Friday 29 April 2016

Switch To Your IPad With Switcher Studio For Live Video Editing

Is it just me, or is virtually everything around us getting smaller and slimmer with every passing year? With slimmer, sleeker, TV sets, PCs, gadgets, more added features and totally new ways of achieving tasks. Today, one can learn anything about everything, just by going online. The classroom is now in your own palm. You can now bring your animated content to life with VR technology. Decades ago computers were 'housed' literally, and now you only need your palm to carry one. Even in the world of fashion, trousers back then could easily have been baggy, but today almost no guy wants to wear baggy trousers anymore. 

Mobile phones and tablets are used to do almost anything a PC can do. Speaking of phones and tablets, more of tablets, you can now use your iPad as a live video editing studio. How? With Switcher Studio, a mobile production suite that lets you use an iDevice for live video mixing and production. How did this not exist already? Well, it's one thing to cover your events, it's another to edit it, and totally yet another, to cover it live. Now, there are apps that enable you edit videos with incredible features, and even cover events, like the new Facebook Live and Twitter's Periscope. But what Switcher Studio does is that, with it you can stream live events directly on your iPad while editing at the same time. You can also stream events live, directly to sites like YouTube, Upstream, and Twitch. 

It's literally your own production studio. You don't need your desktops to do all that heavy editing and production, especially when you video live, you often require a full mixing board and studio. But with "Director Mode", what happens is that, you disable video recording on the main mixing device (your iPad), and connect wirelessly, up to 4 other iOS devices which can all be used as additional video sources. These extra cameras can all feed live video into the main device, turning your iPad into a multi-camera live production studio. How cool is that? I'm thinking right now about starting my very own production studio, or even TV station.... OK not so fast. Focus! 

Yeah, you can even add a  laptop as one of your video sources in case you want to add Web browsing or PowerPoint presentation into your production. The studio also includes editing features designed to make your video look like it came  out  of an actual  studio. Transitions, picture-in-picture, and TV-style graphics and overlays are part of the awesome editing  features that enable you turn your iPad into your very own production studio. You can edit in real time, or in post production after recording is done. With Switcher Studio, you are the "Director". The company is self-funded and charges $25 per month to use its platform. Not bad for such a service, which also includes access to the iOS and desktop apps. 

Like I said everything seems to be slimmer, and looking at this service, you don't need bulky single-purpose cameras. They're kinda boring and heavy and bulky. No offense. 

So "Go Slim, Go Switcher Studio" *winks*. 

Thursday 28 April 2016

Bae: A Dating App For Black Singles

How do you feel about online dating services or mobile dating apps? I don't think I'm exactly cool with the idea of looking for a relationship or love online or on a mobile device (Except you dey find another tin).
I mean don't get me wrong, but I just feel for a relationship to begin or even be given a chance, one should get to see and observe such a person quite closely, rather than just trying to meet someone for the first time, you met on your mobile. Hey! I'm just saying. I guess that makes me old fashioned. Haha!

Anyways, there's a new online mobile dating app, not so new per say, but it's targeted at Black folks. It's called 'Bae'. You know the popular acronym right? "Before Anyone Else". Yep! It is what it is.
Bae is a mobile dating app created by Jordan Kunzika, Brian Gerrard and Justin Gerrard. All black youngsters, who hope to make online dating better for Blacks. 

The app was launched in April of 2015 and has reached well over 150,000 downloads on the App Store. Incredible! Now here's the strategy that Bae's founders employed, in building their user base to up to 17000 downloads within the first few weeks of the  launch. They hosted an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) tour which consisted of parties and mixers where people who matched on Bae could meet in person. All attendees had to have Bae downloaded to participate. Awesome strategy if you ask me. First, the platform is targeted at Blacks all over the world. Then the app went on a University tour. That's New. Best strategy to get users, young and willing and searching. 

But more than just a strategy for a high user base, is the fact that the app is solving dating issues faced by Blacks in the United States and other countries. In the US, Black online users face apparent bias, as Black men and women are sometimes penalized when users rated their matches on dating apps. So this solves that issue. 

