Forget Adsense, Kenyan site owners can now actually earn money online

webPesa is East Africa's ad server intended to make advertising localized and revenue earning simple , fast and efficient. After signup you get your own control panel as an advertiser or a publisher. The best thing about this server is that payment starts at Ksh 500 and advertising for the same price. You however need a safaricom line that is mpesa activated and must be at least a resident of East Africa.
Easily manage your ad inventory.
webPesa Ad Server lets you organize and manage all of your ad inventory under one easy to use interface no matter how many websites you have. It works with all kinds of ad formats, ranging from simple banners to rich media. And it’s designed to deliver your ads as fast as possible, regardless of the number of ads on each page.


Deliver what you want to whom you want.

With webPesa Ad Server, you can manage and target your ads any way you want. Use prioritization controls to optimize how your ads are delivered. Use frequency controls to limit how often campaigns are shown. And use targeting to serve the most relevant ads to your audience. There’s no limit to the flexibility you have over the delivery of your ads.
Measure the performance of your ads.
webPesa Ad Server’s extensive set of reports provides comprehensive statistics on your websites and ad zones as well as your advertisers and ad campaigns. Get detailed breakdowns on ad delivery, conversions, revenue and more.
Benefits to site owners
This is why you will choose webpesa over adsense:

- Payment is by mpesa(whenever you need), no need to wait 2 weeks for cheque.

-Payments start at Ksh 500 unlike for adsense where you have to wait for it to reach US$100(about Ksh 8000)

-Account cannot be disabled without notification on abuse of service.

- Our service iswatched over by the Ministry of Information and Communication.
Benefits to publishers
- Own Control Panel to watch stats

- Choose target traffic

- Advertising rates start at Ksh 500 (cheapest ever)

- Designing of ads free

Mashada. the ultimate web2.0?

If there is only one website management team in Kenya’s cyberspace industry that is always working round the clock to deliver, then its got to be the Mashada admin. I’ve seen the website transform from a basic phpBB powered forum t the country’s ultimate web2.0.

If you need to see a practical example of social media in action then this is where to go.

At the sign up page there is the option of using Facebook Connect.Facebook connect is an application that enables site owners to allow visitors acces their content using their facebook information. After accessing the site, you should be able to invite a limited number of your facebook friends, and even know of any of your friends who are already using the site. Plus, it alos publishes your activity stream on facebook wall.

One of the things that get to strike you at first is the twitter stream on the frontpage. Unlike most twitter streams embedded on websites, this one gives you updates from several users, and you may vote down or up an entry. Brilliant idea! Except that it may not be sensible if the tweets are frequent.

Mashada is in many ways like Haiya, which I reviewed recently, but from the word go, you realize that guys are more talkative here. The forums are well categorized( and “subcategorized”), and you get several responses on posting an interesting topic. Or any topic.

There is always a dozen ,or about, of people chatting in the Kahawa Chat. The chat interface has customizable settings for alerts, status and appearance. The desktop version is flashy, but I didn’t get the mobile version to work on my device. Maybe its the problem with the phone, or maybe the beta version doesn’t actually work. The system comes with normal chat functions like private rooms, customizable font etcetra.And one of the best things about it, you don’t need to sign up in order to start chatting. This is awesome for guys who are looking for a quick chat. But obviously you willl need to sin up to get offline messages and chat history.

Th blog aggregator is also commendable. It reads feeds from selected Kenyan blogs. I however don’t know their selection criteria because I tried getting a blog to be read but I haven’t got a reply yet.

Basically, Mashada is one site where you will not get bored, whether you are a normal person looking to talk politics or you are a nerd with time in his hands. It is not a just a customized open source script that was installed. They clearly know who they want to get there, how to keep guys there,armed with the latest skill on social media and good programming knowledge. Good work guys.

Hacking Vista: Unlock the supersecret Administrator account

Deep inside the bowels of Windows Vista, there's a secret Administrator account, and it's different from the normal administrator account you most likely have set up on your PC. This Administrator account is not part of the Administrator group. (Confused yet? You should be.) It's a kind of superadministrator, akin to the root account in Unix, and by default it's turned off and hidden. (In describing this hack, we'll always use the capital "A" for the secret Administrator account, and a lowercase "a" for a normal administrator account.)

In versions of Windows before Windows Vista, the Administrator account wasn't hidden, and many people used it as their main or only account. This Administrator account had full rights over the computer.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft changed that. In Vista, the Administrator account is not subject to UAC, but normal administrator accounts are. So the Administrator can make any changes to the system and will see no UAC prompts.

Turning on the Administrator account is straightforward. First, open an elevated command prompt by typing cmd into the Search box on the Start menu, right-clicking the command prompt icon that appears at the top of the Start menu, then selecting Run as administrator -- or just use the shortcut you created in the previous hack.

Then enter this command and press Enter:

Net user administrator /active:yes

From now on, the Administrator account will appear as an option on the Welcome screen, along with any user accounts you may have set up. Use it like any other account. Be aware that it won't have a password yet, so it's a good idea to set a password for it.

If you want to disable the account and hide it, enter this command at an elevated command prompt and press Enter:

Net user administrator /active:no

Why Cloud Computing is the Future of Mobile

Source: readwriteweb

The term "cloud computing" is being bandied about a lot these days, mainly in the context of the "future of the web." But cloud computing's potential doesn't begin and end with the personal computer's transformation into a thin client - the mobile platform is going to be heavily impacted by this technology as well. At least that's the analysis being put forth by ABI Research. Their recent report, Mobile Cloud Computing, theorizes that the cloud will soon become a disruptive force in the mobile world, eventually becoming the dominant way in which mobile applications operate.

