Diary Of A Geek

MTN Mobile Number Portability – My Experience

Wale Falade — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:19:18 +0000

And so i decided to pay yet another visit to the MTN friendship center located within Ikota Shopping Complex, next door to the high brow Victoria Garden City (VGC) in Ajah. It was with a bit of apprehension.

My first visit did not go too well. I had walked into a fairly sized crowd and the doorman handed me a tally number putting me at the end of the queue of 30 people. I paused for a few seconds and scurried out through the door. No way i was going to spend my lunch break hanging out with the folks in MTN.

It was with this mindset that i approached the friendship center again, with the hope of having my number ported from Globacom to Nigeria’s biggest network, MTN. This time around, I was in for a big shocker. Surprisingly, the place was almost empty with only one person in line! This was too good to be true, there has to be a catch somewhere. And indeed there was.

I was given a form to fill and i fished out my international passport which i presented to the pretty lady behind the counter, who i later got to know as Chinwe. She carefully explained to me that their network systems were down.

What?! How predictable! In my head, i was already composing a very nasty post i would publish about my experience. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Chinwe saved the day.

After explaining to me about the system downtime, she nevertheless took my details down, gave me a “Welcome Back” replacement SIM and I even got to register the SIM. I left the place with a special thank you to her. I had barely arrived back at my destination when i got a call from her. Apparently, their system was up. She asked for a few more details and finally asked me to send the magic word “PORT” to the shortcode 3232. Believe it or not, about 2 hours later when i checked my old SIM it was inactive. I inserted my new MTN SIM and Y’hello, i was locked on to the MTN network.

What a nice lady, Chinwe. That particular friendship center would be seeing my face very soon – as soon as i can think of a reason!

Toddlers And iPad Addiction

Wale Falade — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:04:24 +0000

I understand that one of the main joys of parenting a toddler involves keeping the little one amused.

Amused, as in quiet.

Ever since the iPad came along, with its bright colors and infinite range of games and pictures, it has seemed like an ideal tool to keep baby happy. This happiness, however, is one that baby does not want to ever, ever stop. So much so that some toddlers are now said to be iPad addicts.

This curiously adult affliction seems to involve baby undergoing seven aspects of demented ranting, should her iPad be taken away.

As the Telegraph reports, a novel strain of therapy involves easing the strain that little children feel when their gadget is not at hand.

There are examples of toddlers being engrossed in their tablets for up to 4 hours a day. This might not seem like much, until one realizes that many of the very youngest are only awake 10 hours a day.

The Sunday Mirror reported on a case of a 4-year-old who, it claimed, is Britain’s youngest iPad addict. It quoted psychiatrist Dr. Richard Graham who runs the Capio Nightingale Clinic in London. The clinic specializes in digital detox, weaning the dependent off their gadgets.

Graham, to whom the 4-year-old was referred by her mother, said that he believes such an addiction is common and not unlike alcoholism or drug dependency.

“Although at this stage her use isn’t a sufficient concern to warrant in-patient care, it would be if her addiction continues to the age of 11, when she has access to other platforms like smartphones and the Internet,” said Graham.

Graham thinks it might be a good idea for Internet use advice to be a core element of ante-natal classes.

Perhaps this all begins with mimicry. The children see their parents’ deep involvement in their machines and want to do the same.

The machines themselves are vastly enjoyable. Indeed, visit any bar or restaurant and see supposedly adult humans seemingly unable to focus on anything but screens.

Psychologists worry that when toddlers grow up they won’t be able to have normal, human interactions with their contemporaries.

But when normal, human interactions already consist of Facebook friending and Snapchat sending, some might think an iPad addiction is merely an early introduction into a certain future.

iPad, therefore I am.

Source

A Case Study of e-Commerce In Nigeria: Why It Pays To Own A Shop Online!

Tito Philips — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:30:33 +0000

I have previously written about the rise of e-Commerce in Nigeria and how you can profitably take part, so in case you missed out, you can read it here.

Consider this a follow-up article as I will be sharing with you first hand my own experience of how I made close to a million naira within 3 months of owning a shop online!

