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Showing posts from February, 2016

How I lost my phone to Nairobi's best con man

Moi Avenue, with a view of the point where I encountered Nairobi's best con man, and parted with my phone A good con requires the highest level of cooperation from the victim. *** I lost my phone on Friday evening, some time between 6:40 p.m. and 7:10 p.m. I know the time because my receipt indicates I was served at Ukwala Supermaket, Tom Mboya at 6:32 p.m., on the 26th of February, 2016. Given I'm a brisk walker who avoids crowds, it should not have taken me more than five minutes to get to the area around the Tom Mboya statue on Moi Avenue,  just opposite the Hilton. My habit of avoiding crowds is what led to what became a tragic decision, to walk along the road and emerge at the bus stop next to Ambassadeur Hotel, rather than walk along the pavement. It is here that I bumped into the villain, Nairobi’s best con man. He was running, kicking a plastic bottle along the road. He said something to me that I didn't catch, to which I responded with a “

Globalisation and technology : Make sure your business does not miss the taxi

Uber regularly teams up with vehicle manufacturers in marketing stunts, like this free ride in Johannesburg in May 2015. On the opposite lane are public taxis (3 white vans) of the kind that are having their operating model challenged by technology based transport service operators like Uber. Every pundit in Kenya is writing on Uber, and I have joined the fray. Tom Makua keeps poking fun at how columnists use world events to draw business lessons. It is a foolproof way of looking like you know what you are saying - after all, you are drawing lessons from other people's failures, rather than been the one stuck with a failing strategy. A good thing with drawing lessons from failure is that people tend to have a better idea of what you are saying. If you write the same article before an issue arises, people will tend to ignore it. There's the possibility too that things might not end up the way you promise they will. In the past few weeks, Uber has irked other taxi play