Windows notes all programs that you have installed on your computer over time. This  record is kept in the Windows registry database. If you delete the programs from the PC, the system should ideally delete all  references to that program in the database (registry) as well. However, you need to do this yourself occasionally, so that the registry is well maintained. In doing so, you are actually keeping your system
clean, reducing the margin for system crashes, and improving your system performance as a whole.
There are many tools for cleaning the Windows registry.

           Try the CCleaner tool (www.ccleaner.com). After starting it, click on the ‘Registry’ or ‘Issues’ button and select all items from the ‘Registry Integrity’ menu. Then click the ‘Scan for issues’ button. The program will now display all the undesired entries; you can delete them from the registry with ‘Fix issues’. Sort out. Make it your routine the tendency of cleaning your registry to access the registry through the command prompt you can easily just type Regedit inside the windows command prompt  and the pop up window showing the registry information will appear.

            “But it’s not Google” is the phrase invented by Google fans to joke Bing the emerging search engine in the market. Bing has been able to possess real threat to some old search engines in the game such as Yahoo search engine and Google search engine. Although the market share of Google is far away from its competitors still the opponents challenge makes you to grow stronger and become even more creative to continue to dominate and rule the game. 

               For many years the MSN search engine have been lagging behind the giants Google and Yahoo search engines this has been a major challenge facing Microsoft goal of monopolizing the computer industry by trying to lead in the search engine business too.  Microsoft as claimed Bing is not a substitute for Live.       Microsoft manager Dorothee Ritz explain “Bing is not a search engine but a decision machine” There were a lot of mistakes and drawbacks in the windows live.com search engine projects which were rectified in the Bing search engine. 

                The main challenge that Bing will always face in this war is that people behind Google lab are not sleeping they always come up with new features in their search engine. For example Bing can real do good in the US but when it comes to the localization Google has proven to be the master. Search engine which corresponds to the specific area on the globe or region in the country Google will sufficiently provide enough details about the searched query. The main advantage of Bing is that it allows the users to comment on the pictures and give some rectification about the search results which enables the future enhancement of the search engine and improved output for future queries of the same results.

The search engine market share:

            Recently in one of my projects I was using wolfram alpha search engines. The search engine was created by mathematician inventor Stephen wolfram; calculate concrete answers for concrete questions. Links are not in a results list instead this search engine provides simple facts related to the search query. For example if you search for “Kilimanjaro” the options will come for Kilimanjaro as a city or a mountain and all the results based on mathematical operations will pop up giving enough details and detailed explanation graphs and geographical locations on the world map. Furthermore it will provide the height of the mountain and the distance from nearby towns and the height from the sea level. The search engine is great for navigators, researchers and scientists. The only drawback the search is limited and details for some terms or places cannot be found easily and since it is mainly based in mathematics operations a lot of data which is not numerical based cannot be found easily.

            

You can test and compare the performance of both the search engines at this link www.blackdog.ie/google-bing here you can compare both of the search engines and come up with your perception wither Bing will be able to compete with Google in the market share.

            The battle of the mobile phone companies tariffs in Tanzania is getting deadly. For us customers it is good news actually but for the mobile companies it can be the reason behind professionals living their companies to join opponents companies every day. Now I don’t even know which company provides cheaper charges in terms of per calling charges, SMS charges or even internet charges. Each and every day new package is available wither is Zantel’s epiq nation or Tigo’s Mega Boksi or Vodacom’s packages .

Mwamvita Makamba (Vodacom)

              I remember back in the days when Tigo come up with the extreme package for the first time it was the coolest thing in the street for just 1500 Tanzanian shillings you were able to talk for the whole day before 6:00 P.M in the evening. Actually this is what people want, the ability to communicate at the cheaper costs and rates. When Airtel Tanzania were launching their cheapest mobile internet tariff this year i remember my friend Dr. Aboud Jumbe posting in his wall on Facebook about it and exclaiming "game on it is time for the new challenge for the Tanzania mobile companies" Airtel revolutionized the mobile charges tariff in Bangalore by competing with their fistful rivals  Vodafone in attaining the local market so has we expect they are doing the same in Tanzania.

             When we are dwelling inside mobile technologies and USSD apps are being made every day as to reach the goal of providing quality services through mobile technologies the prior concern will be the ability of the users of the technology to survive the costs and tariffs that comes with the technology.

