Kenya is already enabled among the few countries which can post on their Google+ accounts using SMS. I was just reading tweets from #gTanzania when I was alerted to the impending availability of the service to Tanzanian users. I decided to check if its is possible to Kenyan users. It is very much possible.

You can post on your Twitter and Facebook networks using SMS, this is not one surprising move by Google considering the kind of competition it is trying to give to Facebook and Twitter.

To enable this feature on your Google+ page, you will have to add your phone number in Google+ settings, following which Google will send a verification code. After verifying your SMS number by entering the verification code, you will be able to choose what you want enabled for SMS alerts and postings.

To set up Google+ posting and notification reception through sms;

1. Sign in to Google+ .
2. Click your full name or email address in the Google bar.
3. Click Account settings.
4. Click Google+.
5. Click Add phone number.
6. Click Send verification code to verify you entered your phone number correctly.
7. Enter the verification code and click Save.
8. Select the notifications you want to receive via SMS.

Again you might want to add a PIN for extra security. You can modify the notifications like below;

In Kenya you will be able to post to your Google+ by sending an SMS to +254700999412. Your operator will charge you the normal SMS costs. The update you send through SMS will be visible to all your circles by default.

Some tips;

• @{circle name} - To share with a specific circle. You can also tag a circle to a post by appending your post with @[circle name]. For example: “Where are all the @techies at”.
• Tagging a post with @extended automaticaly shares your post with the extended circle
• Tagging a post with @[email address] will invite the person to Google+ or tag him/her only on the post.

Thailand has taken up the option for Twitter to have tweets being viewed from the country censored. Authorities in the country publicly endorsed Twitter Censorship with the ICT Permanent Secretary, Jeerawan Boonperm, telling the Bangkok Post that it was a ”welcome development”.

The government also confirmed that it is getting  ”good cooperation” from Facebook and Google but it will soon be contacting Twitter to begin collaborating on the new feature.

Thailand’s lèse-majesté law bans criticism of the country’s royal family. The law gained popularity because of of the blockage of YouTube in 2006 till when the offending videos were removed from the site was YouTube access allowed in Thailand.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology requested Google to remove 225 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the royal family.

In 2011, Mallika Boonmetrakul, deputy spokeswoman of the Thailand’s Democrat Party, tried to lobby for an all-out block on Western social media sites, claiming that the China was a good model to follow. The campaign did not succeed. Thailand has jailed number of its citizens for posting messages on Facebookt. An example was a 61 year old man who got a 20 year prison sentence for sending SMS messages. There was also a case of a dual Thai / US citizen who was jailed for two and a half years for translating a banned book about the king into Thai.

I am doing this post here because it is all about hate speech on social media.

First let me quote Maya Angelou;

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

On her column on The Star, radio presenter Caroline Mutoko bitterly attacks Kenyans on social networks regarding hate speech. Mutoko refers to most Kenyans using social media as “myopic and with little else”. He writings is full of all manner of negative adjectives she uses to describe Kenyans on social media. By the end of paragraph 3 of he column, you get the drift. Mutoko’s real beef is not with “hate speech on social media” but really she wish that someone contained the rise of social media because it makes her powerless unlike before when Kenyans had to rely on her to have the leaders address their issues.

Kenyans on social media are from the same mothers and fathers who begot Mutoko. Some of them are CEOs, radio presenters, ICT geeks or just enthusiasts whose actions online does not deserve such tirades from Mutoko or anyone else. You cannot generalise everyone online and then use words like “numbskulls” and “small-minded”, you get to wonder if this lady really knows what she is talking about. Mutoko is so yesteryear because the numbskulls and small-minded nincompoops online decided so. She will not determine to us when we need to hold Martha Karua, Raila, Uhuru, Ruto or Kibaki to task. She lost that power because Safaricom now serves up 95% of the 4.7 million internet  users meaning that this is a key constituency of smart Kenyans who will not have to rely on Mutoko or whoever to get what they want.

