My new job at the shop [part 2]

As for this second post lemme discuss the experiences there are at the shop / I shall put up another one for 'lessons learnt from the shop'

There are many moments of the day;

7 that I can describe for now.

TheAwkwardMoment: you look familiar
TheAnnoyingMoment: when there's no sale for a long duration and the first person comes in to ask for change.
The coolMoment: when the customer just wants to spend so you decide what to sell.
The eye opening moment: when you get a fake k note.[ then you go ahead and give out genuine 900+ currency]
The bored moment; when the phone charge dies and there's no more surfing.
The happy moment when you're closing the shop to go rest.
The lol moment when #lorryimebeba

more profound experiences perhaps?
lessons maybe

My new job at the shop [part 1]

Most of you who we're connected on Facebook, twitter and g+ already know what I've been doing lately. Shop keeping. These days i work as a daytime shopkeeper at my sister's shop. She's my employer, or boss if you so wish. The shop is for selling sodas, cakes, juices, fruits (& salads), cookies, and sweet milk among others (because we're meant to sell swag too as my boss puts it). I have been here now for a week ( and still counting). It's a complete new lifestyle. What I'm learning here is not what you Google, Wikipedia or listen in a class. It's a lot, so much that there should be an exam at the end of it.

At the shop I sell, welcome customers, answer questions, wipe the shop surfaces, smile at 'potential' customers, gaze, doze, wonder, read, think and most importantly surf all day. Lemme just tell you what i mduties are for the day, maybe in the next post i'll post more of photos and experiences i have being there;

In the morning on opening the shop i mop the floor, yes not a joke. The prepare fruit salads and fruit juices. That's all then i'm ready for the day's sales.

The rest of the time i'm usually on my tablet tweeting, reading nres online, basically staying up-to-date with what's happening elsewhere. I twitpic photos during the day. There's too much standing at the shop. At least now i can appreciate bank guards who stand all day. #EndOfJoke

There are a number of things they should declare illegal for a shop to operate without. A radio. Imagine the boredom of looking around a quiet room for a whole day. It's even unconstitutional to dare to imagine.

I'm also current with times so I put up this notice to show my customers how much I care for security- theirs and mine by extension.

ION once I settled with this whole shop procedure I reverted to coding at the shop. Call it Brogramming cause I do it in style. I finished working on that maasai market website, it's a few steps from changing the way MaasaiMarket trades.

Na kwa hayo machache, lemme now attend to this 'customer'. I just hope it's not a question.

Look, Tuju ako Ngangari

This post is not sponsored asin i'm not paid to campaign for Raphael Tuju or mention him in a positive way. If i'll be paid anyway then you'll also be paid for commenting or reading through still.

Raphael Tuju is the guy who insipes my post today. Lemme first of all describe his campaign and what i think is it's impact or rather how it's working out.

Twitter
I'm really sorry bwana tuju for missing out on your full handle without an underscore. You're aware 'chelewa chelewa....' so that's why you're handle remains @raphael_tuju.

Your profile looks fine though the follower count is a little behind considering your opponents wako farthest. maybe you can consider doing a followback to catch up with the rest of them. Again your account is not verified but that's no big deal, with time we get to trust you with the content you have on it.

Hashtags: your best hashtag so far was #tujusheng. Worry not what we tweeps make fun of, in the end it's publicity is constant whether good or not so good.

Your youtube is also good at 58 subscribers, you know how good the sheng vid did you. It was funny, hilarious, captivating and just unexpected,
There was even a message for you by one almunjama of youtube, i hope you saw it, why don't you dare kenyans to upload videos of themselves with messages to you, it would be a fun idea, don't you think?

5,441 hits for this and still counting.

my point, raphael Tuju's campaign online though young, is something to look at, personally i like how it's being done, the content, plust the creativity in communicating to the online kenyans.
Stay ngangari my guy

a look at the new facebook

There are a number of things in the new fb that are a #Win. Here are just a few

1. The right activity bar that shows you what others are doing even thought they might not think they're being seen. Remember when I said that most people are usually online? These ones who just hide theirs activity and just don't want you to know that they've been online. Now every time they like a page, comment on their own photo, status, activity or someone else's you will know thanks to the sidebar on the left.

