Friday, December 30, 2011

Midnight In Paris


                                         Midnight In Paris.

Finished watching it and I'm drawn to this type of movies.
Surely because I'm a writer in disguise :), or the movie actually speaks in my own voice or it speaks to me in a familiar voice.

The story inspires living in the now; in the moment. There is no greener pasture over the hedge and no better moment than now.

I fell in love with the city of Paris {an old love :)} and Marion Cotillard.

Monday, December 26, 2011

60 Seconds

It's almost end of year and I pay attention to wonders that shall never end :).

Enjoy!.

  
60 Seconds - Things That Happen Every Sixty Seconds

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company


Did you know that these things happen within 60 seconds?
710 computers are sold worldwide and 555 of these computers are sold with Intel processors
1,820 TB of data is created; that’s enough data to fill up 2.6 million CDs
232 computers around the world get infected by malware
450 Windows 7 Cds are sold worldwide
925 iPhone 4s and 85 iPads are sold worldwide
11 Xbox 360 consoles are sold worldwide
18 Amazon's Kindle Fire are sold worldwide
38 tons E-waste is generated worldwide
4,000 USB devices are sold worldwide
2,500 ink cartridges are sold worldwide
2,100 checkins happen on location-based social networking website foursquare
$75,000 is added to Google's revenue
2 Million Internet users watch Porn Online
1.1 million conversations take place via instant messengers
103 Blackberries are sold worldwide
1,100 acres of land farmed in Farmville application
PayPal processes transactions worth $219,000; out of these, $10,000 is transacted via PayPal mobile
Around 950 purchases are done on eBay, out of which 180 purchases are done using eBay Mobile
12 websites get hacked and 416 attempts are made to compromise various Facebook accounts
1,400 movie discs are rented from the online movie rental service Redbox

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Algorithms that make your heart beat: IT WORKS!

What is better than Algorithms that work and gives you real joy.
I was about to send Christmas message to My family members with Wasamundi's service WasaTEXTO, such that I had to use Wasasheet which is programmed in this service. Particulay I have never used it for real things except testing. So I filled my sheet , created my group and was adding my group id. Once I was done, I decided to upload.
Serioulsy at this point, my heart was beating. Then I did it and It:::

                                                                         IT WORKS!!! 




Wasasheet is your contacts on a spread sheet. which you can upload directly to your contacts online, but first you must create the group to place them in so that u have to fill the sheet names with corresponding group ids.
You can keep filling forever the codes update your contact book for you.

I was amazed because I was part of the team that programmed this and I've never tested with my own contacts and it just works like magic. Anyway hope the users enjoy the feature and hopefully the team shall produce videos to help them.

Merry Christmas again!! My neighbors are already spoiling me before I visit my family in Limbe.

You need the Startup Mentality

From: http://d13kj6v34xm2ar.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/followtheleader.jpg

While reading news on this most unusual Christmas morning, I stumbled on the article by Marty Zwilling called "Do You Have the Mentality to Manage a Startup?" . I related with all the points. But up till today I've not had an acceptable definition of success but his is just lovely. 

He writes: " Beyond that, I believe success is a state of mind derived from confidence, self esteem, and what you really want in life." That says it all! so lovely, thanks man and keep doing your great job.

So, I concluded to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need the Startup Mentality. Unfortunately I live in a community where the startup mentality is still being adopted unlike Silicon valley . Hopefully we shall get there no matter how long it takes.

Enjoy your Christmas with Christ and Merry responsibly.



Saturday, December 24, 2011

Is this the life of an entrepreneur?

This is not the most weird Christmas eve I've ever had. But today is memorable cause I've spent time with something I love Wasamundi . Around such a time last year, I can recall I was rolling on my bed with high fever after I left my favorite uncle and Mentor (Madiba) Molua at a Dinner party on Invitation. I'm almost in tears each time I think how such days used to be before I became an entrepreneur.
I hope to spend sometime with my girl friend today. Hope that helps :)

I was programming how users shall be rewarded at the end of the year: Xmas and New year package from Wasamundi. I think I'm done and I'm rolling it out in under 30mins. The code will give a user wasamundi credit. But 2 users may not have the same amount of credit. The max a user can have is 10 and the min is 5. I've had fun today cos I did some cool javascript stuff too :).
Thanking speckyboy for the wallpaper. it's meant for desktop but I've using it for web :).
http://wallpaperstock.net/christmas-champagne_wallpapers_16416_1280x800_1.html .

