Following Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion, TechCrunch heard from WhatsApp CEO, Jan Koum that the app will be getting voice communication services in the second quarter of 2014 (i.e. by the summer).

The service will start rolling out on iOS and Android devices first before it starts showing up on “some Nokia and BlackBerry phones.” Sorry guys.

No one knows how it will work yet, all we know is that it’s coming and should give apps like Viber a run for their money. Hopefully they don’t start making us pay for cool features now the way it happened when Microsoft acquired Skype.

Source: TechCrunch

TechCabal

Also in partnership with Stanbic IBTC, Jobberman, VC4Africa, Memeburn and others, TechCabal will look for budding startups and put them through training sessions with industry professionals. The finalists will then present to a panel of judges that includes Iroko Partners CEO, Jason Njoku (iROKOtv, iROKING) amd Jobberman CEO, Ayodeji Adewunmi.

The juicy bit (and the reason you probably clicked this link) is the $22,000 prize for the winning startup – yes, they mean dollars. The winner gets $20,000, and the runner up gets $2,000 – no strings attached.

“We are really excited about the potential for the technology ecosystem, and way beyond the token prize money, ” said Bankole Oluwafemi of TechCabal. “We hope that the event will facilitate high value networking opportunities for startups and investors, as well as deeper awareness for Nigerians at large.”

Anyone can attend the event, all you have to do is register through the Social Media Week website. If you’re a startup that has received less than $200,000 (again, in dollars) in funding, you’re encouraged to apply and find out more details here.

May the odds be ever in your favour! (I really couldn’t help it, sorry.)

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post stated the prize money was $10,000. A $10,000 contribution from iROKING.com and $12,000 from Stanbic IBTC brings the total winnings to $22,000.

In today’s world of selfies, lategrams and #ThrowbackThursday, your filter choice on Instagram can say a lot about you. Are you the type to go au naturale because you see no need? Or do you overdo the filters and even add HDR to give it a boost because you can never have too much colour?

Whatever your filter choice is from ‘#nofilter’ to Hefe, this infographic tells you what your filter choice says about you. Do you think it’s accurate? Let us know!

Source: Marketo

In the spirit of Christmas and Christmas cheer, we’re placing everyone on our team for auction. Because, money.

We’ll be having a Christmas “meet and eat” on Sunday this week. To secure your date with any of these cuu keeds, type their name in the comments and along with your bid price. Bids start from N100. You’ll get to join us for lunch and discuss whatever. (Lunch means lunch (i.e. there will be food (i.e. we will actually eat)))

We’ve also added Bankole Oluwafemi of TechCabal and Jesse Oguntimehin of Spinlet to the auction.

Winners of the auction will be contacted via email.

Big pimping!

Faridah “Swag Daddy” Seriki

I like to think I’m a swag daddy, then I realize I don’t have that much swag and I’m not a daddy.

Binjo “Commander Spock” Adeniran

Are you from Tennessee because you are the only ten I see.

Paul “DJ Pauly O” Ogunlowo (No, he is not a real DJ, and he is in no way affiliated with Jersey Shore)

Gadget Lover, devoted United fan, programmer on a lifelong mission to travel the world.

Seun Awoyele (For now, we’ll call him SantaPls)

Jack of all things digital, mobile tech aficionado.

Jesse @JesseOguns Oguntimilehin

Connecting the dots | gadget freak | fitness addict

Bankole “Lordbanks” Oluwafemi

I am a blogger. This is what a blogger looks like. Co-incidentally, humans look like that too.

This new service lets you share photos and videos with up to 15 friends. Think Snapchat meets Instagram (also think Snapchat competitor, like the way they gave Vine a run for their money back in June by adding video)

With this feature, you can share your photo or video with selected friends in the ‘Share To’ section of the app. There, you can select up to 15 of your friends to share your post with.

Every “moment” you share this way will be put in an inbox so they you see them on a separate feed. Of course, you can only send these to people you follow. If you don’t follow a user, they’ll get a request from you. Also, you can choose to receive direct moments from people without following them (not sure why you’d want to do that), and if you just don’t want to receive anything from there, the request will be left pending. When a user has seen your photo or video, you’ll see a check mark next to it. Users can also like each other’s moments. One thing to note is you can’t send these moments with just text. However, the you can send your photo or video with text like regular posts.

It all sounds pretty neat! I am concerned about privacy though, so I’ll definitely be looking out for updates to the Privacy Policy. What do you think about this new feature? Let us know!

To get the feature, simply update your app on iOS or Android.

Source: Engadget

Twitter updated their mobile apps for Android and iOS with a few new stuff. The layout got a complete makeover, but the most notable update has to be letting users share photos via direct messages.