These people had to depend on FM stations 95% of the times just few years ago. Now for every one hour this group spend to listen to radio stations, they spend a further 4.3 hours on social media to get the facts rights by comparing notes with their friends or getting news online. This constituency worries Mutoko because despite Kiss FM being one of the few stations to go online, they terminated their streaming services saying that they thought that internet would eat on their influence.  Kiss FM and Radio Africa in general is still very cagey about the internet. That is why all news on The Star would not be available online until a day or two later. They believe that by breaking news online, they kill the paper copy. The same argument they apply over streaming their shows online. It is so arachaic and ignorant you wonder which century the editors at Radio Africa lives

Some lecture to Mutoko, being on radio does not equate you to being smarter than the average kenyan. You might just be as dumb and ignorant as you are now even if you have been exposed on radio that much. Sometimes exposure does not help because you are so thick and proud in your dumb self that you don’t want to listen to the innocent advise from a mama mboga participating in a call-in session.

Calling Kenyans on social media “lazy numbskulls” just because they “have not ignited a revolution equal to the Arab spring” is simply foolish and pedestrian. What revolution do you want in Kenya? Do the Kenyans on social media share your desire for a revolution. Kenyans on social media are a bit much more smarter than the poor slum and village dwellers whom the likes of Caroline Mutoko and Joshua Sang can incite to kill and maim anyone.

Just like most Kenyans are “small-minded” , Mutoko should not expect anything different from social media. The real beef Caroline Mutoko has with social media is its power. The internet has given very kawaida Kenyans the power to stop stupidity in the media and even force action. When Mutoko says that “the majority ……will remain anonymous because even they don’t wish to be openly associated with they trash they write”, she misses the whole point and shows that she understands nothing about social media, leave alone the internet. She should care to read about internet anonymity here. It is a well protected right that not even Facebook, Google or the US government will dare mess with.

Anonymous speech is older than even the US and is well protected by the first amendment.  A much-cited 1995 US Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

What is hate speech online to Mutoko? The only case of hate speech online presented by Mutoko in the article happened in South Africa where a South African policeman, Juda Dagane, ranted against “whites” in South Africa and promised to teach them a lesson after the death of “black messiah” (Mandela). In the whole write-up, there is no single case mentioning hate speech by Kenyans online.

Mutoko goes even further to create her own definition of hate speech limiting it to hate because of ethnicity. Hate speech goes beyond ethnicity. It encompasses the disparage of a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic.

When Nancy Baraza was running roughshod over a poor security guard at Kenya’s premier shopping mall, Village Market, Caroline Mutoko saw Baraza’s actions as a reflection on the empowerment of the females. She even throw a childish tantrum once at the UNHCR parking lot at Lion Place when she double parked her car and when she was requested to remove it, she insulted the UNHCR and called them all manner of names. Just for requesting that she stop double-parking and consider others.

I don’t deny there is hate speech online. But people like Mutoko are fighting the power social media has given to the majority of Kenyans with the excuse of hate speech. If she dresses badly or her show is whack, Kenyans will say it easily to million others through Facebook and Twitter. That really makes Mutoko goes mad because just as politicians, the only other constituency which would never allow kawaida Kenyans to have so much power is the mainstream media.

Social media dilutes the influence of the likes of Mutoko and other adults-in-diapers running our media. The days when Caroline Mutoko would fake her kidnap and then Kenyans would be kept guessing are long gone. Now every move is monitored and even a Caroline Mutoko faked breast blunder would not escape the attention of kawaida Kenyans acting through social media.

Mutoko should be the last person to lecture Kenyans on good behaviour considering that she has insulted even an innocent politician like Martha Karua, having a good time just because she had access to a microphone. The craziier you are on TV and FM Radio stations, the higher the ratings you get. And if Bonoko is a presenter, does Mutoko think that she will ever convince anyone that it requires anything saner or normal to make it on radio. Success on Radio looks to be directly proportion to the degree of madness you display on air.

The fact that the government knows who runs or present on such-and-such a radio station has not stopped them from spreading porn to the living rooms of millions of Kenyans. The reach of radio and TV in Kenya is estimated to be around 65% according to this CCK sponsored study, internet reaches less than 10% with only around 45% of the around 3.8 million Kenyans regularly using internet active on social media.

