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Have you recieved the red call?

Martin Gicheru — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:39:23 +0000

Rumour has it that there is a certain number that is calling guys and they die in minutes. Some friends of mine in facebook like Stephen Musyoka have it that folks in machakos, their home district have recieved calls from a certain number that either appears in red or makes the screen red, and they proceed to die peacifully.

I even got a call in the midnight from my mother in law pleading with me not to take up any call from an unknown certain red number, saying she dont want me to die. So am wondering, did they promulgate kufa pap!

So others are going like this, on twitter there are :

#ghosttwitters- those who recieved the call but cant do without twitting
#mkufa- those who recieved cash from the red number
#kufapap- if you get it from the family bank ATM
#masaaYaKufa- when your time reaches

Are you wondering like me, how the number will appear like if you own a kabambe?

Well, it didnt take long for it to appear

dead

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Bandwith can take you down

Martin Gicheru — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:13:41 +0000

I was just going through real estate company websites in kenya and while at it noticed this.

Know what this means?
Well, either the website developer was ignorant of the clients hosting bandwith need, or the website owner does not know what their hosting involves.
Lemme break it down this way, when your website goes offline because of bandwidth limit exhaustion, this means its been centuries since the last time you logged on to your cpanel, or you probably dont know if one exists. now we all know that if you have a high traffic website, downtime means alot of loss in terms of customer credibility and sales.
Which brings brings me to this:

I start by some jargon explanation, i will assume you don’t know what it is (for the beginner)
Bandwidth, simply put, is data transfer rate.

And having your bandwidth exhausted means the bandwidth you were allocated by your web hosting company is less than you are using in terms of pageloads and downloads.

What are the indicators of bandwith exhaustion?

Bandwidth is refreshed monthly, so you may find a red indicator of bandwidth usage closer to the end of the month. This is the time you should watch closely at your cpanel. Below is the image you see at the back-end of your control panel.

In the above image you see that my bandwidth is almost exhausted, but i shouldnt worry, this tells me that you people are reading my blog, it also tells me that if the red colour almost closes in to the end i should ask my hosting company to add me some bandwidth, (ofcourse at a cost).

This is a necessary cost as it will save you embarrassment as a webmaster and will also save your employer some costs that would be incurred due to downtime. I would like to also add that the hosting space allocated should also be observed. This will also take you down if you dont watch it. Didnt intend to cover hosting space but i have to bundle it in. Hosting space can be used fast if you got lots of mail or upload alot of images. You either have to regulate those or ask your hosting company to add you some. Am telling you this in case your hosting company did not tell you this.

So you see these are some minor yet critical elements you need to observe when running a website. With time i will try covering all vital points you need to note when running a website. Bye for now

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Kikwete2010.co.tz, the presidential campaign

Martin Gicheru — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:35:32 +0000

Tanzanian president Hon Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete is showing us how to best do an online campaign. Bundled up with a complete online campaign gear, comprising of the carefully finished website Kikwete2010.co.tz, a facebook page , a youtube gallery and a twitter page, you can never go wrong about reaching to all the tech savvy and online followers.

With the website fully equipped with the president’s profile, achievements, objectives and campaign calendar this is a complete package. Picture this, most of the country’s working population has a good internet connection, thank to the infrastructure advancement of the country.

This means that they will be able to interact with the president’s campaign communication, get to ask questions via the site where you get to send a text message to the number 15016, a free service, facebook and twitter pages. The same goes to online contribution where you are able to send a text message with the words CCM to three separate numbers identifying the amount you want to donate from a list of 300, 500 and 1000 Tshs We are seeing the trends go hotter by the day with presidents going online. Starting with Obama, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, most of them are following this trend which is very effective as far as i can tell, and they do get lots of feedback, by the way.

So this Tanzanian president is leading the way for Tanzanians and the rest of us to realize the impact that is in the internet, social media and technology in general. Do you have plans for an online campaign, be it in your small business or large corporation?

Google introduces voice calls

Martin Gicheru — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:51:07 +0000

While Kenyans are busy haggling over which mobile service provider offers the cheapest rate, google was at it with voice call. Launched today, google voice call will enable you to call right from your inbox, provided you are a gmail user. What should surprise the mobile subscribers it that it is already available in the US at very low rates, and will roll out worldwide soon. So if you are travelling and are not willing to use mobile roaming because for some reason the roaming charges are high or possibly you are out of coverage, this will come in handy. Will work in your gmail inbox. So this is how it works:

First this works for gmail users, so as obvious you will require an account at gmail.
You will need to install voice and video chat in your computer.
Check the box next to Google Chat in your list of forwarding phones and the next time someone calls your Google Voice number, Gmail will notify you of an incoming call. You can take the call or even listen in as the caller leaves a message, in a single step right from your computer.