            I read the news yesterday about the official launching of the Mobile ticketing in Dar es Salaam were by will be able to book their tickets and do payments for their seats through their mobile phones and areas specifically allocated for the services like payments of electric bills and TV cables has been done recently. My main concern was on the charges of the services since the charges are among the major factors for the people to go for the service. Most of the time people would analyze the cost before accepting the service.

            Some successful projects like HudumaFasta and others have tried to look closely into this. For the companies looking to engage in the business the tariffs should be their main concern if they want to reach more customers and make more money out of the business.

            It’s all Google now am sure even some people inside the IT giants come knows that. Recently there has been some complains from the technology pioneers about Google monopolizing the industry wither the arguments are right or wrong is not up for me to decide. Once it was all Microsoft there were even powerful enough to sabotage the leading internet browser of that time the father of the browsers Netscape by releasing Internet explorer for free and available for everyone who purchases their OS.

             The only difference between Microsoft monopoly and Google monopoly is about the availability of the products for free and the means in which the companies make the money. While most of the Google services and products available for free online their opponents are selling almost everything, for them income is through selling things and for Google is by gaining acceptance and creating more rooms for more customers. With Google’s android OS and Microsoft windows mobile OS the competition become more fistful and the chances of having a win-win situation keep on decreasing.

             “Google have replacement for everything G+ FOR Facebook, Google docs for Office, Google talk for Skype Google translate for online dictionary, Google Earth for Bing satellite search results” words of my geek friend when we were discussing how the giants are monopolizing the industry. The main secret of Google success is their ability to blend in with the locals and giving back to the community. Recently Google has been conducting a lot of research and funding a lot of projects in Africa.

The Google ambassador programs, the Gtug groups, the Google conferences and many other activities are the reason for Google success. Google always welcomed in Africa due to their supports to the local communities, the farmer’s projects in Uganda through Google SMS apps in association with local mobile company MTN and Ngo it is among the Google services in Africa.

I don’t have problem with Google monopolizing the industry if they will continue to play with the same ethics in the game. Google should focus more in consolidating themselves and living the idea of sabotaging other companies far away. We love them because they play fairly and they real help when the support is required.

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.” The late Steve Jobs the CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs used to believe that innovation is what distinguishes between leadership and followers. Like the famous IPhone quote “if you don’t have an IPhone you simply don’t have an IPhone” proves that Apple believe they lead the industry in terms of innovation and creativity.

            The recent battle between Apple Inc. and Samsung concerning the fact that Apple Inc believes the product Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 terminal resemble completely as Apple iPad terminal. The California court decided that since there is resemblance between the terminal of Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Apple iPad hence the blocking of sales of Galaxy Tab 10.1 should be implemented immediately.

             “While Samsung is authorized to competition, he has no right to engage in unfair competition by flooding the market with counterfeit products,” wrote Judge Lucy Koh in the document issued by the court. She adds that the arguments are strong enough to Apple that it has no choice but to grant the injunction.
           

The decision made by the court room is a blow to the South Korean company in which recently has been releasing newer versions of Galaxy Tab in the market. The company has been directly criticized by Apple in their war for sales in the US markets.
            The competition comes as an added advantage to the user’s point of view since the competition in creativity and products quality make the users to attain quality products from the markets. Let’s see what the future of war in gadgets production will have to offer with Microsoft getting in with Microsoft surface tab.

Actually is so interesting when you have a trick which you want others to see and they don't know about it. It is obviously that a regular user of the PC will have two to three ways to switch off the PC. But for a geek you must know more than just those few method since it increase your credibility to your clients and distinguish you from the end users of the computer.

first: This the most basic method. Click Start-->Turn Off Computer-->Shut Down. Every computer user will know this method. Actually everyone knows this i prefer you learn other tricks.

Second: Just press Alt+F4 to get the shutdown dialog box. This is quite common too.
 Third: Go to your task-bar Either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del or by Right clicking the Task-bar and choosing Task Manager. You'll find 'Shutdown' on the Menu bar of the Task Manager. Click it to turn off your computer.

 Forth: Press 'Ctrl+Esc' once and then press the 'u' key on the keyboard twice. Your system will automatically shutdown.

 Fifth: Another similar method to the above mentioned one. Press 'Windows key' and then press the key 'u' on the keyboard twice to turn off your computer

 Sixth: Create a shortcut for shutdown on your desktop. This is how you do it : Right on the desktop and choose 'New Shortcut'. Then type 'shutdown -s -t 00' in the text box provided (shown in the figure below). Click 'Next' and click 'Finish'. Now just use the shortcut to turn off your computer.