Get some education Mutoko. The internet is like Gikomba, don’t condemn all traders in Gikomba just because you don’t agree with some. And also care to specifically mention those you believe does wrong. You cannot condemn all Kenyans on social media platforms while you rely on a case of a confused South African as evidence of such behaviour by Kenyans.

On Thursdaylast week, Twitter announced that it plans to censor tweets as per demands in certain countries. The community on Twitter is not asleep. So on Friday, guys had started sharing how to bypass the Twitter censorship. And even without the help from the online community, Twitter’s own Help Center actually reveals how you can bypass the censorship.

How it all works.

The tweets are going to be blocked on a country-by-country basis. First Twitter will have to identify the country from which you’re accessing the tweets. Twitter will be using your IP address meaning that there are ways that the country can really be masked or just wrongly identified.

A new research by Portland (a communication research firm) indicates that users in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco tweets most. The research titled How Africa Tweets and released today shows that most users of Twitter in Africa access it from a mobile phone (57%) while the 20 – 29 years age group dominate the social media site.

The data was collected by Portland and Tweetminster analysing 500 most active Twitter accounts in Africa. The study found that;

• South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4 2011) as the next most active Kenya (2,476,800). Nigeria (1,646,212), Egypt (1,214,062) and Morocco (745,620) make up the remainder of the top five most active countries.
• 57% of Tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices.
• 60% of Africa’s most active Tweeters are aged 20-29.
• Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, with 81% of those polled saying that they mainly used it for communicating with friends.
• Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa. 68% of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news. 22% use it to search for employment opportunities.
• African Twitter users are active across a range of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Mark Flanagan, Portland’s Partner for Digital Communications, says:

“One of the more surprising findings of this research is that more public figures have not joined Africa’s burgeoning Twittersphere. With some notable exceptions, we found that business and political leaders were largely absent from the debates playing out on Twitter across the continent. As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place.”

Check the infographic below

Al-Shabaab has tonight tweeted photos of the captured Kenyan government officials. The terrorist organisation’s twitter handle released the photos of Fredrick Irungu (Immigration Clerk) and Edward Mule (District Officer) few minutes after 9pm Kenyan time.

#KenyanPoW: Yesse, Mule Edward, 30 year-old Kenyan Government District Officer (DO) for Burderi, Wajir South twitter.com/HSMPress/statu…

— HSM Press Office (@HSMPress) January 18, 2012

The account seems to be run by someone who is taking lots of caution on how he/she logs in. The language looks so American stoking the fear that some US Islamic extremists are aiding the organisation in its terror activities. The account is mostly active at night and the user does not posts for a long time before abruptly logging off.

Former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, has said that he is sceptical about Twitter being a reliable media of conveying knowledge. Speaking at the University of Stellenbosch, Mbeki who was answering a question from the audience said that he believe the social media is not an appropriate tool for discussing knowledge which can better the society.

“I am sceptical about this notion of Twitter being that great conveyor instrument for the democratisation of knowledge,” Mbeki is quoted by News24 as having said at the opening of the university’s knowledge conference.

Mbeki also said that he doubted the effectiveness of blogs and blogging in discussing such ideas.

Mbeki is reported to have questioned whether knowledge has become “less democratised and more compromised” as an instrument for the improvement of society. The former president lamented that mainstream / traditional media is unable to control which political rhetoric went viral or “caught fire” with the public.

Mbeki urged the conference to look at how false knowledge was “advanced” by groups with agendas. Mbeki said that ”false knowledge” was used in 2011 to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power.

Mbeki said;

“False knowledge was advanced that the Gaddafi regime was about to slaughter millions of civilians. This was to justify the imposition of a ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya which served as a cover to overthrow the Libyan government and impose a regime approved by the Western Powers in their interest. ” 

The thoughts of Mbeki are not unique since former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo has also been fronting the same idea.

A man former employee of Phonedog is being sued for keeping Twitter followers that he attracted while working for the mobile news site. Formerly tweeting as @Phonedog_Noah, Noah Kravitz later changed his username when he left the company having amassed more than 17,000 followers.

The company is now valuing every follower at around $2.50, demanding a total of $370,000.

Noah argues that Phonedog gave him permission to continue using the account after he left.

In an interview he gave to the New York Times, Noah says that Phonedog had allowed him to keep the account as long as he agreed to “tweet on their behalf from time to time”.

