July 2010 - skunkworks - Skunkworks Site

Local scene : Apps 4 Africa contest
by aki 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

iHub involved in this project. "From July 1st to August 31st, we welcome citizens to submit ideas that technology can help solve, and challenge technologists to build tools that lead to a better world. The top applications will receive cash, cool gadgets, and the chance to hob-nob with our judges panel of technology and civil society luminaries. On Thursday, we are particularly pleased to have Under-Secretary of State Judith McHale join a group of civil society leaders and civic-minded technologist to launch the contest at the *iHub_ in Nairobi." http://www.ihub.co.ke/blog/

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Local scene : Internet Solutions held a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning function...
by aki 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

If you attended, pls share the knowledge for others to catch up on the briefs. Rgds.

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Batman, Heavy Rain win Develop Awards
by aki 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

The Develop Awards celebrate the best of UK and European game studios. Heavy Rain and Batman scooped Best New IP and Best Use of a Licence or IP respectively at last night's Develop Awards in Brighton. Batman developer Rocksteady went on to win Best In-House Studio (it's now part of Warner Bros.) and Heavy Rain maker Quantic Dream was considered the Best Independent Studio. Brighton's Black Rock Studio were on home turf to win Best Visual Arts for Split/Second, while Audio Accomplishment went to DJ Hero. Channel 4's foray into games meant a Publishing Hero award, while Best New Download IP went to Angry Birds. Joe Danger developer Hello Games took home Best New Studio and Best Micro Studio. The Development Legend award went to the founders of Jagex, Andrew and Paul Gower, who have made loads of money from free-to-play MMO RuneScape. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/batman-and-heavy-rain-win-develop-awards

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OFF TOPIC : ZAIN WORLD CUP COMPETITION - ANYBODY REMEMBER THIS
by benson maina 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

Was this just a fraud or were there actually winners http://www.ke.zain.com/opco/af/core/homechannel.do;jsessionid=FEA45BE5271B5… Anyone

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Broadband spurs new businesses and ideas in Kenya
by aki 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

When Kenyan graduate Roy Wachira, 25, set out to start his first business, he turned to the Internet, whose growth in the east African nation is spawning opportunities unthinkable even a year ago. Mr Wachira runs a free social photography site that allows users to view special occasions or travel photos online and provides firms such as telecoms operator Safaricom with a channel to reach their targeted consumers. The site is one of many innovations in east Africa’s biggest economy spurred by faster Internet speeds through three fibre-optic cables which link Kenya with the rest of the world. http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Company%20Industry/Broadband%20spurs%20n…

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KRA portal
by Mark Mwangi 16 Jul '10

16 Jul '10

Is it just me or is the KRA portal not very useful. I misplaced my pin certificate awhile back (careless version of me) and had not recorded the PIN no. anywhere. I have tried to access it via the portal but as far as I can go it just tells me I have one without displaying it. . .Or I Will just have to walk to times towers? Anyone know of a workaround? -- Regards, Mark Mwangi http://mwangy.posterous.com

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For Open Source : Why FreeBSD is right for you...IMHO
by aki 15 Jul '10

15 Jul '10

For those new to FreeBSD, you may not know this : The latest release of FreeBSD is version 8.0, released in November 2009, and follows the FreeBSD tradition of bringing new and stable features to a fast and robust platform. FreeBSD 8.0 offers enhanced virtual hosting with Jail v2 and network stack virtualisation courtesy of VIMAGE, Xen Domu support and VirtualBox, a new USB stack, and enhanced Dtrace and ZFS support. FreeBSD may not have acheived the giddy heights of Linux in the public imagination, but is secure in its own substantial community of users, has been ported to a variety of architectures, and has spawned a number of offshoots, derivatives and forks, (of which the best known are probably DragonFly BSD and PC-BSD, which is aimed at the desktop user, features a super-friendly package installer, and has won awards for user friendliness). But winning the game has never the primary issue for the FreeBSD developers. FreeBSD contributor and author of Absolute FreeBSD, Michael Lucas says: "Competition doesn't really enter into it for most of us ... You don't see FreeBSD developers sitting in a smoke-filled room plotting the overthrow of Microsoft. We sit in light, airy rooms and plot where to get the best drinks." FreeBSD is not just a kernel, but an operating system, and the FreeBSD community, which is tightly knit and democratic, oversees all the software that constitutes a FreeBSD operating system, including the more than 21,000 packages contained in the ports system, which is roughly equivalent to Debian's package management system, and consists of software that has been developed outside the project. Just as BSD code finds its way into Linux distributions, FreeBSD uses KDE or Gnome and other software written for Linux. The FreeBSD community can be likened, in its focus on technical excellence and quality and the structure of its packaging system, to the Gentoo and Debian communities in the Linux world. Coincidently, Gentoo has a version of its operating system that uses the FreeBSD kernel, and the Debian project announced last year that its own distribution based on the FreeBSD kernel would be given official slots in Debian's experimental and unstable directories. Both projects have preferred to retain the GNU userland in preference to FreeBSD's userland tools. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is described as "a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD's kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set," and will make for interesting comparisons as the project matures. Although FreeBSD hasn't had the public impact or profile of Linux it has grown steadily, as "the unknown giant among free operating systems", and is probably as healthy as it has ever been, offering the traditional virtues that are often associated with Linux, such as price/performance, security and stability on commodity platforms running Intel or AMD Processors, or tucked away quietly on widely used networking devices from the likes of Cisco, Juniper, Force10, and NetApp. The BSD license has an idealistic and permissive relationship with the code. Third parties can take the code, repackage it, and pass it on in any form they wish without any obligation to feed code changes back to the community. BSD users argue that freedom is indivisible and the user should be able to do as he or she wishes with the code. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." A natural corollary of this is that the code can be recycled in any form, proprietary or free, as long as the original attribution is preserved. This position has benefits and drawbacks, depending on your point of view, but from the perspective of those that advocate BSD licensing, reflects a faith in the better side of human nature - and if some parties appropriate the code for proprietary ends, so be it. Such is the price of freedom. http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Freedom-is-indivisble-920301.html

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EaSSy launches in Dar es salaam
by David Mugo 15 Jul '10

15 Jul '10

Hey, Currently attending the launch of the eassy landing in Tanzania with Zantel, an etisalat company. David. -- Sent from my mobile device ------------- http://blog.majibu.com

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OT : Nation Re-design
by Peter Muchemi 15 Jul '10

15 Jul '10

It looks like The Nation is starting to run after The Star! If they can cut abit on the adverts & increase on the news. It sometimes feel like what the PC magazines ended up becoming on their way to extinction!

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UNSUBCSRIBE
by Eneth Kubai 15 Jul '10

15 Jul '10

PLEASE STOP SENDING ME ALL YOUR MAIL

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