₦airaland Forum

Please keep up the good work and get more creative. Make apps that are more useful for a wider population as well. I like these apps, but I dont plan on downloading them, because there is nothing that I can't use it for.

I believe we’re now seeing the same gold rush for premium plugins as we did with premium themes a few years ago.

Link ~> http://inside.envato.com/rise-of-the-million-dollar-plugin-makers/

There were several factors that contributed to YouTube becoming the #1 video sharing service on the web. But a lot of initial adoption was driven by the fact that it had pirated content hosted on it. If you wanted to watch the latest episode of Lost for free, YouTube was your best bet: no queued downloading through torrents, just stream it from the server. Kim Dotcom noted how pirated content was driving YouTube’s adoption and figured that seeding some of that could unlock traffic for MegaUpload. It definitely worked. But playing with pirated content, somebody was bound to get burnt. MegaUpload went under when it was alleged that the pirated content was, unlike the YouTube case, a deliberate part of the platform’s strategy.

Link ~> https://medium.com/@sanguit/how-paypal-and-reddit-faked-their-way-to-traction-9411fb583205

PayPal is a service that allows anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal Smart Connect or account balances, without sharing financial information with the merchants you are buying from.

A few days ago, PayPal opened its doors to Nigerians after a long period of not serving the West African country. I remember there was a time I saw a petition that some people carried out asking PayPal to come to Nigeria.

Link ~> http://www.iafrikan.com/2014/08/05/why-did-paypal-wait-to-enter-nigeria/

http://www.j2mesalsa.com/elearning/

http://www.java-samples.com/j2me/

http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071873/mobile-java/beginning-j2me--building-midlets.html

http://uberthings.com/mobile/

Beginning J2ME ~> http://filepi.com/i/c9TqDMB

J2ME Step By Step ~> http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/pt/j2me%20step%20by%20step.pdf

MIDLET Development ~> http://carfield.com.hk/document/java/tutorial/J2ME/j2me_guide.pdf

J2ME In A Nutshell ~> http://dl.e-book-free.com/2013/07/j2me_in_a_nutshell.pdf

A new set of Firefox Developer Tools features has just been uplifted to the Aurora channel. These features are available right now in Aurora, and will be in the Firefox 33 release in October. This release brings many new additions, especially to the Inspector tool:

Link ~> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/07/event-listeners-popup-media-sidebar-cubic-bezier-editor-more-firefox-developer-tools-episode-33/

Link ~> http://www.gwan.ch/benchmark

And despite being the fastest, G-WAN used 1 to 4x less CPU as well as 2 to 45x less RAM resources (note for Varnish: that's the allocated memory amounts measured here, not the reserved virtual memory address space which does not deprive the system from any hardware resource).
When merely used as a static-content Web server, G-WAN (an application server) is 9 to 42x faster and uses much less CPU/RAM resources than all other servers ("Web server accelerators" like Varnish or mere Web servers like Nginx).
Guess how much wider the gap will be with 64-Core CPUs.

17 Great Websites To Find Jobs ~> http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2013/01/16/freelance-jobs/
32 Sites When Looking For Freelance Jobs & Assistance ~> http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/12/looking-for-freelance-jobs-assistance.html
35 Places To Find MicroJobs ~> http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/Micro-Jobs-Crowdsourcing/ss/Micro-Jobs.htm
50 Freelance Job Sites For Designers & Programmers ~> http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-freelance-job-sites-for-designers-programmers-best-of/

