YouTube has finally announced that it is launching a pilot partner program in which users will be able to pay for subscription to channels like Ultimate Fighting Championship and Sesame Street.

With subscriptions starting at $0.99, YouTube will let viewers test out a channel for free for 14 days. Once they sign up, subscribers can watch the paid channels on all platforms using the same ID, i.e. phones, tablets, PCs and connected televisions.

Through a blog post, Google announced that it looks to help content creators get paid for their videos.

“Today, there are more than 1 million channels generating revenue on YouTube, and one of the most frequent requests we hear from these creators behind them is for more flexibility in monetizing and distributing content,” the blog post read.

YouTube named out only Sesame Street and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as launch partners. The company also revealed that it plans to roll out subscription options for “qualifying” content creators in the next few weeks.

It is however not clear how much of the subscription fees will be shared with the content creators. It is very unlikely that Google will let content creators have the whole amount.

Aiming to speed and simplify external innovation connections, Procter & Gamble (P&G) through their P&G’s Connect+Develop program (C+D) has launched a new website (www.pgconnectdevelop.com), linking innovators directly to top Company needs, and P&G business leaders directly to external innovation submissions.

In the spirit of C+D, P&G developed the website in collaboration with other external partners to enable user submissions to directly feed into the business category leaders. This will allow P&G to review needs for strategic fit or scalability across the business.

The website lets innovators link directly to P&G’s posted needs, which are organized by business area and searchable by topic. Innovators also can access a full description of every need, including scale and success criteria. On the back-end, the site links P&G innovation managers with submissions, letting them search by topic or work area, share internally, and track progress.

P&G launched its Connect+Develop program more than 10 years ago.

The website serves as P&G’s “open front door to the world,” allowing any innovator anywhere to share their innovations with the Company. According to P&G, the site includes translations in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese. It receives about 20 submissions every weekday – or more than 4,000 a year – from all over the world.

P&G encourages our consumers here in Kenya and throughout the East African region to log on and share their innovations.

Buruchara is also a founder of Nairobi Net Limited, one of the pioneer Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Kenya and a founding member and former chairman of the Telecommunications Service Providers Association in Kenya (TESPOK). He is a board member of at the Kenya ICT Board.

He also served as a member of the IT-enabled services working group at the Prime Minister’s Office of the Government of Kenya.

Burachara coordinated the organisation of the ICANN 37 in Nairobi held in March 2010.

So Google decided to claim attention from Kenyans by actually doing nothing apart from aggregating Google+, Youtube and Google News links from Kenyan media into one page. There is nothing much to boast f from what Google is offering. It is still mainly the usual shallow Google News offerings. I say “shallow” because news delivery has gone beyond few mainstream media houses in Africa. Blogs and other social media platforms are now more reliable than many of our mainstream media channels.

I bumped on to the Show Election website on Facebook. I checked the Facebook page and then headed to the Kenyan sub-domain of the website. This is one great idea this time that Kenyans want to decide who should lead them.

The campaign to succeed President Kibaki is heated both online and offline with Kenyans online taking sides while others who are never good in getting down to vote, complaining about everything but taking no definite side.

The platform allows you to vote for you candidate through http://kenya.shadowelection.com/ link. You then have the opportunity to invite up to 50 Facebook friends on to the page. The platform has not grown much and by the time of writing this article, Peter Kenneth is leading in votes. The virtual votes might not turn in to real votes but the platform is a great try.

Google is in a PR disaster management in Africa after one of its Street View cars apparently hit and injured a donkey in Botswana. Botswana is the seond country after South Africa to have Google street view cars deployed. An image on Google street view generated by cameras mounted on the said car, shows a seriously injured donkey writing in pain.

A twitter user  @TheRealSheldonC  tweeted the image of the donkey lying down as if it is dead. Initial shots of the donkey show it by the roadside while later images show the animal lying down and writhing in pain.

I think google street view ran over a donkey in Botswana;maps.gstatic.com/m/streetview/?…

— Dr. Sheldon Cooper(@TheRealSheldonC) January 14, 2013

In a statement to an Australian news website, Google has denied the allegations. The statement read in part;

“Our Street View teams take the safety of people and donkeys very seriously.  A review of our imagery confirms that we did not cause any harm to the donkey.”

