Send free SMSs to your friends from Gmail

Stumbled on a feature today that has been active for quite a while but never noticed it.The ability to send free SMSs from a Gmail account to any mobile phone(at the moment I can only confirm it works to safaricom lines).Here is how to get it running







1.Log in to your Gmail account
2.Google should detect which country you are from and it will automatically show a pop up menu guiding you through it but if it does not continue to step 3
3.Go to the settings menu in gmail
4.Click on the labs menu and activate two options,text messaging in chat and sms in chat gadget
5.Once you have done this when you type a number in the chat box(the one written search,add or invite) it will give you the option to send an SMS
6.Receiving the SMS is free but a reply will be charged at standard network rates,you are also limited to 50 free sms every 24 hrs

For more details or if you want to sign-up to gmail click here

How to choose the right ISP for you

I got a lot of hits with my previous post about which was the best ISP in Kenya and that post was written a year ago and most likely things have changed so consider this post an update.
1.SPEED
It is the first one because most of the times this is all you need to know.With the 3 undersea cables prices have dropped dramatically even though people don't want to accept it they have and they will continue to so if you are sitting at home with an internet connection you hate its you're fault.
Basically there are two speeds you should know,the upload speed and the download speed.Most of the time the upload speed is irrelevant but its good to know anyway especially if you are getting it for a home office or small business.The average lowest bandwidth you get is 256kbps.Now one thing I always get asked is 'My bandwidth is 256kbps yet my download speeds never go over 40KBps.You may not have noticed but the b in the bandwidth stands for bits not bytes.And 8 bits make 1 byte therefore to determine your average download speed divide your bandwidth by 8.
                                so for 256kbps you will get an average of 32KBps
                                    for 512kbps you will get an average of 64KBps
                                   for 1Mbps you will get an average of  125KBps
Yes I know I have just blown your mind but thats the reality of things.So now you can get a rough picture of the package you will be taking home.

2.PING 
(The time it takes a message to be sent to a device on a network and a reply to be received)
Almost nobody cares about this and I am one of them but if you are a fan of online gaming(PS3,Xbox360,PC)(I have not put the wii beacuse it has the same graphics as my phone and I am a hater) this matters because the higher the ping the slower the gameplay online.But one workaround that is currently gaining speed is the establishment of local servers effectively reducing the ping.I don't know any but I know they are there,if you are running one you can give people directions in the comments section.

3.PRICE
Second most important consideration.For around 1000 ksh/month you can get a 256kbps connection on zuku which is enough for a basic internet user.I won't go into details with this as these prices change almost every month(hehe) so instaed I will give a link to each of the ISPs package details page
Zuku(Wananchi Offline,oh!I mean Online)
BOX(KDN)
Access@Home(AccessKenya)
Surf and Talk(Orange)
These are the main ones if you seek internet for your home
NB:If you live in an area where there are wireless hotspots and have come across loopnet you can use that for free,yes free.Its very fast but is ad sponsored

Comments
Zain internet is crap,don't even think fo it
Safaricom are thieves,everything,even if you have heard they have fast internet,it will cost you...Your life!!!hahaha!okay it won't but its expensive
Zuku is okay for the price and it gets reasonable uptime with few outages
BOX is lightning fast,but you have to pay a deposit 15000 ksh before you can start using it
If you have comments leave them in the comments section below....

How to purchase goods online from Kenya

One question that always storms my comments section is users asking for ways to buy goods from online.One major myth that internet users from Kenya share is that paypal does not work here but this is very wrong.In this post I am going to show you how to sign up for Paypal from Kenya and another usable alternative called Google checkout


PAYPAL
Requirements
VISA debit or credit card
Bank statement
Steps
Go to paypal and sign up for a personal account,input all your information correctly especially contact address and credit/debit card number because this will be used as your shipping information and the card for payment
After sign-up and confirmation is complete you will be asked to verify your account,this is just to prove the account is yours and what happens is they take out around ksh 150 and this transaction will show up on your statement as
                                  XXXXPAYPAL----------------------
Once you ask for verification you will be asked to input a code which is the XXXX on your statement(format might differ with your bank but there will always be a numerical code).You can go to an ATM and get your mini statement or for those with Mbanking you can get it from your phone.Once you input this code into paypal you are ready to go.
Note:You cannot recieve money to your paypal account(yet),the only money paypal can use is the one in your bank account
Shopping
Many online shopping sites accept paypal but you can start with the big dogs Ebay and Ioffer
When shopping online a few tip to getting a good deal is always to check the free shipping box when doing a search because products online are very cheap the only problem is the shipping cost.Once again make sure you input your address correctly as this is the information that will be on the package.On average shipping takes 1-2 weeks.

