During the first half of 2012, 40,000 tablets were sold, 52% more than in the same period in 2011. This record growth contrasts with the increase of only 5% in sales of computers, laptops and netbooks. The president of the Union of IT Businesses, Barreondo Manuel said that maintaining this growth rate, they will end the year with a total of 80,000 tablets sold. "In the local market ...

Note: You can read my article from yesterday where I outline a detailed review of the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone. I was seriously considering getting a phone to replace my Nokia E5, but was planning on an orderly transition between phones. Then my Nokia was lost/stolen. I didn't lose any pictures, as they were synced to SugarSync. I lost one contact, since my last backup of contacts, so I...

The technology installed in the towers is from the 21st Century. The bureaucracy that is authorizing them is from the 19th century. The progress of communications is getting slower in Costa Rica, with cell phone companies unable to meet the deadlines for achieving the necessary territorial coverage, because municipalities are taking up to 5.5 months to give permission for each tower. I...

This is not just another review of the Samsung Galaxy S III, as there are plenty of reviews on the Internet. Rather, it is journal of my experience with the hottest selling smartphone in Costa Rica. The journey began with evaluating carrier pricing, data packages, and coverage of the mobile network operators in Costa Rica. While I prefer prepago, the data speeds that I wanted were only availab...

Google announced on the Official Lat Long Blog today that it is expanding the Google Maps live traffic feature first launched in 2008 to cover 130 smaller U.S. cities and the capitals of Panama, Costa Rica, and Colombia. On top of travel time estimates and real-time traffic conditions for the new cities, Google also improved its traffic coverage in a list of other locations including parts of ...

Life in Costa Rica is supposed to be an easy endeavor for everyone; after all, how hard can it be to live in a country where "Pura Vida" is not just a motto, but rather a philosophy of being and living? Thousands of expats find themselves mystified by Pura Vida and decide to give it a try without realizing that underneath the Zen-like visage of life in Costa Rica there are a number of intricac...

Selecting an Android phone is not like selecting an iPhone. Instead of one manufacture with a few models, there are many manufactures, each of which sell multiple models, with different features and prices. The phone description provided by a cellphone store is very short, and often does not tell you if it is an Android phone. Sales representatives rarely know anything about Android, or the fe...

In the indigenous village of Santiago Atitlan, Internet access has been declared “a human right” by both inhabitants and local authorities. Authorities are also implementing a plan to provide free community Wi-Fi to the entire population so that everyone can benefit from it and exercise their rights. The concepts of community and sharing are entrenched in the daily life of indigenous people...

Panama is negotiating with ISRO to enter into technological collaboration for setting up a Satellite Tracking Station, a senior Panamanian minister said yesterday. Senior official level talks were fruitful and modalities were being worked out for installation of the station, so that system would be set up to track various satellites, Dr Ruben Berrocal Timmons, Minister of Science, Technolo...

Guatemala's Kakchiquel speakers will now be able to access Facebook in their own language thanks to a new application developed by US software engineers. Facebook is available in more than 70 languages from around the world including Spanish, which is widely spoken in Guatemala, but not in any language used by indigenous Guatemalan populations, US software engineer Robert Henderson told the...

Recently a new community has started up in Costa Rica which has a mantra to expand and promote Mozilla products. Mozilla Firefox is the worlds most popular and widely used web browser. You can join and support this new community on Facebook and Twitter. About Mozilla: Our mission is to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet. Mozilla is a proudly non-profit organ...

There is not shortage of statistics regarding the adoption of cellphone technology for each country on this planet. There are reports from the World Bank, Internal Telecommunications Union (ITU), Global Information Technology Report, Internet World Stats, Global mobile Suppliers Association, StatCounter Global Stats, and Wikipeida. All the information feels overwhelming. Yet, the data tells a ...

Tigo Costa Rica -formerly known as Amnet- formalized the brand change and introduced news for the rest of the year. The company’s subscribers will be able to watch thousands of hours of HD content through their new Video On Demand (VOD) service in the short term. Besides, HD subscribers will have access to YouTube and other apps through their TV sets as of August. Tigo is Costa Rica’s bigge...

Getting a free phone sounds good, but it may not be the best long-term financial decision. How much are you really paying for the phone? What happens if you lose, or accidently damage your phone? Can you modify the plan, after you sign the contract? Are you ready to be bound to a carrier for 18 to 24 months? Signing a contract is a major decision. In Costa Rica, once you sign a contract, you a...

