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23:37 randomization…
» Me, Life & Everything Rendezvous: 0837hrs Prolixity: Short? Mood: Bleh Whereabouts: Home Echelon: IV Track: Missing my Baby, Amani With all the heads of state of Commonwealth Nations heading to Kampala Uganda for CHOGM, a couple of days of Public holidays, don’t you wish you were a Ugandan? Si we can share the days ama, when our President leaves for Entebbe we should, civil [...]
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17:59
Coffee Anyone?
» You Missed This 
Sasini tea and coffee company of the Sameer family group of companies founded by successful tycoon and business entrepreneur Naushad Merali is launching a bold and daring venture into not just the less crowded but nascent competitive local market but also the more crowded and equally competitive big boy league international beverage consumption market with the launch of its inaugral Kenyan branded Savannah coffee lounges in Nairobi first, followed by Dubai and London
And they are not thinking microscopic either-according to none other than the son of Merali himself who is one of the directors of the Kenyan company, by this foray the company is signalling its global intention to market brand Kenya to the rest of the world
hear him speak "we do not have to sell Kenya abroad; the problem is that Kenyans are not taking advantage of the existing awareness and goodwill about Kenyan produce"
I hold no brief for Merali or his Sameer group of companies but what a fresh change of direction displayed in straight thinking by a company that like many many other Kenyan businesses both well established and emerging are now beginning to move away from old school thinking that an investor is anyone foreign with skin colour to match and increasingly beginning to realize we can't market Kenya to anyone if we at home fail to be attracted by the quality of the made in Kenya brand
Its true that for many years, lack of inspiring political direction made us consider both ourselves and our country as a brand unable to equal international standards in quality and rank; it seems we build better roads only when the people for whom they are being built promise to come from across the Atlantic to throw some scraps of employment our way. Otherwise what need does Onyango or Wambui have for thousands of square kilometres of paved and tarmacked asphalt on the highway?
Even more than politics, we badly require an attitude change amongst us so that our thinking will come in line with national (not ethnic) values and not revert back to revelling in nostalgia and gaining fame and notoriety for all the wrong shameful reasons-corruption, tribalism, comical political leadership and the stigma attached to all of these deadly sins. There is a lesson hidden somewhere there for our politicians and the new administration of Government come 2008. new thinking, new direction, no excuses
I wish Savannah coffee lounges all the best success in marketing brand Kenya-look out for a local Savannah lounge coming to a city near you
Kenya iendelee mbele!
IT'S INTEGRITY NOT THE ECONOMY STUPID -
Lady Luck Saves Team England's Face
» You Missed This 
That the English team had to pray for an Israel win over Russia to keep their qualification of Euro 2008 alive is a contradiction in large proportion. And lady luck surely smiled on their face with Israel pulling a surprise 2-1 win to sink the Russians yesterday.
Looking up to the gods to gain qualification for next year's European Premier football bonanza betrayed the lack of quality in English players despite the boom and publicity generated by the Premier League. Take out the foreign players and the English football will be left yawning for any spark.
One would mistake the strong 4000 (proud) English supporters cheering Israel in Tel-a-Viv for some Jews from West Bank or Jerusalem. So it appears even the obtuse pride can be auctioned at the right price.
Pride on auction
Football spares no room for pride. Team England has been full of of contempt assuming that their qualification was as good as guaranteed given the 'weak' opponents in their group. But alas! Croatia is heading the group and already qualified. They also appear to have been inflicted with that misplaced pride if losing 2-0 to the unrated Macedonia yesterday is anything to go by.
Not that England are out of the woods yet. They have to at least draw with Croatia on Wednesday at Wembley. And with their over-rated stars missing with injuries anything can happen and the Russians must be holding vigil in their churches. Joining Rooney is the football 'wards' is Michael Owen. That leaves Peter Crouch to lead the onslaught upfront.
Owen's injury is definitely England' self-inflicted malady. Knowing very well that the striker is always an accident waiting to happen, Steve MacClaren goofed large scale in taxing his charges against the colourless and useless fixture with Austria.
Add to that loss of form from the aging Beckham and you get a pack of 11 donning 3 lions with St. George's flag chasing a piece of leather bereft of any entertainment nor quality to match the media hype.
Punishing bullies
It may not be wild to imagine that nature is teaching lessons to bully boys on both sides of the Atlantic. What with the the land of opportunity losing its sheen and influence in the global arena in terms of FREEDOM (after 9/11) and innovation? Just look at all the major technological breakthrough always emerging from Seoul.
It may either be crunch time and a time for re-evaluation of values and pride or just mother nature is simply paying the big boys (bullies) in their own coin.
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12:43
South Africa’s Synthasite Raises $5 Million in Funding
» White African 
It’s not that often that one of Africa’s new web companies makes a big international splash. Synthasite has done just that, just announcing a $5 million round of financing from Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital. That’s big money no matter where you’re at, and I’m interested in seeing what Synthasite does with it.Synthasite is a free Web 2.0 Publishing Platform that allows users to construct a website without any knowledge of HTML or programming, using drag & drop along with configurable dialog windows. The Company recently launched its AJAX based platform into Beta and has attracted nearly 10,000 users so far. Synthasite also plans to open it’s platform to third party developers next year, in order to allow them to create widgets, templates & other plugins for the platform.
