New mobile phone app: "Madiba's journey"!

South African Tourism and the Nelson Mandela Foundation launched the "Madiba-inspired tourist attractions" map, which encourages tourists from around the world and South Africa to travel the country and walk in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, in 2014. The map has now been developed into a GPS-enabled mobile phone app to further enhance visitors’ experiences in South Africa. The app uses location-based services and features tourist sites as well as general places of interest, including Mandela's post-presidential office at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg, the Nelson Mandela Statue at Union Buildings in Pretoria, Nobel Square at the V&A Waterfront, Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison (all in Cape Town) and Qunu in the Eastern Cape, where Madbia was laid to rest.

screenshot

The app "Madiba's journey" is now available for download in English from the Apple iTunes store (iOS devices) and the Google Play store (Android devices). It will soon be available in other languages, including Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Dutch, French, German, Italian, simple Mandarin and Portuguese.

Virgin Atlantic to allow cellphone calls during flights

British Airline Virgin Atlantic teamed up with AeroMobile, a GSM service provider for the aviation industry, to bring an in-flight cell phone service for voice calls to its new Airbus A330-300 aircrafts and refitted Boeing 747s. AeroMobile’s technology creates a small cell network on the plane, which routes calls from the aircraft through a satellite network that relays the calls to the ground. During flights, six passengers at a time will also be able to use the service for sending and receiving text messages, emails and web access via GPRS. As U.S. regulations forbid cell phone usage on commercial flights, the service won’t be available on flights to New York or other destinations in the US Virgin Atlantic is operating flights to.
Initially, the service will only be available for customers of European cell phone providers O2 and Vodafone. International roaming costs will apply during fights.

Vodacom launches low flat rates for Africa roaming

Good news for travellers in Southern and Eastern Africa. Vodacom South Africa recently announced that all customers, both contract and prepaid, can now expect huge roaming savings when travelling to 6 African countries where Vodacom and Vodafone operate. These countries include the DR Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Once international roaming has been activated, you will automatically qualify for these rates. All Vodacom customers are now automatically charged at the reduced international roaming rates when roaming on the Vodacom Lesotho, Vodacom Mozambique, Vodacom Tanzania, Vodacom DR Congo networks, Vodafone Ghana and Kenya Safaricom networks. To ensure you are always roaming on the network, change the network settings from "automatic" to "manual" on your device when you arrive at your destination, and choose the qualifying network from the list.

Data (Data roaming is only available to Contract customers and charged in 10KB increments)   

• R5/MB

Voice (Voice calls are charged on a per minute basis)

• Free incoming calls
• Local Voice call - R2.90
• Call back to South Africa or an International call - R5.00

SMS   

• Local and international SMS messages - R1.50 per SMS
• Free incoming SMS messages

Behind-The-Scenes: Your bag's journey after you've checked in (video)

To promote a free mobile app that allows you to track your luggage, Delta Air Lines made the following video that shows you where your bags go after they pass through those black rubber flaps at the airport.
Due to "security reasons", and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the probably most interesting part of the bag's journey from Atlanta to New York in the US could not be filmed, but it is still good to see that they handle your luggage with a certain care at the two aiports. Let's just imagine that this is how they do it everywhere in the world. Thx Delta!

Mozambique: Mobile phone users must register by 15 Nov 2010

According to an article on allafrica.com all users of pre-paid mobile phone cards in Mozambique must register their phone numbers by 15 November 2010. The news source is referring to a government decree which was issued last week, but has not yet been published in any of the media.
According to the decree all new users of pre-paid mobile phone cards in Mozambique must be registered at the moment they buy it. People who already have numbers will have to register them by 15 Nov 2010 (similar to the Rica Act in South Africa). If they fail to do so, their access to the mobile phone networks will be blocked. Registration has not yet started. Sometime in the next few days the authorities and the two companies (Mcel & Vodacom MZ) will announce the registration procedures to be used.