2.4B Global Internet trends in 2012 - 8% Y/Y Growth, Driven by Emerging Markets

Title: 2.4B Global Internet trends in 2012 - 8% Y/Y Growth, Driven by Emerging Markets

As I was going through this presentation, I noticed that while USA ranked #10 in Internet user adds, Nigeria ranked higher at #6. Thumbs up!

Note: On this slide, while KPCB annotated the USA row, I annotated the Nigeria row.

Source: http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2012-internet-trends-update

Instructions to set up Guaranty Trust Bank online third party transfer

Training/ Instructions on setting up Guaranty Trust Bank Online Third party transfer.

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Step 1: Have a computer, desktop or laptop. We do not recommendusing a smart phone because of small screen real estate. GTB is not fully optimised for mobile yet.

Step 2. Have internet connectivity

Step 3. Have your phone ready, because a text message may be sent for additional security measures

Step 4. Have a token. You can get this by going to any GTBank branch. This costs N3000. 

Visit www.gtbank.com

Step 5. Click on the REGISTER  button under INTERNET BANKING

Step 6. I suggest calling GTConnect to register

Step 7. Your account number will be a combination of your select digits of your account number + the digits 01

Step 8. You will select a Password which can be between 4 digits and 9 digits (do not quote me on that). The point that I am making is it is can be longer than a 4 digit Personal Identification Number (PIN). This is why is it called a Password, not a PIN.

Step 9. After you have obtained your User ID and Password, you are ready to login

Step 10. Enter your User ID and Password, and click login

On subsequent days after you visit gtbank.com, 

Click on the LOGIN  button under INTERNET BANKING

This would take you to a new page 

"Simple Tips to Protect Your Funds and Account" that reminds you of the Dos and Don'ts of internet banking 

Scroll down a bit, click on 'Continue"

Step 11. You will see "Do Not Disclose your…"

Scroll down a bit and click on "Click here to view your Account (s).

You are now logged into you online bank account

Step 12. Click on the Transfers tab. Click on "Transfer to any GTbank A/C"

You will see the following statement and instruction:

"With Guaranty Trust Bank Internet  Banking third party transfer is now easier. You no longer have to pre-register your third party beneficiaries. You can transfer funds from your Account to any other account within the Bank. To effect transfer of funds, simply complete and submit the form below."

Please enter the third party NUBAN account number or use your regular account format

Step 13:

Transfer Details

From: (this shows your own account number)

Stored Beneficiary: (after you have sent money to someone previously, you have the option to save their account number for future easier use. I recommend you saving our business account number, for easier transaction)

Account Number System: You can select NUBAN or Regular

After you click on either, wait for the website to load the next text bar , "To: "

Amount: Enter the funds to be transferred. 

Remark: You may enter a comment like "For tutoring and management services rendered"

Answer your Secret Question: When on the registering your online account with GTConnect, you will be asked to set up a Secret Question. GTBank would say that for added security reasons, they would not remind you what that secret question is. Therefore you should either remember the question, or write down both the question and the answer in a file somewhere.

Click on Continue

You will see a "Third Party Transfer Confirmation" page

Beneficiary Name: Olawale Johnson

Account Number: xxxxxxxxxx

Amount: ###,###

Step 14: "Click the white button on your token and type the transaction code generated:" Press the button on your token and enter the 6 digit code immediately, try not to delay. You may have to repeat Step 14 until the token and the website are synchronised to accept the code.

Step 15. Then click Submit

Congratulations you would have now sent your first GTB online 3rd party transfer

Google.com in the main languages of Nigeria

The main languages of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are: 

English which is the Lingua Franca

Yoruba

Hausa 

Igbo

Pidgin - whether we recognize it or not, is a common tongue

pandodaily's office crashers: why it's fun and games inside ZyngaVille

updates - a feature for the future of e-books

I predict that the future of books, specifically e-books, is updates. Just like app developers make updates to their apps, authors would send updates to e-books too. 

For example - page 10 of Reid Hoffman's book, The Start-up of You (Feb, 2012), reads "...thinking through the future of the mobile Internet with Kevin Rose at Digg and Milk (his mobile apps firm)...". 

On March 2012, Google acquired Milk, and in July 2012, Betaworks acquired Digg, so that sentence is already dated. Therefore Reid could send an update to your kindle like, ."..thinking through the future of the mobile Internet with Kevin Rose formally of Digg (acquired by Betaworks) and Milk (acquired by Google)…"

Renowned photographer, Kelechi Amadi, Mania Magazine, likely Nigeria’s first Fashion Magazine.

MANIA- Fearless Fashion from Joel Benson on Vimeo.

Waiting for Happiness

The following was a text conversation with a friend.

Me: 

Side story - I was at an interview yesterday, great interview, he asked great questions, he was clearly well prepared (English guy, CEO of newly formed division at d company)...at a point of the interview, I basically said indirectly that if the job was not the right fit for me, he should not hire me.

