Here’s a very interesting presentation on MedAfrica which a very ambitious Kenyan company seeking to solve very real and appropriate healthcare related problems.
They look pretty good, don’t they?
The “Safari Cup” – Kenyan StarCraft 2 Tournament
September 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
This is a follow-up to the recent article on “E-sports“.
Kalongo.com is organising a small StarCraft 2 tournament, the Safari Cup. In their own words:
“We’re very pleased to announce that we shall be hosting our very first StarCraft 2 tournament, the Safari Cup.
We intend for this to be a fun event whose primary goal is to bring Kenyan StarCraft 2 players together in competitive play. Let us not let Kenya be left out of the StarCraft frenzy that is currently sweeping the world – ama aje? Sign up and lets have some fun while gaining some skill & experience.”
So, well, go ahead and sign up.
The Rise and Rise of “E-sports”
September 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Starcraft II
Electronic sports, “e-sports“, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Nowadays, professional video gaming is quickly becoming a legitimate sport. A few years ago, poker took the limelight, blurring the line between professional gaming and non-athletic sports. Now, Major League Gaming and dozens of other leagues have popped up around competitive games like StarCraft and Halo: Reach.
In the nation of South Korea, StarCraft is literally a national sport and is equally as popular (if not more) as sports like basketball or baseball. StarCraft 2, in particular is currently leading a resurgence of e-sports which tournaments organised online on a daily basis. In fact, the major tournaments attract prizes of up to $50,000 for the winner. That’s Ksh 4.75 MILLION.
Opportunity for our youth
Locally, e-sports is nowhere near the level it is at in more developed countries but the good thing is that there does exist a strong local gaming community and there are efforts to make gaming popular in Kenya led by NexGen and, to a lesser degree Kalongo. This is a good thing and such efforts need to be encouraged for three reasons (among others):
- Competitive gaming can actually easily become a legitimate source of income for at least some of our country’s unemployed youth. if people are winning Kshs 4.75 million just for playing a game, why can’t Kenyans get in on some of that?
- People who are busy get up to less mischief. Again, this helps tackle our country’s problem of having a large number of unemployed, essentially idle, young people.
- It is always good to see Kenyans out there conquering the world and making our country proud!
A couple of years ago, some Kenyan gamers qualified for the WCG (which is like the world cup of competitive gaming). The tournament was to be held in China. Unfortunately, our gamers did not have the funds to travel to China so they approached the government of Kenya through the ministry of sports. Sadly, they were not welcome – “esports” was not recognised as a legitimate sports. This needs to change, fast, lest the great and proud nation of Kenya be left behind.
Opportunity for businesses
Over the last year or so, the number of Kenyan businesses seeking to market themselves online has grown in leaps and bounds. It seems any business that is “serious” needs to be on Facebook or Twitter and it is not uncommon for the big boys to spend lavishly on Google Adwords.
To all the “serious” businesses out there: e-sports represents a massive opportunity to market yourselves online!!
As stated above, e-sports is currently becoming very popular. Very large professional tournaments are beign set up and millions of people are already avid fans of various players and teams. At the very roots of the current resurgence in esports is the Internet. Unlike in the past, e-sports events can now be transmitted “live” to millions worlwide and sites like Youtube make it possible for anyone to be a fan. In fact, popular matches on Youtube are regularly watched by hundreds of thousands of people (see this guy with over 500,000 followers).
Imagine this: what if a nice and lovely Kenyan company sponsored a Kenyan player or Kenyan gaming event on condition that it be publicized massively online? As long as the said Kenyan company chose to work with the right people, this could be a very cost-effective way to reach hundreds of thousands of people online. The best thing is that this would probably be very affordable at the moment due to the idea being so new.
In my mind, businesses in the tourism industry especially need to embrace this unique opportunity as soon as possible. What cheaper way would a tourism firm have of reaching 100,000 potential tourists?
E-sports is here, and it is serious business!
New. Get Paid To Click! Easy Money!!
September 6, 2011 by 8 Comments
Come on, admit it. You’ve been tempted at leas once to sign up for one of these programs. Sindio? Easy money; just sit at home and click on some ads and BAM! You get paid. It cannot possibly get easier than that. Can it? Really, can it?
How much can one expect to earn? Let’s do the math, shall we?