Google checkout
Google checkout is just like paypal only that you don't need to verify your account and you can start using it straight away,the only problem is fewer sites accept it as a form of payment.The goods thing about google is they have a search engine that searches for products for you,you can check it out here:http://www.google.com/checkout/deals.html

TIPS
I would not recommend doing these activities on a computer at a cyber cafe,just to be safe
Also update your antivirus to protect you from phising viruses

Free internet this christmas from KDN

Don't you just love free stuff especially when there is no catch,this christmas until January 4th next year Kenyans will have the chance to enjoy free internet from KDN via their Butterfly WiFi and DSL.Im using the service as I write this and I am very shocked as it is 10 times faster than the internet I paid for from Zuku(you suck wananchi online).So put all those WiFi enabled laptops to use and get surfing cause you only have like 34 days left(approx).There are many butterfly hotspots around Nairobi so chances are high that you are near one but if not you can always go to a nearby Java and buy a soda and burn some hours.Here is a speedtest of the butterfly WiFi that I am currently enjoying and as you can see its really fast,youtube videos streaming seamlessly and 500 kbps downloads

A good looking kenyan online shopping site

After my disappointment with onlineduka I came across a site that really caught my attention in that it was everything that a online shopping site required.I am not being biased and I have not been bribed to diss onlineduka and then praise this site but if you visit it you can see for yourself.These are the kind of sites I would be proud to promote
UzaNunua

Another disappointing kenyan online store

I always get a feeling of joy when I see a new kenyan website thats innovative and string in concept but I always get disappointed when the idea concept is not fully carried out.Running a website I know is not an easy task but in order for a website to grow it has to provide something that the others don't.

So while I was surfing I cam across this new site called OnlineDuka Kenya.I was at first very pleased with the design and load speed of the website and so i automatically dug deeper to see what the website offered.The homepage is very well designed and easy to navigate and provides a simple navigation bar that is comprehensive.Each page has a hovering serch bar which isn't very effective in terms of advanced search as it only searches for tag words.[something the site admin should work on]
When you click on a product you get a picture of the product plus basic details about the seller and the price,below you get a tab of related items which you might be interested in but immediately i feel that something is missing,no cart or cashout option.How can it be an online duka that doesn't sell anything!then it should be called an online catalogue or online classifieds!
When you click on the seller details you get a nice page with basic info such as company products and the likes,a location map tab was available but many shops had no map.For all web developers out there who are in the dark these days Kenya is covered by GPS if you didn't know and there is always the google maps widget if you want to keep it simple.
Basically the site has so much potential that is going to waste,here is a summary of the pros and cons I came across.
Pros
Nice design
Nice concept
fast page loading
easy to navigate
CONS
Products not detailed
No cart/cash-out option
No advanced search option
Basically if you are going to set-up an online shop don't set-up an online classifieds!Website admins should take a look at the books first website,its not the prettiest website in the world but it gives you everything it promises including delivery options and payment via m-pesa,what more could you ask for(except something other than books)[that was a hahaha moment!,Im out!]

Download with ease using Jdownloader

One big problem with downloading from file hosting sites is the inability to automate the download process forcing downloaders to be constantly monitoring their downloads because of the inability to queue downloads due to things such as countdown timers or captcha boxes such as that on Megaupload.Thanks to the guys over at Jdownloader they made a program that could automate the process without much hustle requiring you only to input the link

The program was built especially for file sharing sites and has various feautures to make downloading much easier,here are some of them





Platform independent. (Windows, Linux, Mac, ..)
Runs on Java 1.5 or higher
Complete Open-Source (GPL)
Completely portable-No need for installation
Download several files parellel
Download with multiple connections
JD has an own powerful OCR module (JAntiCaptcha)
Decrypt RSDF, CCF and DLC Containerfiles
Decryptplugins for many services. e.g. sj.org, UCMS, WordPress, RLSLog….
Youtube, Vimeo, clipfish video and Mp3 Download
Automatic extractor (including password list search) (Rar archives)
Theme Support
Multilingual
About 110 hoster and over 300 decrypt plug-ins
Reconnect with JDLiveHeaderScripts: (1400 router supported)
Webupdate
Integrated package manager for additional modules (eg. Webinterface, Shutdown)

For more info check out the jdownloader homepage

Play high end games without having to have a powerful computer

In response to a comment I received I am going to write about a revolutionary service I cam across a few days ago refferred to as OnLive

1.What is OnLive?
This is an internet based gaming service that was though of by some bright American minds that aims at enabling people to play games over the internet without the need of having powerful computers and graphics cards which are usually a necessity with high end games.

