Well, the ever growing unlimited email storage on google is now a thing of the past. You still have your free account but now you need to pay for anything above 20GB. The plans are between $5 and $256 per year although the storage is quite big compared to other services. Below is the pricing structure:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card

Although compared to other services this is relatively cheaper, Google started out offering these high end free services and with that it got to everyone. Eventually, they have almost every internet user in one of their free services. Gmail makes most of its money from advertising and its grown quite fast compared to its competitors, Hotmail and Yahoo.

Question is, will it keep the same pace? Poeple shy off from services easily the moment they start billing. Lets watch how it goes. I got this on my account, the official Gmail blog hasnt mentioned a thing about this yet…or I havent seen it. Hopefully they will soon, I noted the pricing when they introduced the Eye-fi card.

You might have noticed that today most women/girls have colors as their Facebook Updates. Red, White, Blue, Black, Pitch, Cream, Pink…name it, all there and it got me wondering what is happening. Its a beautiful thing that people from all walks of life are using social media for Breast Cancer awareness.

Its a good initiative and it seems to be taken up by most women, question is, does it really help anything in the cause? After the update, what next? How does that help anyone? What of the fact that it also affects men? What colors are we going to update?

I think they should go deeper to explaining how to early detect or what to do when you test positive. Life is just about communicating and educating each other, take a minute and spread the word, to men too, get tested.

Yes, Africa can be self-dependent

About 7 years ago, I managed to get a dial-up connection in my house. It was a great feeling, probably greater than I felt when I first made a 3G connection in Nairobi a about 2007.  Internet at home was a privileged.  An expensive one and the connection was really slow but by the standards then, it was ok. I had to foot the bill twice, the phone company and the ISP. Slowly, things have evolved. Cyber Cafes have become cheaper by the day and more reliable.

In 2004, I first used my debit card issued by the National Bank of Kenya online to pay for a domain and hosting. That was another great feeling. The process to getting services paid for online was a really bad experience, an expensive one too. Things have become cheaper, efficient and more accessible by the day. While we adopt lots of products from the west, Africa seems to also be waking up to the creation bit. We have bought franchises, created, ran and now, we are getting up to the market as a market that can develop and satisfy its technological and entertainment needs.

Next week, Kenya hosts the MTV Africa Music Awards. African talent has been seen clearly worldwide and the only people who seem not to believe in us is us. Look at the sports world – European soccer is filled with African stars. Without them, the entertainment that is European soccer would not be complete. Kenya has exported so many athletes.

Entertainment in Africa is growing to local content. Big Brother Africa, Idols, Tusker Project Fame, Nigerian Movie Industry, we may still need a lot of improvement but Africa has come a long way.

We have to look at ourselves and realize that Africa is hosting the FIFA World Cup for the first time in history. That we are enjoying the same technology platforms as everyone else in the world and that our standard of education is measuring up with the rest of the World. Again I will repeat, we are the only ones who seem not to believe in ourselves. The rest of the World can see the potential in Africa and that is why we have foreigners settled all over Africa.

My challenge to you and I, the African, re-examine what we are doing, ask us, are we doing what we do at the best it can be done? If so, then we are headed on the right path. Keep that spirit and if you need to fix it, please work on it and lets move Africa where the coming generations will have our names in their history books as pioneers and creators of stable systems and unique creativity that will see us move to the next level. Work together, build each other. Dont buy western or European products when you have African alternatives.

I am in the web industry and Majibu.com is my baby. I have great respect for Afrigator, Kachwanya, Moses Kemibaro, Bernsoft, David Kobia & Mashada.com, Kenyanpundit, Whiteafrican, Kiwanja.net,  SKUNKWORKS, Robert Alai,  Bongo5.com, Steve Gitau, John Karanja,  and many other countless bloggers and African webbers. These are a few people that have inspired my work everyday.  Please move towards playing a role in creating self-dependency in Africa. It may take years but its possible.

This is the Blackberry smartphone that we are giving away

Majibu.com is on and its getting into motion with a big bang! We have just announced a Blackberry 8100 give away for 3 Users who will be the first to reach 5000 points on our new question and answer blog. To enroll, you need to be a member by signing up at http://majibu.com/register and its free! Users who have had accounts at http://dearkenya.com and http://qanda360.com do not need to register again, their logins will work at Majibu.com.  Your display name will act as your username unlike in the past where we have used email addresses to login.