          The '-s' means shutdown and '-t' is the duration of the time after which you want to initiate your shutdown. You can replace '00' with any number you want. By choosing  '03', the system will turn off  3 seconds after you double clicked the shortcut.

Seventh: A similar method to the above one. Go to 'Run' by either pressing 'Windows key + R' or by clicking Start-->Run. Then type 'shutdown -s -t 00' and press 'Ok'

Eighth:  And now for the last way of turning off your computer. Go to your 'Task Manager' and click 'Shutdown'. Then keep the 'Ctrl' key pressed and choose 'Shutdown'. This will instantly shutdown the computer.

                Its known to be the fastest way to turn off your computer. Feel free to share more methods and just in case you want to share just put it in the comment so everyone can see it. The last method is not advised to be used since the system will turn off as if there is a power crash on restarting you might get some troubles. One more thing you can always enter in the windows command prompt through CMD and type shutdown/? and get all the shutdown options in the prompt interface with explained details.

Most of the times we want to use our phones for more than just a mobile phone to give it the ability to accomplish some tasks more than just making phone calls or browsing to the internet. There is a trick of switching off your computer using your mobile phone. All you need to have is the ability to send mail in your mobile phone and Microsoft outlook in your computer.

Procedures

1. First create the batch files for Hibernate, shutdown or restart using windows command and save the file with the extension of .bat

2. Inside the Notepad type [c:\windows\system32\shutdown -s -f -t 00] without the blazers]

3. Save the file as filename.bat

3. Open and Configure Microsoft Outlook in your computer or the computer you want to perform operations. Configure that Outlook checks the inbox after every 1 minute.   Go to Tools: Options.

4. Select the Mail Setup tab and then Send/Receive button.

5. Configure and check the Schedule an automatic send/receive configure the minutes to 1 and close the dialog boxes.

6. Now go to Tools: Rules and Alerts select the options button in the upper right hand corner and press the Import Rules button.

7.  Trace the Filename.bat file which you have created and select it.

8. Now, when you send a message from your phone to your e-mail address with the subject shutdown or smsshutdown%%, your computer will shutdown.

It’s complicated sometimes when you found yourself with ambiguities on what to pursue and survive as an IT professional in Africa. The Industry is hot and it keeps on growing everyday new opportunities are born and cities competing to become IT hubs for their local regions. This shows the battle of running the Industry is no longer for the top guns like South Africa and Nigeria. Recently we have herd Kigali trying to become the IT core for East Africa trying to compete with Nairobi.

As an IT pro first of all you need to ask yourself is what do you want to be hired or to be an entrepreneur

This is very vital question because it determines which specialization you are supposed to take for example becoming an IT entrepreneur you need to have a basic knowledge at least in each and everything in the Industry if you want to start a consultant company we expect you to be familiar with number of stuffs. In the other hand for cooperate IT pro’s we expect them to have complete Idea and knowledge on the specific matters they are working on For example we expect a mobile phone engineer in telecommunication firm to have complete knowledge in mobile phone technologies such as VAS and so on also if you are working in accounting and management part of the industry we expect you to have knowledge in accounting packages such as Tally and database management systems such as Oracle and so on.

What went wrong?

The perception of most young IT pro’s is that once you graduate with a Computer science degree or telecommunication degree that is all you need to survive in this industry and forgetting that there is something called specialization. For example we understand everyone studied Software engineering as part of is syllabus in college but ninety percent of these people they know nothing about software development in real sense meaning that they can’t even do a simple software development project. This led us to our main point which is specialization. We expect a graduate to have strong knowledge in programming languages and software interfacing if his goal is to become software engineer.

What to do for those who want to work in institutions and organizations?

First understand the Industry and the working environment of the place you want to work or pursue your expertise meaning that if you are doing database management system then ask people who are already in office what kind of database are they using if it’s Oracle, MySQL, Derby and so on. This will help you to focus directly on what you are going to work on. The same thing goes for people who expecting to become system administrators you must know the servers and the system you are working on you might spend most of your time focusing on CISCO servers and systems later coming to realize your company is using Linux RedHat systems.

What to do for those who want to become IT entrepreneurs?

First of all is innovation and creativity there is no way you are going to skip that and then ask yourself what sells in the market now if its graphics designing or troubleshooting networks that is your decision. Another important thing is about your customers what do they want you to do for them in most of the time that should be your priority for whatever you are studying if its video production or website designing .Learn new things and new technologies every day and at least try to understand everything in basic and when the task come try to focus on that task until you finish it.