The donkey might have been lying as alleged by Google but the photos does not help the search engine giant’s case. A cloud of dust is visible in what appears to be after the donkey’s fall. No clear footmarks aare visible also.

Mocality Accuses Google Of Playing Dirty To Win Kenyan Businesses  

This might mark a very bad start of 2013 for Google after it was accused of stealing data in 2012 by Mocality.

France Telecom, Orange, has signed a and exclusive partnership with Chinese internet company, Baidu, to develop a co-branded internet browser for smartphone customers in Africa, the Middle East and Asia (AMEA). This is the Chinese company’s first global partnership but the deal is part of Orange and Baidu’s aim to make the mobile web available for all in emerging markets.

Orange has a mobile customer base in AMEA of nearly 80 million customers which is very enticing to companies like Baidu. Smartphones use in the market is also increasing with Android registering a double of its penetration in Egypt alone.

The deal with Orange will see Baidu browser offer a highly customisable but simple interface for customers in AMEA, enabling them to access web-based apps and internet services unique to Baidu and Orange, as well as services like Wikipedia, Facebook or Twitter, amongst others. Customers benefit from a new, feature rich user interface that provides one-click access to all of their preferred local and global services but also benefit from a browser that is much faster and more data efficient compared to other browsers, reducing the amount of data consumed by 30-90% depending on the types of services and files accessed.

Orange and Baidu have already developed an Arabic and English browser is launching for Egypt’s Mobinil customers. Both companies are now working to launch French versions of the browser for countries across Orange’s African & Middle East footprint.

Orange Kenya in partnership with PesaPal has today launched a service which allows its subscribers to purchase airtime through the payment processing solution provider. Pesapal will provide the payment solution to the subscribers wishing to purchase airtime.

Since Pesapal supports even Safaricom’s M-Pesa payments, this means that Orange subscribers will be able to purchase airtime through M-Pesa. Not bad but……………….

Through Pesapal, Orange Kenya customers will be able to choose a preferred mode of payment – either via PesaPal’s e-wallet, credit and debit cards (VISA and Master Card) or through mobile money transfer solutions(M-Pesa and Airtel money included).

Company CEO Mickael Ghossein said ;

“Our data customers that may have subscribed to other networks due to their voice offerings will now have the flexibility of purchasing data bundles directly from their mobile money accounts,” he said, adding that this was informed by the fact that Kenya’s mobile telecoms market is characterised by multi-SIM users, with subscribers using different SIM cards from various networks for different services such as voice and data.

PesaPal CEO Agosta Liko said that Orange and PesaPal have a strategic partnership on the technical solution and distribution modes for Orange Airtime.

A customer can make the online airtime purchase through three sites: https://myaccount.orange.co.ke; www.orange.co.ke andhttps://www.pesapal.com;  

It is the season of political campaigns in Kenya. The media in the country is far from neutral. The loyality is between the main contenders  Uhuru Kenyaatta or Raila Odinga. Daily Nation which is largely owned by the moneyed elite who support Uhuru’s candidature did a blunder today of photoshopping the image of Uhuru Kenyatta’s running mate, William Ruto, on to a photo of a crowd at yesterday’s CORD rally.

The embarrassing image has awaken debate on social media on the neutrality of the Kenyan media. Nation Media has totally refused to apologise saying that the images are different. The image is above and you can make your own judgement. The image in Daily Nation’s explanation is not the said image. It looks like one meant to cause more confusion.

Mohammed Ali Resigns from NTV Over Claims of Political & Business Interference

A well placed source within Naspers board has indicated that there are internal discussions to close Mocality. The source claims that Naspers top echelon is worried that since launch, Mocality is neither making money nor have a real business model. The daily deals arm of the business directory service, Mocality Deals is also yet to start making money.

Naspers is also planning to stop marketing other e-commerce products under MIH Internet. Many of the regional MIH staff will also go jobless in the next month or two.

Among those facing the sack are Neil Schwartzmann who has been the CEO of MIH Internet. He might be aware or might not be aware of this already. With Neil not managing Kalahari while OLX management report to Argentina, it is not clear what role he is playing at MIH Internet.

Speaking to sources at MIH Internet in Kenya and Nigeria, the information of the impending closure have not been communicated to the country offices nor to the regional heads.

