Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Ni kama mapenzi yamekwisha

Yes. We know. This is Kenya. Might is right and even if you can bite, you don’t stand a chance in a fight.

It does not matter what you know and what you can do. What matters is who you know and who you can do.

That is why we have a city full of muggers who can code or have a degree in Nursing and PR. Errr…Ok, I meant ‘program’.. not code.

Real coders don’t like humans anyway.

And so it came to pass. Safaricom is finally feeling the brunt. They must have really borrowed all 10 leaves from this tree.

Once upon a time (in 2002-2003), Safaricom came to the Market and met Zain (in campus, hot and called KenCell then). KenCell was termed as a network for the rich. Per minute billing and all. KSHS 28 per minute.

Safaricom came in and flashed her thighs and sumptuous cleavage with Per Second Billing and the peculiar Kenyans jumped on her like flies on a carcass. Like they say, the rest is history.

Delusions of Grandeur

Now, 8 years later, Safaricom our once-faithful lover and mother of a few of our adopted/plagiarized kids like Sambaza, Mpesa, WhoCalled, Mkesho etc, has started to act as if on Menopause. She is suddenly feeling too big and too hot for the small person and we no longer go home. We, nowadays, sleep at the office and pass by Mrs Zain’s place on our way home, if we get back home. Home is no longer the abode.

Why has our relationship become so bad, Dr Marriage Counselor asks. Well here is how, DrMC.

Abusive Relationships and Rip-Offs

DrMC, When I have money on Mpesa, and I use it to buy airtime, that is NOT recognized as legit airtime. I never get the 50% top-up bonuses, Internet bundle discounts etc that I might get on promos when I use a scratchcard. It is as if airtime via MPESA is NOT my money.

Too Scandalous

DrMC, she never gets enough. Today she was seen shamelessly smooching with mXit while local developers have better and more local solutions. But since when you go black, you don’t go back, when she wants to go local, she wants to rob our local developers blind using one-sided NDAs and Terms. Check yesterday’s Sunday Nation and they are being sued over stealing mKesho from another local. Karma is a b#$ch.

Forgetting the small person

DrMC, Safaricom is Safaricom because of the Bamba 10, bamba 20 and Bamba 5 airtimes. They were perceived as the network for the poor and low-spenders. Now she has gone to Westlands a few times and hanged out with ballers and she no longer values the small person. The small person now gets PUNISHED for topping up using small unites. Totally discriminative against the poor. This is even against our new constitution. Zain and YU on the other hand, welcome us all with open-arms and open-legs irrespective of our pocket size. Size does not matter to them. It is the thought that counts.

Chronically unreliable

You never know when or IF she will be at home nowadays. You might think that after the exodus of subscribers to YU and Zain, she would behave a bit since there is no network load. But Ohh no, not our beloved Safcom. She is too big and fly for that. Still we cant access customer care number, we are still treated as horny beggars when we go to their customer-service kiosks. The Mpesa system still experiences time-outs and has no up-time guarantee.

DrMC, I have had enough and thanks to my prenapse, she will get nothing once I finally sign these divorce papers. Zain and YU currently satisfy all my SMS and Call needs and even though their data-package is still wanting, I will persevere for a few months for them to get 3G.

Back to code!

Wazi.

Bend Over, daggering

Raila once quoted me and said, “Wameona Simba amenyeshewa na ametulia, wakadhani ni paka mkubwa”.

The sad Google swahili translator processes this as: “The see lion in rain. He has relax. They think big pussy”

Well, thanks to Mblayo, I got this disturbing video of the Zain truck:

BendOver jibe at Safaricom HQ

The Zain Marketers (who safcom’s has ruthlessly out-performed, out-thought, out-conned us and out-sold  for over 8 years now), came up with what they thought is a daggering blow at SafCom.

They hired PA System and went to blast the ‘Bend Over’ song at Safcom HQ.

Dunno if the traffic police, Nema, the ZainWanaringasasa crew and the ThisWeekSijaona conglomerate will take this lightly. I, for one, know Mwai is devastated by this.

But wait! For the life in me, I would assume for a moment Zain would show some class and focus on the areas where SafCon makes them bend-over, daggering style, e.g:

• Social Networking
• 3G or 4G Data
• Zap vs Mpesa
• International Call rates
• Data Rates

Just a thought.

