried out by the National Judicial Council into the allegation of misconduct he leveled against some members of the Governorship Appeal Tribunal, Ilorin, which sacked him from office in 2010.

In the suit filed by his counsel, Mr. Olusegun Ilori, the former governor said MTN provided inadequate and incomplete call data records to the security agencies, which in turn transmitted the same to the Special Investigative Panel of the NJC for investigation.

He averred that the records MTN transmitted to the security agencies were different from those which the company released to the Police Area Commander, “Area G” Command, Ogba, Lagos.

Oni also accused MTN of frustrating his petition by refusing to provide the call logs spanning the period under investigation, particularly call records for the months of September, October and November 2010, on the excuse that its network capacity for data storage did not extend beyond three months.

He alleged that the call data records forwarded by MTN to the NJC panel covered only that of December 2010.

Oni informed the court that an MTN official, Rotimi Odusola, appeared before the NJC panel to deny the call data records the firm earlier released to the police, on which he (Oni) had anchored his complaint of misconduct against some members of the tribunal.

Following the MTN’s action, the PDP stalwart said the NJC panel declared the call logs earlier released to the police as lacking authenticity and as such, of no evidential value.

He averred that MTN’s actions constituted a serious breach of the duty imposed on it by the NCC Act, and undermined his quest to seek justice.

Culled from Naij

Today I want to conclude some observations on the Boston Consulting Group list of the world’s most innovative companies. Samsung lies at number 3 in the BCG list, just behind Apple and Google.

It’s record for innovation, as opposed to its litigation with Apple, is finally winning plaudits and not just at BCG. And that might bode ill for Apple in 2013.

Samsung’s position at number 3 is telling. For much of 2012 it’s reputation hung in the balance.

Having been taken to court by Apple for patent infringement, it would hardly be plausible to see it rising in anyone’s innovation rankings. Apple fans and many neutrals thought of Samsung as a copier not an innovator.

While we wait for Apple’s entry into the TV market, however, Samsung is already there and at CES began to make a serious impression on analysts.

And as reported here on Forbes a few days back, Samsung looks like to be first to market with a bendable, unbreakable phone/tablet form factor:

Samsung is not the only one with OLED technology, but Samsung is believed to be the most advanced and closest to bringing flexible, bendable and unbreakable OLED screens in mass produced phones and tablets. There is even a rumor that Galaxy SIV, the upcoming successor to the popular Galaxy SIII, will include an OLED display.

And the American tech press has gradually been waking up to Samsung’s innovation record:

“….when Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy Note—a 5.3-inch smartphone that was big enough to be a minitablet, hence the ugly portmanteau—the world’s tech pundits couldn’t stifle their giggles. Was it a phone? Was it a tablet? Was it a joke? Smartphone industry blog Boy Genius Report called the Note “the most useless phone I’ve ever used,” adding: “You will look stupid talking on it, people will laugh at you, and you’ll be unhappy if you buy it.” Gizmodo argued that the Note “isn’t just designed poorly—it’s hardly even designed for humans….Confounding our predictions, Samsung sold 10 million Notes in 2012, making it one of the most successful smartphone launches in history. Then, in the fall, Samsung launched the Galaxy Note II, an upgraded version with an even larger screen—and it promptly sold 5 million of them, and is on track to sell 20 million over the course of the year.

Culled from: forbes

Facebook Inc’s new search tool has strong potential to generate revenue for the social networking company but it is unlikely to challenge Google Inc’s supremacy in web search at least in the near term, analysts said on Wednesday.

The “graph search” tool, unveiled on Tuesday, lets users trawl their network of friends to find everything from restaurants to movie recommendations and marks Facebook’s biggest foray into online search.

“We see some highly monetizable category suggestions for Graph Search (restaurants nearby, games), and it should be easy to incorporate commercial search results via Facebook’s partnership with Bing,” BofA Merrill Lynch analysts said in a note.

Facebook currently has a partnership with Microsoft Corp, whose Bing search engine provides search results for external websites. Microsoft also integrates certain Facebook results into its Bing search results.

The brokerage estimated Facebook could add $500 million in annual revenue if it can generate just one paid click per user per year, and raised its price target on the stock by $4 to $35.

“As of now, we do not see Graph Search as a threat to Google Web search. Looking forward, Facebook Graph searches could be competitive with certain categories of Google searches, such as Places & Maps,” the brokerage said.

Google has been trying to combine social networking and search for more than a year by integrating Google+ into its search engine.

Facebook’s shares were nearly flat in premarket trading on Wednesday, as the rollout of the search tool fell short of some of the more optimistic predictions including that the company would introduce its own smartphone or an Internet search engine.

The company’s shares have jumped about 50 percent since November after months of weakness following its bungled Nasdaq listing in May. They closed down 3 percent at $30.10 on Tuesday.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 28-year-old founder and chief executive, stressed that users can sort through only content that has been shared with them, addressing privacy concerns.

“Graph Search has broad monetization potential across a spectrum of new opportunities, but monetization will take time,” Jefferies & Co analysts said.

The brokerage said graph search in its current form, with its relatively narrow scope, limits overlap with Google and has more potential overlap with the likes of Yelp Inc and IAC/InteractiveCorp’s Match.com.

Culled from:reuter

It said that it had achieved the sales of an incredible 100 million units of the smartphone Galaxy ‘S’ series.

This will be a breakthrough in the Mobile technology for the company, considering the fact that the Smartphones have taken the shine off the basic normal phones in the market, wooing the young and trendy population across the globe.

The Firm described the Galaxy S series as the innovation that has positioned it for the fist time, as the leading player in Gadget and Smartphone Industry ahead of Apple, which has caused analysts to wonder what will be the next stepfor the Americans.
From a New research carried out, the younger generation categorized as the ‘Generation Y’ have recently considered the Samsung products as ‘Cool’ compared to Apple . The Galaxy S2 plus recently launched with the jelly bean Android Operating system could also close the Smartphones market for other competitors.

Samsung said Galaxy S 3 series have been selling at a faster rate than estimated, which for them is a welcome development. Flagship sales of the Galaxy S 3 reached 30 million units in 5 months, and 40 million units in 7 months . Meaning daily sales of 190,000 units per day.

Innovation in the Mobile technology sector has reached its peak, and with the knowledge of the fact that ‘Smartphones’ are now the best bet for driving sales in the Industry, Apple, HTC, RIM and Nokia will have to roll their sleeves ready to take on Samsung.

Culled from: Naij