I am still trying to get more information about the impending closure of Mocality Kenya and Nigera.

A 16-year old boy from Sierra Leone who created batteries and generators using  acid, soda, and metal parts he scavenged from trash bins is drawing admiration among experts in the U.S. Doe is using his inventions to light-up  his neighbourhood.

Kelvin Doe has became “the youngest person in history“ to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at MIT.

Doe who calls himself “DJ Focus” has also managed to build a community radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music. He built the generator powering the radio station from an old voltage stabilizer trashed in cans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOLOLrUBRBY

Kelvin’s engineering prowess was noticed by David Monina Sengeh who is a graduate student from MIT Media Lab. David runs an innovation camp in Sierra Leone called Innovate Salon, supported by Global Minimum. David arranged for Doe to visit the ivy-league college .

“It’s an opportunity for him to create the future that he wants to live in,” Sengeh said in the video.

IMG

Kenya’s daily deals website, Rupu, has sent out an invite to the subscribers on its mailing lists. The invite asks the subscribers to register for the scoop on the launch of Rupushops which will be a virtual shop for computers, shoes, phones and clothes. The Rupushop will have its own URL on www.rupushops.co.ke.

Rupu promises to launch the platform soon and also do 24/7 delivery. The payment for the products will be handled by Pesapal. Daily deals business is still nascent in the region and we don’t know how much Rupu makes

IEBC Boss, Isaack Hassan.

Kenyans looking for the Monday’s by-elections results have been venting their anger on Twitter as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) website crashed due to the sudden surge in traffic. For the better part of the evening into the night, the website has been down and it might not be soon that the site might return to normal.

The website seems to have crashed due to the high numbers of queries into the database supporting the site. The development exposes the inadequacies in the electoral management body. Today’s by-election had only 3 constituencies and few civic wards going for votes. It might just not work when the whole country goes the elections in March 2013.

Users have been unable to access the link http://www.iebc.or.ke/results where the IEBC has been posting real-time results.

Kenyan Blogger Dennis Itumbi has this morning been charged with hacking into a computer system of an Airline. Dennis has been charged with ‘intercepting data in a computer system (belonging to Jetlink) without consent’.

The charges stems from a blog post Dennis did sometime back titled “JETLINK: The Danger in our Skies, Revelations of leaked Emails….”. With attached emails from JetLink, Dennis detailed how JetLink flies “planes which engineers have declared unfit for our skiesa”.

Dennis has been charged with the Section 83D of the Kenya Communications Amendement Act of 2009 which states;

(1) No person shall –
(a) operate an electronic certification system;
or
(b) update a repository or administer a subdomain in the Kenya country top level domain (.ke ccTLD); except in accordance with a licence granted under this Act.

(2) A person who contravenes this section commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding three hundred thousand shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or both

He was also charged with Section 84D of the same act which reads;

Any person who publishes or transmits or causes to be published in electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest and its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied therein, shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding two
hundred thousand shillings or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.

Dennis has been  granted a cash bail of Kshs. 100,000 and is set to appear before the court again on the 6th of September 2012. The case is put in such a way that it is not a civil case where JetLink is suing  Dennis but it is a murky case where JetLink is instituting criminal charges against Dennis while Kenya Police is the witness.

I was charged in the same manner using the same act and not the same sections. All these are test cases with the government fighting to control bloggers and Kenyans online. We will have to apply for a constitutional interpretation for the same.

Read my experience being charged;

Part One: Why Was @RobertAlai Summoned by the CID then Locked-Up?

Part Two: The Court Appearance and How My Communications Were Monitored

Though they were not able to admit this before, it looks like OLX is completing the take-over of the Dealfish Kenya operations. Already Peter Ndiangui who we exclusively reported as joining Dealfish as the country manager, has now become the OLX Kenya country manager.

South Africa’s Naspers is shutting down Dealfish in Nigeria and Kenya and replacing them with OLX.

Orange has now activated the free Wikipedia access for Kenyan mobile subscribers.

Through the services, any subscriber with an Orange Kenya SIM and mobile internet enabled phone will be able to access Wikipedia through their mobile browser without attracting any data charges. he access will be free as long as you stay within the Wikipedia pages.