Now, lemmi make some windows servers bend over.

Have a bendy night, wont you?

Wazi.

One API to rule them all...

Great day today for Kenyan coders. Ok, let us say, EastAfrican Community coders, for political correctness. I don’t even know how to break this news, so I will just do it my plain no-beating-around-her-bushes method. No, the Octopus has not predicted that Safaricom, MTN and Zain will start supporting local innovations. No. The octopus would rather die than err. To err is to human; not to octopus.So, the hustle continues.

As a CSR, being  head of a team of very gifted coders at Symbiotic, I had committed to head the Pay.Zunguka Gateway and API development team and see to it that the Pay.Zunguka API was out before Mid May 2010. But one thing did not lead to another, and we had to inevitable delay the launch.

Well, here it is now. The API. The EuberAPI. One API to rule them all.

Download the API NOW!!

So first things first. What is an API, you would ask? Huh? You are having a larf if you expect me to answer that!! The API has been developed in PHP, jQuery and MySQL and the documentation provided with it makes it totally idiot-proof. Anyone and everyone can use the API and start earning from their hustle, Immediately! All transactions from Mpesa/Zap/yuCash will hit your system, via the API in 5 seconds. Anyone who can copy-paste, can use the API.

Safaricom have indirectly played ball this time round, so flawless end-to-end mPesa support is the first feature of the API. I hope this will not make them Mad. My QA team is still testing the ZAP and yuCash modules, but jump to it. Play with the fully working mPesa support and share your thought on the approach, the model, the logic and the illogic.

If you are a ‘BIG’ fish (read a big corporate with a lot of sensitive transactions) and don’t want to use our API as a payment aggregator, we can license the actual product. This would apply to guys like DSTV and KPLC. So instead of waiting for 48 hours for the transactions to hit their backend system, we can guarantee KPLC customers that their bills paid via Mpesa/Zap/yuCash will be reflected in their account within 5-7 seconds. Cute huh!

Like all my friends will tell you (real friends, not facebook jokers), I believe in seeing, showing and action. Si mdomo mob. So dive right into it! Visit http://pay.zunguka.com/ NOW and have a blast !!

Wazi.

-Salim, Idd

One API to rule them all

Code-Named Gandalf

Symbiotic Developer Labs will soon chip in its 2 bytes in the coding social social responsibility. Safaricom/Zain has NOT released or shown any signs of being in willingness or position to release any developer tools to enable the 17 real coding geniuses in Kenya, the thousand of wannabes and the tens of thousands of VB programmers monetize ANY of their systems.

Understandably, they are here to make money on voice and data. They don’t care about your pesky little ideas. Unless they are called ‘Mpesa’ and not yet patented. Ahem!

Currently, the only way to automate Mpesa/Zap is to use a Modem with the Mpesa SIM card then do some satanic message parsing. No more!!

As the head of the coding department in SMC, I have taken this personally and, unless the finger of god or the eye of the nebula intervenes, we will be releasing a PUBLIC API for Mpesa/Zap paybill.

The API will be available for public download and SMC will just be the aggregator. All settlemennts will be real-time. Yes. real-time. No 48-hour waits. {I still can’t understand some of these things! Ati 48 hours!!}

What about those who cant code

Of course, we cant all be coders, can we? If you are one of the millions of people who cant code, or ‘Ulikuwaga mnoma sana kitambo sana maJava na maC++ but umesahau’, then we also have good news for you. You will be able to open an online shop running off the ZungukaPay gateway and you will be able to monetize your content, time and skills.

We have one mission in mind

To enable ANYONE be able to monetize their content and abilities. To enable that sculptor from Machakos to be able to sell his curios online DIRECTLY to the buyer and realize maximum profits. Not via a proxy, getting short-changed. To enable that guy in Stall 25 Imenti house be able to sell his pirated DVDs online and get real-time payment.

As a user, your money will always be floating around Mpesa/Zap/PayPal/GC/WP… So far, no bank is willing to work with us because we are too small a company, but I am sure someone sane will soon wake up and smell the digital coffee.

Errr… Back to code.