Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

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.

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Cry baby? Again?

Please let me put in 7 laughs Kwanza for Safcom. – Ha… Ha… Ha… Ha… Ha… Ha… Ha…!

Michael Joseph was ranting on KTN as 2 PM today about this deal.

Thanks to the new Zain Tarrif. You can now call for3 bob per minute to ANY network in Kenya.

Safaricom has BLOCKED all calls to Zain as at 1PM Kenya time. Most of the Safcom calls were calls from jamaaz telling jamaaz tu SHIFT to Zain. Talk of viral migration.

This morning, Safcom had 15M+ Subscribers. I predict they will have only Mwai and 4M others by close of day.

The only reason I had kept my Safaricom line was because of Mpesa. Now I have Zap. Now, Zain just needs to stream-line Zap and work with local developers and Zain will rule this Market.

More later.

Back to code!

Wazi.

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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

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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.

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