How It All Began…

My first experience with e-Commerce was selling my business consulting and internet marketing services through my blog naijapreneur.com

Then in January 2013, I came across Kaymu while it was still in its early stages trying to break her way into the Nigerian eCommerce terrain. It didn’t take me long to see the market potentials of such a platform where sellers can be connected to over 60 million Nigerians online. I instantly became a kaymu evangelist. This is partly due to my passion for entrepreneurship development in Nigeria and my successful experience with e-Marketing.

My 1^st Month Selling Online

I own a boutique business where I sell both male and female clothing and shoes. So I decided to create my own shop online to test run kaymu and listed the shoes on the platform, this was in February. Oh and if you are wondering why I listed only shoes and left out the clothes? Well, shoes are far easier to snap than clothes. Before the month ended, I was able to sell one shoe despite 5 orders, only one buyer followed through to pickup and paid cash –N3000. This wasn’t so bad since Kaymu opened to the public in February.

My 2^nd Month Selling Online

Towards the end of February, I decided to expand my shop on kaymu to sell in another promising category other than fashion –phones and tablets. Since I didn’t sell phones and tablets, this was made possible by one of my e-Marketing clients who proposed a partnership. I help sell their phones and tablets online through kaymu and earn commissions on every sale.

So because of this collaboration, in March I sold one Blackberry Z10, an iPad4 and a Tommy Hilfiger shoe for a total of N223,000. Not bad huh?

My 3^rd Month Selling Online

April was the best month ever, all of the marketing initiatives where falling into place and people were becoming more confident in the brand due to the number of successful deliveries and safe transactions recorded. So in April, I sold 7 Smart phones and 5 male shoes for a total of N613,547!

The total?

February – N3000

March – N223,000

April – N613,547

Total = N839,547

Why It Pays To Sell Online

Besides the number one obvious fact that you get to reach a whole lot more people through an online shop, the most significant reason for me is the 24hrs 7days a week operational nature of an online shop. There’s practically no closing time online, you can be making sales while you sleep!
Reducing overhead costs is one other reason why selling online is so super smart. You don’t have to bother about shop space, on the internet there’s unlimited shelf space. The amount of items you can sell is unlimited. As you just saw me explain, I expanded from just selling male shoes to selling smart phones and tablets and it didn’t cost me additional rent!
And my personal favorite, growing your brand has never been easier. Online you connect with millions of people you would never have been able to sell to offline. And the bonus part, they become your customers as well not just kaymu’s customers because they buy from you directly not from kaymu.
Safe transactions is another advantage you get by selling on kaymu. Unlike other free classified sites, kaymu is much more than a free classified site. It is an actual e-Shopping mall where you can buy from so many trusted retailers who have physical shops offline. On Kaymu, you are buying from real businesses not just some random individual who has something to dispose.

Over to you

You’ve read my story and as many naijapreneurs have come to know me for, I hardly share what I haven’t personally applied. My own approach to marketing is simple; “don’t tell people what you will do, show them what you’ve done. Why? Because results sell faster than words!”

If this isn’t sufficient proof that Nigeria is in the early days of a heavy e-Commerce boom, then you can choose to ignore this article. But if you are among the few wise ones, you will get in now while many are still contemplating and begin to reap the rewards of selling online. Here’s an invitation, click here to start!

Moving Beyond Megapixels : More Is Not Always Better!

Wale Falade — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:42:27 +0000

New advancements are ensuring that it’s only a matter of time until your smartphone’s camera is just as good as a point-and-shoot.

Smartphone cameras have come a long way—moving from convenient methods for sharing mediocre snapshots to near pro-quality image-capture tools in the right hands. Although the old benchmark of resolution seems to have topped out, innovation is still accelerating in many other areas of mobile camera technology.

“Packing more, but smaller, pixels into the same size sensor increases noise.”

BIGGER, BETTER PIXELS

After years of racing toward higher megapixel counts, camera vendors have finally realized that more is not always better. Packing more, but smaller, pixels into the same size sensor increases noise because smaller pixels capture fewer photons in a given time period. Tiny pixels also run closer to the diffraction limits of optics—particularly the inexpensive kind found in phones—so the added resolution gain isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. In some high-resolution cameras, a 50 percent increase in pixel resolution only equates to an effective resolution boost of around 10 percent.