Orange has 70 million subscribers in Africa and the Middle East where the “Free Wikipedia” access is targeted.

Free acess to Wikipedia will be possible to all the languages the online encyclopedia is available in. In Kenya, the most widely used languages are English and Swahili.

Orange is looking to support the Wikimedia Foundation through this initiative. Kenya becomes the second country in Africa after Uganda to benefit from this partnership signed in January between the Orange Group and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia also plans to enable a functionality soon that will notify users when they log on to the paid up pages.

Looks like Dealfish is fastracking its shutdown to allow for the entry of OLX. Already, OLX Nigeria and Kenya sites are live and accepting ads. Sources at MIH Internet offices indicate that the company will be moving all its classifieds business to the OLX brand which they believe is more global.

With expenditures beyond $2 million in Sub-Saharan Africa to market the Dealfish brand, it looks like there is no well thought out strategy at Naspers on how to conquer the African e-commerce market. So now is when someone is seeing that OLX has a better platform and more global brand than Dealfish.

Seriously!!!

Google is upping its very stupid trampling on our ideals. If it were for Google, every community in the world should behave the same way and not have their own ideals which they expect to be respected. Google is showing lots of disregard of our diversity by the latest campaign they have launched called “Legalize Love”. The campaign will be pushed online as well as through Google’s 60 offices worldwide including Africa.

While Google claims that the campaign is not about legalizing same-sex marriages but supporting workers living in countries which criminalizes same sex marriages, Google’s intentions can rightly be seen even by the most primitive of eyes.

The campaign started in Poland and Singapore but will be eventually spread out to every city in which Google has an office. A statement from Google reads:

Though our business and employees are located in offices around the world, our policies on non-discrimination are universal throughout Google. We are proud to be recognised as a leader in LGBT inclusion efforts, but there is still a long way to go to achieve full equality. Legalise Love is our call to decriminalise homosexuality and eliminate homophobia around the world.

At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In all of our 60 offices around the world, we are committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. We also want our employees to have the same inclusive experience outside of the office, as they do at work, and for LGBT communities to be safe and to be accepted wherever they are.

I believe that Google should cease imposing  its ideals on any of us. The company has denied that it wished to do that but their intention is very evident from the emotive blog post they published to oppose a California amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. The amendment later passed. The company also ran a Doodle which supported Gay marriage on Valentines Day.

Google should respect our diversity.

An online payment solutions provider, 3G Direct Pay Ltd, has launched a recurrent payment solution in the Kenyan market. The new recurrent payment module is an addition to the company’s existing array of web-based e-commerce solution and end-to-end payments platforms.

The module is targeted at merchants who wish to collect online payments directly from the customer debit/credit and/or pre paid card. Merchants like airlines will be able to collect payments from frequent flyers, internet service providers to collect monthly subscription fees and by any other merchant looking for easier ways to collect online recurrent payments.

A new legislation passed last month in Ethiopia outlaws Skype calls. The crime can now attract up to 15 years in jail according to Aljazeera.

The law went unnoticed last month because of the restrictions the regime has on media and foreign correspondents. The authority in Ethiopia argue that the law is meant to enforce national security and harmony as well as protect the interests of the state corporation. Ethiopia has only one state-run and owned ISP, Ethio Telecom.

The regime has a tight control over the internet with blogs and news outlets constantly filtered.

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has been given the “power to supervise and issue licenses to all privately owned companies that import equipment used for the communication of information.” The new law strictly prohibits “audio and video data traffic via social media.”

It is clearly not easy to see how the Ethiopian authorities would enforce this law but the penalties will sure keep contravention to a bare minimum.

According to reports from Reporters Without Borders, the state ISP has also installed an internet filtering system which currently blocks the Tor network. The tool is handy in anonymous browsing of the web.

With a population of over 84 million, Ethiopia currently has the second lowest Internet penetration rate in sub-Saharan Africa with just below  920,000 connected online.  And according to Akamai, the average internet speeds in Ethiopia stand at just about 622 Kbps.

Things are happening at Naspers owned verticals. It seems that the millions spent on Dealfish and Mocality have not bought the two verticals love.

