Sub-Saharan Africa's first metro railway

Commuters in Addis Ababa, the booming capital of Ethiopia, now have an option to rise above the notoriously congested streets of the city with the opening of a new metro -- the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ato Workeneh Gebeyehu, the country's Minister of Transport, says that each day, more than 60,000 people use the north-south and east-west lines that form the first phase of the project; when completed, the railway should carry 100,000 people per day.

Gebeyehu says that the project is focused on providing an affordable solution for the country's low income workers.

"When the government thought of constructing this, it was for low income people, the people who are using the minibuses," he explains. 

"The majority of the users who move from the city, travel from here to there, people who are working in the factories, government offices and so on and so forth... most of them cannot afford expensive transportation." 

etachew Betru, the CEO of the Ethiopian Railways Corporation, says that the plan is not to make money, but to provide a service to the city to enable its growth.

"The light rail is not a commercial business, it is a social infrastructure. Economically it's not very expensive, the longest you go you pay nothing more than 30¢. It is reliable, you can time yourself to go anywhere you want to go. So the convenient effect will give an added value to the city of Addis," he says.

Many of Addis Ababa's inhabitants rely on 'taxis' -- actually minibus services that make short journeys around the city. Betru says that the light rail will not compete with these small businesses, but will be complementary, offering a cheaper way to cover large distances, and allowing travelers to link up with minibuses at metro stations.

BlackBerry releases its first Android smartphone

 The future of BlackBerry’s smartphone businessmay very well be sitting in your hands later this week.

The BlackBerry Priv, the company’s first Android device, marks what could be a last-ditch attempt by the Waterloo, Ont.-based developer to create a phone popular enough to save its struggling hardware division.

If the Priv doesn’t sell, it’s almost certain BlackBerry will pull the plug on designing phones after a series of sales flops whittled down its thriving device business into a money-losing operation.

“BlackBerry’s handset business rides on the success or failure of the Priv,” said technology analyst Carmi Levy.

“If this device doesn’t turn the sales tide around, expect a quick decision in the new year.” After being pummelled by the likes of Apple and Samsung, BlackBerry is doing what some of its critics say should’ve happened years ago: appealing to existing smartphone trends instead of fighting against them.

For first time in its history, BlackBerry will be selling a phone beginning Friday that doesn’t run on its own operating system, using Google’s Android system instead.

It’s a compromise with the mainstream on almost every level. On the surface, its larger touch screen evokes the design of most smartphones on the market, while a slider keyboard caters to more traditional BlackBerry users who still favour one of the company’s most beloved features.

In naming the device Priv – short for privacy and privilege – the company hopes to tap into a conversation about how we unknowingly share our personal details with third parties through various phone apps.

BlackBerry promises the Priv will help users learn exactly who is accessing their information by monitoring the legitimacy of apps and outlining how many times services like Facebook and free games log details like GPS co-ordinates, access image files or activate the microphone.

Whether those selling features are enough to lure back former “CrackBerry” users remains to be seen.

BlackBerry put off calls to build a phone on the Android for years, despite appeals from some analysts to abandon what they considered was a tunnel-vision perspective that ignored some of the biggest failures of its own devices.

Using the world’s most popular operating system resolves one of the biggest setbacks of the company’s most recent models: a lack of apps that set it miles behind other phones that could stream Netflix, post on Instagram and interact through Snapchat.

BlackBerry executives had tried to overcome the hurdle, but with every year it became harder to ignore how quickly the company was falling short of what people expected from their phones.

When John Chen joined the company in late 2013, one of his first priorities was saving the company from its own app disaster.

“I was swimming uphill against the application people,” he said in late September. “Eventually it didn’t matter how hard I tried.”

After a partnership with Amazon’s app store failed to completely solve the app shortage, Chen was faced with breaking one of BlackBerry’s cardinal rules which resisted saddling up to a competitor’s operating system.

But putting the pride of BlackBerry aside wasn’t easy. The decision was “highly contested and debated” by employees, Chen said.

One former insider at the company, who was not authorized to speak about BlackBerry’s internal operations, said employees were concerned that making an Android phone would result in widespread layoffs – a fear that he says began to prove true when BlackBerry slashed its development staff over the summer.

After an ugly transition period, the Priv arrives in stores nearly two years after concepts for the device began to take shape.