asalimpo: Sometimes success isnt measured fully in dollar terms but lives touched and how it was affected.
Watif apple were sold ,in todays biz savvy wrld? Jobs wont steer and lead it as He deemed fit. It wud b 1 generic ceo with an MBA and years of cognate business experience and an aristocratic air who wudnt b half as innovative . Since he wears a sad suit 24/7 He'd think you're unserious to suggest a computer with color!
First person,He'll fire would b (geuss who?) our dear and beloved sir,Jonathan Ives!
Yeah, i know it's Unthinkable now, but then ivy boy didnt hav no reps. No online fame.
He's d design guy who just was too moody and wouldnt leave good at good enuff.
Apple wud miss multiple ship dates while He was perfectg his pesky designs.
And Managers like people who get RESULTS . Results, quick to market. Ives wud b gone. And products wud ship faster. Just no innovation.
Wat if google were sold for d $1m they asked for. Unthinkable.
Wat wud d buyer make out of d innovation? Which buyer by d way? Alta vista? Ask Jeeves, metaSearch. Where ar they today?
They and d google dream wud b as dead as wood. Theyd b no android, mayb no adsense and gmail wud b as spamful as yahoomail.
Wat if youtube were not sold?
It wud grow and innovate around its core concept - video contents - same as facebook has and twitter has. Where is facebook today? Riding high. It just had a seismic IPO. Shook d entire industry. Same way google and microsoft's did.
Where is youtube today?
Its fine. Livg on as an appendage of google. Nothg much in dat departmnt. It's been parked like another acquired car in a billonaires garage.
What of watsap?
Bought for big bucks.
But watsap was already havg about 200 million users in its base bf facebook came knockg. Now watsap cudve grown into a phenomenom on its own. It was already an underground sensation.
20 yrs ago tech companies were built up, the rate of acquisition was small , they grew and died based on their market impact.
But that's y we hav cisco, (no cisco no ccna,ccnp,ccisp).
Think of it! Cisco wouldve been bought before you cud say "router".
Cisco grew and grew many lives with it.
Watof sun systems, it brought us java. Yes, the most popular language of all times. Brought d first respected programmg certifcations-scjp,scjd etc In d hands of greedy oracle, you cant take d top ones without selling your kidney! With sun systems it was easier. You could take programmer without associate. You cud take Developer without payg for compulsory traing.
Even d father of d language had to leave under d new administration.

Watof wen fb bought, isreali featurephone app maker,snaptu. This was the only link 3rd world ppl had to
apps tht required smartphones.
Well, after d purchase, and subsequent job losses (all staff except programmers were axed) ,
the servces were shut down, or reduced. Former customers ar now groang. Sure, snaptu wudnt hav grown into much,it was acquired for token amount,but it was servg mor ppl better bf it became a bigger companies appendix.

So true, but I think that as Nigerians/Africans we can't like that. Like these people have options, we dont. Thats why startup acquisitions (as long as they make us money) is a good thing.

I think beacause is hardware is more showy and can be presentable. Software on the other hand, has always been free to some people.

I like this ideas, please keep up the good work.

The world today is about tech. And tech, well, is mostly about apps, as they are beginning to be significant parts of everyday life, including education, health, transportation, budget and many others. Nigerians are making waves in the arena, and we spotlighted 10 of them.

The word app is short for "application" which in this case refers to a software application or special type of software program. An app typically refers to software used on a smartphone or mobile device such as the Android, iPhone, BlackBerry or iPad. Recent trends with mobile apps around the world allow you from the comfort of your home access vital information which in the past could not be so easily accessible. Many young Nigerians and have moved beyond consuming these tech innovations, making their mark by creating apps that people actually use. Osamede Umweni, Managing Director of 70th Precinct Limited, one of Nigeria's IT companies, in a recent interview, described the potential of the app market in an emerging economy like Nigeria as 'massive'. Apps are getting more popular amongst Nigerians, whose contributions to technological advancement haven't gone unnoticed. Following, are ten high-flyers.

Zubair Abubakar

He's co-founder of Lagos-based mobile media company, Pledge51, which created an app called Nigerian Constitution. The app was released after the 2011 presidential elections in 2011 and has over 330, 000 downloads which users can download onto their mobile phones. So far it is Nigeria's most popular download. Abubakar said: "I didn't really know if it would be successful, but something inside kept telling me that this was something I should do, to see if I could get Nigerians more interested in knowing their rights and understand the constitution. He's currently looking at different versions, translating it into the other Nigerian languages.

Bayo Puddicombe


He is co-founder, Pledge 51, and was an associate in the IT advisory unit of KPMG Professional Services, Nigeria where he specialised in information protection and business resilience (IPBR). Puddicombe's strong desire to see cutting-edge innovation and tech emerge from Nigeria, brought about his creation of the mobile game app, 'Danfo'. The initial version of the app was created in an effort to hone his software development skills and testing local demand for relevant consumer targeted mobile applications. It has also created the Ramadan app. All Pledge 51 apps have so far no less than 1 million downloads.

