TechCrunchTV
I just did an interview with Paul Carr (formerly of the internet), and @sarahcuda on techcrunchtv, about the Kenyan/African tech scene.
I’m in Nairobi right now; things are especially exciting at the moment. The Central Business District is chaos ahead of the promulgation of the new constitution on Friday (probably already happened by the time I post this), but there’s a whole bunch of really, REALLY exciting things happening:
- The big mobile price war. Last week, Zain (now owned by Bharti Airtel), cut their airtime and SMS tariffs to 25% of the previous, causing the other operators to immediately follow suit. In a country where people spend 50% of their disposable income on their phones, this is a huge deal, and will spark another round of mobile phone innovation and usage. The main point here is that lowering the cost of using technology, lowers the cost of failure; as Clay Shirky says, in turn this lowers the risk of innovation. I believe this will have a big impact on my business, Mocality.com, by making it easier for EVERYONE to use us. Compare these two photos of adverts for Orange’s tariff, taken on the same day;
The pricing is changing so fast, that they can’t even take down the old billboards quick enough!
- (blowing own trumpet) Mocality hit a big milestone this week – we signed up our 60,000th Nairobi business, making us easily the largest business directory in Africa. Most of our businesses have no web presence other than our listing – I’m very proud to have given so many businesses their first outpost on the internet, and thank everyone involved, especially our hardworking Ambassadors and our network of crowdsourcing Agents. We’re re-launching our website on the 30th August, now actively open for business.
- Maker Faire Africa is taking place on the 27th and 28th August, here in Nairobi – it’ll be an explosion of local tech innovation.
I namechecked a bunch of internet businesses/projects in Africa that I think are leading the way (although this is nothing like a complete list). Since TV is such a crappy medium for delivering URLs, I’ll list them here:
- Mocality
- Pesapal
- Kalahari Kenya (disclaimer – sister company to Mocality)
- Ushahidi.com
- The iHub (like the techhub that Paul mentioned, but better) (sorry, Mike :) )
- eatout.co.ke
- jobberman.com
- village telco
- symbiotic
- jobberman – in the interview, some weird mental buffer overflow made me say that they’re in India. They’re in Nigeria. Apologies.
There’s a great tech scene in South Africa, but I have to say, that I think Kenya eclipses it. Mocality’s country manager, Josh Mwaniki and I spent Wednesday giving our SA Head of Customer Service a crash course in Nairobi – Ray was pretty astonished at the variety and density of technology retail (phones, PCs, everything) across the city. Mobile tech (retail, M-Pesa, airtime sales) powers commerce in Nairobi like no where else.
Right, more later, I’m off to the Maker Faire party now.
iBooks and my iPhone/iPad can read pdfs, but iTunes’ support for pdfs on the filesystem is non-existent. Adding pdfs to iTunes is a pain. I didn’t understand why iTunes.app didn’t appear as an option for opening pdfs in the contextual menu. Note: I do not want to make iTunes the default App for handling pdfs – that would be crazzzeeeeee.
After much web searching, and more than a little help from some Monkeyz, the answer is this.
- Make sure iTunes is NOT running.
- Right-click on iTunes.app and choose ‘Show Package Contents’
- In the window that opens, open Contents, then open ‘Info.plist’ in a text editor
- paste the following
<dict> <key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key> <array> <string>pdf</string> <string>PDF</string> </array> <key>CFBundleTypeMIMETypes</key> <array> <string>application/pdf</string> </array> <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key> <string>Viewer</string> </dict>
Finally, Rebuild the LaunchServices Database by running the following incantation on the command line.
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
iTunes in the context menu for a pdf file
Young Rewired State
Barcamp Nairobi 2010
Thoughts on #barcampnairobi/wherecamp
1. Great turnout – over 600 Kenyan geeks and entrepreneurs, with a healthy sprinkling from the NGO community too.
2. Better gender ratio than I’ve seen at any barcamp in the UK, and any tech event at all in South Africa.
Why is that?
3. If I had a criticism of some of the companies that I see/meet in Kenya, it’s that they don’t focus tightly enough: “we’ve built a social network and a classifieds platform and a game and a dating site” – as Erik said about Ushahidi, technology is 5% and people/growth is 90% (the other 5%? luck.)
Without focus, you’ll never be able to grow your 5 or 10 sites together. Pick the best, put the others in a drawer and dust them off later when the first is profitable or at least has audience and growth.
4. The iHub is a great space. Lovely combo of good connectivity and informality of setting makes it perfect for the barcamp ethos, better than the eBay offices in London or similar corporate venues that I’ve barcamped at. This place is going to be great.
5. Loved the positive reception that Mocality got from everyone here. Really great to hear the feedback.
Location:Nairobi, Kenya
iPad un(chocolate)boxing
Right, this is the rebirth of my blogging. My first post in at least 5 years, with a new domain and a new title.
Anyone who knows my wife, @kerrching, knows that she’s a Apple nut. Also, with a June birthday, she has conveniently positioned herself perfectly for the Apple release cycle. An iPad was inevitable for her birthday, but I knew that if I just delivered a wrapped box, there wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Where’s the fun in that? So I rang my friends James and Paul, who happens to run the finest chocolate shop in London, Paul A Young Fine Chocolates and said “Could you freeze an iPad in chocolate carbonite, and have it survive?”. They weren’t sure, but were willing to give it a go.
Additionally, iPads aren’t available yet in South Africa, so it had to smuggled over from London, without Kay finding out what was going on.
The prepared product:
Unwrapping begins:
The “I like chocolate, but you gave me 2 kg of it for my birthday, are you a bit nuts? look”:
Why don’t you pull on that little ribbon embedded in the chocolate?
Realisation!
Revelation:
Acceptance:
Success!!!!!!!!
With many many thanks to all the wonderful people who helped this to happen:
Simon , who waited in line forever at the London Apple Store to source the machine itself.
James and Paul, for successfully performing the carbon-freezing process, and
Karen, who went through a couple of hours of hell trying to explain what was going on to the South African customs people.
Oh, and just in case you’re worried: no iPads were harmed in this production :)
Update: 16:27, June 14th
Wow. Well, thanks for all the kinds words, everyone. This ran away a little more than I expected.
Media types: Yes, you can use the photos without permission, so long as you maintain attribution with my name or a linkback, as per http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en_GB