Over the coming weeks, BlackBerry will unveil a marketing campaign it says forgoes the traditional launch event in favour of spending on advertising throughout the crucial holiday shopping season.

The goal of boosting BlackBerry sales could prove a huge challenge against a slate of high-end devices from industry giants, particularly Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy.

This year, sales of a variety of cheaper phones, like Google’s Nexus, Sony and LG, have also picked up momentum, and that could make it harder for BlackBerry to pitch a compelling case to invest in its pricier device, which lists for $899 at BlackBerry’s Canadian web store without a carrier contract.

If the Priv doesn’t sell, BlackBerry would likely scale back its staff even further and pivot attention to its software licensing and services division.

Chief operating officer Marty Beard said BlackBerry executives have been focused on ensuring that doesn’t happen.

“We’re doing everything we can to make hardware a profitable business, of which meeting our business case objectives for Priv is a very important part,” he said.

“We have a down-to-the-penny view on what we need to achieve with Priv and we’re very focused on that.”

While Beard wouldn’t provide presales figures, he said advance orders for the Priv have been “much” better than the Passport, Classic and Leap devices.

Executives have also emphasized that despite pairing with Android, the company isn’t abandoning its BlackBerry 10 operating system. It plans to offer new updates in early 2016.

Before the middle of next year, Chen needs to make a few big decisions, including whether there’s still hope in making BlackBerry phones a viable business.

While outsiders might be skeptical, the CEO said he’s confident the hardware division can still become profitable.

“It’s doable,” he said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.”

“Running Thru a Field of Smiles,”

Listening to music is a form of emotional self-care that many of us turn to every day, without much conscious thought. The streaming service Spotify, well aware of this, offers a collection of “Mood” playlists, from “Anthems of Angst” to “Running Thru a Field of Smiles,” to my personal favorite, “The Happy Hipster.” 
While music’s therapeutic qualities have long been known—Aristotle described music as a force to purify the emotions—music therapy as it exists today began in the early-mid 20thcentury, when musicians in the U.K. travelled to hospitals and played music for soldiers suffering emotional and physical trauma after World Wars I and II.
Music therapy is now a sanctioned form of health care with clinical, quantitative research to back it up. In some cases, it’s as effective as traditional forms of therapy, especially for adolescents with mood disorders or adults with depression. One tool music therapists use with patients—along with actively playing or composing music—is guiding patients through the music listening experience, helping them to process what they are thinking and feeling. What we do when we put on headphones is, in many ways, just a self-guided version of this process.
And it often feels good to listen to Aretha Franklin to lift our spirits, or croon along with Adele to make sense of a breakup. But is it also possible to listen to music in ways that sabotage our mental health?
This is the question that Emily Carlson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, explored in a recent study.
The study asked 123 participants about their music-listening habits using a scale developed by one of the study’s co-authors. This scale assessed how much people tended to use seven different music mood-regulation strategies, based on their agreement with statements like “When I'm angry with someone, I listen to music that expresses my anger.”
Of particular interest were the three strategies in which people use music to deal with negative moods: Diversion, where music is used as a distraction from negative thoughts and feelings; Solace, where music is used to search for comfort, acceptance, and understanding when feeling sad or troubled; and Discharge, where anger or sadness are released through music (think of a mosh pit in the mind).
All of the participants were assessed for depression, and anxiety, and levels of the trait neuroticism, one of the Big Five personality dimensions associated with a predisposition for mood disorders. Half then had fMRI imaging on their brains while they listened to a selection of wordless musical samples that tended to evoke sadness, happiness, or fear. Carlson and her colleagues were most interested in the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), an area of the brain widely thought to be related to subconscious mood regulation. Irregular activity in the mPFC has consistently shown up in those suffering from depression. Carlson and her team found that of all the music-listening strategies, Discharge—using music to express negative emotions—correlated with higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism in all of the participants, but especially men. In turn, the fMRI data revealed that those men who tended to use the Discharge strategy more showed decreased mPFC activity during music listening.

Apple and 60 Tech Companies Supports the Houston Unites Coalition on Key Human Rights Vote

Apple and 60 Tech Companies Support the Houston Unites Coalition on a Key Human Rights Vote this Week

The Houston Unites Coalition is a broad coalition of groups and people working to defend the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). The coalition noted that high-profile Fortune 500 companies have joined the overwhelming majority of local Houston business leaders in support of a Yes vote on Proposition 1 to protect Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance. 