Oluseun David Onigbinde

He is the project leader of the BudgIT team. With a goal to redefine participatory governance in Nigeria, BudgIT is a civic start-up to present Nigerian public finances in a web platform understandable at every level of literacy and user interest. To promote open access to data and focusing on a more user-friendly presentation of state and federal budgets, the app includes charts and performance analysis for proper understanding of what budgets and public data entail. Users with even the most minimal knowledge of accounting and public financial management, find the app user-friendly because BudgIT serves as a bridge, using creative methods of visual intelligence, info-graphics, mobile (web and sms) and online interface to deliver Nigerian budgets to all.

Hugo Obi

He's an International Business, Finance and Economics graduate from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. With a passion to share the experiences of everyday Africans with the world through games, the former financial analyst at General Electric, London, in 2012 founded Maliyo Games, a Lagos-based online start-up which focuses on creating games with an African stamp. Currently served as web browser-based games, Maliyo is made up of a variety of titles including Aboki, Mosquito Smasher, Kidnapped, Cklass Fight, Okada Ride and Football Goal. Other themes are expected to be added to these as the app is available to Africans all over the world.

Tunde Aguda

He is a Higher National Diploma holder in Department of Quantity Surveying from the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. Aguda's motivation to develop the app, RAMP an acronym for 'Residents Association Management Portal' comes from his rather eccentric nature to explore new ideas that have virtually never been considered seriously here in Nigeria. Aguda says the Idea behind RAMP is simply to fill an existing vacuum in the area of online automation of resident associations in Nigeria.

Chuks Onwuneme

He is a software engineer and entrepreneur, as well as the founder of the Personify app, which he describes as "an app whose purpose is to discover the social good around you. Onwuneme's path is a long and inspiring one. At the age of 16, he walked the streets of Lagos, Nigeria to raise funds to study computer science, later earning an engineering scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington. After graduate school, he landed a job at Nokia in Dallas, where he worked for a couple years before the mobile phone giant decided to close down the R& office. At this point he was given a choice to relocate to Nokia's offices in Silicon Valley or Finland or take a buyout and leave the company. He left, and says he hasn't looked back since. Now, in Seattle he works at Game House and continues to build Personify.

Nana Fatima Ogunfemi

She is the brain behind Techsis, where she came up with the Kinship application, while struggling with depression and difficult personal circumstances. Rather than continue to struggle in silence, she decided to take control of her own destiny and set up an app development company. She went through a pilot business course with HBV Enterprises in Hackney, where she learned how to make the most of her entrepreneurial spirit. Working with a team of developers, she has now built an app that will help thousands of others who feel isolated and lonely to stay connected to the people they care about. Kinship is a free social awareness and safety app designed to help users keep track of the people they care about. Dele Oluwole


He exploited Lagos' chaotic traffic situation in good light with his creation of JonnyWaka 316. Meant to help improve road users' experience, safe, efficient road management and reduction of road hazards, the idea was provoked by Oluwole's traffic experiences in different countries, targeting road users in Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja as well as Ghana. It's free mobile to download, and specifically designed to help users who include road traffic officers and the police, monitor and report traffic situations, avoid incidents like traffic jams, armed robbery, and flood, among others.

Modupe Ajibola

He is the creator of the OTGPlaya platform which helps content providers to stream digital content without using the Internet as a pipeline; they are not constrained by bandwidth. The app brings digital media and online access to areas with broadband access challenge without investing in expensive last mile infrastructure. It is a customer-focused application that brings "accessibility" to critically underserved sectors. Ajibola the CEO and founder says their business model focuses on using this platform in entertainment media distribution and education content dissemination in classroom environments. Through a small device which runs at 900Mbps, content providers can convert their content into software.

