Kojo Baffoe

Cashless Parking With KaChing

Mar 2, 2016 | Social, Technology & Innovation

You have been shopping. You walk up to the pay station. There’s a line. You put your bags down and fish into your pocket for cash to pay for your parking. You realise you might not have enough. You pick up your bags, find the closest ATM (which is usually on the other side of the mall), withdraw cash, get back, stand in line. You put in a note. It pops back out. You flip it, turn it, twist and eventually you pay. (If you had enough money, in coins, you probably had to scratch at least one coin against the pay station because it keeps sliding through and popping out.) Head to your car, drive...

Playing With The Sony Xperia Z5

Feb 29, 2016 | Technology & Innovation

Have you ever thought about what truly influences your smartphone spending habits? With the exponential improvements to smartphones that have happened over the last couple of years, I was often mesmerised by the specs and features. For example, the higher the megapixels the phone’s camera had, the more excited I was, as an amateur mobile photographer. Until I saw my pictures. And then I wasn’t so excited anymore. As a side note, in a discussion about smartphone cameras, someone (can’t remember who so can’t give credit) made the comment that, as important as the camera specs is the actual...

Need Extra Money?

Jan 27, 2016 | Social, Technology & Innovation

The first cellphone I owned was a Nokia 2110 in 1996/97. A hand-me-down from my father, who got it while doing work at CSIR in Pretoria. Vodacom had just setup a deal to provide cellular services in Lesotho, creating Vodacom Lesotho. I was literally given a list of numbers to choose from. Since then, I have had countless phones and have written on them relatively extensively for a variety of spaces, also having the opportunity to go to launches both locally and internationally. I’m actually reviewing the Sony Xperia Z5 right now. I have also had two phone contracts for ten years which means...

Intel Powers Convergence

Jan 11, 2016 | Technology & Innovation

Convergence. A word that has, over the last decade or so, taken on added meaning as technology has evolved and we have made the transition from single-purpose devices to multiple purpose devices. The PC, followed by the laptop, and the birth of the mobile device, whether smartphone or tablet, have created proper confusion when it comes to how we divide up our time because everything purports to do everything, just not always well. Not too long ago, I struggled with the idea of watching video on a laptop or reading books on a tablet. The screen felt too small for video and I still preferred...

Life: Put In The Work

Dec 3, 2015 | Social

There are so many great examples across the continent. Examples, in my view, are people whose lives, whose actions serve as a guide for how to live as part of a broader society, in whatever sphere. People who through the sheer force of their will and personality have forever altered the trajectory of their lives and those around them. When we see them reaching dream-level in their lives, we often do not see what it took to get there and assume that it was an easy journey. We package their stories neatly into ‘overnight success’ when, perhaps, it took fifteen years for them to get where they...

WeChat’s Digital Wallet Service

Dec 3, 2015 | Technology & Innovation

It has been interesting watching WeChat’s push to entrench itself not just in South Africa but across the African continent. Because it is perceived as direct competition to Whatsapp, which has had a significant head start in establishing itself as the leading IM service globally, the WeChat Africa team, based in SA, have made strategic moves to find other ways of penetrating the respective markets. In SA, this has involved initiatives like the partnership with the Cape Town based “on-demand goods collection and delivery service” Picup, which I wrote about after attending an event earlier...