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!
Grab your package here:  Xmas and New year package from Wasamundi


Thursday, December 22, 2011

Wasamundi Launches WasaTEXTO

Earlier this year, at Barcamp Cameroon 2011, I gave a presentation on the future of  Wasamundi.com.
Wasamundi presentation - Barcamp Cameroon 2011
View more presentations from naral.

I talked about how the people and businesses shall communicate on Wasamundi platform and the different services to follow.
Yesterday, wasamundi announced one of their services which was talked about during that event. WasaTEXTO.
Some of the goals of WasaTEXTO are: 

  • Permit anybody to reach everybody and anywhere.
  • Reach all the people who matter in your life at once via SMS.
  • Promote local entrepreneurs and promotion of creativity with an API.

Follow up the release: http://wasa.me/qGp9
Enjoy the service!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Human beings - real heroes

I spent some quality time today away from my computer. I mean from writing codes cause I've been watching movies from the computer :). I picked "Drive" as one of the best movies for this year: I love the soundtrack by the College feat. Electric Youth - A Real Hero. Then I ask who is a real hero. I think every human being who successfully lives through the challenges of a day is a Hero: A Real Hero.
Enjoy the lyrics of the song and the song: 


‘A Real Hero’
Real human being, being… (repeat)
and a real hero, hero… (repeat)
Back against the wall at odds
With the strength of the will and a cause
Your pursuits are called “outstanding”, though emotionally complex.
Against the grain of dystopic claims
of the thoughts your actions entertain, and you have proved to be
A real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being (repeat)
A pilot on a cold, cold morn,
One hundred fifty-five people on board,
All safe and all rescued,
From the slowly sinking ship.
All are warmer than his head so cool,
In that tight bind knew what to do, and you have proved to be
A real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being, and a real hero,
Real human being,
Real human being,
Real human being
(To fade)
College feat. Electric Youth
‘A Real Hero’

Carey Mulligan  , I particularly liked her; don't ask me why! Ah I saw her the last week in Wallstreet: Money never sleeps, humm....great acting. She just connects with you. Ok!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Live your life


A bungee Jump The thrill comes as much from the free-falling as from the rebounds.
Freedom from emotions and psychology. Live and lets live and forget all the consequences.
Love.


Monday, April 25, 2011

African Startups in .com(dotcom) ambush

Recently, I've been involved with low, medium and high profile projects.



Most of them required getting a domain name related to the project I'm working on.

Sometimes, the client come with their domain names.
But some of them are beginners, they have little knowledge of domain name check sites like checkdomain.com, namecheap.com or the numerous re-sellers who have this service.


Africa is in the period of uprising in web and mobile. More people and companies are seeing the need to get a web presence.
Startups are born every second from Nigeria , through Cameroon, East to South Africa. Internet usage in Africa is rising. The present growth is at 2,357.3 %. {that's HUGE!}

The major problem is, the startup or the company needs to get a name that reflects the company or the product or the startup name. This means my startup company name should not be Cocoa and my domain name is Corn!

In one of the cases,
a company that has been existing in Cameroon for 10 years called NRL, needs a  website with a .com extension nrl.com. The company specialises in Computer spare parts.

But if you go through the search to buy the domain, it can not be available. see,

result from checkdomain.com

See for yourself the domains available :); .la and .cc. Disaster!.


I noted that possible words from the English dictionary saw all the domains absent.

If you are lucky someone should be ready to re-sell at a higher cost. But we should not settle on that.
It is this very problem of absence of proper domain which first prompted the Wasamundi team to look inside.
We understood that Africa and Cameroon has a rich culture of Language and A name drawn from this language should be .com available. We were sure, we would find something like us.

Originally, we tried, locate, locator, ifind, findme, searchme, all this domain names searchearth{which is not actually sexy for a product name} where not available.
We therefore settled for wasamundi, which has several varied meanings, but we are sticking with searchearth.

I should not be tempted to think that ,it is this .com ambush that led to the name Ushahidi, ubuntu, umbono.
Nevertheless, whether they were ambushed or not, the example is clear. 
Drawing a product name from Africa's rich culture should be our number on thoughts for African startups.

So my advice is simple, no matter the .com ambush, Africa has a rich culture, rich language which should serve as an escape route to the .com ambush.

Greetings to my friend Eloge Kly, CEO of dotcom :).

I'll see you sooner!