Emotu Balotun

He is the creator of www.traclist.com, an online shopping platform regarded as the Nigerian version of eBay. Balotun says, the app "allows small-scale Nigerian retailers expose their stock inventories to an online shopping portal, and allows shoppers to compare the prices of those items across each retailer, and order them online. With many small businesses in Lagos lacking online presence, Balotun built a simple, central tool that lets them easily create an online shop. "It's kind of like eBay or Amazon, but created for this environment," he says. With help from Co-Creation Hub, Balotun was funded by the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Link ~> http://allafrica.com/stories/201403311796.html

payne4real: Am Payne adetoro. I have a particular IT Start up idea, that I believe will help fight insecurity in Nigeria.
I need a good programmer and a very good mobile app developer that can handle android, blackbery, windows n IOS app.
Note: we will finance the project by ourself.
If ur intrested contact me on bbm 2A654247

If you have any question, you can ask me

Im interested, if this is still open.

GitHub Source Code ~> https://github.com/google/j2objc

Google Code ~> https://code.google.com/p/j2objc/

Google Open Source Blog ~> http://google-opensource..com/2012/09/j2objc-java-to-ios-objective-c.html

Along with Facebook, Twitter is another of the Social Media Kings. 645 Million people in the world have a Twitter account. This social media platform appears to be more useful than Facebook for the individual user. Because of its limited characters, it acts more as a gateway to other sites and places. Facebook pleases the gossipping cravings of many, and businesses can promote their brand and observe user behaviour and demographic information through useful metrics for future ventures. But Twitter has more functions that just telling that you are bored on a commuter train.

1. Market Research
Everytime you have an idea regarding a line of products or services, Twitter can be a good way to find both content related to that topic and also comments from that people. These comments might conceal problems that people have and that you as a business could solve.
Make sure that making this an organized process and include all this data in an excel sheet. Make sure also to write down the people who commented this and that and research more about their profiles. This way you can get a grasp of customer personas for a more targeted marketing.

2. Influencers
There are tools such as BuzzSumo that give you comprehensive lists of influencers around particular keywords. These lists take data mostly from Twitter, and the fact that they are so useful and popular means that absolutely everybody is now in Twitter!
You can definitely promote your business and your content through following influencers. Do not focus on the top echelons of Twitter. Target lesser known people with a healthy following and which you think can also be benefited by your help.
At the same time, Twitter is a good way of finding similar businesses in your industry which can feed your imagination towards creating partnerships and networking across businesses.
Just keep in mind that when using Twitter, any interaction can unfold into back-links to your site or a mention to your Brand. The more active you are in Twitter the more chances you will have of creating these links and connections naturally.
Influencers in your industry could be very helpful for content collaborations. This can result in the synergies of sharing expertise, exposing it to a wider audience and creating natural back-links to your site.
When an influencer shares your content, he is exposing it to a massive, targeted audience which you still don’t have and can benefit from.

3. Measure engagement
Twitter is a very good barometer to check the reactions of your content. How many people are ‘faving’ your posts? how many people are re-tweeting you? How many mentions does your brand have? A happy customer might be talking about you.
Also if you share content, people might use twitter to make comments on it, rather than using the original blog post.

4. Get up to date with industry news
Twitter is very good to have all the industry news in one place. If you do not have time to browse all the blogs and magazines that you like to read to get updated with the industry, the chances are that all those publications and journalists are Twitting every single page that the publish. I know people who do not read newspapers any more because they have Twitter. For a busy professional this is very beneficial.

5. Promote your content
As I have mentioned earlier, you should be Tweeting about every that your business has that you think it can be made public, including your content. It should be on your workflow that every time you create a blog post, you create at least 10 Tweets about its with content within that blog post and schedule those Tweets. This way you will be reminding people of your updates and you will be present in your followers’ Twitter feeds.

Link ~> http://www.neotericuk.co.uk/blog/can-use-twitter-business/

LogoDWhiz: Well well well,

I with suggest Mr. Seun, have a mini company.. A building with a couple of offices, which will include programmers, good PR crew, moderators.. And accounts manager. With this, I believe there will be proper management, and Nairaland will be much more better.

This site is much more bigger than it was few years back, u have to expand your scope and in doing so expand your physical scope.

There is quote I once heard, " To move to the next level in life, you need a new level of diligence".