2.How does it work?
Simple,you are in control of the game.You play the game on their servers but the images from the game are streamed to your computer or TV.Basically its like you are playing the game on their servers but you are being streamed the video of your gameplay so it looks like you are playing it right from your computer

What do I need?
1.Broadband internet(has to be fast)
2.Windows XP/Vista enabled laptop or PC
3.To play directly on the TV a micro-console is required

How do I join?
It is still in beta stage and they are only allowing beta testers to join

What kind of games are available?
The latest games from the big companies which they have partnered with such as EA,THQ,Eidos,Take 2
Some of the games they say are already available include;
Tomb Raider:Underworld
Crysis warhead
Mirrors Edge
Prince of Persia
Bioshock
H.A.W.X
and many others

When will it be available?
They promise by the end of the year but am I say probably mid next year

What are some of the things you expect to go wrong with this service?
Am glad u asked,
1.Its internet based so automatically you have to worry about your internet speed and also their servers sometimes not being available
2.Its still not as good as having the games themselves
3.Streaming will never be as good as the real deal

You can check out their website here for more details and screenshots.
OnLive homepage

Download from rapidshare with ease

Downloading from rapidshare as a free user can sometimes be a real bother and not only because of the speed but also the inconvenience of having to wait a few minutes after downloading a file
WHAT if you want to download a bunch of files and don't feel like waiting for each and every one of them to finish,there is a solution

The software is called Rapidshare Auto downloader and what it does is exactly what is in its name,you give it the rapidshare link and it does the rest.
What the software does is it accesses rapidshare under its inbuilt web browser and then downloads the file enabling multiple files to be downloaded(one at a time) without a wait time.
Here are some more features;
-Scheduled downloads function
-Auto-shutdown feature and many more

If you are interested you can download it here
Download

Get a disposable email with ease

One major thing that bothers me about email is spam,and no matter how much you block them they just keep on coming and so people are forced to set up secondary emails for such things which ends up being a long process of signing up and the sorts.But recently I stumbled onto a website that changed all this.

The website is called mailinator and what it does is it gives you the ability to use any email address that comes to mind,in other words if you want your email to be lookimspamming@mailinator.com just send an email to it an it will be activated,as simple as that.
Because the site does not ask users for passwords it would be wise to use the address for non confidential purposes such as confirming offers on GPT sites and such.
So just think of an email address@mailinator and then send it an email to try it out.
Visit mailinator here

Coming soon:GDrive

For quite some time people were able to use Gmail to store files online but word on the net is that Google will officially launch this feature to people dubbed GDrive.Apparently the feature has been beta for quite some time now and was once named platypus(good thing they changed it) and boasts many features that other free online storage sites do not offer

Once released the service promises to have the following features;
1.your files accessible from any device be it computer or mobile phone
2.Quick data backup
3.Sync data on different machines running different operating systems

The info on this project is still quite fuzzy as it has been going on since 2006 so is 2009 going to be the year its released.We will just have to wait and see.

Who is skullptura?and how does he do it.

Yes am sure by know he/she/they are very famous by now for the happiness they have brought to millions of gamers worldwide.So for all of you in the dark skullptura is the person responsible for the highly compressed full RIP game available for download over the internet(full rip means that nothing has been removed from the game such as songs or videos).The result is games which are like 7GB are compressed to 2GB therefore decreasing download time exponentially.

How he/she does this is a mystery to many as normal compression softwares such as WinRAR cannot achieve this.The games are now easily avaiable on the internet via torrents or via file sharing sites such as rapidshare and megaupload.
For all of those wondering if the games work they work perfectly on Windows XP but an extra step has to be taken in Vista to extract the file:

once downloaded extract, if you are on vista go to Control Panel and then User Accounts, go to turn user account control on or off uncheck the box their and click ok and then your computer will reboot. Extract original.exes and then run setup and you will be done

At the moment only PC games are available(thats all I know) and just by googling the name skullptura you can get many of the games compressed by him.

Get translations quick and fast with Google translate.

Many people know about the Google translate widget that many blogs have but very few people know that their is now a Google translate website where you can enter text or webpage urls and the site will translate it into the language that you choose.

The site is pretty simple to use and comes with many tools such as text/web translation,web search translation,dictionary and downloadable tools such as toolbars.

The available langauages include English,French,Japanese,Chinese,Spanish and many more.
The website also enables users to give better translations or correct mistakes.
In the above image I decided to translate the word 'panther' to Spanish and it gave me the translation 'pantera' which is the correct one and so for a beta system it seems to be doing pretty well.