2. Subscribing to people's updates is a really nice idea especially when they've not put up privacy for their updates. Sort of copies twitters follow style but it's a nice way to get someone's update without them having to be listed as a friend on your profile. #Win

3. Favorites are also another thing I think will help me see what content I want to see. You don't exactly want to see a certain persons update at some time and maybe you want to see someone's updates at another certain time. A good distinction is during weekdays and at weekends. You can agree that the talk on the feed is usually different for different people on your live feed

4. Recent Stories and 'From Earlier that day' You may want to see what's latest and what interesting happened earlier that day. However I may never know what criteria they use to arrive at what's interesting for you especially now that what interests different people doesn't necessarily follow a pattern, formula or curve on a Cartesian plane

word is, anybody who writes code, design or is involved in thinking about the development of a part of an application appreciates what facebook has done to come up with the new site

#gkenya | Kosa si kosa

The other day at the g-kenya I made yet another big mistake with my tongue, brain rather.
Sorry let's introduce you to my subject then we continue flowing it.

I got an invite for day 2 and as sincere as I was I only came for that day. It's good sometimes to be sincere I must say but only for yourself and not for others.
Back to my point, KBO had a launch at the event. KBO stands for Kenyan Businesses Online. It's a free websites solution for small and medium enterprises in Kenya whereby they can create a website in less than half an hour and it gets hosted on kbo.co.ke as a subdomain.

Being a day2 attendee, I didn't know about this kbo thing but anyway there was no harm. Screen 2 was the introduction point and that's where I got to learn about it. It's a really nice idea for businesses to come online. Brilliant in fact. However there's a challenge posed on both ends.

First the people don't really think it's cool to have a subdomain for their businesses and this is the biggest fallback for the domain and for the content they want to get to come online.

Secondly website guys won't like the idea and this is the part where my mistake comes in. I asked the 'Chinese lady' how it would be should people get more people to signup and maybe charge them as a service both to set-up and maintain the websites. Needless to say we almost had a fight. She was so mad at the question you'd think we had a quarrel. A mere question. Seeing the damage was already done and now I had nothing to lose I went ahead to comment,' this is Kenya madam, you get?' now this was the last nail on the coffin. She said Kenya doesn't develop because of people like me who think it's write to do that,' it's immoral, illegal, not acceptable and just not right'.

Now that I may not dare do it, don't you think people will do that anyway?

E-Voting, is it all?

At the end of last week we had a successful conference. The 12th annual ICT conference Strathmore. among the speakers invited w

as Mr Ahmed Isaak who talked about how they went about to come up with a reliable voting system guided by integrity. The IIEC was formed in 20

08 after the former Electoral Commission of Kenya flawed badly in 20

07.

"When people vote and go home, they think they have decided but actually it is the people who count the vote who decides"

The new IIEC has implemented IT alot more than just for appreciation. To start with they've begun on electronic voter registration to replace the manual (ORM) way of doing the same. He said this is how voters for 2012 will be registered. The elections are also monitored closely with a

double updating of vote counts on line. The will be a central collection of vote counts of different regions.

So far so good, the vote has not been interfered with. However for me that is half the problem. The peoples of Kenya are yet to be taught how to vote and vote wisely. Are we going to ride on a system that is water-tight but still have our vote influenced by tribe, money, region-ism etc? This is the bigger half of the problem we have. There's an mp who was voted in passionately by the people of his constituency after literally splashing money in all the neighbourhoods and using it to satisfy the vain needs of the voters like getting drunk. Thanks to the IIEC though, the integrity of the vote count was unquestionable. Looking at that scenario in whatever angle, don't you think the IIEC ought to do thorough civic education (i don't know how) or is it that we just need prayers?

Tuwafanyenini hawa?

I am going to update a status

There's a common statement among many of your friends "I don't facebook much these days."
I find it rather annoying cause this is mostly the reason why our online content does not get generated as much as it should because of these people who less often post/update their online profiles as much as they used to some time back. People were fast to try out all features of facebook against social humanity until now they don't want to use any of the same anymore.