It was June 29, 2005, and I had just returned from a semester abroad in Italy. I had spent the past five months stuffing my body with the most salivating gastronomic indulgences and snapping photos of the most jaw-dropping architectural feats in Florence, Italy. To say I felt out of place back in my small Wisconsin town would be an understatement. Family and friends were interested in my li...

In February, I got an e-mail that I’d been hoping to receive for almost three months. It was from Estrategia Siglo XXI, a Costa Rican nonprofit organization that promotes science and technology, saying I’d earned a scholarship for United Space School in Houston. It made me extremely happy, and it began a long period of waiting for July 22. In November, I was invited to apply for one of two ...

Kolbi vs. Claro vs. Movistar vs. TuYo Movil Brace yourself for a very detailed comparison of facts and charts, and consider sharing this article with your English speaking contacts in Costa Rica as the data is time sensitive. Introduction Until mid 2011, Kolbi was the the only cellphone operator in Costa Rica. TuYo Movil was the first private operator to offer services in Costa Rica. Tu...

Today GSMA Latin America announced the commitment of the main mobile network operators (MNOs) in Latin America to collaborate with the regional governments in initiatives designed to reduce mobile phone theft and related crime. This voluntary initiative of GSM MNOs will allow the sharing of stolen mobile device information in order to block stolen devices and make their trafficking and reuse acros...

The radio frequency spectrum is a limited resource shared by every country on this planet. In 1865, the International Telegraphic Union (ITU) was founded to promote and coordinate the telegraph as a mode of communication. With the advent of radio, the ITU changed its name to the International Telecommunications Union, and in 1947 became a specialized agency of the United Nations. Currently, th...

The World Bank's private equity investment arm, IFC, is providing US$120mn in financing for Guatemalan mobile infrastructure provider Continental Towers for the building and maintenance of mobile phone towers across Central America, the former said in a release. The finance package is comprised of a US$40mn loan and US$80mn syndicated loan with participation from HSBC's Panamanian unit, Dutch d...

A visitor to Madame Tussaud's Museum in Las Vegas poses next to an effigy of Daniel Craig as Agent 007. Source: Flickr San Jose – The work of legendary MI6 agent James Bond of Her Majesty's Secret Service could be made easier by the scientific talent of Costa Rica. Tico scientists, engineers and inventors interested in developing a gadget suitable for the dangerous missions of the fictitious sec...

New policies in Central America are connecting small-scale renewable energy users to the grid—but not in the direction you might expect. Net metering policies allow owners of small-scale distributed renewable energy systems to feed power produced by their installations back into the grid. Under net metering, utility customers who own such systems can install a bi-directional meter that records ...

Welcome to the rainforest! Living and loving here is a dream, but not when your home or business gets flooded. All around our beautiful country there are well constructed gabion walls supporting hillsides for years. Gabion, from the Italian word gabbione meaning ‘big cage’, is a large, thick-wire basket filled with rocks, through which water can flow at a much reduced rate or be diverted around. M...

When you are sitting on a beach enjoying a beautiful Costa Rica sunrise, or sunset, it's hard to picture Costa Rica as ranking #4 in the world for technology exports. Yet, according to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, 41% of Costa Rica's export income is from high technology. For the reporting period of 2011-2012, Costa Rica ranked #1 in Latin America for the Foreign Direct Investmen...

Milestone XProtect open platform IP video management software (VMS) has been implemented in more than 30 government judicial buildings in Costa Rica. The new surveillance system is the foundation for defense against violence for judicial employees to be less vulnerable to the risk of attacks in the office. With an increase in reported violent crimes throughout Costa Rica, the prosecution of mor...

Top Costa Rica News Claro and Movistar are taking advanced registrations for the Samsung Galaxy S III. Kolbi just states that Samsung Galaxy S III is coming soon. With Samsung expecting to only ship 10 million Galaxy S III phones by July 1, the 9 million international pre-orders means there may be a delay. Although the phone ships with the latest version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the int...

The services export industry employed 1.4% of the Costa Rica labor force, and generated $2.8 billion in revenue in 2011, according to CINDE (Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency) (PDF). The services export industry includes Business Process Offshoring (BPO), Information Technology Offshoring (ITO), and shared services (such as entertainment and media). The services export industry does not incl...