Get you own 24/7 internet TV station for free

I am very excited to tell you that you now have the opportunity to set-up your own television station online for free which will air 24 hours a day and 7 days a week showing what you line up.This service is offered by a company called mogulus and what happens is that you put the videos or images you want to be viewed and then it puts them in a storyboard which will then be viewed by people who log-on.Here are some of its main features;

-Comes in two packages,one which is free(your channel will air 10 second advertisements every 10 minutes) and a pro version where no ads will be added to your channel but you have to pay a small fee.I think the free version is very fair and this is a very good offer these people are giving.
-You can add videos from your webcam,youtube or your own videos to be broadcast live and if you are not online you can set it to play videos from a play list.
-The website has plenty of inbuilt graphics you can add to videos such as CNN style scrolling news,your channel logo and many more features all which can be done with ease.
-Supports multiple producers where you and an associate can air one channel and yet you are miles apart(sort of like the multiple authors feature for blogger).

If you are interested click here:Mogulus sign-up
If you want to see some channels that are already on the air click here

How to find out where your website host is located.

Many people complain that their websites don't rank well in their country specific search engines such as Google's this is because Google gives priority to websites hosted in that country i.e to websites whose servers are located in that particular country.So if you want to find out where your websites' host servers are located there is a tool you can use.

The tool is by webconfs and you can find it here:webconfs website to country
All you have to do is input your url and it will tell you which country your server is located in and its IP address,for example if your are using a blogspot blog then your blog is most likely hosted in the United States.

Backlink checker with page rank and 'nofollow' tag details.

Backlinks are links to your blog or website from another website.Their advantage is that they increase the popularity of your blog and also help in search engine rankings hence increasing traffic to your blog,but some websites put a no follow tag on certain areas of their blog such as comments section or sidebar section.If a search engine spider finds a no follow tag it will not follow that link and therefore according to the search engines that link does not matter.

Now when finding out your backlinks it is always good to know the details of the sites that are linking to you so while I was browsing I came across this site called backlink watch that analyses all the sites that link to you and gives you their details such as the total number of backlinks,page rank,if they have added the nofollow tag to where your link is and the anchor text that your link has.With this you can know all the sites that are beneficial to your website.

Get a free .biz domain valid for 1 year

The offer is by 1&1 internet inc and they are offering you a one year .biz domain.This is a limited time offer so you have to hurry as they have not given the deadline of the offer so people are going to be rushing for those domains.By the way .biz domains are only for businesses and commercial use so make sure your website complies with the above before you sign up.

Here is the link to follow to get the free domain.1and1

Major changes over at entrecard

(UPDATED)
Entrecard is a website that enables members to advertise their websites,blogs or products using 125x125 image links.Members do not use money to purchase ad space but instead use entrecard credits which are obtained from dropping on others widgets or selling ad space on your widget.All you entrecard members will be shocked to find out that entrecard has made major changes to the way the website operates and for some especially the heavy droppers these changes have not put a smile on their faces.The first most controversial change is that members cannot sell entrecard credits and it has been added as a violation of the terms of service.Entrecard credits can now only be bought from the entrecard website.(By the way entrecard members don't forget to drop on the widget.)

Other changes include;
1.The cost to purchase 1000 credits has been reduced to $6
2.You can only transfer a max of 1000 credits per week to other members and you can only make 14 transfers per week.
3.Blogs that are inactive for 3 months are deleted
4.Blogs that have offensive images and do not have the EC widget are also deleted
5.Addition of upgrades to the EC shop such as fast pass which lets you jump ahead on any queue for an advert request.
These are the major changes so far,if any more come up I will keep you posted.
If you have any thoughts about the changes you can drop a comment here

Block spammers before they attack you

This is a very useful tool for forum owners such as myself who are constantly burdened with the task of deleting spam left by spammers,but now there is a way to block the spammers before they attack your forum or comments.This done using a website called StopForumSpam.

What this website does is it gives a list of the most notorious spammers IP addresses so you can block them before they post there spam.So don't waste anymore time,get to the website by clicking here and block the spammers IPs from your forum or comments sections

How to make your own proxy site

This is very easy and all you need is a web host and a proxy site script.Now for those of you who do not know a proxy site is a website that allows users to do things such as access sites blocked on their server,surf anonymously and other important features.

-For a list of some of the most common free web hosts visit this page.
-Once you have a free web host download any of these free proxy scripts.


Zelune
This is the latest one out and it promises to be the fastest proxy there is and is optimised for quick loading of pages.
Download Zelune:::Zelune Homepage

PHPProxy
One of the more common proxy scripts that is similar to CGI Proxy but does not allow logging in to websites which is quite a drawback.
Download PHPProxy

CGI Proxy
The most common proxy script and is used on most proxy sites because it allows logging in to sites.It also uses less bandwidth than PHPProxy.
Download CGI Proxy

Glype
Made as a fast alternative to other proxy scripts it has been coded with a strict emphasis on speed and performance.
Download Glype

Once you have chosen the script that you like download it and then upload it to your web host.If you do not want the hassle of customising the script code just go to proxybuilder and you can customise a CGI proxy script before you download it.I would recommend this for people who have encountered any difficulties.