HTC has led the way in the retro effort to go back to fewer, larger pixels. Its 4MP UltraPixel cameras feature sensor sites that have three times the surface area of 13MP competitive cameras. In a somewhat odd move, Nokia has also swerved from offering the über-resolution 41MP Nokia 808 PureView to trumpeting the “good enough” 8.7MP resolution of its new flagship, the Lumia 920—which has amazing low-light performance thanks to a combination of high fill factor courtesy of its back-illuminated sensor, better optical image stabilization, a Zeiss “low-light optimized” f/2 lens, and lots of fancy noise reduction and image processing that’s done immediately after the capture.

FASTER, LESS-EXPENSIVE FOCUSING

Autofocus has been a major source of irritation for both smartphone and point-and-shoot camera users—and because it’s never fast enough to capture quickly moving action, it has helped keep D-SLR makers in business. Smartphone makers are moving to change that.

DigitalOptics Corporation (DOC) has created an autofocus system based on microelectromechanical (MEMS) technology that uses an electrostatic charge to move the focus. This lets camera modules (and thus smartphones) be slimmer, and DOC also claims its system reduces lens tilt during autofocus, which in turn reduces image distortions including vignetting. DOC is planning to sell a 5.1mm tall, 8MP camera module with this technology to Chinese smartphone makers, but it’s on the expensive side ($25 per module).

Startup LensVector, meanwhile, is hoping to address the lack of autofocus in lower-end smartphone with a low-cost element that realigns liquid crystal to change the refractive index of different areas of the lens and thus effectively change the focus.

“The relatively small photo sites in camera phone sensors restrict their dynamic range.”

HDR: POST-PROCESS YOUR IMAGES BEFORE YOU TAKE THEM

The relatively small photo sites in camera phone sensors restrict their dynamic range. As a result, photos that are backlit or combine sun and shade can either lack detail or look completely burned out. High-dynamic range (HDR) photography combines two or more images with different exposures to try to take the “best of both” images and create a single image that more accurately reflects how the original scene looked.

For many years, HDR could only be done after the fact, with processing software on a computer. But Apple’s introduction of in-phone HDR with the iPhone 4S changed all that, and has ushered in a number of new phones with integrated intelligent image processing that make HDR still image and full-time entire new class of mobile device camera capabilities.

HDR video possible. This feature has until now needed to be custom-coded by the phone vendor and rely on the image signal processor (ISP) chip to do the work. But Nvidia is smashing through that limit with its new Chimera architecture, which will be available starting with its upcoming Tegra 4 family of processors.

By unleashing the horsepower of the GPU during image capture, features formerly only found on high-end cameras will become available on smartphones. Real-time object tracking and panoramas, and best shot selection, will quickly become reality.

Other vendors are putting together systems with many of these capabilities, but what makes Chimera unique is its open interface. This lets other companies write plug-ins that access to the low-level data straight off the sensor, and use the computing power of the ISP, GPU, and CPU. Although it remains to be seen whether Google and Microsoft let these programming interfaces shine through in stock Android or Windows RT, there will certainly be an opening for custom camera applications integrated with homebrew ROM versions. Chimera is open enough to support this type of advanced functionality.

WHAT WILL THE ULTIMATE SMARTPHONE CAMERA LOOK LIKE?

Putting together all these innovations will take a few years, but is inevitable. Combining a Lytro-like light field sensor with a high-powered architecture like Chimera will make amazing photo effects and post-processing possible in real time, in the phone. MIT’s Camera Culture team, along with startups Pelican, Heptagon, and Rebellion are all working on the light field sensor component—as it is expected are Apple and HTC. Pelican in particular made waves recently with its low-key demo of after-the-fact refocusing at this year’s Mobile World Congress—done in conjunction with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 800 processor. After four years, Pelican finally appears ready to start announcing some products—stressing how thin its light field–based sensors are, and how they can make possible depth-related processing after the fact.