Kunzika, CTO of Bae and senior at Dartmouth College, a Google Generation Scholar who has internships with Microsoft and Intel, turned down Microsoft and Google to build the Bae app. Now that's epic! I mean come on it's Google and Microsoft we're talking about here. Who would pass up such an opportunity? Jordan Kunzika, That's Who. I must say this Angolan-American's got 'guts'. Or is it Vision? I say 'Both'. Often being the only Black person in his computer science classes, he says "I quickly realized that it was up to me to either let this negatively affect me, or let it motivate me to be successful, so that people who come after me will have role models who look like them". 

I'm inspired, I must say because he's looking at the future and how to make an impact positively in the lives of Blacks all around the world. That's both Daring  and Visionary. And he is just in his Twenties. "I was honored to get full-time offers from Google and Microsoft before even turning 21,but I knew that I could serve a higher calling to represent a paradigm shift in what a tech entrepreneur could look like" he says. 

Kunzika met his co-founders, Justin and Brian Gerrard in his junior year and joined the team after they pitched Bae to him. 

Bae has reached users all over the world and has even been listed as a Top 50 Life-style app in twenty African and Caribbean countries. Bae is different because of its proprietary algorithm which was built by Kunzika. What users like most about Bae is the quality of matches and the fact that it helps you find those you're interested in, matches from your secondary school, stuff like that. The founders' goal is for Bae to become the best Black dating app in the US and across the African diaspora. Now that's a Dream. I'm still not a fan of online dating, but I'm just prouda them. Reping Blacks and the African Continent. ✊ #Inspired. 


Wednesday 27 April 2016

Exclusive Launches!

Here are some recent launches by different companies in Nigeria and beyond,starting with Uber.
You know Uber yeah! Taxi hailing service? Right. You should know also that it has officially launched in Nigeria's Federal capital city, Abuja. Lagos in early January, hit over a billion trips since its inception in 2014, and one wondered when the capital city would get her fair share of the "launch pie."

Now it's finally here. The launch was officially announced on the 23rd of March, making Abuja the eleventh African city that Uber launched after Mombasa Kenya. This also made Abuja the 400th city (I think) in the world, Uber launched. The app offered users in Abuja 6 days of free rides.
Uber also partnered with some Abuja-based firms to attract users. As a way of celebrating their city, the first riders (talking about the partners) were out and about, and had special treats in store for all Abuja Uber riders.

Among these were Charles Okpaleke; CEO and co-founder of the Play Entertainment Network, Adama Ndimi; a passionate humanitarian and one of Northern Nigeria's most influential taste makers, Restaurateur and culture promoter, Sal Gbaja of Salamander Cape. There was also celebrity wedding and lifestyle photographer, George Okoro, and owner of women's fashion house, Dzyn, Ogwa Iweze and they all had some interesting discounts for Uber riders. All that was needed were Uber receipts or scan codes to get discounts.

Sliide launched officially in Nigeria last month and already has over 5000 downloads on the Google Play Store.
It's a new startup that wants to lower the cost of mobile broadband for Nigerians. With high cost of Internet access, and growing social network presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the rest of them, it is only needful to find new and better ways to help Nigerians pay for Internet access.

Android users can earn NGN100 free airtime just by downloading the Sliide Airtime app from the Google Play Store, and more airtime every month for keeping Slide Airtime on the phone.
Also, users can earn an extra NGN100 for every friend they introduce to Sliide Airtime, and their friends will also earn NGN100 each. The service can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or www.sliideairtime.ng.

South African born Corbyn Munnik, is the CEO and co-founder, Sliide Airtime. Corbyn who had his childhood in Botswana, said the service is non-intrusive. People get free airtime and are also sent contest which will be interesting and useful. The company is focused on Nigeria for now but intends to expand into South Africa, Ghana and Kenya later.

And finally, Ford is going head-on with Uber, with its FordPass. FordPass, a mobile app, is available to both customers and non-customers of Ford. It provides live chat assistance and navigation, remote starting, locking and unlocking, vehicle health information, finding and paying for parking. It is also testing sharing and borrowing of cars via the app. This was during the keynote address by President and CEO of Ford Motor Company, Mark Fields. He suggested that FordPass could do for the car industry what the iTunes did for the music industry.

The app has been introduced in the UK and Germany and will formally launch this month. (Don't know if it has launched already).