Flipboard combines a periodical news reader with social networks news in a magazine style format. Mike McCue and Evan Doll initially created this unique approach for the iPad in early 2010. By December of 2010, versions were released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The unique design of the app quickly made it one of the most popular iOS apps. Flipboard received Apple's iPad App of the year in 2010...

Source: Xbox LIVE Costa Rica Facebook Technology and software giant Microsoft has a lot riding on its Xbox video game ecosystem. The company's Xbox LIVE online multiplayer service runs across several platforms, from the Xbox 360 console to just about every version of Windows from XP onward. The Xbox LIVE global network has about 40 million subscribers, and many of them live in Costa Rica. Tico ...

Top Costa Rica News On June 14, SUTEL certified the Samsung Galaxy S III GT-I9300" for use in Costa Rica. Samsung officially announced the Galaxy S III in London on May 3, and was officially available to select markets on May 29. The version of the Samsung Galaxy S III coming to Costa Rica sports a quad-core processor, with 1 GB of memory. While the standard version has 16 GB of internal stor...

SAN JOSE – The Ministry of Science and Technology in Costa Rica (MICIT in Spanish) is making its leading indicators available in an easy-to-use platform that allows users to manipulate and visualize data at their pleasure. This initiative follows the Open Data format and it provides greater transparency in the governance process. The data in question was previously available in raw format on the ...

A good thing happened for seminary students this June. The Seminario Nazareno de las Americas or SENDAS (the Nazerene Seminary of the Americas) came to an accord with the Bible Society of Costa Rica over the podcasting of a relevant radio program that features some of Costa Rica’s most well-known Theologians. The program is called “God speaks today”. The Bible Society of Costa Rica and other e...

Costa Rica Technology Insight, the most important Digital Technologies event in Central America and the Caribbean brought together more than 70 Costa Rican companies with at least 100 international enterprises from countries like US, India, France, China, Mexico, Spain, Panama and more this past June 19-20. International invitees to the Costa Rica Technology Insight event included businessmen w...

Top Costa Rica News The worst part of changing carriers is getting a new phone number. To solve this problem, SUTEL formed a Technical Committee for Number Portability. The purpose of the committee is to define the specifications and select the carrier to manage the number portability project. The committee is to complete their work by the end of August. The selected carrier than has four mon...

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MICIT) has provided new computer equipment to its Intelligent Community Center or CECI by its acronym in Spanish, for the community of Miramar, Puntarenas. The center is located in the local Library and members of the community will be able to use six new computers made available which include Windows 7, Office 2010, webcams, headphones, 4gb memories and ...

Football fans in Costa Rica have a new home on the Internet. Goool.cr is an online social network that aims to bring together Tico fans of the world's most popular sport. According to Yariela Novo of digital newspaper Costa Rica Hoy, the idea of creating a dedicated social network for football (or soccer for some anglophone countries) began two years ago. The company behind the network is E-Way, ...

Siri, the smart personal assistant that made a splash debut last year along with the iPhone 4S now talks Spanish. Is Siri ready for Costa Rica? Will she (it's a female voice) be able to understand Tico commands and the unique idioms and nuances attached to the Spanish language in Costa Rica. Don Alonso Castro is a Tico iPhone expert whose love affair with Apple iDevices started with an iPod Nano ...

Top Costa Rica News Costa Rica Technology Insight 2012 is being held in San Jose on June 19 and 20. The conference is organized by the Export Promotion Agency of Costa Rica (PROCOMER) and the Costa Rican Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies (CAMTIC). If you cannot attend the conference, you can follow it on their iPhone app. They did not release an Android app for this confer...

According to an official press release (PDF) from the National Chamber of Tourism in Costa Rica (CANATUR in Spanish), a new mobile app for Android-powered smartphones and the Apple iDevices will allow users to find out more about special offers and promotions. The name of the app is Toditico, which is a colloquial diminutive for "absolutely everything." Toditico can be downloaded from the iTunes ...

Many Latin American consumers are ready to leave their wallets at home and begin making payments at retail establishments with their smartphones. The necessary factors of familiarity with technology and willingness to use it are certainly there. In Costa Rica, the mobile payments market is timidly being investigated, despite a strong mobile penetration. In a recent study released by MasterCard Wo...