First there was this rumour in March on Nigeria’s blogosphere that MIH had sold Deafish to Argentina based OLX Classifieds. Then MIH did some fire fighting and fought all rumours. Despite the denials, Dealfish South Africa (dealfish.co.za) which was branded as KalahariAds, was secretly pushed to OLX (84% owned by Naspers) and heavily marketed in the country.

Despite the denials, increased activities by OLX have been witnessed in the Kenyan internet scene. Few months ago, www.olx.co.ke and www.olx.com.ng were quietly registered. Looks like OLX Kenya domain was registered in August 2010. But there has been increased activity in social media with both OLX Kenya Facebook and Twitter presence being set up on 9th May 2012.

Breakdown of Ownership of MIH and OLX by Naspers

• Napser owns 100% of MIH
• Napser owns 84% of OLX
• Napser owns 100% of Dealfish via MIH
• OLX buys 100% of MIH’s stake in DealFish
• Napser looses grip on Dealfish as it doesn’t control  16% of OLX

The accounts are currently not so active but are followed by few staff at MIH. Funny enough, OLX Nigeria’s  Twitter account was also set up on the same day while the Facebook account was setup on 18th May.

The last week, someone working at Dealfish Kenya’s Saatchi Plaza intimated to me that senior staff at Dealfish Kenya had informed them that the an Argentinian company had acquired Dealfish Kenya.

What looked strange at Dealfish Kenya again is that, though the budgeting year starts on April 1st of every year, the company decided to cancel all TV adverts they were running in the Kenyan media just two weeks after initiating the campaigns. Digital advertising of the Dealfish has also been stopped. Even the brand campaigns have been ceased.

You remember that since September 2011, Dealfish has had two general managers. They have been managing three technology platforms, 4 interfaces and two Africa-wide regional managers. The company has spent a great deal on advertising with no clear strategy and no revenue to-date. To earn few returns, the company started putting Adsense on its platforms.

Now that Dealfish has been bought by OLX Classifieds, what will they deliver for classifieds clients in Kenya and Nigeria? It is not clear when the the OLX brand will launch in Kenya and Nigeria. OLX is a Craigslist-style business available in 42 languages and present in 94 countries. In all the 94 countries, OLX is a market leader in noen of the countries and according to reports, earns no revenue nor profits in all of them.

The site has also run into problems just like Craigslist with recent accusations just late last year that it allowed adult classifieds onto some of its country sites where it is illegal to advertise such services.

Of the two General Managers at MIH, Stefan Magdalinski was on 10th May posted to Indonesia to head Multiply.Com while Neil Schwartzmann was promoted to Stefan’s job running MIH Internet in Africa.

Though OLX Classifieds is still part of Naspers Group, the MIH empire seems to be shrinking with now Mocality even remaining operational with no revenue strategy.

Since things are not looking good, sources at Mocality indicate that they will be launching a Google’s KBO competition in the next one week. Mocality will offer to build mobile and full websites to businesses already in their directory for a small fee. Might be a great move considering that they recently launched Whoiswho Kenya which seems to have interested no one.

Cheki was launched in Kenya in September 2010 and has rapidly grown to become the favourite car classifieds website in Kenya with over 21,000 cars listed from the majority of Kenyan used cars and Japanese car dealers in all of Kenya’s major cities. The classifieds site has a Nigeria version which ranks in the Top 20 Nigerian content websites.

Checki Africa Managing Director Carey Eaton said

“Offering East African car buyers an easy way to connect to sellers in our local language is an important step in building towards our goal of making it easier for car buyers and sellers to connect with each other.”

Cheki first released a test version of its Kiswahili mobile and web browser sites in the Tanzanian market where the local language version is now the default language rather than English. Having tested the site in the smaller market in Tanzania, the company updated some of the language and usability features there before rolling the update first to its Kenya mobile website and finally the main website in Kenya.

The expansion of Cheki’s language capability also involved an update to the core architecture of Cheki’s technology platform to enable multiple local language capabilities for other markets including its market-leading operations in Nigeria and potential expansion to Francophone Africa.

Cheki Africa has relied on original content generated from actual dealers instead of scrapping it from competitors. Most classifieds sites are still not doing the actual collection of data but rely on data on other classifieds sites to fill their pages. Driving around Nairobi, you would see Cheki billboards and Cheki branded cars which are a great way of recruiting advertisers.