To make a call, just click the Call phone link in Gmail and enter any number or name from your address book.

All the calls you make from google voice will show your google voice phone number as the outbound caller ID and all international calls will use your Google Voice calling credit. Here is the video

How to get a free e-commerce website

Martin Gicheru — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:47:52 +0000

Wanna get a free website, I MEAN COMPLETELY FREE!! ecommerce website? Here’s how. Young kenyan managers are hosting a luncheon at hotel 680 Taj Palace hall on Saturday the 4th of september. So if you happen to have the spirit of a young entrepreneur, you know where to be on 4th of september.

Infoken Solutions, a premier web solutions company has partnered with Young Kenyan Managers and it is giving away 2 FREE! E-commerce websites and 5 Free Blogs to the winners of the prize draw during the Luncheon…You may want to contact Joseph Mutinda of Young Kenyan Managers on the number below to get your ticket today! You don’t want to miss this event of the year!

Ofcourse there will be loads of other prizes, Mutinda please confirm this.

At the luncheon, you get to interact with fellow enterprenuers and professionals at the start of the last quarter of the year when the country has just witnessed a re-birth with the taking to effect of the new constitution. The speakers at the event will be:

1. Mr. David Muturi-CEO, Kenya Institute of Management.

2. Prof. Mary Getui- Chairperson, National Aids Control Council

3. Mr. Joseph Malinda- Town Clerk, Nakuru County Council

4. Mr. Justus Kilonzi-CEO and Founder, Palsoft

5. Mr. Collins wanderi-Snr dep Commissioner, KRA

6. Mr. Peter Mutie-CEO, Kenya film commission and Chair, PRSK

7. Mr. Patrick Karanja-Horizon contact centre

The organizers however await confirmation few others. They also have a taped address from Ms. Anna Smith-CEO, WYWFT-Informal network for managers based in Charlotte,North Carolina, USA. Mc’s of the day will be Mr. Javas Bigambo assisted by Ms. Diana Kubebea who will will make sure the event is as lively as possible.

Check the young managers group for official invitation card. Kindly book your place at this historical by sending your details and registration fee either by sms on 0722-223084. The event costs 1000/- payable by mpesa on the same number. Happy networking :-)

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African Innovators Join Global Experts at Online Tourism Summit in Nairobi

Martin Gicheru — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:49:22 +0000

East African tourism industry stakeholders are set to benefit immensely from discourses on e tourism to be presented at a regional e tourism conference set for early next week. The conference, which will feature global online giants such as Trip Advisor and Expedia, will focus on how East Africa’s tourism sector can harness the potential of the web, especially following the enormous interest generated in Africa from the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The conference comes in the wake of increased optimism in Kenyan tourism sector following a peaceful referendum and an impending promulgation of a new constitution on Friday August 27.This, coupled with impressive results in tourist arrivals in past half compared to 2007, is set add an impetus to the already stabling growth fuelled by the improved internet connectivity.

Speakers at the event will include Trip Advisor’s Head of Emerging Markets, Helena Egan and leading Internet innovator Jerome Touze – the company’s CEO and one of the Founders of WAYN.com – the world’s leading travel social network, which has over 16 million members, globally.

Mr. Touze spoke at last year’s E Tourism Africa Summit in Johannesburg and he has since worked with South Africa Tourism on a social media campaign called the “Face of South Africa”, which has been hugely successful, attracting over 5 million views and 20,000 applications for the competition.

“We have achieved some amazing results through social media for South Africa Tourism and I am very pleased to be traveling to Nairobi to speak at the E Tourism East Africa Conference. Its great to see much more awareness and understanding from Tourist Boards about the importance of the web and social media as a strong marketing tool”, said WAYN.com co-CEO Jerome Touze.

E tourism Frontiers CEO Damian Cook, who is the convener, said that alongside the international speakers at this year’s summit, there will also be an impressive number of Africa based companies and projects presenting new and innovative ways of promoting and selling Africa online.

“Since our first conferences in Johannesburg and Nairobi in 2008, we have seen major changes in the way African tourism companies and destinations are using the web. We have some amazing projects in our line up this year- including South African company – watch?v=pJDc-ic-zXE who stream game drives live to the world via vehicle mounted webcams and provide Twitter updates and interactions with viewers as they go”, said Mr. Cook.