Since the time he left, Noah’s followers have moved from the 17,000 to 22,000. Noah worked at Phonedog as a blogger.

However, eight months later the company filed a lawsuit claiming that the account’s followers were a customer list, and that it had invested “substantial” resources into building it.

In a statement provided to the New York Times, PhoneDog asserted that Kravitz did not invest in creating the Twitter following.

“The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media L.L.C.,” PhoneDog said. “We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands.”

Facebook acquired Snaptu and then removed support for various apps and the one affected most was Twitter. More than 26 million users in emerging markets depended on Snaptu for feature phones, mainly Nokia and Samsung, as the only way to get Facebook, Twitter and others services.

With Facebook stopping to support Twitter and other services on Snaptu, we found a very good work around which impressed even the Snaptu Chief technology Officer (CTO), Barak Naveh. Now snaptu did a smart thing and made it almost impossible to use the workaround after the discovery.

So Snaptu has announced that it is completely shutting down as from 26th December 2011. That means that if yours has not been shut down, then today is the last day you can use Snaptu.

The Facebook acquisition of Snaptu looked suspect because Facebook experience on the platform was never pleasant. Twitter was really great on Snaptu but not Facebook. So the acquisition looked like meant to cut the influence of Twitter in emerging markets. Facebook was not happy that we could find a workaround hence thee abrupt shutdown now. Unlike the announcement over support of Twitter and other apps, the shutdown notice is only one week old.

We will be showing you better options of accessing Twitter and Facebook from your feature phones. Just watch this space.

Follow us on Twitter @Techmtaa or the writer on @RobertAlai

Could you do Twitter via postal mail, Facebook via faxt and or YouTube via SMS? Those are some of the questions posed by  Giles Turnbull on Twitter. Giles then went ahead and sent tweets via snail mail.

In an article on The Morning News, Giles gave reasons why he decided to try the project called “Twitter-by-post”:

Tweeting by post made me appreciate the online and the offline. Brevity is a good thing, but there’s no reason we should only be brief on Twitter. The internet is a marvelous thing, but so is cheese, so are close friends who know your opinions and respect them, so is a glass of fine English ale. So is getting postcards from interesting people, because it makes your letterbox come alive.

Turnbull got the postal addresses of some of his tweeps and decided to send them mail. He further writes:

For those “public” tweets, I wrote the same thing out 15 times, on 15 cards, and sent them to 15 different people. This took every moment as long as you might think; possibly a little longer.

My wonderful collaborators were asked to do more than simply receive my ramblings through their letterboxes. I also asked them to reply with cards of their own.

Read the whole story on TheNextWeb.

A new study has revealed that those on Facebook “friend” those they know and unfriend those who offend them. The survey by NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey company specializing on social media data, polled over 1,800 social media users finding that 82 percent of Facebookers “friend” people they know in real life and 60 percent connect with mutual friends.

Only 8% of the respondents friend others because of looks, while 7% friend people to increase their number of Facebook  ”friends”. 7% of the respondents said they “friend everyone”.

See the infographic on the findings below

Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud and his investment company, Kingdom Holding, have reportedly invested $300 million on Twitter.

The deal, first reported on Bloomberg and officially announced in a press statement, reads in part:

“This investment was the result of several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence and represents a strategic stake in Twitter.”

Prince Alwaleed is reported to be worth US $19.6 billion making him th 26th richest person in the world according to Forbes. The company also has a stake on News Corp.’s among other investments on media properties in the Arab world. Alwaleed  also bought a five percent stake in Apple in 1997 for US $115 million.

Google launched its location service which many tech bloggers believes is a targeted competition at Foursquare but we bet that it looks more PlanJam. The service allows you to discover new places to checkout.

Google describes it this way;

Whether it’s exploring a new city, checking out a friend’s movie recommendations, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day.

We’re a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world. So we went ahead and built Schemer! We hope you like it.

Schemer is currently in beta and invite only but add us on Google+ to get exclusive information and invitations to join.

Theidea of Schemer is for members to start  ”schemes,” or plan cool things to do, as well as to explore schemes from other.

