June 2009 - skunkworks - Skunkworks Site

Zain Partners with Western Union to Deliver Mobile Money Transfer Via Zain's Zap
by Mbugua Njihia 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Traditional money transfer and credit card companies are trying to be part of the mobile payment loop in order not to lose their business, while mobile operators and software vendors across the world are deploying different schemes <http://arabcrunch.com/2009/06/videos-last-day-of-the-media-and-telecom-conf erence-mobile-payment-discussion-and-more.html> to capitalize into this opportunity. Putting ideas into action, Kuwait based Zain <http://www.zain.com> , which is considered the fourth largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographic presence, with a footprint in 22 countries spread across the Middle East and Africa with over 60 million active customers, and Western Union <http://www.westernunion.com> , a global leader in money transfer, recently announced that they will work together to deliver mobile money transfer services in countries in Africa and the Middle East through Zain's new Zap platform. <http://www.ke.zain.com/en/zap/> http://tinyurl.com/kk5adz symbiotic_logo Mbugua Njihia - CEO SYMBIOTIC MEDIA CONSORTIUM | Design:Develop:Deploy [a] Muringa Court - Suite B2:Kilimani- Junction of Kirichwa and Muringa Road [t] +254 20 359 6305 [c] +254 721 668 709 [e] mbugua(a)symbiotic.co.ke [w] www.symbiotic.co.ke [b] http://blog.symbiotic.co.ke/blog/ This message may contain information, which is confidential, private or privileged in nature. If you are not the intended recipient of the message, you are notified that any distribution, use or copying of this message is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately

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Testing My Skunk Works Account
by Hussein Abdi 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Just Testing

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Simply Market Yourself!
by Murigi Muraya 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Why is it so hard for most of our software developers to present themselves like http://pjbeardsley.net? Transparency can be simply profound!

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Venture capital in Kenya.
by Martin Njuguna 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Hi Skunks, Has anyone dealt with venture capital firms/individuals in Kenya? Are there firms out there who do equity funding as opposed to traditional loans structure? Martin S. Njuguna

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mobile internet access never to improve unless tariffs go upward. Fiber to become a nightmare for inexperienced telcos?
by aki 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

To me it seems telcos here are very inexperienced in data services and in the process have burnt their fingers to offer reliable data services. Why? Simply, they modelled the data services similar to voice services. While on voice they could compress a number of voice channels per BTS capacity to say eg 8kbps, data is a different monster all together. TCP/IP alone has massive overheads and trying to squeeze it to work on 8-16kbps channels simply cannot work. The costs/profits to a mobile telco are based on the number of BTS channels utilized and congestion models that have predictive call behaviour. The congested internet backbone has until now helped them keep control on BTS overheads and channel allocations. For example, we can say that for an 8k channel allocation the business model for voice call is 1 Ksh and timed per second. During a voice call, the caller will naturally hang up asap and this allows another caller to use the same time slot. On data, the same 8k channel is timed per Mbyte. This Mbyte may take upto 10 minutes to clear. Therefore during this period, the channel cannot be used by anyone else and so queues build up proportionally to congestion. Once the fiber goes live, these BTS models will not be able to handle the demands. In many ways, not having the fiber has been a big advantage to telcos as the backbone self congested and slowed down. In fact if safaricom 3G don't follow certain rules, they may see a network crash within the first few hours of the fiber being lit. They seem to have learnt a few things and thus the reason for blocking smtp and torrents. Foolish and amatuer ways of network management ( I blame the sales management, not engineers! ). Orange has also adjusted their rate bundles. Yu has some sort of primitive channel controllers that drop packets if the speed rate/ports is exceeded. I believe tariff rates will have to go upwards if telocs are to improve on data delivery. Somehow safaricom seems to be the culprit. It comes up with cheaper rates and then not able to offer reliable services. Others follow suit and none can offer any reliable services. Teclos have tried to compete with traditional ISPs and their infrastructure will never allow it. Inexperience shines like a light on a dark street. my thots....

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Cisco Certified Voice Professional Required
by Kevin Oeba 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Folks, A pal of mine requires a Cisco Certified Voice Professional ( CCVP ) urgently. Please contact her on kuisarah(a)gmail.com Kind regards, Kevin

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Squid with tproxy option
by Alex Nderitu 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

Anyone on the list who has managed to have IP Spoofing on squid with tproxy? My environment; Ubuntu 9.04 server Kernel - 2.6.28-11-server iptables v1.4.3.2 squid-3.1.0.6 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Re: [Skunkworks] Skunkworks Digest, Vol 3, Issue 289
by carlos ageng'o 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

RE: Mobile Development for Social Change @edObie You sure should post the happenings here for those held up guys like me. Don't see too much tweeting about it On 6/27/09, skunkworks-request(a)lists.my.co.ke <skunkworks-request(a)lists.my.co.ke> wrote: > Send Skunkworks mailing list submissions to > skunkworks(a)lists.my.co.ke > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > skunkworks-request(a)lists.my.co.ke > > You can reach the person managing the list at > skunkworks-owner(a)lists.my.co.ke > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Skunkworks digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Swine Flu Alert (Dennis Kioko) > 2. Mobile Development for Social Change (Edward Obiko) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:53:20 -0500 > From: Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi(a)gmail.com> > To: Skunkworks(a)lists.my.co.ke > Subject: [Skunkworks] Swine Flu Alert > Message-ID: > <2f1649800906270153p63c5ed82nada4fc48ce1f7118(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > A friend on facebook says that a case of Swine Flu has been detected > at AAR sarit and that MOH has cordoned off the area. > -- > with Regards: > The Nairobi city By-Laws that never were. > Only at my blog: > http://gramware.blogspot.com > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:55:49 +0300 > From: Edward Obiko <edobie(a)gmail.com> > To: Skunkworks forum <skunkworks(a)lists.my.co.ke> > Subject: [Skunkworks] Mobile Development for Social Change > Message-ID: > <f4e2fbbf0906270155gea0486fs721da68ed0cf62e9(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > You are invited to participate in the Mobile Technology for Social Change at > Strathmore University gone live now! > > omingoobiko.blogspot.com > > -- > OO > > Omingo Obiko >

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Mobile Development for Social Change
by Edward Obiko 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

You are invited to participate in the Mobile Technology for Social Change at Strathmore University gone live now! omingoobiko.blogspot.com -- OO Omingo Obiko

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Swine Flu Alert
by Dennis Kioko 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

A friend on facebook says that a case of Swine Flu has been detected at AAR sarit and that MOH has cordoned off the area. -- with Regards: The Nairobi city By-Laws that never were. Only at my blog: http://gramware.blogspot.com

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