I’ve been particularly impressed watching Vinny Lingham’s hard work and determination to make Synthasite into something bigger - something global. When he sent me the press release, I was really happy to hear the news, because it shows that firms in Africa have the possibility of building global software/websites and can play at the same level as their counterparts around the world.
They’ll be using part of this money to create a larger footprint outside of South Africa. Vinny will be opening an office in California, so will have part of his team in the US and the other still in Africa. This is a really important move actually - those who are in this space realize how hard it is to be taken seriously amongst the web intelligentsia if you’re not located in their own back yard.
Giving it a Test Run
I haven’t tested Synthasite since last year, so I got to work creating a simple site to test out what is possible. First off, it is SO much easier to use than the previous version. I remember how hard of a time I had on the first version - and I know what I’m doing on the web, and this new version is so much better that I think the only thing that remains the same is the name of the product.The basic design templates look outstanding and seem to work well with the editing. Adding images and text was a breeze, as was adding more pages.
[The Website Editor - You can see what I built here]One of my favorite features is that you can download your whole website as a zip file. Doing something like this allows you to use their editor to build your site, but you can still host it on your own server if you like. Nice addition!
There seems to be a lack of widgets, the one thing that the old Synthasite had a lot of. Before, you could build Yahoo and Amazon affiliate widgets into your site quite easily, I didn’t see that option at all anymore. Hopefully they’ll see some real 3rd-party development as I’d like to see a full widget library for people to use.
Summary
If you’re in Africa, why should you care about Synthasite? Well, it’s a free website builder offering free hosting - given the internet costs in Africa - this should appeal to many people. It’s a good product, that’s easy to use and will allow novices to build a good looking site easily.
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A Missed Opportunity By PNU To Bury ODM
» You Missed This 
There is no doubt that the popularity of ODM and Raila Odinga has slipped significantly over the last few weeks. One of the reasons for this has been what started out clearly as mere propaganda over the Internet to the effect that Raila had signed a secret MOU with Muslim leaders in Kenya to introduce Sharia law into the Coast and North Eastern province Jimbos shortly after the introduction of the majimbo system of governance as proposed by ODM.
It was a ridiculous claim that many readers here quite rightly dismissed. However, one thing led to another and very soon Raila found himself under considerable pressure to reveal the details of his alleged MOU with the Muslims. He actually put more pressure on himself than was necessary by initially denying the existence of any such agreement. He later changed his mind and admitted that an agreement of sorts had been reached between himself and the Muslims, Coming so soon after the famous Kadhi courts battle in the proposed Bomas draft between Christians and Muslims in Kenya, the issue has caused considerable anxiety amongst Christians all over the country and this has without doubt considerably reduced the momentum in the Raila presidential campaign. Several polls have clearly shown his popularity slipping.
It is quite likely that the hiring of the controversial Dick Morris (a gifted but controversial pollster who former President Clinton talks of very highly of in his biography—My Life.) was one of the measures taken by Raila’s handlers to try and reverse the situation. It really isn’t a crisis yet but in politics...
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New Must-See Series On NTV
» You Missed This
Since it is quite clear that most of my dear readers here were terrorized so much by their history teachers that the mere mention of the word “history” triggers a fit and causes them to start foaming in the mouth re-living a terrible horror movie, I believe that the new series on NTV on the political history of Kenya may prove very useful. The documentary is titled aptly; The making of a nation.
Documentaries are certainly much easier to take in than large volumes of books like the several hundred pages of Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted To Forget that I usually recommend for anybody who wants to understand Kenyan politics.
The series which seems to have been done by Hilary Ngweno (of the defunct Weekly Review fame) starts tonight at 9:45 pm (Kenyan time) and will be shown on Sundays and Mondays.
It pleases my heart that so many Kenyans based all over the world will now get to learn a little more about our country’s history since NTV is now available on the web. The truth is that you can’t really discuss the present and future without a pretty good understanding of the past.
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12:00
Computer for every Child
» Kikuyumoja's realm Just a short note on a news item about an adapted version of Edubuntu 7.04 being deployed to schools in Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.).
The interesting part is that these 20.000 PCs (7.000 already shipped) will be equipped with (X300) Thin Clients by NComputing, which allow 7-8 users on each machine at the same time.
I’ve posted it here because Daudi’s comment the other day over at Erik’s Realm reminded me of this “sharing perspective” - which I think will be one of the reasons why any real multi-user OS will eventually win the game. As for the Linux vs. Windows debate: I personally don’t care which system is used, as long as it’s secure enough (viruses = kill productivity), provides a good usability and won’t be affected by power cuts.
Related to this owner-user-question, I wonder how many average users every mobile phone has in a country like Kenya (given that a phone may only be used by one person at a time and that different profiles depend on the SIM in gsm phones).