Google’s video on Schemer;

We are still trying the service. You can get some invites to Schemer by commenting on this post or retweeting the post. You can also just click on this link http://schemer.com/invite/7efirl0h65lha

Twitter seems to be introducing a new redesigned look for both Twitter.Com and Tweetdeck. Twitter hopes that the new look will simplify the experience of the millions of users on the micro-blogging site.

There is a total change of layout where tweets now appear on the right while the redesigns also sees the introductions of Home, @Connect and #Discover links at the top of the page. #Discover will show the trending topics while @connect will show who has mentioned you and what accounts you might want to follow.

Watch the video of the redesign

Twitter has also launched brand pages in partnership with American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard, Intel, JetBlue, Kia, McDonald’s, Nike, PepsiCo, Staples, Verizon Wireless, NYSE Euronext, Heineken, Subway and Paramount Pictures.

According to Advertising Age, the brand pages will let advertisers customize their headers to make their logo and tagline more prominent. Brands will also be able to stick one tweet on top of their Twitter stream.

The mobile apps for both iPhone and Android have also been updated. You can check the new Twitter showcased here https://fly.twitter.com/

India’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel has launched free Twitter mobile browsing today, a day after Essar Kenya launched free Facebook browsing in Kenya. The free Twitter browsing will be available till March 1, 2012, according to a report by MediaNama.

Airtel users visiting http://mobile.twitter.com will be able to access the website without paying a cent. The move comes just few months after Airtel made the access of Facebook through USSD in India free. Airtel users in India can access Facebook by simply dialing *325# or *fbk# through their phones free of cost.

Twitter is also available in India through SMS where users just send updates to 53000 number. Twitter is aggressively targeting Asia looking to have a strong footing in the market.

yuMobile has today unveiled another freebie. The company says that it is not taking its chances with the social media community. From today, all data users on yuMobile will be able to browse all Facebook website addresses for free. This means that any URL with the main domain as Facebook.com will attract zero data charges on yuMobile network.

Asked what kind of network yuMobile users enjoy, Essar Kenya CEO – Madhur Taneja – say that “according to CCK report, yuMobile data network  scored higher than the competitions. The network is 2.5G (GPRS).” This has not been convincing considering that 2.G networks can only manage data transfer rates of between 56 kbit/s up and 115 kbit/s.This is dwarfed by Safaricom, Airtel (yet to be officially launched but Live in Kisumu, Nairobi and Mombasa) and Orange 3G networks.

The new development makes yuMobile the only network which offer free full Facebook browsing. Both Safaricom and Orange offer the zero.facebook.com or 0.facebook.com also known as Facebook Zero for free. Facebook Zero is a stripped down version of Facebook which is mostly targeted at feature phones users.

Users have also demanded to know when yuMobile will start offering BlackBerry services but the company responded that RIM has suspended entering into any partnerships with new operators till January 15th 2012. yuMobile say they will pursue the negotiations with RIM when the window for new partners will be opened again.

The new “Free Facebook Browsing” offer from yuMobile is for a limited duration according to Mr Taneja.

Paypal is teaming up with the world’s largest web payment solutions provider, Paypal, allowing Facebook friends to send each other real money using the “Send Money” application.

Through the app, users will have the option to send money using an eCard or just a money without the card. While there are several ways to use Paypal to send payment via Facebook (like Payvment), “send money” is the first peer-to-peer payments system enabled for Facebook and PayPal. Since it is a peer-to-peer transaction, there will be no transaction fee

International fees and payment limits which are regular in Paypal will apply though.

“Sending money, person to person, is free,” PayPal Senior Product Marketing Manager JB Coutinho told Mashable. “If it’s funded by a PayPal balance or linked to a bank account, it’s free.”

Through a blog post, Paypal said that more than 500 Million eCards are sent everyday. The app makes social payment stronger and a reality in all aspects. Friends can send their friends money through Facebook or buy gift cards for any occasion. It would be so interesting to see M-Pesa also join the social payment fray.

Snaptu stopped sorking on 11/11 but many users have found a workaround to have it working again. The mobile app used to enable superior social media experience on more than 27 million feature phones and smartphones. Snaptu was bought by Facebook around March 2011 for around US $60 Million.

