Archives for January 2011

New Free WordPress Theme: Sanaa

January 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Sanaa DukaPress Theme

Yep, we have more freebies for you – another free DukaPress theme!

Sanaa is a WordPress e-commerce theme, powered by DukaPress, that is based on the old Crafty Cart. In the words of the original creator, “It’s a fresh flavoured retro style perfect for selling t-shirts and handmade items, designed to be a starting point for your online shop.”

Theme Features

  • Intriguing “retro” design
  • Drop-down menu support
  • 2-column layout and widget-ready sidebar
  • Support for WordPress 3.0 custom menus
  • Styled to work elegantly with DukaPress

View the live Demo
Download For Free

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With: ,

Making Enough Money?

January 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I used to wake up every day and hate going to work. I had to wake up hours before I started work in order to get the kids ready for school, get myself groomed and breakfasted and ready for my lengthy commute – a commute that took me to a place that I didn’t want to be. I realize though that this is not only my reality, it is the way many people live their lives, and I’m so glad that I took the initiative to change mine.
Like most people, I keep a budget at home and for the first time I am able to stick with it comfortably. Now, as long as I make Ksh 50,000/-, I can do what I want without feeling like I’m skimping on anything. These are my monthly expenses that I am able to reach each month. In fact, when I have met this quota, I can rest easy and relax.

So, after I make the 50,000 goal that I set for myself for the month, then I know that everything I make after that is going to savings, a new toy, a vacation, or what have you. I can take it easy, knowing that I do not have to actually be anywhere for the next how ever many days area left in the month.

Sure, I don’t just sit back on my haunches counting my money after I have made my quota, or met my goal. I answer a few emails, I prepare for the next month. I think about the future of the business, and so on. But, I know that I don’t have to be anywhere, and that frees my time up to do the things that I actually want to be doing in my life; spending time with the kids, recreational activities, working on the house, gardening, and so on.

But you will find, as I do, that once you have met that quota, you actually want to keep working and making more and more money to save for that rainy day. The difference is that you don’t have to; it isn’t an obligation, it’s a choice, and that is the kind of freedom that few have, and most want. This freedom will inspire you to make changes in your business, make it better, more efficient, in short—more enjoyable. It is a very different experience altogether to be able to choose whether or not you want to invest more in your business, and yourself than simply waking up every day to go to a job each day that will make you just enough to meet your monthly expenses.

I find that most months, I keep working once I have met my goal. However, having that choice makes all the difference.

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Interesting Kenyan Sites #17

January 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Good
www.economicstimulus.go.ke – a website that aims to report on the success of the economic stimulus packaged introduced in the 2009/2010 budget. We must say that for a Government site, this is pretty amazingly well done. good job all round! Though its creation was outsourced to India….

Owlses – though it does not exactly serve the Kenyan market, this is a nice shop for T-shirts based on owls. The site’s design is pleasant and professional.

Ticket Masters – this is where you can buy tickets to many events online. The site itself is very well designed and works pretty well. Good job!! Though it would do no harm to keep it more updated…

The Bad
The Kenya Police – this is the site of the Kenya Police. Besides being hacked numerous times a while back, it is not available right now. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Viva – this is a website that sells premium rate SMS services. Unfortunately, the badly dated (as in old) design makes one think it may not be legit. The look and feel of your website tells people a lot about you, and this website does the owners no good at all.

Filed Under: Cool Sites

KBC Interactive Game Show Fraud (with pics)

January 20, 2011 by 5 Comments

This article was generously contributed by Mutwiri.

Earlier this month there was a huge debate on this forum about an error KTN had made on their interactive game show. The issue was with the simple arithmetic – 11 x 2 + 32 – 21 + 5 x 3 + 5 x 1 The answer that won cash was 120, which off course was WAY off.

Well, yesterday KBC ran something similar on their show.

23 – 12 x 5 + 112 – 20 + 3 x 8 + 12

The choices were -125, -170 and 250

I took screen shots:

KBC interactive game show fraud

The Question (click for larger)


The answer that won Kshs.50,000 was 250

So how did they arrive at 250? Here’s their calculation:


KBC interactive game show fraud

The Fraudulent answer (click for larger)

If you look at the pictures closely, KBC actually changed the question and then awarded 50,000/- to….”the winner”. Theft in broad daylight!

What are your thoughts on this? Where can a complaint be made?

Update
Even the fraudulent answer does NOT add up to 250!!!!

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,

Safaricom FUD Strategy

January 19, 2011 by 15 Comments

FUD means Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Safaricom’s new CEO, Bob Collymore was on the news the other day furious at Airtel for their new price cuts. His main point was that these prices were not sustainable and may lead to the collapse of the mobile phone industry in Kenya. Mr. Collymore went as far as saying that the government would lose revenue because Safaricom would not make as much of a profit as in recent years.

A day later, Dr. Ndemo (the permanent secretary) was reported by the Daily Nation saying that the mobile phone price wars may even lead to the failure of the implementation of the new constitution in Kenya. The talk in town now is that the government may place a lower limit on mobile call rates i.e. akina Airtel will not be able to offer cheaper rates to us any more.

Okay….what the hell is going on here? Kenyans have been looking forward to cheaper call rates for years yet when they finally come the government wants to stop them?

