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Is There a Problem Here?

tranx — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000

So last week I was with a friend of mine who does a lot of IT freelance consulting in the city of Nairobi. He wanted my opinion on how to solve a particular problem that he had come across. The problem is this:

There is a client who runs a certain business that generates a lot of text files (about 10,000 a week). These are small and simple text files but they are important hence they need to be backed up and also uploaded to a website online. How do you reliably automate this?

Apparently the solution he was looking for was a program that he could buy that does this. Nothing wrong with that, right? Yes. But this is not the first time I have come across such a relatively simple problem that computing can solve. All of them follow the same basic pattern: a company needs a way to automate one of their internal processes, usually to reduce some costs and they give their usual “IT person” the task to find a solution for them. Said IT person then finds some software to do the job or one that comes close. Almost always, the end result is a compromise because little software out there really ever does exactly what your company’s peculiar processes need.

The thing that nags me about all this is that most of these problems can be solved by a good programmer in little time. And the best part… the resulting solution will not be a compromise, the programmer can build a solution that exactly matches the needs. We’re not talking about huge programs like Ms Word or even Notepad or Ms Paint, most of these solutions can be done by a tiny little ‘script’.

So this begs the questions: are there no programmers who can come up with these little scripts? Why is the default solution always to look for some software “out there”?

Where do all the programmers go after they graduate from the seemingly millions of computer colleges in town?Similar Posts:

Google Brings NFC To Kenya

Kelvin — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:25:21 +0000

I was aboard a CitiHoppa yesterday when the person seated next to me asked the conducter if he could pay via his Beba card. I didn’t really pay much attention to what followed but later on, I googled about it and found Beba.co.ke.

In their own words, The Beba card is a smart card that makes it easy to pay for bus fare and helps you save money. It’s convenient because you don’t have to worry about getting change.

To use your Beba card, you just tap your card on the card reader to pay.
You can get a Beba card for yourself, family members or coworkers.

What really got my attention, though, was their Terms of Service. Beba.co.ke is a product offered locally by Google that utilises the much talked about Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.

NFC is not new. It is based on technologies that have been around for nearly two decades. NFC allows two devices to communicate when they are placed near each other (or when they touch each other). NFC technology is already big in Japan – you can use your NFC-enabled phone to buy train tickets in Tokyo or as a contactless payment system.

My guess is that the Beba card is an experiment by Google to try and determine whether this technology can actually work locally. If successful, in theory we could all get similar cards and use them not only for bus tickets but to pay for meals, for shopping at supermarkets, and anything else, really. Exciting, eh?

Learn more: What is NFC, and why do we care?

What do you think of this?

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The Cesspit That is Kenyan “Job Sites”

wham — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:42:59 +0000

So, recently, a friend of mine who had struggled for a long time looking for an employee, decided to send the job details to one of the many Kenyan job sites out there. They had a notice on their homepage that if you sent job details to them via email, they would post the job to an audience of thousands. They were right.

Soon, my friend’s inbox was flooded with job applicants. He’s extremely happy and cannot thank the Kenyan job sites enough. He’s still sorting through them and is certain that he will get what he needs.

This intrigued me a little and I had a deeper look at what had happened. Not only had his little job advert appeared on the site he posted too, but it had “magically” spread through Kenyan web space like you would not believe. It was suddenly on all Kenyan job sites, it seems. Big sites, small sites – they did not seem to care.

What might interest you, though, is that his ad also ‘magically’ appeared on heavy-hitters N-soko (by nation Media), Dealfish and Brighter Monday. It seems that these large sits employ someone (or perhaps a bot) to go through the other, small sites, and copy their content (at least as far as job ads go). Worse, the ad that appeared on these “heavy-hitters” was absolutely worthless to a job seeker – they had removed the contact address before posting the job ad. Can you believe that?

How would akina Dealfish gain from posting a job ad that no one can apply to? Sad truth is that they don’t really care. All that these job sites, big or small, are after is eyeballs. They want to post as many job openings as possible in hopes of attracting as many job seekers as possible. I would wager that they dont care if these job seekers actually find jobs….. they only want them to click on their little adsense adverts. And that, my friends, is business.