Let us assume that you get paid $0.001 (which happens to be the usual amount) for every click you make. That is approximately Kshs 0.095 per click. Assuming you can click on one link every 30 seconds (as it happens, you are usually limited to one link every 30 seconds), this translates to about Kshs 11.4 every hour. Assuming that you work for 24 hours every day, for 30 days, that makes it approximately Kshs 8,200 per month.
So, that is Kshs 8,200 per month assuming you work for 24 hours every day for 30 days. Now subtract the cost of electricity, Internet and any other expenses you might have.
Sounds like a waste of time to me. You?
This post was inspired by a thread on SkunkWorks.
Cyber Crime in Kenya
August 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment
www.bettersms.net hacked!
A couple of days ago I was at my local – by local I mean not one of those fancy places in Westlands – barber shop when suddenly two policeman came in and arrested one of the barbers. The crime? Cyber crime (their words). The barber shop offers phone charging services and , apparently, this one barber had figured out how to get into people’s phones when they were charging. He then accessed their Safaricom Bonga points and sent them to himself.
Now, I know the guy pretty well. He hasn’t been to any college or university …. if a guy such as him is into cyber crime, then what of those educated to the highest levels of computer science?
Just recently, I cam across this. Yes. Someone somehow accessed Classic FM’s text messages system and leaked some (very sensitive) text messages to the public. If you have ever sent a text message to Classic FM then you better check if your message has been ‘leaked’. Otherwise you may be surprised to find that your husband figured out what you have been telling Classic about him.
The state of cyber security in Kenya is simply woeful. It seems everyone wants to get online, build fancy websites and all sorts of ‘apps’ but no one wants to invest in basic security. Take the case of the screenshot above which is from www.bettersms.net – they got violated publicly and embarrassed. Just recently, Idd Salim talked about the shockingly lacking security in our local online banking sites.
What’s all this leading to? If it hasn’t happened yet, someone will end up losing a lot of money that will affect a lot of people. Don’t let that be you, sawa?
Are You Becoming Cheap Labour?
July 27, 2011 by 11 Comments
I bet you have heard about websites like Freelancer.com, Fiverr and GigBucks. These are websites in which anyone can sign up and start making money online almost instantly. Basically, on these websites you can sell your services for a small fee. The good thing about them is that they are very popular and as long as you are skilled in something it is very difficult NOT to make money online on these sites.
Indeed, there are literally millions of people who are trying to make money using these websites (and other similar ones). Of all these millions of people, many actually do make money! Sounds nice, eh? You want to go try it out? Go ahead. But before you do, please take a moment to think it through. These websites are loved by people by me because I can get really talented people to offer their services to me really cheap. The people doing jobs on these sites are certainly happy to take my money. And I’m certainly happy to pay them… you know why? Because it is crazy cheap labour!! I can literally hire a graphic designer for $5 (Kshs 450) to create a logo for me then go ahead and sell that logo to someone else for Kshs 5,000/- Pesa taslimu.
Do you get my point? Sites like Freelancer.com and Fiverr represent hundreds of thousands of people willing and able to work for you at the cheapest rates imaginable. Is the smartest thing you can do to join these hundreds of thousands of people and to compete with them? Really?
WAKE up!! Find a way to make some money off this insanely cheap labour. Do not BECOME the cheap labour.
PayMPESA Helps Withdraw Your PayPal Funds to MPESA
July 11, 2011 by 215 Comments
There finally seems to be a legitimate, trustworthy way for Kenyans in Kenya to access their PayPal money quickly and easily: PayMPESA.
In case you are new here, some time last year PayPal did us a favour and made it possible to maintain a PayPal balance with a “Kenyan” PayPal account. This meant that we could finally receive money via PayPal in Kenya. However, withdrawing that money turned out to be a whole other story. Why? Because PayPal has no relationship (currently) with local banks. They need this in order to allow “Kenyan” PayPal accounts the ability to withdraw to a local, Kenyan, bank account. In plain English, this means that you can have money in PayPal but you cannot take it out.
The only way to take it out – and this is what PayPal themselves recommend – is to withdraw to a US bank account. Unfortunately, not many Kenyans have one so this is a very real and very serious problem when it comes to dealing with PayPal from Kenya.
Until now. With PayMPESA, all you have to do is to deposit your PayPal funds with them, and they will send it to you in Kenya via MPESA. Nice, eh? I think they are onto something very, very lucrative here and I wish them massive success.
Have you tried it yet? What do you think?