Dennis Kioko

Web 2.0 and social networking has really picked up all over the world. In areas like Africa where internet access is limited, Social Networks have been a driving force towards the adoption or Mobile Internet. Most people begin using the internet in order to use tools like Facebook of to access webmail. In terms of helping internet spread, social networking is close to pornography in the number of people it draws to the net. (Yes, don't frown. Pornography has been the biggest driving force when it comes to adoption of technology, even if society frowns upon it). With the growth and popularity of social networks like Tweeter and Facebook, a new tend has been developing. The control and flow of information has moved from State observed(controlled/managed) News channels to people managed social networks. This has resulted in the masses having more power in themselves, with cases of demonstrations been organized and managed via social networks. The most famous of these has been the Iran...

Well, you have all heard about the proposed Nairobi city by Laws, currently awaiting approval by the Local Government minister. The proposed laws seemed to be quite comprehensive, and ranged from simple laws governing traffic-lights-conduct to the outrageous ones which seek to limit the behavior of city dogs. We here at gramware have been having a feeling that some of the laws on dogs were referring to a word used to co-notate the gender of a female dog; and commonly used to refer to human beings with outrageous behaviours. Still, we think that there are some laws that city hall missed, and we decided to list some of them here. Most of them might be outrageous, and probably a reason why they didn't make the cut. Here they are: It shall be illegal for a city Resident to stop on a street to stare at a video screen for a period of time longer than 15 seconds. any resident contravening this shall be charged with obstruction. Pedestrians within the city shall attempt to walk in almost ...

Of late, Child molestation & other stories related to pedophilia have been having a large share of Kenyan news. Its quite strange that all this stories seem to have cropped up at almost the same time, as if someone was coordinating the action behind the scenes. Above all, the child sexual molestation & homosexual allegations against Father Kizito , a Kenyan Catholic priest of Italian Origin , seem to be leading the pack and gaining the lions share of such stories. It has gone to such an extent, that whenever the media is talking about anything paedophilic, Father Kizito's photo is shown, even when the story is unrelated to him or does not mention him. MUDKIZITO1706C.jpg (JPEG Image, 460x234 pixels) So to say, the guy is now the unofficial mascot of paedophilics in Kenya. Still on the news & mascots, Kenyans seem to have an in-built gene that makes them have a high affiliation to overturned petrol tankers. This is apparently in the name of making a living out of the spi...

Twitter has been in the news on several occasions in the recent past. It all began with a few celebrities using twitter, then it caught on to CNN and Ashton Kutcher going head to head for who gets a million followers first. Ashton Kutcher beat CNN in what was the first demise of CNN on Twitter. This event was closely by Oprah's grand entry into twitter. It was at this point that many people actually joined twitter. Oprah happened to be a major occasion on twitter, with many geeks anticipating that twitter would be overwhelmed by the interest brought on it by Oprah and her millions (if they haven't hit a billion) of fans worldwide. In fact, we gave a Before Oprah and After Oprah Twitter ages. Twitter has continued growing, with it been claimed to be the fastest growing social network in the world, with a growth rate of about 1300% per month. Ironically , a Harvard research says that only 10% of twitter users contribute to 90 % of the content on twitter; the content is known as t...

So you are one of us? That was a question I was asked by a Human Resource Officer at a ministry which I am attached to. I was doing some maintenance on a laptop in the officers office, when one of her tribes mate came for some catching up. They chatted in their language oblivious to the fact that I was one of them. After I was through, the officer asked for my name. I told her my name, and it then dawned on her that I was one of her tribes mate, or one of theirs . She then proceeded to ask me some targeted questions, which advertisers are fond of asking when doing targeted advertising, such as 'where you come from', 'Where you went to school'. I have seen organizations(departments) and other workplaces that are dominated by people from the same tribe. Many people prefer allocating job positions to their friends/tribes men , who then invite more of their tribes men. The fact that the organizations human resource is limited to one geographical source contravenes the law o...

Martha Karua, one of our most hyped politicians, was in the news again. This time round, it appears her god-like status is now fading as quickly as it came up. Some of her constituents were demonstrating against her; odd it was that they were motor-cycle taxi men, not demonstrating against her motor cycle policies, but against her so called support for the mungiki. It is odd, since the activities of the mungiki do not affect cyclists alone, but the constituency as a whole. This had reeked a strong oduor of hired demonstrators, as she claims. As for the demonstrators and the planners, they appeared to have made a judgemental error when they claimed that their MP was supporting the mungiki. Martha Karua, been a sensible person and a lawyer, has been against the stance that the government is taking against the mungiki, by allowing other so called vigilante groups to hunt for mungiki and kill them. Been against this method, does not mean that you support the mungiki;the two aren't...

Today I arrived at the office in the cover of darkness, not that I wanted to arouse any suspicion, but been a user of Thika road, I have to choose arriving at work either under the cover of darkness or in broad day light. Arriving at work is not the only thing that i have done under the cover of darkness today. Waking up was the first thing I did under the cover of darkness, immediately after which I was hit by a very strong stench, only to discover that its source was yours truly's armpits. In short I now also had to shower under the cover of darkness. I then went to get water from an outside tap, that is shared by my whole block of flats. This was also done under the cover of darkness. It is at this moment that I realized that I had made a critical mistake; one of entrusting the critical job of providing water for my essential use on this morning to an unreliable firm, aka the Nairobi Water & Sewerage Company. They had lived to their expectation, and had only provided a trick...

Yesterday, I arrived home past 10 in the night, which is quite late for my area. Reason been that I was trying to satisfy the law of demand and supply of transport to Kahawa, where I live. According to the economics I was taught before my university was abruptly closed , price drops when demand is low and supply is high. As for yesterday, the more than 20 empty matatus at the bus stop insisted that they had to charge rush hour fare-despite absence of willing passengers at the bus stop-which had only enough passengers to fill 2 omnibuses(Nissans). I came to realize that the law of demand and supply is not the case in this metropolis of ours, Nairobi. Apparently, its population is quite sizable for the metroplois to disregard common economic laws and come up with it's own replacements. After a quick research, albeit free of common typing errors , I found out that we now have a law of price versus time. This law states that the price of a good or service will increase & remain con...