Mobile money is among the fastest growing technologies in East Africa, the technology has proven itself to be a life saver and a game changer to the local financial institutions and business sectors. Few years back it was a normal thing to witness people queued up in long lines waiting either to send money in some accounts in the bank or receive money. The emerging of Mobile banking has been a great step forward in the enhancement of financial transaction systems of Tanzania and Africa in general.

Mobile money is paved the way for Mobile Banking with Vodacom working with both CRDB and NMB to provide the m-banking services to their customers this implies the game is on for more mobile service providers to works with local banks to provide the services to the local communities. With the case study done by Vodacom M-PESA in 2010 In Tanzania 54% of people didn’t use any form of financial service; formal, semi-formal or informal prior to the launch of M-PESA while only 9% of the population had access to formal financial services.  In 2011 the governor of Bank of Tanzania (BOT) Mr. Benno Ndulu told The Citizen the daily local newspaper that “The mobile phone banking facilitates the flow of financial services to unbanked customers mainly in rural areas. And they access banking services at low charges”

                This is the period when we say everything goes online wither its money or media. The East Africa mobile industry giants like Vodacom, Airtel, MTN, Tigo, Safaricom and others have implemented the technology as part of their services which they provide to their customers. The number of mobile phone users in Tanzania is expected to hit 36 million by 2015. This means that mobile payment and transactions at some point of time will be among the most influential ways of doing business and conducting financial transactions.

                “I have a chance to double the original amount I invested in the beginning of the day as the daily profit in my business for both M-PESA and Tigo PESA” the local entrepreneur said. PESA means money in Swahili official translation of the term. M-PESA and Tigo PESA are among the mobile transactions services provided by Vodacom and Tigo respectively in Tanzania. The users of the technology enjoy the benefit of the technology and most of them agree the technology is efficiency, time saving and more secure. They no longer have to travel with a lot amount of money in their pockets, this reduces the risk of them being robbed also they claim that the technology reduces the complication they were facing in the banks having to line up in long queues. The condition that you must have a bank account before sending or receiving money was among the other things they didn’t like to face.

                Mobile payment is a game changer now people can contribute for the weddings, sending school fees to their kids, paying their T.V bills and electric bills, spiritual contributions and so many other things can be done through the use of digitized money transactions.

                The lack of knowledge and security in the digital transaction of money has been the major setback in the growth of the technology. People has been withdrawn from the technology with the fear of getting cheated and tricked into releasing their accounts or transfer their banks deposit to the wrong people. For services like performing balance check and other banking transactions which does not involve transferring of money has been utilized more than services which involve major cash transfers through accounts or payments in some businesses.

                The local mobile phone companies have been reluctant to explain the issues of security to their customers and most of the time the banks and mobile companies have the perception that the responsibility of informing the community about these problems associated with digital money transferred belongs to the other body.

                While the technology is booming and new innovation and ideas are coming out every day the authorities should focus more in creating awareness to the local people on safety procedures on the ways of doing their final transaction using digitized system wither is mobile phones, PDAs and so on. Recently have been reports in crimes involving people stealing money from locals and banks using their mobile phones working together with corrupted people in these institutions to reach their goal of tricking the customers into the trap of thieves. The only problem that remains in our hands now is the issue of security and how to create awareness among the users of the technology.

For someone like me having all of my works loaded in my email from my blog posts, financial records, partnership agreements, access to my blogs and other things really to have a just a password to protect my stuff isn’t enough. Always I was thinking what would happen if someone hack my account or by mistake someone get access to my password what would I do?  

Then Gmail come up with the solution the 2 step verification of the user ID and Password. The idea is great after you longing in to your account using your username and password the text SMS message will be sent to your phone in real time giving you six digit codes which will allow you to access your account and just in case you don’t get the SMS you can simply dial and immediately the machine will reply through your phone mentioning the digits to you. 

This helps you in two ways, first even if someone get access to your account he will not be able to access your account. Second, the six digit codes you are receiving they kept on changing each and every time you log in to your account which makes it difficult for someone to hack your account. The other best thing you can easily realizes if someone has hacked to your account since you will get the six digits notification immediately on your phone through the SMS.

2-step verification was introduced by Google it requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone.

To edit your security settings and upgrade to 2 step verification, just log in in to your Gmail account and follow this link https://www.google.com/settings/security inside it, go to step 2 verification and make sure you activate the step 2 verification. 

 To learn more about 2-step verification and get started, visit  Google Help Center. And for more about staying safe online, see Google ongoing security blog series or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org/. Be safe!