There are plainly two reasons i'd use to explain why people don't want to use fb as much as they used to back then,

First of these reasons is that they got bored of facebooking, or that it's less fun these days. Why would you say it's less fun yet you now have more friends so that should mean a higher possibility of interesting people. These lot who use this reason are mostly the ones who talked to everyone, flirted with everyone else and were in a relationship with all of the remaining ones. What's bad is that they log in daily to these sites but rarely want to get noticed so they carry out no activity at all. They keep seeing your updates daily occasionally 'liking' and after 6 months they say hi on and claim that you've been lost and how they've missed YEW. Ok that would be a good stunt if you were doing some professional PR for yourself, elsewhere you've failed cause this conversation doesn't even last then again you begin another journey of months before saying the same thing to the same people.

The second category is the ones who actually got busy and really don't have much time to talk to people on social media. I don't hate on these group for their sincerity but the bottom-line is that they also deserted social media.


I'm going to belong to none of these groups. For as long as I'm able to i shall tweet,update my status, make a new connection on linked in, add another person on google+ and share good material on the internet. I shall participate to healthy discussions online and read more blogs online. I shall be part of the internet society for as long as i can.
this i believe will be good of me as a citizen of the web.

shall you update you're status with me and keep online content alive?

2nd ActiveWeb Workshop

Two companies have teamed up for a web workshop. Savvy Africa and Passive Softwares Technologies
They have called it ActiveWeb Workshop. it's a second after the first successful one held on 5th-8th July 2011 at the Meridian Hotel.

About the Web Workshop


The Web Workshop is the 1st ever prestigious web
workshop in East Africa that addresses the modern corporate
website development. The workshop covers corporate websites
from strategic planning to results analysis. The aspect of website
security is most emphasized.

Who Should Attend ?

Anyone seeking technical knowledge on implementing
a corporate content management website. (Joomla CMS).
Professionals in IT, Marketing, Public Relations, Digital Content Mng.
& Web Developers or any departments charged with website
management for corporate organizations.

They intend to cover through the following categories of web

• Joomla CMS
• Joomla Security
• SEO
• E - Marketing
• Social Media
• Content Mgt.

Registration
You may register online at wwww.savvyafrica.com or
www.softwares.co.ke download fill the registration form
and send by post or email to info@savvyafrica.com or
info@softwares.co.ke

cost

I'll not say anything about the costs here on my blog since this is not advertising but just a feature I'm doing as a way of passing information on what's happening in town. I however think that there should be a reduced cost for students in order to cater for people like me who are very interested but for a reason or another may think that some charges are costly

Overview
The timing for such events in my opinion is well timed with the increased connectivity of the world in all ways of interaction. I missed the first one, i'm a student so you should understand and try figure out what could have caused me not to attend. This second one however is one i want to attend even if for just a day and get a feel of how it's actually applied in business.
You may have a look at (download) the brochure from here.

PS. For this publicity it would be nice if the companies sponsored me fro two days so that i can cover what and how the event goes.

M-pesa cred

M-pesa is just but a life-changing miracle. How we're able to send money through mobile is a phenomenon worth the wide usage it safaricom enjoys. The idea of agents to me is the only limiting factor for m-pesa cause that renders it unusable when the agents are not there.
My proposition idea on this is the similar approach to how we top-up our credit account on our phones.

scratch-card vendor [photo from business daily]

There are a number of advantages of this idea if it were to be implemented.
1.  This could be an anytime transaction. We could be able to top-up our m-pesa accounts at any time of the day or night regardless of whether the agent has opened or not.
2 There would be no such a thing as 'float imeisha' or the other forms of nonsence you're told at an m-pesa agent when they don't want to do the transaction simply because it's not of much profit as withdrawing is to them.
just like you can send someone to buy you credit[airtime] you could be able to send someone to buy you a card for m-pesa top-ups. Personally i don't see why one needs an id to deposit money to any account of choice. Even in banks we deposit money to the account we feel like, and that has no security risk- i think.

There are disadvantages too.
First major setback is the cost of the cards literally, they have to be printed, transported and sold to distributors at a lower price than normal to leave a margin for the distribution to make business out of it, i don't think this is so much an issue since the amount we pay for other transactions that is sending, paying bills and withdrawing is already a handsome return to safaricom and the agents and so in my proposition safricom should easily forfeit profits on the service and leave it all to the distribution channel. The point is making m-pesa more popular even though it already is a in a major way. That translates to keeping their market share and innovation too.
Something else i think is the insecurity both to the people handling the cards and to safaricom. To distributors since they'll now be handling money more directly than just having the normal airtime which they can't utilize for monetary sell directly
. I honestly don't know a remedy to that but with time there definitely would be one or at least a better way of doing it.

used up scratch cards [photo from all things mobile]

Worst of all is the physical waste of the used cards. The damage to the environment would be terrible should we try that since the already existing scratchcards system is already a problem. But between mobile money and  the environment, which one people seem to need more?? m- money deff!