In this context, u need a new level of administration.. Both on things on the site and things off the site.

Nairaland can be much more better than this. So many potentials .

God bless u

So true!!!

Your favorite functions. Now in every language. No server setup.

Sometimes I code in Rails or Javascript and wish I could use a particular Python function. Obviously I'm not going to set up a Python server to call a single function, so I'm out of luck. I built Blockspring so I could use my favorite functions in any language - without needing to set up servers, authorization, and endpoints.

Continue with video tutorial:

Link ~> https://api.blockspring.com/blog/api-in-60-seconds

As developers one of our biggest “problems” is our voracious appetite for news. From Twitter to HackerNews to the latest funding on TechCrunch, it seems, at times, we cannot avoid the gravitational pull of our favorite news feeds. I know, at least for myself, this is engrained in my routine: wake up, check Twitter, check TechCrunch, check The Verge, etc. I spend at least the first 30 minutes of every day reading feeds based on title and repeat this a couple more times through the day.

I recently discovered SkimFeed, which I love and call my “dashboard into nerd-dom,” basically it is a single view of the major tech sites’ titles. However, I wanted more information on each article before I decided to click on one, so I thought: Why not use text analysis algorithms as a more efficient way of consuming my feeds?

Building my very own text analysis API

There are a number of things that can be done as part of a text analysis API but I decided to concentrate on four elements I believed I could build the fastest:

Strip documents of unnecessary elements
Advanced topic extraction
Automatically summarize stories
Sentiment analysis
As all of these algorithms are already available in the Algorithmia API, I could piece them together without having to worry about servers, scaling, or even implementing the actual algorithms:

ScrapeRSS – Retrieves all the necessary elements from an RSS feed
Html2Text – Strips HTML elements and keeps the important text
AutoTag – Looks for keywords that represent the topic of any text submitted to it. (Latent Dirichlet Allocation)
SentimentAnalysis – Analyzes sentences for positive, neutral or negative connotation. Uses the Stanford NLP library.
Summarizer – Breaks content into sentences, and extract key sentences that represent the contents topic. Uses classifier4j to ingest a URL and summarize its main contents
Now, it was just a question of making them work together (and it took ~200 lines of code).

Check it out:

Link ~> http://blog.algorithmia.com/post/93293999119/create-your-own-machine-learning-powered-rss-reader-in

Seun: Thank you all for your valuable advice, which I really appreciate. We will work hard to implement the ideas that will make Nairaland better.

Please do sir, we all wishing and banking on your success. Always improve and please never slack. Stay hungry.

Remember NL started as a forum. Here Are few Websites, That Have Been Used To Evaluate Nairaland.com (not the potential aspect of it like in my 1st post), just the site online. Remember I said that Nairaland can be split into 10 STARTUPS in my original post, if taken seriously but this is just to evaluate the site without apis, features or upgrades. Lets not 4get that this is just a forum. Get a source code, put it on a server and tell your friends about it and now it is worth millions of dollars.

1. http://mcjonline.com/domain/nairaland.com ~> $ 8,993,160.00
2. http://siteworthit.com/websiteworth.cfm?siteq=nairaland.com&search=Check+Website+Worth ~> $3,004,329.93
3. http://siteworthchecker.com/nairaland.com ~> $2.6 Million USD
4. http://www.freewebsitereport.org/www.nairaland.com ~> $2.6 Million USD
5. http://www.yourwebsitevalue.com/details/n/a/i/nairaland_com.html ~> $667, 148 but same company wants to pay $2448/month to have ads on this site
6. http://www.webuka.com/ ~> $6,571,742 USD with monthly income of $262, 870 USD.

That was just to evaluate the site. Now imagined if each subforum was created as an app.

i.e. Nairaland Programming = Stack Overflow or Quora.com
i.e. Nairaland Jobs = Elance + Freelance + oDesk + PeoplePerHour
i.e. Nairaland Computers/Phones = Craigslist + Amazon + eBay
i.e. Nairaland Movies/TVS = YouTube
i.e. Nairaland Ads = Google Adswords
i.e. Nairaland Forum = Google
i.e. Nairaland News = BBC + CNN
i.e. Nairaland Music/Radio = iTunes/SoundCloud/TuneIn

etc etc etc. Like Are u kidding me? Nairaland is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR STARTUP POTENTIAL!!!

asalimpo: Seun has no R& or business vision.
All tht is needed to seriously rattle it ,is focused well funded forum-as-a-business minded competitor emerging outta d woodworks to wrestle market share with it. But investors wont want to put their money there. The returns will b too low for their taste. It will take time ,say 2-5,years to establish itself. Etc.
So seun has gat all day dally on issues.

