Just managed to mmake a paypal  payment, apparently the card was linked to my paypal account without the need for additional verification or a confirmation. Not sure whether to celebrate or worry

I attempted to link my Orange Money/Equity Bank Visa card to paypal on Tuesday,and the card was added to my Paypal linked cards without incident. However when I checked my
ministatement for the 4-digit confirmation code yesterday, Wednesday I saw none. Called Equity’s Card Centre and spoke to this gentlemen who assured me that my card
was authorised to make online payments of up to KES 15,000, including payments to Singapore where the local Paypal Pte is. However he told me that the confirmation code was yet to appear on my statement.
He further  informed that their cards just work with paypal, and they only usually receive calls from people asking to have their online payments
limit raised.

Will be checking my ministatement today to see if the confirmation code has finally appeared.

Spoke to a friend who confirmed that his Equity Visa, like his National Bank visa card,worked without a hitch.
Not sure where the problem is exactly.

In  the meantime been looking to link my card to skrilla, (a.k.a moneybookers) a paypal competitor that is supposed to be more secure.
Had signed up for a skrilla account a couple of months back, the abandoned it.

Update: Visited an Equity branch where the enquiries lady informs me yet again that the four digit confirmation code has not appeared.
Advised me to give it another go on the paypal site. Just about to.

I hasten to add that Co-op charges KES 100 per month for the Internet banking service. I understand Equity charges about the same.
The folks at I&M keep telling me that it’s free, though that was Direct Sales Representatives I kept talking to, and off my experience working DSR
have learnt to take whatever they tell me with a grain of salt and other assorted spices.

Econet and National Bank both claim that they offer Internet Banking though yet to fully understand what their services offer and how much they charge.

Expect most banks to offer Internet Banking to Corporate customers first because a) That’s what snobbish Kenyan banks do and b) they expect to recoup on their substantial investments on the technology (Kamal , Craft Silicon, I see you baby!) very fast by overcharging corporates and other high value clients.

I am still convinced though that OnlineBanking has the greatest potential when it comes to banking the unbanked masses in remote places and other places where the conventional banking model has failed to work.

I like the Hardy Heron background as seen here in Ubuntu Ultimate 2.3.
Takes me back to much simpler terms.

I often recommend Ubuntu Ultimate to those who want a Linux distro that “comes with everything”straight out the box.
It is richly featured and will clutter your desktop in no time. I mean Ultimate comes packed with everything, from a Flickr client to an IRC client to a php editor(whatever that is). You name it, it is there.
Besides it comes jam packed with various custom themes for folks to whom that
sort of thing is important (obviously not you <a href=”http://identi.ca/eebrah”>@eebrah</a>).
Also liked that it came with all sorts of proprietary drivers,for the Compaq CQ 6x Wifi chip for instance. That’s a really popular model around here and outta be handy having a distro that takes care of Wireless Bluetooth and Wifi chipsets just like that.
Am yet to successfully install Wifi drivers on a vanilla Ubuntu or fedora for the accursed chipsets yet, so Ubuntu Ultimate took care of that for me.
The down side is that Ubuntu Ultimate, or at least the Kubuntu based version 2.3 of the distro is heavy as a motherfucker. It boots in around the same time it takes me to sweep the house. And that, trust me is a mighty long time.

Want to try out Linux? Ubuntu Ultimate is a nice place to start.

Saturday took on a greater significance for me when I noticed that the newish KES 500 currency note I was holding had been issued on July 16th 2010, making it exactly a year old.
Bit of research made me realize that the Central Bank of Kenya issues a lot of it’s currency around July. This perhaps because the Kenyan government’s fiscal year starts in July and ends in June.
The date was  also significant because it meant as per the new constitution, promulgated in August of last year, that the notes issued in July 2010 will be last to bear the portrait of a person.
All future currency,presumably starting with the July 2011 issue, will bear national symbols.
Will be disconcerting for a lot of people since Kenya is the sort of place where people love “kile tumezoea” [what we are used to] and can not imagine alternative ways of doing things. Sure a lot of people will be wondering “Now which pictures will be on currency?”
Currency notes from just across the border in Uganda, do not bear portraits, but all sorts of other symbol. If you are in possession of Ugandan currency might just help you get the picture.