So now the question, would it be viable anyway??

TECH BLOGS [mid-size]

I like to talk stuff related to technology, of course that is what excites me to talk about however wrong or not i am in matters concerning Technology. Of blogs, I like reading blogs both in our region and in the wider sphere. VentureBeat huffing-ton post Globe and mail are among blogs i frequent.
I like how in 'our' region blogs have stepped up their game.
The blogs of kina Techweez, techmtaa and the like have a good record of being updated so that means there's content. Authors who write for these blogs have also increased. another plus.
The above blogs are what I'd call Top Blogs that have been accepted far and wide and have massive readers.

Then we have these back-street blogs who blog about the other bloggers who blog seriousness.i consider this mid-size blogs important cause most of them talk of opinions. Opinions form a basis for ideas which when looked into are polished then implemented as real-life solutions to the world. My point, mid-sized tech blogs are also important in this game.
Anyway the point is our 'younger' blogs should also have some form of recognition and appreciation for they hatch golden eggs too.
So today when you visit one of these blogs, please do leave your reactions, comments. Participate in a healthy discussion and help breed an idea into being.

Why Twitter for me

Here’s just what makes me think twitter’s on an upper side

Follow your interests

Twitter is such a miracle especially for my pursuits of knowledge. Ever since I joined I've had to spend less time on other sites on the internet and more of twitter. This is simply because the collective web is on twitter. And so this has made it easier to find out something of your interest. Definitely on some sort of info I need google for more info on a story or to get a certain website I'm looking for. Twitter however allows you to follow people of your interests and who actually talk about things that excite you.

In my opinion this is a great idea since in life we tend to hang out with those people who excite us and not just the people we call friends just because we know them or have been introduced to at some point in life, Word is birds of a feather tweet together.

 

What's happening?

Twitter is a bit more clever than Facebook(in my opinion of course) to ask this question. The question by fb is 'what's on your mind'. Honestly what's on some people's minds is that which you don't want to know. Commonly on people's minds these days are Issues, gossip, hatred, gender stuff and more silly stuff. Fb is the platform for all that.

Point is you need know what's happening, but what's on people's mind, especially those of different interests, you need not know.

 

140 characters

Once I wrote a tweet longer than that I got a message like "You'll have to be more clever than that". makes you feel sort of silly to get such message, and more so when the tweet you were posting was not so clever. This assures the timeline of brevity, simplicity and clarity by extension. Links and short descriptions are most common to direct you to the longer story. This also assures a neat looking TL with only text of equal size.

Trends

On trends I'd think I stick to #kenyansOnTwitter who almost literally run social media in kenya as a team with all sorts of people [#TeamRoast #Tweefs #Geeks #idiots #MkzImmigrangs #bullys  and others I'd rather not mention ]. Trends are so cool and spread like wild-fire. Shout out to #KOT for exaggeration skills on basically all trends. They practically exhaust all the info on a trend.

 

Verified accounts

The fact that we have verified accounts that give us the confidence that we're actually following/unfollowing the actual person we want to is a BIG plus. We are able to know who. Parodies I must say also add salt to the whole picture too.

 

Retweeting: is also a cool feature that extends the reach the information contained in  a tweet.

 

PS

A negative for twitter as you follow your interests is mob thinking. Somebody starts all these positive and negative vibe.i find most of the population that join in to participate as the crowd who not necessarily share similar opinions but  just flow to keep the vibe flowing

 

A monday with airtel #NiKuchagua

There was confusion in the morning…

Everybody I was calling sounded strange and unfamiliar. Personally I don't like the question "who's this ?" in a phone conversation. One of my very good friends whom I called in the morning was so courteous. This good friend(call her W) of mine is one of those people you never hear say hallo (of course due to the informality of how you relate) They start from 'sema fala'.