So on 11/11 Snaptu withdrew access to LinkedIn, Picasa and Twitter after this notice. Facebook, Rss news and weather access were left intact. So Kenyans on Twitter have found a better way to get to Snaptu Twitter app without having the native Twitter widget present.

Below is the process of getting to have Twitter working on Snaptu again;

1. Logon to your Snaptu App and click on the Facebook widget

2. Post the URL of your Twitter profile or any url of a Twitter profile as a status update on Facebook

3. Click on “Wall” and navigate to the status update you just posted and click on it.

4. One of the options you will get is the Twitter handle of the of the profile url you just posted  ( I posted www.twitter.com/robertalai and so the handle I got was @robertalai)

5. Click on the Twitter handle and it will take you to the same Twitter handle’s profile through Snaptu. Here now you are on Twitter through Snaptu.

6. Click on “Menu” and then select Home” to go to the main Twitter interface on Snaptu. You can even get to other accounts you previously managed through Snaptu by just clicking on “Menu” then “Accounts”.

Despite being labelled a primitive app, Snaptu continues to be the easiest way to manage social media through the many feature phones. Apps like Gravity and TwimGo are great but just don’t run well on feature phones. Gravity is also a premium app and purchase of apps is not easy from many of the African countries.

Leave a comment below if you have any issues addressed regarding access to Twitter and other social media platforms through Snaptu.

Follow us on Twitter @Techmtaa or the writer on @RobertAlai

Over the last few days, many links have been spreading on Facebook which when you click hijack your account and start sending your friends all manner of links. Norton seems to have found a way of improving on the security of Facebook users. The trick is very easy and just works like what we used to have where all Yahoo downloads were scanned before you downloaded them onto your local drive.

1. First you need to open Norton Safe Web for Facebook in your Web browser. You need to have logged into your Facebook account.

2. Facebook will want you to authorize permission for the Norton app to scan your account.

3. You might be required to authorise further permissions. Confirm and continue. You should enable auto-scan

Google+ will soon support pseudonyms and Google apps among other forms of identity, says a Google executive.

The revelations were made at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco by Google’s  SVP of Social Vic Gundotra. This means that Google+ will eventually support assumed identities. Google will still only allow users to sign up if they use their real names but it will be adding features that will “support other forms of identity” in the next few months.

Google has previously stood its ground on the use of real names in the network but with demand for anonymity in some cases, Google seems to be budging to criticism and allowing the use of pseudonyms. Google recently ignited a controversy with its insistance over the use of real names.

Meanwhile, Google apps support will be announced “in the next few days” according to Sergey Brin and Vic Gundotra. The said that Google Apps support was coming “imminently” at the Web 2.0 Summit. Gundotra made it clear that “imminently” meaning that within the next few days, we might see the support for Google apps.

Google didn’t launch Google Apps support previously because the company thought “it would have more time.” Vic said that the adoption of Google+ has beat expectations hence the delay.

Google yesterday announced that it will be shutting down a number of its products in the next few months. The two most notable are Google Buzz and Jaiku, the latter it acquired in 2007. Google will also remove social features from iGoogle but will not shut down the whole product. Google Buzz and Buzz API will be shut down so that Google can focus on Google+.

Other products which Google expects to shut down are Code Search and University Research program for Google Search. Jaiku had Twitter like features and the acquisition by Google prompted rumours that maybe it was Google’s competition to Twitter. Google has failed in its quest to enter the social media scene with Google Wave and Buzz both failing to impress.

Google labs was shut down yesterday while Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search. Google notes in the blog post “We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+.”

Apple co-founder and immediate former CEO, Steve Jobs has died. Steve was a real inspiration to some of us who grew up in  the village and had to struggle against all the odds just to make a living. We sometimes had to depend on listening to radio talk shows and participating in contests just to pay our way through college.

As someone who went through the initial Africa Virtual University programs which were sponsored by World Bank and inspired by the likes of Steve Jobs, I must appreciate what the former CEO did to my life. I must tell you that were it not for the college dropouts like Steve Jobs and Bill gates, I would either have been a lost boy with no future as the environment I grew in could not let me be what I am today.