Of course I am not saying that anyone is doing any wrong – in fact I think that the whole system put together serves job seekers very well. As my friend learnt, it is also extremely useful for employers. At the end of the day it is just business – only at the cost of endless copying and/or plagiarism to entice job seekers and hope that they click on some adverts. This must be one of the easiest “online businesses” to start in Kenya, right?

As they say, if you get a product/service for free then think again. You are the product.Similar Posts:

Making Money – Knowing When to Quit

tranx — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:02:55 +0000

An old nugget from doshdosh.com:

Making money anywhere involves understanding the value of your business, idea or website. Are they profitable or are you attempting the impossible by trying to squeeze blood from a stone?

We all have many ideas on what types of money making websites to set up and we often execute these ideas only to find them withering due to neglect or intense competition from others.

Knowing when to terminate a project is just as important as starting one. By cutting off these additional channels, you can focus exclusively on the ideas that will actually make you money.

According to a Forbes article on this topic, there are three main reasons why you should consider dumping your great money making ideas. Headlines below come from the article, comments made are mine.

1. Paying Customers Never Show Up
Are you getting sales? What do your visitors say or think about your online business? Is your website or service well received? These are some points to assess once a project has been initiated.

If you don’t meet your goal forecast, reevaluate your business model or tweak it to better fit the target market’s needs. If you still don’t make money after all these efforts, terminating or selling your business will help you avoid unnecessary costs.

At bottom, it doesn’t matter how ingenious your product is–if you can’t communicate its value, it may as well not exist.

2. You Can’t Sustain a Competitive Advantage
It is important to have a long-term plan to cope with other competitors in your field. If your idea is truly novel, you should expect a bunch of copycats. To succeed to constantly adjust your website to provide an unique selling proposition.

Allocating a significant portion of your income towards consistent marketing and promotion is always a good idea after the initial site launch.

Remember: Your idea is what gets you in the game; your competitive advantage is what keeps you there. If you can’t figure out how to stay ahead in your market, start looking for a new one.

3. You’re Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job
A great money making idea only reaches its full potential when you support it 100%. You need to push your idea as much as possible if you truly believe it. If you are passionate about professional blogging, giving up your day job to focus on your projects is a move you will eventually have to consider.

Chances are, if you’re going to make that leap, you’ll do it sooner rather than later. Commitment to an idea spurs action. Driven entrepreneurs can’t wait to hit key milestones–incorporation, building prototypes, drumming up customers.If you’re not moving fast, it’s probably time to move on.

If your idea fulfills all the above conditions, it might be better to drop it in favor of another idea that would fare better. My personal belief is that most ideas will turn out to be profitable if you have in-depth industry knowledge, sufficient personal networks and the will to sustain it through the difficult initial growth period.

Play it smart and be intuitive when building your business empire and you will eventually generate a lucrative income from all your businesses or projects.

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How to Think Like An Internet Entrepreneur [Interview]

wham — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:56:29 +0000

Readers, we’d like to introduce Gerald to you. We learnt about him from this comment on a previous Like Chapaa article. Gerald is an Internet entrepreneur who has a network of 15 websites. He is also part of the team that runs Mara Gates which is a local tours company that relies on the web to drive the business.

We thought Gerald’s would be an amazing story. I hope you agree.

Q. Gerald, tell us about yourself and what you do.
I graduated from JKUAT university with a Bsc Science degree specializing in Mathematics, Chemistry in 2002. After university, I didnt want to become a teacher so I went to a college in Westlands to learn web design and other IT related studies. It was in that college that I learnt about Internet marketing.

I took it upon myself to learn SEO, PPC advertising etc and other forms of internet marketing. I also read stories of people that were making good amounts of money on the internet and this intrigued me.

The challenge was that there were no colleges in Kenya that taught Internet marketing well and the ones that touched on it were offering very shallow or basic information.

After college, I got a job with a tour company whose main source of business was the Internet and my work was to get more leads for the company through my self taught skills. After a few months business started increasing for that company and they had to move from a house they were operating in to a big office in town. From there on I increased my knowledge in Internet marketing.

I worked for 6ys for that tour firm until i resigned in 2009 to start my own company to help businesses make money off the Internet. The company is called Ebiz Connect Solutions – http://www.ebiz.co.ke.

In the process of time I also opened up a tour company towards the end of 2009 with a friend of mine. Our main source of traffic/business was from the web. This tour company, for its small size, has been doing very well and is able to compete with the big players in the tourism industry.