After a number of calls is when I decided to check it out. Of course I remember the mischief I'd done in the morning but I din't care that it had any effect, sort of escaping reality of what I'd done. I'd decided to try on some experiment you don't want to try with whatever number you use mainly. I chose a number on airtel.  As of any of you who'd dare this try *111#, then choose menu number 3 and choose the number of your choice. You will be in the same situation as I am.

Problem is I have had to go to the airtel customer care center on koinange street who haven't helped. I'm made to understand that airtel system is down and so I have to 'wait until the day the system is back'- this is according to the people who are said to care about customers. Meanwhile  here is the number I  chose. +254789114840 ugly as friend W says. I'm also made to understand that my other number does not exist at the moment.

This is what has meant that I stay off the network for the whole of today.
 I'm sorry for the inconveniences for all who are trying to reach me on mobile.

I Touched a child's heart

Today the  14th of may 2011 is by coincidence the same day  as it was last year 14th of may. By coincidence I wore the same t-shirt on both days and on more coincidence was on the same course- touching a child's heart and by extension; charity, something I enjoy as much as I do enjoy being on the internet.

catch up with me on #Cnn tomorrow :)

On 14th of may last year, I participated in the matter heart-run a walk that saves many lives of children in need of heart operations. For me it was a walk leave for the 'run' in the 'heart-run'. I literally walked all the way. Anyway, bottom-line is the cause was and would still have been met to the same effect.

On this different Saturday morning (2011), I wake up in Kitui. I'm here to help come up with a dorm for girls at mutini secondary school. This school is quite interior and majorly 'marginalized'. At a glance, you are able to learn that this school lacks facilities that make a secondary school. To start, there's no dh(dining hall) so they will feed under trees. Their labs are also pathetic, dorms insufficient and loos worst of them all. In fact they should we tell truth, they need another whole new school. With these lacking facilities they are able to make a B+. I respect the effort.

Back to our story, today we were putting the sheets on the roof as to do the final works of the project. We've been here for a week now and the kind of hospitality we get on each single day of our stay there is heavenly. Our visitor-hood never seems to grow old. We are honored to be introduced in front of local leaders, board of governors of the school, parents, literally the whole village knows we're here on a friendly mission. And so with this welcomeness we strive our best to have them some better place to sleep in by the end of this month. When it is complete, we shall have housed 100 girls in a new dorm. Shall we not have touched a child's heart?

 some photos at kitui

carrying the sheets in.

on the job!

men at work

work men on the pick-up

EasymoveKE ~We'll be moved soon

Easymove is what I did for my IS project last semester and I'm of the belief that it could be the next hit in the movements scene in Kenya.

 Let's first of all do facts as I tell you on what it's about. The first thing I must agree to is that we have few moving companies in Kenya that have an online presence, moreso one that uses it's online presence to interact with a huge chunk of people.  Moving companies I know of include cube movers, prestige movers, and others in the bulky moving world  and one world, G4S, Dhl, in the courrier world and all the others you know of.

However in my findings, 'open-source' movement carries the day with individuals who have lorries, pick-ups and other forms of transportation such as trailers, hand-carts(mkokoteni) who indeed collectively make more movements than any of these organizations that offer cargo movement services.

So my idea is to have an online platform where we have all these individual or small companies register as 'movers' and people in need of these services(I called them 'movees' in my system) could log on and possibly use this platform to get this information and thus easier information outreach over internet.

Another fact I'd take some measure of courage to confess is that my public skills are awfully wanting. Murphy's law proved true as I was presenting/defending this project on Thursday. They say what can go wrong will go wrong. Some functionalities of my proj flopped working during presenting just for some code I'd changed on the very morning. All's not lost anyway as I'm working on it for the next few months to have it launched online soon even before completion. I just created an a/c on twitter the handly is @easymoveKE, you could follow in support of the cause.

That's the basis of my idea,  will keep sharing  more of my experiences in development as time goes by

 Thanks

Concert on livestream [Christian]

nairobiyouthconvention on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

This concert was streamed on Sunday evening, Really a blessing to believers present at the youth convention. livestream also has lots of other streams of sermons and other sessions at the camp. Well brought to you by Onpoint IT truly on point.