The first time I set my eyes and touched a computer was in the year 2000 while starting my course at Africa Virtual University. I marveled at the PCs  running Win 98 and when I clicked the mouse the first time, I felt like someone aroused all over the first time he/she sat on a powerful motorbike. While at AVU, we were taught by Professors and AVU then was headed by Dr Juma who later passed on. 1985 when Steve Jobs was fired for creating Apple Classic was just 15 years ago and we wished we knew the computer then. Later I met Dr Jacktone Odote at Kenyatta University and Prof. Namuye at USIU and these people have the real stories of the Kenyan tech scene.

So today after getting the news of the death of Steve Jobs, I decided to get the thoughts of the academic and tech business leaders in Africa. Prof Namuye is now on sick-leave. He has an illness which has made him not go to school and when I broke the news of the death of Steve Jobs, he was really surprised. He was saddened and without listening to my questions, Prof. Namuye started telling me why even Windows is Windows because of Steve Jobs and so the influence of Steve Jobs in the Kenyan and African market must not be limited to Apple products.

Dr Odote who is now at KCA University said “Steve Jobs Story is long and short. The long can’t be told but the short is that any innovator, creator and tech enthusiast needs to hum his story to supplement the efforts we are making elsewhere to make a change in this world using technology”.

I also contacted other business leaders and techies and these are what they had to say;

• Bob Collymore, CEO Safaricom; Inspirational corporate leader who continually redefined how man would interface with machine.
• Robert Ngeru, Deputy MD of Samsung East Africa; He was such a great inspiration to the innovators all over and it was thrill competing with his ideas most of the time. The African young innovators, most of who could not afford Apple products, got inspiration and hope from his leadership.
• Aghastee Khante, Head of Nation Media Group Digital Division; It’s a great loss for the entire world and not just the tech community or the USA. Infact this day should be celebrated as Steve Jobs day, for his contribution to the world of product and marketing.I personally feel that apple will not be the same without him, although only time can tell what will happen to Apple. It’s a great loss to lose him so early on in his life and I am indeed saddened.
• Omar Bajaber, Intel Kenya Country Manager; He was a “modern day innovator/entrepreneur”  that pushed the limits on creativity and business. He will be missed in the Tech Industry as he always raised the bar for the rest of the industry, Apple PC, Mac book, iPod, iPhone,  Ipad..
• Professor Anne Amadi, Head of KeKoBi  (Business Incubation Lab): It is hard loosing a mentor. Our work at KeKoBi was much easier because we got great personalities like Steve Jobs to introduce to our those we mentor. Losing Steve jobs is like losing one wheel of a tri-cycle. We will just have to wobble along hoping to get a replacement.
• Mr. Paul Otellini  CEO of Intel; True genius is measured by the ability to touch every person on the planet. Steve did that, not just once, but many, many times over his amazing life. We at Intel were privileged to have known him and worked with him as he brought his creations to life. Our hearts go out to his family and to his many friends and co-creators throughout the world.
• Kenneth Oyolla, General Manager East and Southern Africa at Nokia; Every once in 4years the technology industry experiences a major disruption. Often times it has been new technology. In Steve Jobs was an enigmatic personality that defied all odds and confounded his friends and foes that it will take several generations to forget.
• Shem Ochuodho, the father of internet in Kenya; How sad! What a waste – at that tender age? Steve contributed immensely to creating the ‘global village’, and in the process created many opportunities and jobs like his name. As we mourn him, we also celebrate his life and the lives he impacted and will continue to impact for generations to come. The i-touch concept like a number of other Apple products was a sure hit! RIP.
• Joshua Wanyama, Pamoja Media; Steve Jobs changed how people look at design. He made the aspirations and ideals designers look for a standard of his creations. Steve Jobs took the life of designers, their designs and presented it to the world in a very cool way.
• Dr Jackton Odote, KCA University; Steve Jobs Story is long and short. The long can’t be told but the short is that any innovator, creator and tech enthusiast needs to hum his story to supplement the efforts we are making elsewhere to make a change in this world using technology.
• Gaurav Singh, General Manager of Squad Digital; Steve Jobs constantly challenged the status quo in innovation. He ended up becoming the best and has died challenging even his own innovation pushing the boundaries always. I believe in his ‘Stay foolish and stay hungry” and felt inspired when he said “Why join the navy while you can be a pirate?”. The name has a way of doing things while with pirates, it is spontaneous.
• Nzioka Waita, Director of Corporate Affairs at Safaricom; The creativity and products that Steve Jobs inspired epitomized customer aspiration better than any other  technology house!