Q. How did you find out about selling sites and how did you start?
I stumbled upon selling of sites just by reading discussions going on in the internet. Thats when I came to learn about Flippa.com. I needed some money for personal issues so i decided to list one of my sites on Flippa.com and even though i didnt sell it at the price that i listed on that auction site, someone contacted me and we concluded the sale later.

[ For the readers: Gerald built and sold the website: www.cutedogbreeds.com ]

Q. www.cutedogbreeds.com?? How did that come about?

Since dogs have a huge fan base around the world, in 2007 I decided to built a site where people could upload photos of their dogs and rate them. To make some money, i incorporated Google Adsense into the site.

Q. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Concerning building a business off the web, the main challenge is that there is so much information to digest on the internet that it can incapacitate you from doing anything. There are too many “experts” out there trying to tell you what works or what doesnt and some of this information contradicts one another.

You also need to be cautious of sites peddling “secrets” that will teach you how to make thousands of dollars per month online. Yes there are genuine business persons that are making millions off the web but there are many more lying to unsuspecting people. Research first.

The other challenge is being consistent. Its easy to build a site but the hard part is marketing it. If one is not consistent and strategic in marketing, you will end up not making money and will end up dropping the project and start another one and this can become an endless cycle

Q. What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in Kenya?

For internet entrepreneurs some of the challenges are;
- Slow internet connections
- Lack of proper training in Internet marketing
- Limited startup capital to run the business

Q. What was critical to your success?

Not giving up. Also you need to treat making money online as a serious business and not just something you try

Q. What about the competition and marketing, do you need to advertise, print flyers participate to conferences or is it mostly word of mouth?

Just like any offline business, for your website to be seen, one needs to advertise. Whether offline or online, you need to have a budget for marketing your business. From personal experience, I prefer marketing my internet businesses online as this is more effective.

There are various methods you can use to market your business online. Some of them include optimising your site and building backlinks to your site in order to get high rankings in Google. You can also use PPC (Pay Per Click) to advertise your services. PPC is very effective if done correctly. My tour company gets a lot of business by advertising through PPC

Q. Do you think that in order to “make it big” online you have to live in a western country? Or does Kenya offer more or less the same opportunities?

You dont have to live in any western country to be a success. You can do it right from the comforts of your home. Our tour company is doing well and we are selling travel all over the world right here in Kenya.

Q. Where do you see yourself and your business (es) in the next 5 years?

Making passive income from Affiliate marketing about $3000 per month

Q. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Create a plan and strategies my income expectations and how to execute each goal consistently in order to reach the expectations that I have set.

Q. What advice do you have for internet business entrepreneurs in Kenya?
Building an internet business takes time, effort and money. Many want to try and cut corners believing the lie that one can make money quickly and fast.

That is all for today, readers. You can get in touch with Gerald by visiting his website: www.ebiz.co.keSimilar Posts:

Learn Programming – The New Literacy

Kelvin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:52:37 +0000

A while back, I had written this:

In case you have not realised it yet, computer programming skills are as necessary for success today as reading and writing have been for the past few centuries.

In fact, “You’re a second-class citizen if you don’t know how to read and write today, and in twenty or thirty years the same will be true for people who don’t have basic computer programming skills. Those who don’t understand–at the very least–the concepts of order-of-execution, variables, data structures and recursion will be as socially and economically disadvantaged as the illiterate are now.

I have been taking CS 101: BUILDING A SEARCH ENGINE from Udacity for a few weeks now. I must be honest and say that the course represents one of the very best learning experiences I have ever had. The course instructor, Professor David Evans, is naturally gifted at teaching complex ideas in simple terms.

If you have ever wanted to learn how to program, you have the most golden opportunity to do it now. Have you ever been frustrated when you hired a “techie” who played around with you? This is your opportunity to make sure it does not happen again. Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Learning to code is never a wrong move. Especially in today’s world.

Just to show you how accessible a good ICT education is today, following the CS101 class, Udacity are introducing the following (among others):

CS253 – WEB APPLICATION ENGINEERING
Description: Web applications have the power to provide useful services to millions of people worldwide. In this class, you will learn how to build your own blog application starting from the basics of how the web works and how to set up a web application and process user input, to how to use databases, manage user accounts, interact with other web services, and make your application scale to support large numbers of users.