 Apple, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, BASF and EMC Corporation joined a strong roster of nearly 60 businesses that have joined the coalition's campaign, including the Greater Houston Partnership, Dow Chemical, the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. These businesses know that Houston needs an equal rights ordinance in order to attract and retain top talent—and send a message that the city is truly open for business to everyone. 

 In a recent statement, Apple urges Houstonians to vote Yes on Prop 1 to ensure everyone is treated fairly and equally under the law: "Apple is proud to be a part of Houston with four stores that employ over 500 people. Our stores and our company are open to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. Apple supports Proposition 1 as it sends a clear message that Houston is focused on a future of inclusion, diversity and continued prosperity." For more on this, visit the Houston Unites Coalition website here. 

YouTube Finally Unveiled Streaming Subscription

Last week, YouTube finally unveiled the details of its much-anticipated streaming subscription platform after years of rumors. Red is available to the public this week, and it is poised to make a big splash—one which could bring some much-needed revenues into a shrinking music industry.

According to the company, YouTube has over one billion users, which represents about one third of every person on the planet with internet access. One really couldn’t ask for a better starting point from which to launch a new product, and the potential for Red to become a game-changer for the industry is clear just from looking at the numbers.

If just one percent of YouTube’s users sign up for Red, that’s 10 million people right off the bat, which translates to just under $100 million dollars in revenue per month. Add it all up, and those 10 million streamers will end up paying a total of $1.2 billion per year. To put that figure into perspective, the entire recorded music industry was worth around $15 billion as of last year. So, if just a single percent of YouTube’s users subscribe to Red, the company could see its product bring in one fifteenth the annual net worth of the entire music industry.

So, what if instead of estimating just one percent, that figure was raised to five percent, or even ten? At just five percent, YouTube’s Red would bring in around $6 billion per year, and at ten percent that number grows to an incredible $12 billion annually.

Is it unreasonable to assume that ten perecent of all YouTubers on the planet would pay $10 a month to get rid of ads and to be able to save music offline to listen to later? Probably, but coming anywhere close to that would have amazing repercussions on the industry. The music business is hurting for cash, as it is essentially still locked in the idea that selling records and singles is where the money is at, meanwhile the number of sales drops every year, and that trend is only going to continue. Streaming platforms may be the way of the future for the consumer, but for the industry they have posed some issues.

These figures should be met with some cautious optimism, as there really is no telling how many people will subscribe to Red. When Apple launched its streaming platform, earlier this year, the company was candid in saying that it had aspirations of convincing 100 million people to sign up, which also would have changed the industry in a meaningful way. While the company hit 11 million users at the peak of its free trial period, that number has since subsided to a respectable 6.5 million, which still makes it larger than many other streaming services.

YouTube’s Red goes live this week, so it’s only a matter of time before we have an idea of what kind of an effect it will actually have on the industry, but hopefully it’s a a big one—the industry could use it.

Nigeria's economy is growing at the slowest

LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigeria's economy is growing at the slowest pace this decade as oil prices drop. Companies are complaining they can't get the dollars they need to do business. And trading in the naira has long since dried up.

There are many good reasons why Godwin Emefiele, who runs the central bank of Africa's biggest economy, should lift currency controls and let the naira depreciate. One of the things holding him back is politics.

Devaluing the naira may give opposition parties the opportunity to claim that Emefiele's main supporter, President Muhammadu Buhari, has lost control of the economy. With his backing, the policy chief will be able to resist his critics into 2016 before the worsening economic slump eventually forces him to capitulate, according to Standard Chartered and Bank of America.

"They could probably hold out for at least six months, maybe even a year," said Ayodele Salami, chief investment officer for London-based Duet Asset Management, which manages about $200 million of African equities. "The central bank has chosen currency stability and the price they're paying for that is growth. They could hold the line for a lot longer than the markets expect."

Streaming advocate

24-year-old singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran is a big music streaming advocate — he is the most-streamed artist on Spotify, after all — but the hearthrob/superstar made a dumbfounding statement in a recent interview regarding his own experience with streaming services: he doesn’t use them.

In a new Billboard cover story, Sheeran told the publication that he doesn’t “stream anything ever.” This from the man who, to date, has racked up over 2 billion streams on Spotify alone.