Some other leaders all over the world have been quoted here and here Euologising Steve Jobs. I must say that I could not afford most of Apple products in my life but he made me want to break every wall of thought and that is why I will never be with the crowd just to please people.

My last inspiration from Steve Jobs was yesterday and I created this while thinking of being innovative;

Kenya’s Patrick Makau broke the World Marathon Record in Berlin Marathon  today. Makau finished in 2 hours, 3 minutes, 38 seconds breaking the record previously held by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia at 2:03.59. His record led to him ruling today’s discussions in social media with Patrick Makau trending worldwide on Twitter and most Facebook updates mentioning him.

The last time Kenya ruled social media was during the referendum or during the 2008 PEV. It was such a relief seeing Makau rule the social media albeit briefly.

Facebook, at the F8 conference yesterday, announced a complete remake of the profile pages on the popular social network introduction of Facebook Timeline. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  say that “Timeline is the story of your life”.

There are lots of changes key being that the single column wall of posts is gone  while the most recent updates telling “15 minutes of your story.” You will in place see a timeline of your life events containing the photos and all other updates dating back to when you joined Facebook. You can so click on any year and month and see all the updates you made then.

Facebook automatically selects for you the most important updates of your life and highlights them with a blue dot. Grey dots represent hidden updates and users can arrange their Timeline however they see fit by removing updates hey would rather not show to the public or highlight others they think are important enough.

The public will have to wait a few more weeks to start getting the invitation to Facebook Timeline but if you are a developer, you can view it now. The good thing is that it is not hard to be a Facebook developer.

Here’s how you can get Facebook Timeline on your profile:

You need to log into Facebook and enable developer mode. The best and easiest way to do this is to search for “developer”and click the first result. It will be something like this;

You will then need to confirm your password so as to allow the developer app access to your account after which you see a screen that looks like this;

Now this is the  developer page. You will now have a chance to convince Facebook that you are a real developers and create an app that uses its new “Open Graph” technology. It is not that complicated. If you are an existing developer, you will need to activate Open Graph in your apps.

Now click the ‘Create New App’ button on the top right. On the “New App” prompt , give your app a name and name space — just any name, it doesn’t matter. Agree to the Platform Privacy Policy and click Continue. To achieve this, you will need a verified Facebook account so make sure you have either a credit card or phone number on file.

You will find the CAPTCHA verification which after clearing, you will be taken to your new apps’ settings screen. If Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically hit the Edit App button on the top right.  Now click on Open Graph link on the left column.

Create some test action for your app, like “read” a “book” or anything. You will find suggestions in the box

Voila!! You now have it. You might see some error telling you that something went wrong,  just ignore it and head to your Facebook homepage. You will then see an invitation to the new Facebook Timeline Beta. You might have to wait a maximum of 3 minutes for it to appear.

Things worth noting.

• The Facebook Timeline gotten through Developer account might have bugs so if you are not ready to try new things, don’t attempt.
• You will see your own Timeline for a few days but will be going public after a few days. Mine is set to go public on 27th September.
• Your facebook Timeline might disappear, but you can get it by accessing this link http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sk=timeline (remember to put your own Facebook Username)

Facebook has recently rolled out a whole bunch of new features and changes that the it hopes will cement its position as the social media platform of choice.  The social network has apparently increased the status update character limit to 5,000 from a only 500 characters from what we have tested.

Facebook has also changed other stuff including the new news ticker bar on the right pane. The news ticker shows your friends current activities on Facebook, including leaving comments, status updates and uploading photos. Facebook has also pushed out the floating navigation bar we’ve heard so much about.

With 500 characters, Facebook updates were not much different from Twitter’s 140 characters and almost put it on the micro-blogging platform cadre. The change to 5,000 characters further pulls Facebook away from the micro status to something bigger.

The other removal is the update box which is now not so present but can be accessed by clicking on “update status” link.