You may be wondering: what does the term "mobile cloud computing" really mean? Basically, it refers to an infrastructure where both the data storage and the data processing happen outside of the mobile device. Today, there are already some good examples of mobile cloud computing applications including mobile Gmail, Google Maps, and some navigation apps. However, the majority of applications today still do most of the data storage and processing on the mobile devices themselves and not in the cloud. In a few years, that could change.

Why Mobile Cloud Computing?

With a Western-centric view of the world, it can sometimes be hard to remember that not everyone owns a smartphone. There are still a large number of markets worldwide where the dominant phone is a feature phone. While it's true that smartphones will grow in percentage and feature phones will become more sophisticated in time, these lower-end phones are not going away anytime soon. And it's their very existence which will help drive the mobile cloud computing trend.

Not only is there a broader audience using feature phones in the world, there are also more web developers capable of building mobile web applications than there are developers for any other type of mobile device. Those factors, combined with the fact that feature phones themselves are becoming more capable with smarter built-in web browsers (and more alternative browsers available for download), will have an impact on mobile cloud computing's growth.

How Will Mobile Cloud Computing Become a Disruptive Force?

There are two primary reasons why ABI believes cloud computing will become a disruptive force in the mobile world. The first is simply the number of users the technology has the power to reach: far more than the number of smartphone users alone. The second reason has to do with how applications are distributed today. Currently, mobile applications are tied to a carrier. If you want an iPhone app, for example, you have to first have a relationship with the mobile operator who carries the iPhone. If you want a Blackberry app, the same rule applies. But with mobile clouding computing applications, as long as you have access to the web, you have access to the mobile application.

Moves by PaaS Players Could Change Everything

When you think of Plaform-as-a-Service (PaaS), one of the first companies that springs to mind is probably Salesforce. With their Force.com platform, business applications can be built and run "in the cloud." But Salesforce is not the only major PaaS player out there today - Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google's App Engine are also two platforms that could have a major impact on this trend.

Currently, AWS is used by over half a million developers and Google's App Engine hosts 45,000 applications. Now imagine if those two companies along with Force.com all of a sudden started aggressively marketing their mobile capabilities. Today, neither AWS nor Google offers this, and Salesforce's mobile offering is limited to smartphones (Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and iPhone). But if the companies decided to make building for the mobile web as easy as building for the web, you could have a mobile revolution on your hands.

But People Like Apps!

Saying that "mobile cloud computing" is the future doesn't mean phones will be filled with links to websites that work in any browser instead of special, downloadable applications, some of which you can even purchase. Instead, mobile applications will exist in both formats. As for the downloadable applications themselves, they will still appear to be your typical mobile app - end users won't even notice a difference. However, there will be a difference - it will just be on the back-end. Mobile applications will begin to store your data in the cloud as opposed to on the mobile device, and the applications will become more powerful as processing power is also offloaded to the cloud.

The first mobile apps powered by the cloud will likely be business-focused mobile productivity applications where collaboration, data sharing, multitasking, and scheduling are key factors. For consumers, though, navigation and mapping applications will be the most obvious examples of the trend. Plus, there are some specialty applications today which already function as mobile cloud apps - for example, Schlage offers a remote keyless entry system which lets you mobilely control your home from a distance. You can let someone into your house, manage your lights, your thermostat, your camera system, etc. There are also a few applications in the iPhone app store that let you remotely manage your PC and your DVR, too.

Potential Problems

Of course, there are some potential issues that could be barriers to this shift in mobile computing. The most notable problem is the lack of speedy mobile Internet access everywhere. Here in the US, for example, 3G coverage is spotty outside urban areas, leading to intermittent connection issues and slow speeds. Other markets may have it even worse.

However, new technologies like HTML5, which does local caching, could help mobile cloud apps get past those sorts of issues. And there's even a chance that the browser could one day be replaced - at least in some markets - with another technology altogether which provides a better way to access the mobile web. ABI Research mentions initiatives like OMA's Smartcard Web Server, essentially a souped-up SIM card that connects directly with the carrier to push applications to mobile phones. There's also TokTok, a company whose technology allows access to web services like Gmail and Google Calendar by voice. With voice-enabled search like this, mobile apps could talk directly to the service itself which sits on the edge of the network, as opposed to needing the user to launch a web browser and navigate through the mobile web.

When Will Mobile Cloud Computing Really Take Off?

According to ABI, this change is only a few years away. By 2010, we'll see one or all of the major PaaS players marketing their mobile capabilities, they say. But first, API standards from open-source mobile collaboration group BONDI will go into effect. Later, in 2011, we'll see more of HTML5, and the OneAPI standard will come into play. (OneAPI involves standardized apps for networks allowing developers to consistently access parts of network providers' capabilities, such as location services). All these factors combined will help drive the move to the cloud.

The changes will occur with differing speeds depending on the market. Markets with higher Internet participation will obviously lead the way, as will markets with higher subscriber penetration. That includes Western Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. Other markets will then follow. By 2014, mobile cloud computing will become the predominant application development strategy. By that time, our PCs will be more like thin client devices than they are today, and now it seems our phones will too.