The ETF CEO added: “African Travel companies have seen the success of tourist produced online viral videos such as the Battle of Kruger, which has been viewed by over 50 million people, and they are now creating platforms for user generated content, reviews and discussions of their products. The web has really made it easy for small players to use technology, creativity and innovation to make a big connection with global markets. It is critical that tourism companies in across East Africa take advantage of online marketing opportunities. The E Tourism East Africa Conference will show them how”

Also presenting at the summit will be ecologist and author Dr. Paula Kahumbu – CEO of Wildlife Direct who have created a blogging platform and social network for conservation projects. Mr. Kahumbu will also be discussing how Tourism and Conservation can work together online.

Key sponsors of the conference include Kenya Commercial Bank, Safaricom and Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Wordpress introduces sharing

Martin Gicheru — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:29:21 +0000

Starting tuesday the 24th August, wordpress bloggers will be able to set sharing options inside their blog posts. this was announced at the wordpress blog.

See this video:

You will be able to set this in settings>sharing which is already available for wordpress hosted bloggers. I know you are thinking, what about the self hosted? Well, a week from now the plugin for that will be available in the plugins directory for you to use.

Currently you are able to choose from these services: facebook, twitter, press this, reddit, digg, stumbleupon, email to friend, print….these are the basic ones you may want. however if you wish to add any other you will get it at the Settings>sharing option in the dashboard. You can choose which of these services you want to display and in a range of different formats. If you have the custom CSS upgrade you can go even further and choose your own icons and layout. There is also added stats for all activity around this feature so you will be able to see what content people are sharing and on what services. Check out the sharing support article for more information on getting setup.

I believe its a nice idea, having all these features inside wordpress for the .wordpress hosted bloggers, and as one plugin for the self hosted wordpress bloggers.

How To Get 1st Page Google Listing For a Local Business

Titus Githiru — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:21:27 +0000

Today Weather is colder than usual, but that’s okay with me. We know very well that the internet offers us some limitless opportunities for taking our local business to the next level in the Ecommerce industry. It is estimated that most business which have embraced E-Commerce correctly have got an increase in sales exponentially.
The big question is, which is this correct way? Unfortunately many might think its just by having a website. Having a websites that do not give sales or provide leads is as good as not having one. A website only will give you only 10% of the traffic you need to convert into sales. Various avenues have therefore been exploited on how to get the remaining 90% like use of Multimedia such us images, Videos, blogs, Squidoo lenses, and many other WEB 2.0 properties that form the bookmaking cloud.
Today, we are going to take a rather different approach and start a series of training on how we can establish our presence of our small or Middleclass business online. We are starting with HOW TO GET A 1ST PAGE GOOGLE LISTING FOR A LOCAL BUSINESS.

Our main objective here is that when a person types something that is relevant to your business, your website is the first one to appear. I have decided to use hotels as an example for that matter and I hope you will follow the easy steps and enjoy.

Google Maps is a great service, right up there with its competitors at Yahoo!®, MapQuest® and others. However, one extra interesting twist that’s going on at Google is that you can include your business address & information that gets integrated into the Google Maps search results via a tab near the top of the page.

By typing on Google hotels in Nairobi, this is the search result that is displayed. Do you notice the 7 results of local business?
Our objective now is getting “Our hotel” Listed in the Results after a person searches for hotels in Nairobi.We are now going to look at the goole maps now.
On this next image you’ll see some nice features of this service that are great to capitalize on as
noted on the image:

Now before you begin you’ll need a Google Account. You’ll see this on the left side of the page. Before setting this up, if you are doing this for a client, it’s a good idea to use hotel@gmail.com that you can hand over to them upon delivery of your service. If you’re doing it for yourself, well then…use your own Google or Gmail account to sign in.

Lets catch up some other time and expound on this topic on how we will list it and find out the Do’s and Don’ts when Listing a business. In case you have any questions regarding this dont be hesitant to ask it in the comments section. You also want to share this for your friends to get some knowledge also. Go ahead.Have a good day.

Some facebook changes to marvel at

Martin Gicheru — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:23:45 +0000

Facebook has made some noticeable changes to its usability of late. First and foremost, earlier today i noticed an unsubscribe text link while i was commenting on a friend’s image. This is a good step in the right direction since you wont have to get millions of facebook comments whenever you get tagged in an image or other media.
So it works this way, your friend tags you in an image they think will please you, it turns otherwise and the other tens of people also tagged in that image comment in their hordes, to your dissaproval.
Previously, the only way you would have avoided this is by searching your name among the many names tagged in an image and click “remove tag”. This is not necessary now as you can keep the tag minus the comment notifications bogging you down.
Now, thanks to facebook changes that had been announced earlier, you can now click on the unsubscribe button and the notifications will cease. Note: this is reversable.