Cheki is among the  Top 10 Kenya-content websites in late 2011 and has won the confidence of the majority of the Kenyan car dealers and private seller markets. Cheki hopes to be the among the most popular Swahili websites with the release of the Swahili classified website version.

Cheki has also released and integrated Swahili versions of its Android and Nokia Ovi mobile applications as part of the update.

InMobi has announced the launch of its new mobile conversion tracking platform, Adtracker. The tracker will help in provviding real-time analytics allowing advertisers to measure multiple conversions on both mobile web and app campaigns, across all advertising networks and publishers.

The InMobi Ad Tracker is separate from the InMobi ad network, not reliant on UDIDs, and is completely free to integrate and use. With this combination, InMobi looks to provide an independent, scalable and cost-effective solution for managing mobile campaign performance in a rapidly growing market.

Chandrashekhar Vattikuti, VP of Products at InMobi, comments: “The industry has been aware for some time that UDID deprecation was on its way. With this in mind, it was critical for InMobi to create a solution with long-term benefits for both advertisers and publishers. InMobi Ad Tracker is a UDID free solution that is independent from the InMobi Ad Network and tracks conversions across all mobile ad networks and publishers. By integrating with the InMobi Ad Tracker, ad networks can get real time feedback on all conversions that they attribute, giving them accurate insights into their mobile campaign results and allowing them to optimise campaigns in real time. This will in turn drive more accountability for spend in mobile, benefiting the entire mobile ecosystem; from advertisers to publishers and app developers.”

InMobi Ad Tracker benefits include:

• Network agnostic and works across all mobile ad networks
• Tracks multiple conversion types across mobile web and app inventory
• Combines multiple tracking technologies to ensure no dependencies on UDID
• Single login to access conversion data across all mobile ad networks
• Real time dashboard view of all conversion events
• Ability to define bespoke goals, for example, downloads, registrations, payments etc.
• Conversion data can be passed back to the originating mobile ad networks to enable real-time optimisation
• Easy SDK integration for iOS and Android Apps and JavaScript integration for mobile web campaigns
• Completely free to integrate and use

For further information on InMobi Ad Tracker contact the team direct AdTracker@InMobi.com.

Google has announced that its iconic email service is now able to translate emails written in other languages. Through a blog post, Google indicates that Gmail is now able to provide Automatic Message Translation, Smart Mute and Title Tweaks.

Not that this feature was not there, but it was one of the features still under Gmail Labs. It has now officially been moved from Labs to a full feature while receiving or writing emails.

In addition to graduating these three labs, Google has decided to retire “some less popular labs over the next few days.” Some of the services which will be retired are: Old Snakey, Mail Goggles, Mouse Gestures, Hide Unread Counts, Move Icon Column, Inbox Preview, Custom Date Formats and SMS in Chat gadget.

Gogole has clarified that it will not retire the SMS in Chat lab but just the gadget associated with it.

So Google say that

Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email. The next time you receive a message in a language other than your own, just click onTranslate message in the header at the top of the message,

and it will be instantly translated into your language:

Title Tweaks
With the graduation of Title Tweaks, Google has changed the text in the browser tab so that you can see if you have new messages. The tab now reads “Inbox (20) – user@example.com – Gmail” instead of “Gmail – Inbox (20) – user@example.com.”

Smart Mute
Google has also made improvements to muting based on the graduation of the Smart Mute lab so you can be sure that noisy email threads stay out of your inbox. You can learn more about muting email threads in the help center.

Google has just launch Google Drive, its much rumoured cloud storage service. Free Google Drive accounts get 5GB worth of Cloud Storage space but there are upgrade options of  25GB for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month, and 1TB will see users spend $49.99 monthly. Upgrading your Google Drive to a paid account will boost the available storage space on your GMail account to 25GB.

Before announcing the launch of the Google Drive, the company also made announcement where it upgraded free storage on Google to 10GB and Google Docs to 5GB.

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re increasing everyone’s free storage in Gmail from 7.5 GB to 10 GB (and counting) to celebrate today’s launch of Google Drive. The increase will take effect over the next 24 hours. We hope you all enjoy the little bump!