Google doesn’t want to be left out. Hiring computational photography guru Marc Levoy to work on its mobile photography architecture is just one indication of how serious it is. To quote Google’s senior vice president Vic Gundotra, “We are committed to making Nexus phones insanely great cameras. Just you wait and see.”

Sensor architecture will also continue to advance, with stacked sensors enabling greater on-chip innovation. Expect zero-lag global shutters (which read out the entire frame at once, eliminating motion artifacts) to become commonplace. Real zooms will soon start to be available. Add-on lenses will also increase in functionality, providing true wide-angle and telephoto capabilities. Rumors for the Nexus 5 even include the possibility of a camera module co-branded with Nikon. The only question will be whether anyone will still need a point-and-shoot once these innovations come to smartphones.

Source

Embracing Employee – Acquired Smartphones Without Compromising Security

Wale Falade — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:31:05 +0000

This article was first published in Diary of a Geek on April 20, 2011

If your capacity as an IT professional involves dealing with people in your office going on the road with mobile devices and bemoaning policies that keep them from accessing the company’s network because of pesky security protocols, then my heart goes out to you. It’s rough trying to balance the legitimate needs of a staff trying to maximize its ability to get a job done and the often bureaucratic rigamarole of office directives that seem to be counterproductive to what should be a goal shared with that same staff. People want to work smarter, not harder, and being part of a team should support — not stifle — that goal.

In the past decade (and especially in just the past few short years), the mobile phone has become more common among the general population and less of a company-issued “perk” — and, therefore, less under the reign of strict policies that your company may have instated in the past regarding the use of such devices. It just makes sense that you, as an IT professional in charge of enforcing the integrity of your company’s security initiatives, want to be kept up to date on your options with an ever-changing set of rules in an ever-changing game. So when on-the-go people at the office increasingly voice a desire to use their own smartphones to take part in mission critical (but top secret) company communication, how do you embrace the use of employee-acquired smartphones without compromising security? BlackBerry may not be the first company that comes to mind when you think of smartphones today, but it inarguably has more experience in the field than many of its contemporary contenders. So when BlackBerry has an opinion on the matter and offers free advice to IT professionals who have an ear to listen (well, in this case, an eye to read. Maybe even two of them), you may find it worth your while to see what the company has to say.

BlackBerry to offer BBM for iPhone and Android

Wale Falade — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:59:06 +0000

The idea was first mooted about 2 years ago about the possibility of Blackberry making its Messenger (BBM) real-time messaging service available on Apple’s iPhone and iPad and Google’s Android platforms.There was a post on Diary of a Geek from March 2011 suggesting this. This fact has however been confirmed by Blackberry and the service is billed to be rolled out by summer 2013.

From all indications, this implementation has been 2 years late in coming. Within this period, the only edge that Blackberry could have laid claim to, the messaging app, may have been eroded by the likes of Whatsapp and Wechat. With WhatsApp claiming more than 200 million active users, and WeChat around 190 million, BBM may just be a little late to the party with its paltry 60 million monthly active users with, perhaps, a big chunk from Nigeria and other developing countries.

Samsung Galaxy S3 And The Case Of Failed SanDisk Memory Cards

Wale Falade — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:57:39 +0000

I have used 2 (Two) 32GB Sandisk Memory cards with my Samsung Galaxy S3 in the space of 5 months, both dying out on me suddenly, taking away with them valuable data. The last happened just last week.

I was very worried and even considered the possibility that the cards were fakes. However, common sense told me the cards were most likely the real deal because they were bought from BestBuy. Idid a quick search on the internet, on the off chance that some whiz kid with some oracle may have found a solution i could benefit from. What i found was very revealing.

They were tales of woes of how Samsung flagship phones and tablets, including the Samsung Galaxy S3 (perhaps the S4 too?) and Galaxy note, have ruined their microSD cards. If you were lucky, you would get some warning signs – your card acting up for a while, starting and stopping intermittently before failing permanently. It will stop being recognized by any computer or phone.

However, most do not get this warning.

Rumour even has it that the issue is not limited to Sandisk MicroSD brands alone. Apparently, something in the phone is destroying these cards. CNET even published an article on this issue in March 2013.

