Thursday 3 November 2011

ALL ABOUT STEVE JOBS

steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922-1993) and Clara Jobs (1924-1986). Clara’s maiden name was Hagopian. When asked about his “adoptive parents,” Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs “were my parents.”He later stated in his authorized biography that they “were my parents 1,000%.”
The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Steve was five years old. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Paul Jobs, a machinist for a company that made lasers, taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands.Clara was an accountant, who taught him to read before he went to school.Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.Asked in a 1995 interview what he wanted to pass on to his children, Jobs replied, “Just to try to be as good a father to them as my father was to me. I think about that every day of my life.”
Jobs attended Monta Loma Elementary, Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends’ rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts!!!
Jobs and Steve Wozniak met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. In 1976, Woz invented the Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple computer in the garage of Jobs’s parents in order to sell it. They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. “Mike” Markkula, Jr. As Apple continued to expand with Wozniak’s next version, the Apple II, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion.
In a speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, he said being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” And added “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
Looking back at Steve Jobs childhood life, his early Education, Early career one cannot help but be inspired of how such a man can rise from humble beginnings into such a success srory.
It goes to show with determination and sheer hard work we can achieve anything we ever dreamt of but we just have to work a little extra harder to attain those dreams.

Saturday 9 April 2011

MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY – Is this the next step or will it be checked by Kenyan’s peculiar calling habits?


Barely a week into the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) only 300 people in Kenya have used the service out of a total subscriber base of about 16,000,000
Are you amongst the 300 people? Do you consider yourself a lucky user and if not what are your reasons for not using this service.
Maybe for us to understand more about MNP anyone who has used this service needs to share their most interesting experiences with us.
Do you own more than two phones with different sim cards? Is this why you don’t need MNP?
Did you know that Kenyan rank consistently amongst the 50 most innovative nations in the world? Yes, that is because of the creativity of you and others like you. So here is the gauntlet, In which way would you like number portability services to improve?
Let us know: the most innovative answer will be forwarded to Mr. Patrick Musimba the CEO of Porting Access BV who run MNP services in Kenya. Who knows, you could be the next Mark Zuckerberg !

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Access Kenya What went wrong?

Opportunity turns nightmare
-AccessKenya’s troubles began when it issued a profit warning on December 15 last year that full-year profits would be 25 per cent lower compared to the previous year. This, coupled with governance issues, has been eroding investor confidence.
-Growing competition from nimble rivals has not given it breathing space. Mobile operators led by Safaricom and internet service providers like MTN Kenya and Kenya Data Networks have stepped up their game, causing a major shift in market shares.

This has seen the company turn to cost-cutting measures such as reducing borrowing expenses and renegotiatingbandwidth contracts with international cable owners.

Mr Jonathan Somen, the managing director, says some of the decisions made two years ago have come to haunt the company. “There is no secret about our profitability,” he says.

“We have learned a lot of important lessons. There were a lot of things we did that affected our business, but we have put measures in place to rectify the situation.”
One of them was investing heavily in infrastructure then the ground shifted suddenly as mobile phones entered the fray. Also, the acquisition of Openview Business Systems turned out to be disastrous, with the unit soon running into the red.
-What are your views and how can kenyan ISP providers improve and most important How can they avoid losses in the Kenyan Market?