The service has not been enabled for everyone. You need to check later or sign up on https://drive.google.com/start so that Google might alert you when your free Google Drive account would have been enabled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKJ9KzGQq0w

Google’s offer for 100GB at $4.99 is strong challenge to Dropbox which offers 50GB for $10 per month. Microsoft also offers 20-, 50-, or 100-Gbytes of its Sky Drive storage for $10 per year, $25 per year, or $50 per year.

While the North Korean government continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on powerful weapons and rocket launches,  the regime seems to have a little to spend on PR. The reclusive totalitarian regime has recently redesigned its official state Web site, investing only $15 (yes fifteen dollars) on the new redesign.

The regime bought a new theme designed by Robert Westmore (an American) who designs website themes and sells them on the ThemesForest portal. The theme which Robert posted on ThemeForest.com is now North Korea’s website homepage.

“I had no idea,” Westmore told FoxNews. “Honestly, I didn’t even know North Korea had a website.”

The redesigned North Korea state website with the new $15 redesign korea-dpr.com, was accidentally discovered by a college student,  according to Wired reports. Michael DiTanna, a undergraduate student at Fordham University was working on a class project about Korean propaganda.

He noticed the country’s flash-heavy website, which he believes was just redesigned recently. Since he is a student in computer science, he quickly searched and realised that the regime used Westmore’s $15 template.

“Right away I saw that the site was produced through a purchased theme,” DiTanna told Fox News. “They just did a really sloppy job of cleaning up the source code.”

The web site has been the official image of North Korea since 2000. It was created “for the people outside DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], to have basic information and a direct connection point with the country,” said Cho Son-il, a.k.a. Alejandro Cao de benos de Les Perez who is an honorary citizen. He is also the first and only foreigner to ever work for the North Korean regime. He is an authorized North Korean spokesman and also built the web site.

Official statistics from the regime claims that they get an average of 12 million hits per month.

On the use of his theme by the reclusive regime, Westmore told Fox News

“As a web designer I’m always happy to see my work getting utilized. Especially when it’s on a high-profile website.”

Higinio O.Ochoa is a 30-year-old Linux administrator from Galveston, Texas, USA. He was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with unauthorized access to a protected computer system.

Higinio is a member of the hacker group, Anonymous. He is reported to have hacked into several Web sites belonging to law enforcement organisations like the FBI. He dumped proof of his hackings on a website and used a Twitter account to direct enthusiasts to the web site.

But also on display on the website was a picture of a woman, her cleavage out towards the camera for all to see. There was also a sign beneath the image reading: “”PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w <3 u BiTch’s”.

The connecting bit is that CabinCr3w is an apparent name of an Anonymous offshoot which Higinio is suspected to belong to. The Twitter account linking people to the site was @AnonW0rmer.

The photograph, taken using an iPhone, had GPS location details of where it was taken leading the FBI to the location of Higinio. The information allegedly suggested that the lady showing the cleavage on Higinio’s website lived in Melbourne, Australia.

The police used the picture to connect the photo to a Facebook account and details of where Higinio’s girlfriend was. Apparently she was Australian.The police managed to match the pictures of her that Ochoa posted on Facebook to the cleavage image. It is unclear how the police was able to match the faceless photo with the ones on Facebook which has faces.

It seems that Keriako Tobiko’s office has been hacked. The website http://odpp.go.ke/ seems to have been hacked by some Latino hackers out on an adventure. I doubt if there is any serious damage since most of what are loaded on the Kenyan government websites are nothing more than skeletons of informations.

Nothing much only that it is embarassing to the office of the public prosecutor.

Now Facebook is giving you more including previous names, friend requests and IP addresses you used to log into your account. The archive you will download still lacks your friends’ photos and status updates, friends’ personal info and comments you have made on other people’s posts.

The feature is not available to everyone now as it will be rolling out gradually. Facebook promises to allow you to download more information through future updates.

Iran has come out to deny the online reports which have indicated that it plans to cut access to the World Wide Web (Internet) in August and replace it with a national intranet (Iran-ternet).

The IB Times article which started the rumours apparently picked an April 1 hoax and used it as the basis of its story, Iran’s Ministry of Communication said on the ministry’s website www.ict.gov.rw. The website itself is not accessible from outside Iran.

“The report is in no way confirmed by the ministry completely baseless,” the ministry statement said.