I didn't know until the interview, but it was a project management job in electrical engineering, I also said that Information Technology is where I would prefer to keep my focus on, and I have only a 3 month internship in electric engineering (from my 2nd year in university)…even though I have a BSc in electric engineering. 

I basically gave him reasons not to hire me.

I felt better, cos simple honesty really beats, trying to prove what I'm not into, because I want a job.

So ill be expecting d results next wk or wk after :)

Friend:

Haha

Love it

Me:

Yea:

Friend:

I love when someone knows what they want in life and goes after it

Me:

Bear in mind that I'm broke as $#t

But I know the direction I wanna head to

The interview was at ******* (huge conglomerate group) btw

Friend:

Don't worry

Before daylight there must always be a night

Where you don't even know where to head

Everything seems dark

Me:

Yea, I'm not worried. Surprisingly enough, I'm happy.

Few months ago, I was bored to my teeth. You remember when I used to

tell you…

Now, I have so much to do, I use my calendar a lot now

I joined the church media team, I've started tutoring again

Got two job offers - the hard part is choosing. And I have two more prospective jobs that I'm in the interviewing stages of. 

I may not have money, but I live, eat, and drive a car, provided by the God via the parentals.

So..I just looked on the bright side jare. My...(personal device of mine)... was stolen - don't matter, I'll buy a better one soon.

Friend:

:)

That's the spirit

When you are waiting, it's always good to be active

Me:

Exactly

Plus another lesson I needed to learn..if I keep waiting for that next job, or that next gf, or to move into my own apartment to make me happier..I might wait a long time

Cos when those things happen, I'll still need that next thing

Friend:

Yup

Yup

Me:

So why not find a way to be fulfilled now, no matter what life has in store

Friend:

Exactly. Dang God is working on my Folarin

Me

:D (laughing)

That's why I didn't wait to be comfortable to begin investing. I started when I was/am broke.

Friend

:)

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Update
The 'personal device' that was stolen was my iPad. It was stolen while I was working at church. Graciously, the church elders met and bought/replaced me a new iPad with double the hard drive

Software will replace physical placeholders

CDs, DVDs and Bluray disks are placeholders until internet bandwidth is cheap enough and strong enough all over the world, for us to be able to stream TV and Films. When we get there, we will no long have disks. 

Paper money and debit/credit cards are only placeholders, until we have all embraced payments on our mobile phones.

Physical books are placeholders, until we all fully embrace e-books

Point and Shoot cameras are placeholders until our phones can do a better job at taking pictures. In-fact we are already at that point where point-and-shoot cameras are getting phased out.

Therefore, SLRs are placeholders until they become phased out when phone cameras become sophisticated enough with the help of camera apps

There are many more examples

Our phone's software has made obsolete or will soon make obsolete these placeholders:

Alarm clocks

Calculator

Calendar

Photographs

Paper maps

mp3 player

etc

2 years ago, I told a friend that cameras are placeholders until our eyes are actually able to take photos. Then Black Mirror also suggests that our eyes will soon be able capture video 24/7 that we can rewind and playback either to ourselves, or through a TV set.

For more, look at  slides 33 - 84 here:

KPCB Internet Trends 2012

The Amazing Spiderman review

The Amazing Spiderman is very aptly named.

It was an excellent movie. Well cast. The scenes with Peter Parker and his love interest were better than those in each of the 3 previous films. The relationship with his uncle Ben, and aunty May was fresh, warm and they nailed it emotionally when the scene needed to.

The way they tackled the uncle Ben demise was more grounded in reality than in the first Spiderman, and what a great choice to cast Martin Sheen.

Andrew Garfield is a superstar. Tobey Maguire was a great spiderman, but Garfield I think, really gets the character a little bit more than Tobey did. 

I was initially skeptical that the swinging was gonna disappoint, but it didn't. Having said that, I still prefer the swinging shots in Spidey 1 & 2.

I think what director Marc Webb did better than director Sam Raimi, was to re-imagine the spiderman character when he is in the suit. Spidey has more fun this time. He has is funnier. He moves faster in the cleverest of ways. My favourite action scene is when Spidey is fighting with the Lizard inside the school. When Gwen Stacy attempts to help, Spiderman unleashes this strong web of horror around this very powerful assailant. He weaves the web in a very fluid, musical way to hold him down. Then at some point, he crawls from the shoulders of the Lizard down to his legs and to his back…like a freaking spider. That was the best moment, that was the edge, the nuance of the character than Marc Webb and his visual effects team got over the previous spiderman films.

Don't get me wrong Spiderman 2 set the bar so high. I won't say this is better because they are so different. I can say this one is definitely better than Spiderman 3 which was crap, still don't know why I bought the dvd. Oh, yeah because of the extra features, and a few decent action scenes. 

Emma Stone nails...nails, the Gwen Stacy part. She is going to be our generation's Meryl Streep. 

