The Tech Informant

Technology and social media have changed the way consumers are engaging with businesses. Literally, two decades ago, the only way for a customer to interact with businesses was through phone and fax. Do you remember the fax? That must have been rough. Today, consumers have multiple channels (touch points) where they can contact, interact and even purchase products and services from businesses. It is crucial for a modern business to have a consistent presence throughout all these touchpoints in order to have engagement with its customers. A consumer in 2022 can interact with businesses on at least 6 channels. These include text messaging, email, phone calls, live chat, and of course, the many social media platforms available. The problem for many companies, now, is how to synchronize these channels in order to deliver quality, consistent, and seamless customer experience. What is Omnichannel customer experience When a business integrates and synchronizes all channels where new and retur...

Both Coda and Notion are excellent tools for individuals and teams to increase productivity and efficiency. They are best-in-class when it comes to recording ideas, managing projects, and monitoring workflows.   The two are also quite similar in user interface design and one can easily switch between the platforms with almost-zero learning time.   There are a few key differences, however, that set these two tools apart. In the research leading to this article,  I discovered that these differences actually form the basis on which most users choose which platform to use. Key takeaways Notion is easier to use for beginners and is great for individuals and small teams performing non-complex tasks. Coda is better at third-party integration. Its modular databases and complex formulas make it have a steeper learning curve but is rewarding in the long run because of its powerful information management features. Larger businesses will incline towards Coda’s customizable enterpr...

What is a DAO? A decentralized autonomous organization is a relatively new system of governance with no central leadership. Members of the organization have a common goal and they make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization. DOAs have been popularized by cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. They use a bottom-up style of management. How do DAOs work? DAOs operate using smart contracts - these are chunks of code that automatically execute whenever a set of criteria are met. These smart contracts establish the DAO’s rules. DAO stakeholders then vote rights to influence how the organization operates by deciding on or creating new governance proposals. For example, based on the outcome of a decision, certain codes may be implemented to increase the circulating supply, burn off a select amount of reserve tokens, or issue select rewards to existing tokenholders. Voting power is spread across users based on the number of tokens they hold. For example, a user that ha...

So, you have now been sold on the idea of doing construction with shipping containers and you are thinking of beginning a project soon. You would like to see some general designs and ways you can utilize a shipping container? Well, if you choose Mauru Containers Limited , we promise you that the options are limitless.  However, here are some residential and commercial ideas that you may consider when choosing to build your next project with shipping containers. Commercial units (container stalls and shopping malls) These units are fairly common. They are dotted everywhere in major cities and towns in Kenya - from Donholm, Nairobi to Vihiga County. Commercial stalls have become the quickest and most affordable way of acquiring a commercial space in busy town centers.  Saying that the Kenyan economy is expanding may be a bit controversial to the common mwananchi on the street right now, but statistically, it is true. More businesses are being opened than ever before as demand fo...

These days the options are plenty when it comes to choosing shipping container vendors in Kenya. For the most part, many of them are legit and will give you sound advice when purchasing a shipping container. Some are actually our business partners.  But, in a high-demand market, you can never miss a few bad apples. We have unscrupulous businesses and middlemen ready to make a quick coin by giving wrong advice and selling the wrong type of undocumented containers.  If you are a first-time buyer, we strongly suggest you contact a container fabrication company for consultation before committing any money.  Here is a general guideline to help you navigate the sometimes-murky waters of purchasing shipping containers in Kenya. How the shipping container should be used First and most important, please have an understanding of what solution you are looking for. What problem are you trying to solve with a shipping container? The best dealers will always lead with this question, th...

Mauru Containers Limited has managed to build a large portfolio of shipping container products tailored to the desires of our clients. They have a gallery with hundreds of photos to inspire you and sample what they can deliver.  Their offices in Pipeline, Nairobi are also made from fabricated shipping containers. Please pay them a visit any day except public holidays from 7 AM to 6 PM. Here are some of their bestsellers. Shipping container products are highly customizable so kindly be advised that the prices of products may vary significantly from one client to the next. The table below shows the approximate prices for the standard range of these products.  It should guide you on general budget estimates. Project Approximate cost Standard one-bedroom house (in a 40-foot container) From Ksh. 850,000 Standard two-bedroom house (in a 40-foot container) From Ksh. 1,300,000 Standard three-bedroom home ...