Unfortunately, no solution has been proffered by Sandisk or any other microSD manufacturer. For now, we can only hope and wait.

Back To Life!

Wale Falade — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:13:36 +0000

I picked up a number of WiFi routers on Amazon last December for a very good discount, hoping to make a good profit selling them in Nigeria. The Linksys E1200 brand of WiFi routers was retailing for $19.99 (about N3,200) apiece, and my plan was to sell them for N10,000 each.

It was not until i had taken delivery of them that i realized that i just might have flushed my money down the drain because the router had a bouquet of issues bedeviling it.

Issues included;

- Dropping/Intermittent wireless connectivity
- Slow downloads and uploads speeds
- Seemed not to be able to handle more than 5 or 6 connected devices at once
- Power cycling does not always fix issues and sometimes hard reset is necessary

Apparently, there were issues with the firmware that was bundled with the device. Repeated updates to the firmware failed to fix the problems. Extensive search on the internet revealed a horde of very dissatisfied customers. The customer services of Cisco (the manufacturers of the device) also did nothing to help the situation.

It was a painful decision but i just could not sell devices that i knew were faulty, so i let them gather dust in the store, swearing never to be blinded with greed again when making business decisions.

That was until i decided to pay a visit again to DD-WRT.

DD-WRT is a site that develops and host Linux-based firmware for wireless routers and wireless access points. It is compatible with several models of routers and access points and is among the many third-party firmwares, which are designed to replace the firmware that ships pre-installed on many commercial routers. There are many advantages to running alternative firmwares as they unlock features that are not present ordinarily on all routers and can give your low budget routers features that are not available on even some professional grade routers, unlocking settings that are not accessible normally; static routing, VPN, repeating functions, boost your router range by increasing antenna power and overclocking.

It is a fact that your router is only as good as its firmware, the software that makes it tick.

My earlier check on the site dd-wrt.com in early December 2012 listed the Linksys E1200 as not being supported by this open source firmware. However, what i did not realize was that it became supported just a few days later.

I have upgraded the firmware of all the routers in my possession and now they are worth all the N10,000 ($62.50) that i am asking for them.

With the latest tested and stable builds of DD-WRT customized firmware, the true capabilities of the Linksys (Cisco) E1200 hardware are unleashed. Now you can create a personal VPN network, manage several wireless and guest networks, take advantage of advanced QoS bandwidth controls, and lots more. I have since parked up my Belkin Wireless N+ Router for this beauty and i am absolutely loving it!

Nigeria slashes second level .ng registration cost by 97%

Wale Falade — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:47:57 +0000

According to an article on This Day Live, Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the registry for .ng domain names, has reduced the price of registering a second level .ng domain name by 97% to NGN 15,000. That is equivalent to about $95 USD.

Previously, the group had been charging NGN 500,000, or $3,165 per year, for a second level .ng registration.

But it actually used to cost a lot more than that. When NIRA started offering second level domains, it offered to sell a five year registration outright for NGN 7.5M, or $47,450. It offered reduced pricing of NGN 3.0M for domains that matched trademarks.

Some companies took NIRA up on the offer. Google registered four domains while Microsoft picked up Bi.ng.

But the This Day article says that only 32 second level .ng domains were registered, and only two of those were registered by companies in Nigeria.

The Chief Operating Officer of NIRA, Mr. Ope Odusan, who gave the information, told THISDAY that NIRA later discovered that most Nigerians preferred the .ng top-level domain name directly, instead of the .com.ng domain name. He added that they however complained that the N500, 000 per year, which amounted to N6 million in five years, was exorbitant for them.

Gee, really?

Third level .ng domains, such as name.com.ng, are available for around $15 per year.

However, since the price reduction took effect on April 16th, 2013, there have been a spike in registrations, even at a price that is relatively high for a second level domain registration.

About 1,700 second .ng domains have been registered till date.

Judging by the 85 .ng listings on Sedo, a lot of these registrations are probably domain hacks ending in .ng. Some of the domain hacks listed for sale include sla.ng, roofi.ng, and uploadi.ng.

Some people listing domains on Sedo are asking prices in the 10,000 EUR range.