How to Earn Points:
You earn points by login in, answering open questions, voting for questions and answers and inviting friends. Each time you ask a question, you loose 5 points.  The more you answer, the more points you make. You earn extra points if your answer is voted the best answer.

Participation:
Participation is open to members from all African countries. The winners will be announced on the website as soon as we have our first 3 members to hit 5000 points. The phones will be shipped to owners within a week after that.

Blackberry 8100:
This is a smartphone like no other with all the features and a slim design. It will be open to work with any GSM Network in Africa. Please see features at http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/blackberrypearl8100/pearl_features.js

What if I dont win?
Everyone has equal chances to win, unfortunately, only 3 people will walk away with the smart phones. However, this is a great chance for you to be able to interact with people from Africa and share knowledge and help solve someone’s problem or get yours solved. So everyone is a winner.

Requirements for Winners:
You will need to have 5000 points at Majibu.com supported with a minimum of 30 question from you, votes and a minimum 20 best answers. This is to ensure the quality of content is not compromised as the main aim of the website is to provide solutions to issues raised by members.

So, get on it, start making your points now! All new members get 100 bonus points. Dearkenya and QandA360.com members get 100 points as well on first login. Lets do this!

Majibu, Swahili for answers has unveiled its new question and answer website which starts running today, 17th August 2009. A walk through it shows a lot of adaptation of Yahoo! Answers, probably the most famous question and answer website. This launch narrows the reach for the African, making it easy to find questions and answers relating to the everyday life in Africa. Majibu.com is simply a nice place to seek simple and complex answers to issues.

Majibu borrows from the creators of DearKenya.com and soon will complete acquisition for the Kenyan question and answer website that has been running for close to 3 years now. Dearkenya has at least 15000 questions and 49,000 answers posted so far. That makes it a great archive for research, so if the merger moves as predicted, Majibu might just be among the biggest bases for local content. We are happy to be Majibu! Congrats on the launch of majibu.com.

Lets move from looking for blames and excuses to finding solutions with the resources that we have.

There is an old Kikuyu saying that goes …”You cannot take a donkey to the river and force it to drink the water”. So Seacom has delivered proper bandwidth at our doorsteps. Soon retailers will be giving us a share of the affordable and better internet. Question is, what are we going to do with it? We had our previous connections and as slow as they were or expensive as they were, they gave us a way to communicate with the world, infact, they still are until we get proper retail services from the ISPs.

I would like to challenge us to be innovative as we await the price drops and service delivery from our ISPs. What can we do to change our Nations? What can we do with better connectivity to increase the quality of education? What can we do to deliver better services at our jobs? What can we do to save time with the capacities that come with good connectivity? How can you make your children’s life better than yours using the new opportunies presented by this connectivity to the rest of the world?

Africa has waited too much for guidelines from the west and this is time we take the road South Korea took in the early 90s. We need to be creative and support our own. We need to start creating and innovating. We need to invent something that the west can adopt. We need to be leaders in something other than corruption, poverty, greed and war. We need to have IT managers lead our Nations and avoid the likes of most of our current leaders. Am specifically ashamed to say I come from Kenya when I look at our situation. Am looking for the young people who can identify with what am talking about, lets change our lives. Africa, wake up, you have the chance to make the world turn round and ask “Is this really the Africa in History Books?”

Lets move from looking for blames and excuses to finding solutions with the resources that we have.

Students who witnessed the shooting speak to the Inspector General of Police Major General Kale Kayihura at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.

I will never stop being amazed by some of the things we wake up to read in the news. This morning am shocked at a news item about students being shot by police while on riot at a Kampala international school. Student riots can get ugly and I have no doubt about that but my question still remains, is live bullets the only way? Police brutality seems to be a common thing in Africa and its really unfair that the people supposed to be protecting us are the same people who we are afraid they would kill us the next minute.

In the streets on Nairobi, there is no difference meeting a police officer and a thug. In fact, its better to meet a thug because if you are lucky, you will be sleeping on your bed. Police will take your money, beat you up and you end up sleeping with drunk people in dirty cells. I wonder what our political voices are doing about this, its a pain that everyone seems to be doing the wrong thing at all public offices.

Back to the point, student riots can be solved in other ways, tear gas is enough to disperse crowds, live shooting will kill them and eliminate a future resource for the nations. Africa needs to train the policeman to be a helper and not a killer.