Old Gospel; New Technology [1]

It's definitely a great Easter weekend, I hope your weekend was as great with the sole purpose being the remembrance of salvation.I was lucky to have celebrated my birthday on 22nd which this time around was on good-Friday. I spent this Easter at kabete TTI for an extremely wonderful youth convention in my life yet. Of-course for the convention organization itself to be able to be hosted on the internet is in itself a great idea and progress in spreading God's wonderful message using current technology. There was also a page on Facebook, so as to also enjoy in the goodwill of social media in the same.  Use of Technologies like these is absolutely great especially in this age where it's use has spread widely both in the 'developed' and developing countries. My opinion on the gospel however is that the same old time gospel should be preached in the churches even with emerging trends.

Save for that here's an insight of what tech would be like back in the days of the old gospel.

Case [Moses]

Israelites as seen on google-earth(pasted from ICantRememberWhere.com)

Google maps- Moses while leading the Israelites from Egypt would definitely have needed Google maps for navigation through the desert, the red sea and around mount Sinai as well. I guess the IDEOS would have served him pretty well.

On that note Moses would also have required a tablet(say the galaxy s), of which I think he'd treasure it more than crashing in to the ground.

Twitter would also be a big hit in the days with moses having the largest share of follower. Picture the Israelites tweeting their journey with controversial leads like dathan and korah being the biggest haters probably #TeamRoast main members.Numerous radicals would also be on-board, hating like it's doom's day. As the saying 'every market has a mad man' there definitely would be those 'tweeps' with all sorts of handles ranging from the creative to those fonyfony handles you come across every-once in a while (@joshulito @aaronWag1 are sample handles) .

IPods would also be a common thing with introverts buried in earphones 27/4 of the journey.especially people like joshua, Aaron who least had an idea of the direction or time it will take them to get to their destination.

ushahidi platrofm would also have been used to aquire data from people's tweets. We read that a whole generation died in the wilderness, with ushahidi use they'd have been able to track information from multiple sources.Crowdmap aswell would come in handy for info mapping.

Finally i think android phone OS would be in use with the numerous handsets acquired at the safcom outlets before crossing red sea. android market would boom just like it does today. 

I Thank God  a wonderful Easter, i hope you do as well.

Number Portability #Nikuhama

Recently they enabled number portability for Kenyan subscribers across  network providers. It's however not as easy  to shift from one network to the other  as is shifting from #mkz to #twitter .There are a documents that are needed by the new network. Anyway it's something common to have 'original' documents needed as you enter anywhere (! including kanjo toilets) so we assume that it's acceptable for the new network to request for 'originals' as you enter their territory.

It's quite a common Kenyan trend to defect parties in a wave. Mostly it's the younger generation that'll tend to shift more from network to the other as some form of adventure, however retaining a number is also a thing the elderly phone users might be convinced to change providers especially for those who've had a number for a long period.

With this #nikuhama wave there are a number of things in the game that have to change, some for better some for worse.

The first thing have a feeling is that Should there arise a wave of shift from network to the other, 'marginalized' (smaller) networks in Kenya stand to gain(obviously) more so those that readily welcomes defectors. Airtel in my view would be the biggest gainer of these wanderers having started their campaign a good while ago with the number portability awareness so well CCK didn't have to put much effort to publicize the same.

Based on this argument, when smaller networks get numbers, there will arise a sort of level playground  having better positions in the market. Safaricom will from thence, have to regard to this marginalized service providers more as competitors than what they'd call AOB.

Interconnection between these networks will also improve with more subscribers across different networks.  With regards to this Safcom have to increase incoming traffic allowance . You will not be able to guess automatically to what network a subscriber belongs to and hence you can't even make prejudice on a call and the call rate. This definitely calls for some form of equality amongst the networks. The call rates therefore must be looked at once again and some form of standardization of making off net calls.

Money transfer is also an issue of dispute with safaricom having the major role in the market of money transfer. However the cost of transacting with safaricom's m-pesa has been for long the cry of many who now believe it's quite on the higher side and that we ought to have it's cost reduced. With 'marginalized' networks gaining porting defectors, their money transfer services are bound to improve which means some compe to the current leaders in this service.

It's clear that I support this growth of marginalized networks for the better of the telecommunication industry in future. I'd like to stop there but should anyone have figures of porting that have taken place I'd like to know of them, my email- billnguts@gmail.com

These are just a few of my foresights, from my point of ,,, inexperience.