It is true that the government will lose huge amounts of revenue from Safaricom’s reduced profits but is it really right or fair to change the rules so that Safaricom’s high profits are maintained at the expense of its competitors?

Such a move by the government would be VERY wrong and would set a very bad precedent in Kenya. This is why:

  1. Airtel is a business that has chosen a certain strategy to tackle the Kenyan market. They have chosen to incur losses now so that they can profit later. This is also called “making an investment”. It is not proper for the government to stop them from doing so.
  2. Any change of rules would serve to protect Safaricom from the competition. This is unfair at the very least. Every business should be responsible for its own survival.
  3. The money that we the consumers save by paying less on calls does not suddenly disappear into thin air – we will still use it within Kenyan borders and the government WILL earn tax revenues on almost everything else that we spend that money on.
  4. Cheaper communication costs very often (in other countries) lead to a more robust economy.

Let’s hope that the government does the right thing.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

254 – A DukaPress Theme

January 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

254 DukaPress Theme

254 DukaPress Theme


We’re pleased to announce the release of our third DukaPress theme, the 254 DukaPress theme. This is a WordPress theme for use in your DukaPress powered shop.

Theme Features

  • Clean and minimal layout
  • Drop-down menu support
  • 2-column layout and widget-ready sidebar
  • Support for WordPress 3.0 custom menus
  • Styled to work elegantly with DukaPress

View the live Demo
Download For Free

Basically, this is a free shop ‘design’ (for those who have no idea what a theme is) that you can use to make your DukaPress online shop look good. Enjoy.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Miscellaneous Tagged With:

The Best ISP in Kenya

January 13, 2011 by 62 Comments

A good and reliable Internet connection is pretty much essential these days. You need it for all sorts of things, including the ability to make real money online. Unfortunately, the state of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) in Kenya is very nearly pathetic. After some readers asked us to recommend good ISPs, we realised that we could not actually recommend anyone without giving a caveat. How sad, eh? So we decided to do some research and establish the truth about which company may actually be the best ISP in Kenya.


Our admittedly very limited research focused on the so called ‘big’ names:

Why did we do this?
Well, almost everyone we talked to felt that the ISP state in Kenya is just not right. Very few if any of the Kenyan ISPs do things right and the customer is at their complete mercy. It should be the other way round – they should be at our complete mercy.

This is our own little contribution towards that future. We hope to publish updates in the future as and when the situation changes. Please note that our review was limited to residential internet access and not the so called “corporate internet”. Many ISPs are totally different depending on what type of customer you are. Sigh.

The Best ISP
Unfortunately, and sadly, we did not find any one company that we could call “the bast”. Some seem very good, but all have painful problems associated with them. Sad tu sana, eh?

1. GOOD ISPs
A. Safaricom
It may come as quite the shock but currently Safaricom seems to be the among the best overall ISPs in the country. Safaricom offers internet via mobile modems, WiMAX, and fibre. Overall, people speak very well of Safaricom.

The Good:

  1. Very fast Internet
  2. Fairly stable and rarely goes down

The Bad:

  1. When things go wrong, the customer often does not know who to cotnact for support – and the Safaricom customer care line rarely goes through. However, Safaricom seem to genuinely care about improving their customer care.
  2. Safaricom is expensive.

B. Airtel
Airtel is another company whose reputation is mainly good. They currently offer internet via mobile modems.

The good:

  1. They are affordable
  2. Their service is mostly reliable

The bad:

  1. Speed is really slow, sometimes becoming pathetic (i.e. the region of about 6Kbps or lower)

C. Access Kenya
Many people who deal with Access Kenya are quite happy. However there are some people who would highly recommend against them.

The good:

  1. Fairly stable service
  2. Fairly ok customer service

The bad:

  1. It is a bit pricey
  2. Relatively low speeds
  3. It feels like it is an ISP that is slowly fading away to the competition as far as residential customers are concerned.

2. BAD ISPs
These are ISPs that we would not recommend for anyone, unfortunately. Of course these companies do have happy customers so they must be good to them but you should engage with them with extreme caution.

A. Orange
Orange’s bad reputation comes fro their mistreatment of customers. Complaints range from:

  • In the past, they have changed their rates suddenly and unexpectedly and inexplicably
  • There have been reports that a customer’s bandwidth runs out faster than it should
  • Slow speeds
  • VERY poor support

B. KDN
KDN is famous for its extremely poor customer service. They seems to focus on serving corporate customers at the expense of residential customers. However, they are known for offering good services (for while) but when things start going wrong (they always do), they really get bad.

C. ZUKU
Personally I have been using Zuku at home for a while. In spite of this, I find it extremely hard to give a positive review of their service. Why? Because as a customer, Zuku will give you a special kind of pain: internet that is so shaky it disconnects every few minutes and extremely unhelpful, inaccessible and poor support. Dealing with Zuku sometimes feels like being scammed. Proceed with caution.

3. Other ISPs
We have no direct experience with the following, but their reputation seems to be good:

  1. Tangerine
  2. CallKey Networks

Conclusion
It is said that Internet services in Kenya can be one of two things, but not both:

  1. Reliable OR
  2. Affordable

The sad truth is that, at present, if you want an internet connection that is reliable, even enjoyable, you must pay premium rates.

What are your experiences with ISPs in Kenya?

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews