Bits and bobs

A Kikuyu, a Luhya and a Persian are standing outside Nakumatt Prestige at 8pm. Which one is selling popcorn, which one is eating popcorn, which one is watching?

I am an information junkie. I used to be one of those people with a million different email subscriptions flying into my email inbox each day. News lists, global security information lists, sports, technology, you name it I had it. One day last year I revolted and unsubscribed to all of them except two. Why? First of all it was information overload! Secondly the growth and wide availability of RSS feeds and other ways to get information means I no longer need to fill my email inbox to get the information I want. Now I am signed up to only two daily email lists on my main email account and both are vital reading and if you don’t have them you should get them!

One is The Global Voices daily digest (blogs) written by David Sasaki and his bunch of merry men and women. The other is The Fiver (football) written by a bunch of nutters in Fiver Towers. (OK I admit I do have one or two other weekly email subscriptions that such a pillar of society such as myself has no business reading, step forward Holy Moly!) What lists out there are worth a look.

So which RSS Feeds am I reading or do I think are worth reading, or do I feel I should be reading? All is revealed on the MentalGator. Yeah I noticed some of you noticing my site pulling your feeds and was bound to oust me before long so I might as well publicise it. It is quite small, I will try to keep it under 30 feeds, unlike the monster that is the KENYAUNLIMITED AGGREGATOR! It is rough around the edges, needs a serious css over haul and some options need changing but it will do for now. If this all works out then, I’ll change the software that powers the KenyaUnlimited aggregator to this one.

It’s been a while since I shook with laughter while reading a blog post but Greg Black got me laughing and holding my head at the same time while I was reading this.

The guys at Very Sawa Technology Studios are on to something with the launch of Jahazi. When you have White African, Kobia, JKE, and the Skunkworks crew all ooohing and ahhhing over one of your products its time to start thinking about an IPO.

And finally

KBW exists. And KBW exists primarily because its members want it to exist and contribute to help it exist in various ways, not because Mentalacrobatics started it or the KBW Admin Team helps sustain it, although those are factors as well. If KBW members do not want KBW to exist it will not. It really is a simple as that. That is why, at the end of the day, my opinion on each and every attack on KBW is not that important and why I will not comment on each and every blog post that mentions KBW negatively.

If KBW loses credibility then bloggers will simply leave KBW and no others will join. In the same way, if the Admin Team can not be trusted then KBW members will simply stop conferring with, contributing to and indeed trusting that Admin Team.

I can tell you honestly that when I fire up Thunderbird each morning the KBW admin email address is the most active of all the email addresses and of those messages new member registration and new members requesting assistance take up a healthy number. Do not take my word for it, look for yourself.

KBW does have its share of yahoos. What is healthy is that we all have different opinions on what constitutes a yahoo, and believe me I have my opinion as well. I can take the personal attacks, they stopped bothering me a long time. (When cartoons email your parents to inform them that their son is confusing the youth of Kenya on behalf of StateHouse and should be arrested – you learn to laugh at life – otherwise you can go mad).

This does raise interesting questions on the issue of ownership of the Kenyan blogosphere. Methinks I have just found the right topic for my next podcast.

I was talking last night with another veteran of Kenyan online communities and we were reflecting about the back-in-the-day days. If it is beef and “online war” you are after let me tell you right now KBW is the wrong place to look. We are but a bunch of amateurs.

In 1997 as an innocent 1st year undergrad I joined an online community called KenyaOnline. Walalala. VITA! This was just before the 1997 general election and I tell you MPs, aspiring MPs, their cronies, even MINISTERS (apparently writing anonymously – remind you of anything) were all throwing, what the KOL community called, online rungus at each other. I must admit I found it brilliant to start of with.

By the time 2002 had come along and those same wazee, wabunge and wamweshimwas were still throwing insults at each other it had become tiring. However things mellow out and KenyaOnline is still going strong in its current incarnation on yahoo groups.

Any of you who were around for the drama on mlevi.com, rcbown.com – remember when rcbowen was THE Kenyan page on the internet – if you weren’t in his guest book then you basically didn’t exist online – and even at the height of drama on mashada.com then you know that KBW is a relatively stable place and actually quite quiet in comparison.

There many who like to cultivate a them and us mentality about this whole online thing. The KBW Admin Team is always accessible, if you have any concerns then you know where to find us.

With our numbers growing and our membership diversifying, with the power or blogs increasing and recognition of bloggers growing day by day I am confident, as I always have been from that day 1 when I was the ONLY member of KBW, that this project that we are all involved in, is here to stay.