Other features include adding users to favourites so you can get push notifications anytime they tweet. This could be done by turning notifications on from certain users, but they just made it a more prominent feature.

I’m not a fan of the abrupt design overhaul, it looks nice but it’s gonna take a lot of getting used to because they literally moved everything around. Everything includes composing a tweet: That’s at the bottom of the screen now.

How do you feel about the change? Also, please be good in your DMs

Just in time for December rockies! Popular photo-sharing service, Instagram will let users send private messages to each other before 2014. This comes according to Mashable via GigaOM.

Allowing users to send private messages will add Instagram to the realm of major social networks, including its parent company, Facebook. This could possibly put them in in competition with each other as it will let users interact beyond just likes and comments.

What I’d really like to know is if users would be able to share links with this. Are you excited for this? I know I am. Let us know!

“We already have 220 partners in Lagos, but we are soon expanding to Abuja and beyond. We want to be the universal food service for all Nigerians,” said Managing Director, Joe Falter. “We want to be the first place Nigerians think of when they need food: whether it’s for them at work, for their families at home, or to cater an event.”

To be that “first place Nigerians think of” of course, you’d need to go mobile because that’s where most of us are. So they’ve just launched Android and iPhone apps that bring the already convenient service to you on-the-go.

HelloFood is service from FoodPanda that has similar services in Europe, Asia and countries like Ghana, Kenya and Ivory Coast in Africa.

Now on to the good stuff: Put in “TNTT readers” at checkout and get ₦500 off your order. Again, you’re welcome.

What do you think about the service?

Okadabooks is an app that provides local and international books to you on your phone. With over 7,000 books available in-app, Okadabooks aims to make it easier for people to access books in Nigeria – especially those by local authors.

“What drives Okadabooks is the belief that Nigerians read,” says Ofili. “We are sick and tired of people saying Nigerians don’t read. The thing is that readers have evolved, and the publishers haven’t evolved with the reading culture”

The frustrating book industry

Being an author himself, Ofili experienced first-hand the frustrations of the book industry. Major bookstores in Nigeria owed him over 1.5 Million from book sales, and he didn’t get his money until he voiced his frustrations on social media and major blogs.

“It was frustrating,” he said of the bookstore issue. “I started to think, ‘What about the people that actually need this to survive?”

Ofili decided to take control and approached funmobile – a Value Added Service (like the ones that tell you to text a word to a number to get a ringtone, game, wallpaper etc), to get his books (How Stupidity Changed My Life, How Laziness Changed My Life) directly to people in Nigeria.

What triggered his idea was when he looked around bookstores in Lagos for Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and didn’t find it until he got to the Houston International Airport

“I think its ironic that its easier to find our writers in foreign lands than it is to find them in our land,” he says.

Eliminating the middle man

Funmobile let MTN subscribers SMS “laziness” or “stupidity” to a certain number and they got either book on their phones for N200 (deducted from their credit). The thought of expanding the service to host more books inspired the idea that created Okadabooks as it is available today.

As of a few weeks ago, users could only pay for books with call credit on their phones, but with their most recent update, users can pay for books with Paga, GTB, Zenith Bank Direct Transfer, and PayPal.

“The limitations with with SMS is we only get 20% of the money back.” said Ofili. “Now we get at least 80% so we can give the authors more by doing away with the SMS system”

The new version comes with Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, and in they hope to add books by classical authors like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Cyprian Ekwensi soon.

Upon installing the app, you can read a free sample of most paid books by just creating an account. You only need to pay for certain books as most the books in the app are free anyway – the paid ones can be anywhere up to N300. Books like Americanah have the first 100 pages available for free. 

Available for free in the app are the Bible, Nigerian Constitution, past JAMB and WAEC questions. Regarding the choice to have these books up for free, Ofili says “people can utilize it as an educational resource.”

His proposal to publishers is for them to let Okadabooks digitize their books for free “in exchange for exclusivity to distribute them within the Nigerian market digitally.”

Why the name, “Okadabooks”?

Regarding the name of the app, Ofili says, “Just like Lagos traffic, the book industry is at a bureaucratic deadlock, and the way people get through Lagos traffic is to use okadas to get the from point A to point B.”

“We’re hoping Okadabooks goes past the bureaucracy of our book distribution system and jumps over everything, putting books directly in people’s handsets.”

GIVEAWAY

To celebrate the release of their new version, Okadabooks is giving us N500 in book credit to give to five readers. (Trust me, it’s something) Just let us know if you’re interested in the comments. The first five to comment get in on it