African Leadership Academy - Fred Swaniker - Stanford - Part 1

Acha Leke - Africa New Era - Stanford

How to transfer contacts from a Nokia phone to a Blackberry

How to transfer contacts from a Nokia phone to a Blackberry using a mac. I had to transfer contacts from my mum's Nokia X3-00 to her new Blackberry Bold 9900 using my Macbook. Not a single website gave me a straightforward answer, so I decided to add my how-to to the internet space. First, you need a PC. Yes, this is one of those very few times, when the Mac is inadequate. Download the Nokia PC Suite. Install it. Connect your Nokia phone. Click on contacts, to reveal all your contacts. Highlight all (Ctrl+A) drag and drop into a new folder on your desktop. From this point, you can either use a Mac or a PC, but the computer has to have Blackberry Desktop Manager (BDM). If you don't have, google it, and download it for free. Connect your blackberry with the computer using the cable. On PC, copy the contacts to Outlook, fire up BDM, then sync your contacts with Outlook. On Mac, Use a flash drive to move this contacts folder to your Mac desktop. Open Address Book, create a new group, and drag and drop your contacts into it. Fire up BDM, sync contacts with the address book. And you are done!

The Descendants

Super-star actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are at the top of their game for good reason. They are not just famous celebrities we see on the cover of People magazine which lies in the rack at the grocery store. They act and make the best films when compared with the films that their peers make. I suppose since they are already incredibly wealthy, money no longer is the priority when choosing projects. They would much rather choose to do films like The Descendants, Moneyball or In the Land of Blood and Honey (respectively), where they can gain respect by winning accolades and awards.

I had never heard of The Descendants, which stars George Clooney, and directed by Alexander Payne until the 2012 Golden Globe nominations were announced. The Descendants is a film mainly about family. Clooney is a father and husband whose wife was in a boating accident. She hit her head and is now in a coma on life support. Clooney has two daughters ages 10 and 17. They live in Hawaii. Clooney, who is a busy real estate attorney now has to learn to raise his children who he has not had much experience with before his wife's accident, because he travelled a lot on business and was hardly around. He now also has to learn how to deal with the imminent bereavement of his wife and manage his somewhat estranged children's feelings too. The other side of this film's story is that Clooney's character is the trustee of a massive land in Hawaii worth hundreds of millions of dollars, someone even offering half a billion. He and his 7 or 8 other 'cousins' are The Descendants of this land, which may or may not be sold by the end of the movie.

Clooney's voice over at the beginning of the film was quick to suppress our stereotipical notion that everyone who lives in Hawaii lives in paradise. Or that its residents are on some permanent vacation, where everybody sips on Mai Tais on the beach everyday, without a care in the world. No, Hawaii is like everywhere else. People there work for a living. "Its residents are not immune to life."

So, the movie is about Clooney dealing with the business of getting the land sold, and dealing with his children whose mother will not wake up. There is a clever tie-in between boths stories that raises the dramatic and comedy to a high level, because, Clooney, who was excited about the sale before, now finds himself in a dilemma.








Clooney decides to take the family on a trip to inform all family and friends about the state of the wife/mother. Alex decides she wants to bring some obnoxious and impolite guy-friend along with her. Clooney disagrees at first until she says she would behave herself more if he is there with her. It turns out she did behave. This guy-friend seems to be really annoying at first, many times, never realizing how insensitive he is to an old woman's Alzheimer's or the serious situation the family is going through. However as he travels with the family, we notice him understanding things better, he even has a few seconds of wisdom to disperse. We learn that he lost his father a few months back, so maybe that is the connection Alex sees in him, and therapy she needed.

This movie is very smartly written. It is also well grounded in reality. Nothing happens that could not happen in real life. As I listened to the characters talk, I kept saying to myself, yep, that is how I would expect that character to respond...yep, if I were her, I would do exactly that. But the reason we go to movies is to see something we would not normally see in real life, therefore the dialogue is pushed a bit beyond reality just a tiny bit, so that there are witty comebacks and clever remarks, which makes it more exciting.

There were amazing performances by every single cast member. Clooney is obviously great as always. He shows that he is as adept at comedy as he is at displaying and evoking strong emotion. Even actors normally known for comedic roles like Matthew Lillard and Judy Greer were great in their dramatic parts. Clooney's father-in-law, played by Robert Forster (popularly known from Jackie Brown), is amazing as a gentle but bitter father who blames Clooney for not giving her what he thought his daughter deserved in life. A stand out performance was Shailene Woodley as Alex, Clooney's teenage daughter. At the beginning, she is a rebel, but her character arch evolves to become her dad's partner who goes on hilarious family reconnaissance missions.

I normally would not be the first to seek out dramas, but I am begining to like comedy-dramas because as soon as a scene becomes too sad, the filmmakers inject something funny, but not 'haha' funny so as not to downplay the seriousness, but the kind that makes you wanna cry and smile at the same time.

Every character gets their time to grow, learn and cry.

Director irector Alexander Payne has only made 5 films, including About Schmidt and Sideways which already makes him a master at what he does.

The Descendants won the Golden Globe award in 2012 for Best Picture - Drama, and Best Actor - Drama for George Clooney. This is a film that will be a classic which will withstand the test of time.

By Folarin Osibodu