Bathing with Elephants in Chiang Mai

Anyone who knows me knows just how much I love elephants – they are my spirit animal (never mind that I am 5’2 and weigh less than 120 pounds). So feeding, playing and bathing with them was on my bucket list.

Views of Lake Kivu from Gisenyi

Gisenyi is located in the western part of Rwanda. It’s a 3-hour drive from Kigali. Last weekend was a perfect time to unwind and practice on my new found photography skills. I hope you enjoy the photos. Shot them with a Nikon D3300 DSLR (though the last 2 were from a friend’s phone)

My MWEA (Mobile Web East Africa) experience.

The MWEA 2013 technology event went down last week at the Southern Sun Mayfair Hotel. It ran from 19th of February til the 21st. I got to attend it for one day but was so bummed since i wish i had attended the conference on all the days. The main focus for this year was taking Monetisation and content creation dialogue to the next level.

The new low cost smart phone in the Kenyan market – The “Intel Yolo Smart Phone” Review.

 

Kenya is privileged to be the launch market for Africa’s first Intel-powered smartphone, the “Intel Yolo Phone”. Intel has partnered with Safaricom to introduce the phone to the Kenyan mobile phone market at a reasonable cost of KES. 10,999/=. If you fit the bill, you may want to check out the Yolo as soon as possible

The Yolo phone may not be the thinnest device out there, its dimensions being 110.5*61*12.6mm and weight 132g. It has a 3.5 inch TFT multi-touch capacitive screen with HVGA resolution at 480*320 pixels. From the front view, you can see 4 touch sensitive controls at the bottom (namely Back, Home, Recent & Menu). You may not notice the volume rocker on the left and power button on the right due to their perfect blending. At the top, there is a USB/Power port and the 3.5mm audio jack. The back features a 5.0MP camera, the phone speaker at the bottom, a white “Intel Inside logo” and they just had to put it there too, a white “Safaricom logo”. At the bottom of the phone, there is a slot that to fit your nail in order to remove the rear cover for the purpose of inserting the Battery, Sim card and a microSD.

The phone responds very well to touch and its screen is scratch resistant.  It is supplied with high quality earphones hence good quality sound. The loud speaker is ok too, more like normal quality. Inside the phone’s packaging, apart from the phone and headset, you will find the USB cord, Charger and a “getting started guide”.

Intel Yolo is pre-installed with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. Other pre-installed applications include Wireless display app (WiDi) which works by rendering a second virtual display broadcast via WI-FI to a receiver on the TV or PC. Chrome browser and doubletwist are other applications that come bundled in the phone. When the phone is purchased from a Safaricom store, you get a one year subscription to McAfee mobile security application. Not forgetting it also comes with a pre-installed SwiftKey keyboard, Swiftkey for Intel, which is a premium keyboard that makes the typing on phone quite easy and responsive.

The rear facing camera is a 5MP one and comes with a Burst shot feature (enables capture of up to 7 simultaneous photos) and panorama mode feature (for shots in panorama mode).

The Intel Yolo phone has a 1500mAh battery is quite good, say, it gives you a full day use on social media if that’s what you like to do.

IN SUMMARY:

• Dimensions -110.5X12.6mm -132g
• Display and user Interface -Size: 3.5″Capacitive touch TFT, 60HZ-Resolution: HVGA(480X320)
• Application Processor -1.2GHz IA CPU w/512KB L2$ -Intel(R) Hyper-Threading Technology -512MB 2-ch LPDDR2 memory -Avatele passage Lite MSIC

• Camera -5MP rear-facing Camera-No front-facing camera
• Cellular  -Intel Xmm265, HSPA+ Rel.7, Cat 14/Cat6 (21Mbps DL/5.8Mbps UL);-2G Quad-Band 850/900/1800/1900 -MHz; GPRS EDGE Class 10; HSPA+/UMTS Quad-Bad 850/900/1900/2100 MHz (I/II/V/VIII)
• Connectivity-Wi-Fi (802.1bgn 1×1 2.4Gz) , BT2.1=EDR, FM Rx, (A)GPS; Micro-USB 2.0 type-B with USB charging
• Audio -3.5mm audio jack (w/ FM Rx Support)-integrated Hands-Free
• Speaker – 1 analog microphone-Single vibra motor (haptics + silent ringtones)
• Sensors -Accelerometer, Compass, Proximity, Ambient Light Sensor
• Storage -4GB eMMC -MicroSD card slot (internal
• Battery  -Removable Li-IOn Battery Pack 3.7V, 1500mAh

 

Conclusion: This is a phone worth having. The price of KES. 10,999/= is good, keeping in mind it has Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich!

Lenovo S400 review : The Beast

I stumbled upon the Lenovo S400 when i was looking for a replacement for my old crashed Samsung. At first, i was lusting for the Dell Aspiron convertible : duo hybrid tablet. but as soon as i saw the Lenovo S400, i fell in love :-). for more information on the dell Aspiron hybrid, click here.

The sleekness and functionality of this gadget makes it the ultimate laptop suitable for any programmer, developer, designer, blogger or business executive. Some of the basic specifications include:

• Intel core i3-2365m processor (4 processores)
• 1.4 Ghz default clock speed (*4)
• 4.00 GB RAM
• 500 GB HD
• 14 inch screen
• a generous touchpad that is multi touch capable.
• A chiclet accutype keyboard
• Intergrated bluetooth version 4 and Wifi
• USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI out and Card Reader

Other interesting features include the Intel graphics Card that will be of particular importance to gamers. The one key recovery system is very helpful when it comes to data backup and recovery processes. it also has a quick start key that lets you surf the web, photo manager, Skype and music player at the instance of a button before the windows operating system is loaded.

Its looks are breathtaking. apart from the fact that it weighs approximately 1.8 kgs, it is extremely slim and is therefore loved because of its ultraportable nature. It comes in crimson red and silver colors. The super sleek profile and a very sleek metallic finish is captivating to the eye.

This is the ultimate Ideapad. I happened to purchase mine at the Ibrahim’s Store opposite Stanley hotel. It was retailing for 45,000. Its initial price was 50,000 but lucky for me, they had a sale and were selling laptops 5,000 less if they cost more than 40,000 shillings. I had window shopped around at Avenue Electronics next to I&M bank, Bright Electronics and a couple of computer shops on the Ibrahim’s lane but they were either too lame (did not have it in their stores), or did not offer a good bargain.

One thing that is wanting about it is the battery life. It was indicated that the battery life would last for about 4 hours, which it did in the earlier days. However, right now, sustaining 3 hours is a miracle. Because of its slim nature, the battery quality had to be compromised.

Lenovo Group Limited is a China company that manufactures servers, laptops, computers and handsets. it offers some of the best quality products in the market. to have a look at more of their gadgets, click here. 

Thank you for taking the time to stop by!!