Many Kenyans do not appreciate just how an elaborate work of art, our legal tender is. In many countries currency notes are a staid affair.
My favorite Kenyan currency note, is the old KES500 note bearing the portrait of former President Moi,issued in 1990s.
A true beauty.
Will be posting pics of it soon.

I never did like the old green theme of the site. Found it too dull, unexciting. And it spoke against everything I know about web design. I still do not like it.
In the back and forty  that ensued from the colour disagreement, I made a spectacular I “can’t take it to the enterprise” arguement, worthy of any Cannonical  exec.
I argued that it was about the users. True, I am yet to receive feedback from folks who were on the site, who thought it was any good. Some designer pals outrightly hated it. But didn’t offer suggestions.
My decision to alter the CSS,and @eebrah’s sharp reaction to erm, the unilaterism of the said action,led to an epiphany.
Right there I had a microcosm, a snapshot of sorts of the power struggles and beefs between the sponsoring  Corporation and it’s community of developers, as occassioned most recently by Ubuntu, it’s communitized developers and recent decision to push their own shell/Desktop environment Unity.
Business is predicated on the notion,rather pretentious, that execs and proprietors  know what’s best for their customers. This is often arrived at through extensive research. But more often than not ,through gut feeling, business instict and is largely informed by prevailing trends. But do businesses really know what users want
Business is not science. Execs often get it wrong. As exemplified by my arguements, and those of Canonical, Ubuntu’s sponsors.
The sponsoring corporation,the business end of things, and the community both have the well being of the project at heart.

And very often, the business feels, wrongly, that the community just does not get it.

In early  2009, Canonical felt they had a problem. Much like me, they felt that their choice of colour, themes and overall design, did not reflect well on their identity and the User Experience on their flagship Ubuntu desktop product.

A product that had in less than 5 years, achieved a user base of over 10million users and become, according to distrowatch, the world’s most popular distro.

So in March of that year they brought in Ivanka Majic,a brilliant designer, to work on revamping branding and UX.

And things for Ubuntu have never been quite the same.

Ubuntu’s mantra Linux for Human beings is based on the presumptuous notion that the Linux community does not get the average, human user and doesn’t consist of, itself “human” users of Ubuntu.
And so they brought in Aubergine, a more earthly human theme to Ubuntu,and
a tinkering of the buttons [maximize isn't where maximize used to be] on the title bars of windows.
A lot of users didn’t like it. @methoddan’s mother didn’t like it for instance. And I doubt she is a bearded, hippy, free software  geek. The decision was never properly communicated to the community, and actual users of the distro.
A more recent change, Unity essentially a Gnome fork [At some point, I informed @eebrah that I would fork the darned CSS,and we would see which one would win out] was released to considerable backlash by the community and many average users. My cousin, a DTP designer who I got on Ubuntu around 8.10, certainly didn’t like it.

I get Canonical. They feel that they are more invested in the long-term well being of the project. They pay the bills. They have to make the business decisions. They certainly have the skills and expertise to do. Their CEO Mark Shuttleworth has had considerable business success before [See Here Be Dragons,Thawte Consulting]. Who better to make the decisions?
Where they, and myself, and several other companies and  execs involved in open source projects get it wrong, is the in their logic defying presumption  that their communities aren’t invested in the long term success of the project.

Members of your community have the actual purchasing power for when you are selling your product. They are the ones who are more likely to pick a netbook/laptop running Ubuntu over a similar one running on Windows  or Mac OS X.
They’re the ones who make suggestions and assurances to potential & newbie buyers.
Some go as far providing support to users who you the Corp would otherwise not be able to reach. My cousins who run Ubuntu, and to be fair love Unity,are more likely to call me for support, than say Cannonical or even getting on the Ubuntu site and forums.

They evangelize your project.
They use it in ways you couldn’t have conceived.
[Heck, I run a business on a Canonical product, and am very much interested in their eucalyptus "cloud" computing offering.]
They are as equally , and at times more so invested in it than you are. [See Illumos Project, Solaris after Sun.

A top down approach in a community simply doesn’t work. “We know what’s good for you only sparks trouble”

Hoisting decisions on people while working in a team only gives birth to resentment. Which in turn leads to estrangement of your community.

Ask Novell SUSE, estranging your community is the surest way to lose momentum and fail.

Mass hypnosis is the corporation’s end game, mass benefit the community’s.
Communities rarely do get things wrong. Company execs often do.

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