Everything you've been spitting @asalimpo, is on point and thats why I think that if NL is not careful, YM will take over. Ive lurked and spied on the owner of YM, and that boy sounds hungry. His team sounds hungry. NL needs to watch out.

Still what does Mr. Seun need? Does he have a hq for his company in Abeokuta? Like what is holding him up from being number 1 in Africa and then number 1 in the world?

inspiratio: There are few people that reason positively, the few who can see what million what million other men cannot see. I share your vision, good observation.

Thank you and I appreciate it @inspiratio. But its time we put in the work. Lets get this done.

GodMode: is just another forum... Anyone can build.

Building is one thing. Getting user base is another. Look at Reddit, Reddit is a forum that has a billion startup valuation with all the users. NL is like Nigeria's Reddit. Another billion dollar startup company.

Yeah I see what you are saying. Personally I think that the main problem is the app. Like a killer app will make users move from 1 platform to another. For instance, think of NL (NairaLand). NL is a semi-killer app. If we can have a killer app that will make the internet useful 2 Nigerians or Africans, then everybody will shift regardless of what phone they are using. Thats why I think 2go is better than Facebook in the Nigerian Market. Like u said, 2go targets feature phones as well.

GodMode: Never heard of YM...

YM = (YanMe) Its banned here tho.

For any doubters, here is a link ~> http://rcs.seerinteractive.com/money/ of how your major tech startups like Google, Facebook, YouTube and etc make money. Plz tell me, which startup on this list or which way of money on this list, can NL not implement if they are dedicated with the great user base?

SpaceGoat: i was thinking taught of range between 2 - 3 million dollar before !!

Its growing everyday sir. It makes about $30,000 - $50,000 a month and as the young generation of Nigeria gets phones and are being redirected here, NL is getting more popular.

asalimpo: seun,is too slow. 3 slow. But mayb thts cuz he's carryng too much load.
Suggestions hav poored in, but d guy too dull to implement them.
NL is already a portal- a fast ceo wud push it towrds being a media arm, give rich media fronts (like yahoo).
Or create thematic contents like google (sallah,christmas,independence shud carry visual themes. Chibok shud carry a black glummy theme)
again,a departmnt for media actvties shud b created.
Branching out, NL app, y dnt evrybody access fb from browser? The app is more convenient.
Private chat, you wanna hav 1on1 without publishg phone number or dropping email id, just like it was possible on yahoo messenger,fb.
This feature alone cries out.

Seun's savg grace is tht there is no serious competitor.

I totally agree with everything you said. Maybe Mr. Seun needs help. NL is a multi-billion dollar startup, if taken seriously like I said.

SpaceGoat: hmmm.are you seun brother? im not buying again. !! i have some ware i want to spend my money.

I am not Mr. Seun sir, but how much do you want to spend? What is your budget? We can flip domain and websites everywhere but buying low, recreating and selling high.

GodMode: I have a dream

That one day

Nairaland will have competitors

That will make nairaland

Just another forum.

They already do. If NL is not careful, YM might take over.

GodMode: toshodei Those things you listed are listed with solutions not dreams

What do you mean by listed with solutions not dreams? Please clarify. Those site are the same as Nairaland.

Nairaland is like the Alibaba of Nigeria. Check this article out ~> http://qz.com/206283/all-the-western-companies-youd-have-to-combine-to-get-something-like-alibaba/?source=HackerNews&referrer=Anuj+Adhiya

cirmuell: Seun can we get an 'Overview' feature so we'll know what's in a thread before we open it?

#Crap

What do you mean by crap? Im over here stating facts. Before you post opinion or says something, back at it up.