CS262 – PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Description: This class will give you an introduction to fundamentals of programming languages. In seven weeks, you will build your own simple web browser complete with the ability to parse and understand HTML and JavaScript. You will learn key concepts such as how to specify and process valid strings, sentences and program structures. Then, you will design and build an interpreter – a program that simulates other programs.

Yes, you read right. In about 14 weeks you can go to a complete and utter beginner to someone who can create their own simple web browser. How cool is that?

Personally, I think this is a godsend for us in the “developing world”. In my opinion, our tertiary education systems are not at an acceptable level of quality, especially for computer science and similar disciplines. Udacity and others like it represent a great, great opportunity for us.

Nicolas Pottier of Nyaruka puts it best:

Suddenly, the very best education is available to everyone. Suddenly it doesn’t matter if you live in America or Rwanda, the opportunity is yours. And that’s why I think the greatest effect of Udacity will be felt not in America, not in Europe, but in developing countries like Rwanda. Because the improvement in quality over what is offered here is astronomical.

I fully expect that everybody who finishes the eight week Udacity course will be better prepared than those who finish four year university programs in Rwanda. And that’s not unique to Rwanda. Every developing country suddenly got a world class computer science school donated to them. [Read More]

Are you as excited as I am?

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How To Make Money From Nothing But Numbers!

Kelvin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:43:54 +0000

This is a free online course about Cryptography. In the video below, the course instructor mentions that he will teach you how to use cryptography to “make money from nothing but numbers”! Sounds great, ama?

Cryptography means “secret writing”. It is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties.

Udacity will be offering a course on Applied Cryptography starting April 16^th 2012. The course is free and open to everyone.

I do not know about you, but I would love to learn how to make money from “nothing but numbers”!

See you in class?

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Daktari Mtanzania … Now in The US of A

wham — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:15:13 +0000

You remember those ads you see on the streets that go like: “Daktari Mtanzania anayetibu magonjwa 75…..?

Well, have a look at this:

I will cast a powerful SPELL to get you whatever you want for $5
Spell Caster, Master Shaman Crystal Indigo will perform an extremely powerful spiritual spell for ANY need that you desire. Want to find your true soul mate? Want an ex- lover back? Need more money? Want to lose weight fast? Do you have a serious problem that needs fixing?The spell I cast will quickly and dramatically change your life!

YES, now you can get services za “Daktari” online, for $5…

Link: I will cast a powerful SPELL to get you whatever you want for $5

What do you think?

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Aroma Cafe

Kelvin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:26:02 +0000

The brilliant, curious, story of how one establishment in Mombasa has used the on-going debate on “husband battering” in Kenya to do some brilliant marketing:

From NTV Kenya:

The upsurge in the number of husband battering cases continue to dominate debates in various parts of the country but in Mombasa the issue has been captured in a different way. One café in the coastal city has chosen to put it in black and white. Aroma Café has written pro-men messages for anyone to see and the management say it is their way of discouraging the vice that has given Central Kenya a bad name. The high-class restaurant has even gone to the extent of preparing cookies labeled “Love Men” in their effort to condemn husband beating.

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Learning Marketing from Email Spammers

tranx — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:32:41 +0000

A little Gem from DoshDosh:

Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.

So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.

You don’t know the audience well. So how do you increase the chance that they’ll even open up your email and clickthrough on the links within it? By treading on common ground and leading with the familiar. People might not know who you are but they know Angelina Jolie, who incidentally is the most popular celebrity name used by email spammers.

2.28% of all emails sent in July 2008 contained her name in the subject field. As a personality famous worldwide, she’s an alluring referential point spammers use to breach the walls of unsavvy targets. The familiar is powerful. That’s why you’ll see domain urls that are almost identical to official institutions or receive emails that use the addresses of people you know.

But that’s not all, spammers also love to use current events as bait. Events like political elections, conflicts between nations and major sports events like the Olympics are all fodder used to hook unassuming users into clicking on links or videos loaded with Trojan viruses.

When you want to get someone to do something, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect.

Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus on getting your audience interested first, because if they tune out right from the start, they’ll never absorb your pitch or give you a second chance.

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