Posts

Mobile penetration inEgyptis over 80%. So, compared with a measly 10% of the population owning a credit card, mobile payments are the logical alternative for the majority of the country. Recently given a tentative go-ahead by the government, mobile operatorsMobinilandVodafone Egyptare gearing up to offer Mobie Money Transfers, a service that has already proven successfulin Africa, particularly in Kenya, operated by Safaricom. The actual launch date is yet to be determined, as the final approval depends on Egypt’s security situation, which has yet to stabilize since the uprising that toppled former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak....

Surely you’ve heard the thing about viewing art — you need to stand back in order to fully appreciate it. It seems to me that the same thing can be said about the overall technology scene. Sometimes, in the midst ofSilicon Valley, the adage of not being able to see the forest for the trees comes to mind. Here at TNW, we see the scenario quite often. While we might get (quite literally) hundreds of pitches for new apps and ideas every few days, the vast majority of them are very Valley-focused and directed toward early adopters....

One of the hardest processes for business leaders to control, encountered by every growing organization, is how to scale successfully. I’ve found this is even harder when scaling tech teams. Investing in the right places at the right time can be pivotal to the future of the business, as time and again these teams are the nucleus of value creation. I’ve heard it said — seen it attempted — that building larger teams is an easy fix, but for every order of magnitude increase, a new layer of management needs to be designed to operate the system....

While Internet Explorer 9 for PC is launching tonight, the mobile version of the browser is not set to be released untillater this yearas part of the ‘Mango’ update to Windows Phone 7. That is, however, not stopping Microsoft from letting a few people have apeek at the future. If you are at the SXSW event, you can drop over to the Microsoft booth, and if you cancatch Joe Marini, he will show you IE9 Mobile on his phone....

iPhone-based photo-sharing serviceInstagramhas become asensationover the past few months but the real problem is that there’s no web-based interface for browsing photos. We recently reported on one third party solution,Followgram, although that got quicklypulledas Instagram prepared its official API for release. Now a new service calledInsta-Greathas emerged as a Web-based way of accessing popular Instagram photos. Although we suspect that it’s using an unofficial method to pull the photos in, it’s a gorgeous site that allows you to flick through current hot images with your arrow keys or mouse....