Another change i noted today was how the flike button below, (just click it and see how it changes) has changed appearance and is now a soft image with the like text and a small facebook icon, once you click on it it shows you 20 people and the famous thumbs up image.

Cheers, whoever at facebook thought about these two changes, look forward to better times ahead.

Extended power outages should not mean corrupt data

Martin Gicheru — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:25:57 +0000

Despite advances in computer technology, power outages continue to be a major cause of PC and server downtime. Protecting computer systems with Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) hardware is often part of a total solution, but power management software is also necessary to prevent data corruption.

An extended power outage can prevent computers from initiating their required shutdown procedure. PC and server operating systems are not designed to support abrupt losses of power known as “hard” shutdowns, but rather rely on a set of built-in processes that prepare a computer for a “graceful” shutdown which includes saving memory and stopping applications and services.

This is according to Christian Bertrand, vice president: Middle East and Africa at APC by Schneider Electric who says that a UPS can protect the system and improve server availability by allowing users to continue working without interruption during a short power outage.

“During an extended outage, if the system is equipped with UPS shutdown software, it can perform a graceful, unattended system shutdown before the UPS battery is exhausted,” he adds.

There are several ways to configure UPS software, he advises. “The simplest configuration, used in both server and workstation deployments, involve protecting a single computer with a single UPS, which communicates with the computer over a serial or USB cable. UPS software is installed on the computer and in this case the UPS is managed locally by the connected computer.

“Protecting two to three computers with a single UPS, where several computers are plugged into a larger UPS (typically one rated at 1500VA or higher) entails one computer to be connected directly to the serial port on the UPS, while the other two are connected to an expansion card installed in the UPS that provides two additional serial ports.”

In this situation, Bertrand says all three computers will have graceful shutdown capability, but management of the UPS is handled via the computer connected directly to the UPS. Although this scheme can be extended to handle up to 24 computers, APC does not recommend such an approach due to the additional cabling required.

“When protecting three or more computers with a single UPS managed directly over an Ethernet network, a network management card installed in the UPS eliminates the requirement for server-based management,” he says. “One example of such a configuration is the InfraStruXure architecture from APC. Software installed on these computers need only encompass shutdown functionality since management capabilities are embedded in the UPS itself.”

Purchasing a UPS with extended runtime capability merits serious consideration when extended outages are common and the cost of downtime is high. In cases where hours of runtime are required a generator is recommended in addition to a UPS as a few minutes of runtime is still required to maintain the load until the generator comes online.

Applications are only as available as the network that they are accessed through. Power protection for hubs, routers, and switches is an essential but sometimes overlooked ingredient in ensuring availability applications.

Additionally, if three or more computers are protected by a single UPS, the shutdown software requires the network to be up during the power outage in order to communicate properly. If the network is unprotected, graceful shutdown of the computer will not be accomplished.

The time required to properly shut down the operating system varies from system to system – some e-mail servers can take upwards of 20 minutes to shut down. Therefore users must ensure that their UPS software’s settings take into account each computer’s specific requirements and are set properly.

“Without shutdown software installed on the protected computer, the net effect of the UPS is simply to delay the inevitable. Regardless of which configuration, which best practices, and which particular UPS software is utilised, APC highly recommends customers not overlook this requirement – the small effort involved in installing and configuring such software can well be worth it in the event of an extended power outage that exceeds the runtime of the UPS,” he concludes.

About APC by Schneider Electric

APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in critical power and cooling services, provides industry leading product, software and systems for home, office, data center and factory floor applications. Through its unparalleled commitment to innovation, APC provides pioneering, energy efficient solutions for critical technology and industrial applications that are well planned, flawlessly installed and maintained throughout their lifecycle. APC solutions include uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), precision cooling units, racks, physical security and design and management software, including APC’s InfraStruxure® architecture, the industry’s most comprehensive integrated power, cooling, and management solution.

As a global specialist in energy management with operations in more than 100 countries, Schneider Electric offers integrated solutions across multiple market segments, including leadership positions in energy and infrastructure, industrial processes, building automation, and data centres/networks, as well as a broad presence in residential applications. Focused on making energy safe, reliable, and efficient, the company’s 100,000+ employees achieved sales of more than 15.8 billion euros in 2009, through an active commitment to help individuals and organisations “Make the most of their energy”.

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