Check Out These Awesome Ways To Use Your Flash Drive

Wale Falade — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:05:21 +0000

Flash or thumb drives are probably a dime a dozen nowadays with good quality original 2GB drive costing as little as N1500. Apart from the popular use of simple file transfers, many are missing out on the best use that any of these tiny data buckets can fulfill. Enthusiasts know that flash drives are the perfect portable repositories for all sorts of software that can breathe life or enhance your PC usage experience.

Run Portable Applications

The first thing you’ll want to install on your USB rescue drive is PortableApps, a free, open-source platform for installing desktop applications on USB drives and other removable media. PortableApps manages the installation of new portable software on your USB drive, and it also acts as a front end when you’re actually using the USB drive, allowing you to browse and launch applications easily.

PortableApps maintains a list of hundreds of “portable” versions of popular free programs, each of them designed to work without installation. For the complete list, see portableapps.com/apps.

Each of the following applications that has “Portable” in its title is available for the PortableApps platform. You can download these items at the URLs provided, or start PortableApps and click Apps ▸ Get More Apps. You’ll see a large list of applications; just check the ones you want and then click Next to download and install all of them automatically.

Boot an operating system

If you want to do more than just run your own applications, you might want to consider booting an entire operating system from your USB flash drive. You can boot either Windows or Linux from a USB flash drive; however, the process is not an exact science and you may be in for a technical adventure.

Most existing operating systems support or can be adapted to support this feature.

Run A Website From It

If you are a Web developer, you may be interested to know that with Server2Go, you can easily run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl right from a USB flash drive. You can use Server2Go right out of the box without any installation. It runs on all versions of Windows, supports most common browsers, and is completely free. To a developer, the benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB drive are numerous. For example, imagine being able to carry a live Web site demo into a sales pitch meeting. For more information about this package, visit the Server2Go site.

Lock Your PC

Have you ever seen a movie in which a person in some secret government installation simply inserts and removes a card to log in and log out of a PC? If you thought that idea was cool, you’ll definitely want to investigate Predator. Once installed and configured, this little freeware utility will allow you to turn a USB flash drive into a key you can use to lock and unlock your computer.

While the USB flash drive is connected to your computer, everything works as it normally would. Once you remove the USB flash drive, your computer is locked down — the keyboard and mouse are disabled and the screen darkens. To unlock your computer, you just plug in the USB flash drive and the computer will be unlocked and you can begin using it.

PREDATOR locks your PC when you are away, even if your Windows session is still opened. It uses a regular USB flash drive as an access control device, and works as follows:

you insert the USB drive
you run PREDATOR (autostart with Windows is possible)
you do your work…
when you’re away from your PC, you simply remove the USB drive:
once it is removed, the keyboard and mouse are disabled and the screen darkens
when you return back to your PC, you put the USB flash drive in place:
keyboard and mouse are immediately released, and the display is restored.

It’s easier and faster than closing your Windows session, since you do not have to retype your password when you return.

Turn a USB Flash Drive into Extra Virtual RAM

It is not hard to turn an extra USB stick lying around collecting dust into an extra memory for your computer, allowing it to run speedier and manage more applications better.

You can put the flash drive to good use by using it to increase the virtual RAM on your Windows computer, preferably a USB drive smaller than 4 GB. The procedure has been summarized below:

Rename your thumb drive as “RAM DRIVE” or something similar, so you can see which drive is being used as RAM.
Delete all the stuff on the flash drive. Check for hidden files.
Right click on My Computer, and go to Properties. Once there, click on Advanced and go to the system output’s Settings.
Click on Advanced, and then Edit.
Click on your thumb drive above, and select “user-defined size.” Here you can see the size of your flash drive.
Calculate the size of the flash drive, and subtract 5 Mb.
Type this number in the first box. In the second box, type in the same number.
Click Set and confirm all your settings, applying them wherever you can.
Restart your computer.

Windows 7 users should go into their System Properties, under the Performance tab for these options. After you’re done, your computer will recognize your flash drive as extra virtual memory. Do not pull out your thumb drive after these settings are implemented. It could crash your computer. More detailed information can be found here.