Let's wait and watch

Incubator Incubate Incubation,,,,,

Incubation in Africa and mostly in Kenya has become the in thing. The timing for this is perfect especially with the explosion of ICT opportunities and possibilities. In just a month i have learned of new more incubation programs than incubate-es(to mean those who are beneficiaries of the incubation programs). I'm really for the idea that young ideas be improved, developed and brought into light where they can be able to shine and possibly change lives of people for better. Talking of incubation, the first i know of is SITT(Strathmore Information Technology Transfer) program which "seeks to commercialize ICT innovation in Kenya. The SITT Program is focussed on working with young ICT entrepreneurs, innovators and students in Kenya."(see kemibaro's blog on that).I trust we've heard of Safaricom Innovation  which kicked off in less than a month ago.
other 'kids on the same block include NAilab , HumanIPO,Mobile Monday-Kenya and i can predict we'll be seeing more of that in town.

My concerns however when i wrote this is from a different point of observation. I consider incubation now more of an industry rather than an industry-maker with all these players in the game. There is bound to be competition since the set incubatees in question is still the same. For as long as new incubators keep cropping up in town the grass will be shared among the available incubators. It's mathematical function x/yit's the denominator than changes/increases, the numerator remains the same.soon the grass is almost exhausted.
I think it's high time incubators started going to other 'smaller towns' to source for students who have ideas. Another idea would be to actually start thinking of involving high school students in this. who knows?, the next huge innovation would come from a teen. It's a great time incubators and the like started venturing into other grounds before we start seeing incubators for incubating other incubators


......just an opinion from my point of (inexperience)

My Adobe CS5

Just installed Adobe CS5 and I'm having the excitement of exploring what it has to offer.
My main focus on this CS5 was Dreamweaver for my web project I'm working on and plus a number of websites i wan't to be done with soon.


Where i got it and on whether it's licensed is rather obvious prejudice on Kenyan student both in IT and the rest. Anyway i assume it's not that big deal assuming most of Kenyan software users (especially personal use) don't buy software-> add that to #PeculiarKenyanHabits (on Twitter if you fancy). I however appreciate the effort to come up with such a powerful and useful software package.

I have used only two modules of the software

my menu showing the CS5 package

.Adobe contribute CS5 and of-course  Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.The new Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 is cool and has an easy-to use interface that improves the coding experience so much. What i like mostly of it is the vertical split function an improvement of the previous split screen.

I have also tried my hands on Adobe Contribute CS5 which in-line with it's name it's used in contributing to the internet. To sample it, it's what i used to post this blog-post.I'd first of all posted an empty post just to test if it works.
Something i also noticed is it's inevitable connection to the internet. I'm unable to cut communication between the software and it's author. I managed to get a number of serials which every time i connect to the internet using this latter blogging discovery(Adobe Contribute ) blocks the serials and i have to move on to the next. It's security against #PeculiarKenyanHabits 
seems on another level . I'mcurrently  running short of serials. Probably that will take me back to Dreamweaver8 if this one gets locked. << -- That's the sad point :(
All in all I'd recommend this software to anyone trying to hit mob birds in one stone

SMART BRANDS on social media

Looking at the growth of internet usage and information sharing being online is an unquestionable for any company worth it's name. much more latest trends show that social media is the new way to go as far as being online is concerned. Since your consumers are on social sites, it's of much importance to be there since they're your core sustainer as a marketer. History repeats itself and as from history. Looking at the way companies and different industries welcomed computerization  the same is expected with brands and social media as a current trend whose time is due.

Results of a recent TNS study that was conducted on companies listed on the NSE and their presence on social media were released at the event. A greater fraction of these companies have pages on facebook than twitter however the percentage of companies using their pages on twitter is much greater than facebook.

The fact that most companies now will be going into social media usage, it no longer is an advantage since all your competitors will be onboard the same platform as you are. What draws the line between the good and the better is dependent on the usage of these facility.

I find humble brands tend  more appealing  to online fans since they relate to the people not as a brand or an abstract entity but as a person. On twitter, Firefox is a perfect example of a humble brand which follows it's followers, safaricom is also a good example of such a brand.

My encouragement is on brands to make good and creative usage of social media to get an edge above the competition in social media