We are all familiar with container stalls around our major cities and towns. Popular examples are the One Acre Fund merchant shops and the famous shipping container getaway home in Kajiado.  About 82% of all commercial and residential properties are constructed with brick and mortar. However, the high cost of inflation and the high demand in the real estate market is denying ordinary Kenyans a chance to own or lease conventional brick-and-mortar properties. Affordable building and construction technologies have been a popular topic in the country in the last several years because the government has been keen on implementing affordable housing initiatives for its citizens. One of the few exciting technologies that have penetrated the construction market is the use of shipping containers to construct residential and commercial projects.  Shipping containers are readily available as a building material Kenya is the trade gateway to greater Eastern Africa and many internationally ...

What is no-code? No-code (with or without a hyphen) simply means programming without the use of code. This includes, but not limited to; webpages, mobile applications, and scripts. New programming languages like Python have made it a little easier to write code, but generally, there is still a steep learning curve. It is also important to note that you may need to learn two or more programming languages for you to entirely design and build a website or mobile application – or spend thousands of dollars hiring or contracting a software engineer. No-code platforms intend to significantly reduce the burden of acquiring technical knowledge of programming languages, and according to statistics, it seems they are succeeding. In 2021, research firm Gartner forecasted a 23% increase in the global market for low-code/no-code development tools. It also projected that over 65% of all mobile application development activities will be through low-code/no-code platforms.  So, how do no-code plat...

What is Salesforce Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that initially only provided customer relationship management (CRM) tools but has over the years expanded into sales, analytics, customer service, and marketing automation. It is now the most popular and most successful software-as-a-service platform in the world. It was founded in 1999, but like most online companies at that time, it was severely affected by the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It suffered crippling financial losses and had to lay off about 20% of its staff. But the company, under its founder, former Oracle executive Mark Benioff persevered and Salesforce put up impressive financial numbers passing 1 billion dollars in annual revenue by 2009. In 2022 the company’s revenue hit 26.49 billion dollars which is a 26% increase from 2021. It also boasts a market cap of 150.25 billion dollars. Not too shabby for a company that almost went under in the first three years of operations. In many ways, especially in th...

What is pig butchering? According to Internet Crime Complaint Center’s press release about online safety, in 2021 ‘pig butchering’ scam victims lost an estimated 429 million dollars. Pig butchering is essentially a long con. Online scammers take their time to establish fake personal relationships with the victims before ripping them off.  The trick is to get the victims to trust the scammers. A con artist usually creates a fake online profile on social media, like Facebook, WhatsApp, or Tinder masquerading as an incorrect number or an old friend. They use these profiles to reach out to thousands of potential victims attempting to be their ‘new friend’ or ‘potential lover’. If the potential victim ignores the scammer then the con ends there with no loss or foul done, but if they are intrigued by the scammer’s lies and continue engaging then they fall right into the scammer's trap. The con artists will then insert themselves into the daily lives of the victims by consistent personal ...

In 2004, a scruffy college kid from Harvard University co-created, in his dorm, what would be the most important networking platform in the next two decades. Considering that it was initially meant to connect university students, Mr. Zuckerberg probably did not know how much of an impact his creation would have on the world. Since 2006 when it was open to anybody above the age of 13, the Facebook co-founder and CEO has steered the company to amass 2.93 billion active monthly users (more than a third of the world’s population) and is ranked the third most visited website globally. In the years since, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing App, Instagram, an instant messaging App, WhatsApp, the virtual reality company Oculus, and Giphy, an online database and search engine for short looping videos. All these platforms have had their share of successes. It has however not been smooth sailing for Facebook (now Meta.) The last eight years have been extremely difficult for the California-based ...