www.whive.mobi

Whive has merged the following projects into its mobile platform.

• SMS254.com (Sold off to Kentext.com)
• iKatiba.com
• Whiver.com

For the last 8 months Whive has been testing and rolling out its SMS based Content Platform on the Whive.com Web portal. The goal of this project is to provide the Whive user with curated and personalized content directly to his/her phone.

Whive users can now subscribe to content on the platform and make mobile/online payments to purchase credits and access the service. The content will be delivered via SMS to the subscriber with Daily,Weekly,Monthly and Yearly time preferences.

Our Payments service is online in Kenya, Uganda,Tanzania and Western countries courtesy of the PesaPay, Pesapal, KopoKopo and Paypal Payment platforms.

Whive will localize content by country and region on the Whive.com, Whive.mobi and apps.whive.com

Inoorero University Courtesy NaiCity.com

John Karanja, Founder and C.E.O of Whive.com will be making a presentation at the 2nd Annual Mobile Boot Camp at Inoorero University on 14th March 12 PM.

John will be presenting on the Application of Mobile Technology on Social Media.

What follows are details about the event.

IU 2nd Mobile Boot Camp

Overview

Mobile boot camp is a four day crash-course session, whereby participants will be exposed to the following concepts:

• Wireless networking,

• Server-side mobile application(s),

• Wireless messaging,

• Mobile OS (operating systems),

• GSM Networks,

• Telecom billing systems and

• Mobile computing: Application development

The sessions comprise both theoretical and practical whereby participants will gain an insight on mobile computing technologies and acquire some practical skills in the use of J2ME, Android, SMS and USSD platforms, frameworks and tools used for the development of mobile applications.

The opening ceremony guest will be Mr. Mugo Kibati, CEO Vision 2030 and the closing guest speaker will be Mr. Paul Kukubo, the CEO Kenya ICT Board.

The University’s inaugural Mobile Boot Camp was held was held on 17th – 19th March 2011 with the theme “Mobile Technology and its Impact on Vision 2030”. 144 energized participants participated in the event and the event was opened by Eng. John Waweru, the former Director-General and CEO of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) for 3 years on 17th and Dr Bitange Ndemo, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication presented the certificates and gifts to the participants and facilitators on the closing day of the event on 19th March. The Research and Innovation Center hosted the event in collaboration with the School of ICT and I-Hub.

This year’s boot camp will be held on 14th – 17th March 2012 at Inoorero Centre, Forest Road, Parklands. The theme of the boot camp is “Mobile Technology for Solving Problems in the Kenyan Society.” Participants will be trained on the following

The objective of the mobile boot camp will be to foster on development of new applications for mobile phone users within the Kenyan context, create awareness on current mobile technology developments and comprehensively discuss mobile technological tools available for application developers.

The aim of the camp will be to enhance participants’ capacity to develop meaningful solutions, and enable them to think: easily, efficiently, alternatively, fast and smart; appreciate current innovative solutions using mobile technologies; acquire practical skills in the use of current platforms, frameworks and tools used for the development of mobile applications, and get hands on development experience of mobile applications for specific industries.

The target groups for the event are local developers and students from all public and private universities countrywide. About 200 energized participants are expected at the event.

Mobile Bootcamp Competition

After the mobile boot camp, a competition will be held where judging of the submitted applications will happen 2 months after the boot camp in order to gauge what the students learnt during the boot camp. The top 3 applications in the four categories will be awarded. The competition categories are:

1. Financial Services; Will focus on innovative ways of delivering services such as money transfer, banking, commercial transactions, insurance and payment systems are bound to improve the efficacy of our financial services. Applications and services submitted in this category should target to improve service accessibility, efficiency and effectiveness of the financial sector in East Africa and beyond.

2. Business and Resource Management; Will focus on management of human and capital resources, the value chain, marketing, production processes, customers and other aspects of the modern day business require constant innovation as an imperative to remain competitive. Such innovations will support achievement of objectives among businesses such as to maximize revenues and profits, and to remain relevant in the market place. Applications and services submitted in this category should ideally offer technological opportunities to large and small enterprises in process innovation that leads to efficient management of their resources.

3. Mobile Society; Applications and services submitted in this category should therefore, present new socially and economically relevant ways of improving livelihoods and productivity for people in East Africa and beyond. Moreover, activities such as farming, livestock rearing, and other economically productive activities among individuals can receive a boost with mobile technologies and solutions being the game changing enablers.

4. Mobile entertainment and utilities; Applications and services submitted in this category should provide innovative ways of delivering entertainment value to the increasingly sophisticated populations of East Africa and beyond.

M:Lab East Africa

After 6 months at the M:Lab East Africa Incubation Centre Whive has formarly opened its doors to Customers, Interns, Developers and Partners. Whive joined the MLab in August 2011 by virtue of being a winner of Pivot25 (Now PivotEast) mobile applications competition back in June 2011.

The Whive team lead by Founder and C.E.O John Karanja have been receiving training in Management, Technical and Legal aspects of doing business at the training facility. In particular John was a trainee at the recent Tandaa Business Plan Training program at Strathmore Business School.

Since joining the MLab, Whive has successfully completed the following operations.

• Legal Training and Documentation
• Business Plan Training
• Product Harmonization and Documentation
• Client Management and Accounting
• Third party Integrations with Crowdpesa, KopoKopo and Uhasibu

Whive is seeking partnership in the following areas:

• Media Partnerships
• Auditing and Legal services
• Engineering and Server Management
• Business Development
• International Relations Management

To partner with us do contact us at info(at)Whive.com or through this website.

Merry Christmas Bees

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012

P.S. Dr Bitange Ndemo Launches CrowdPesa

Crowdpesa an application built on top of Whive SMS API has launched in Nairobi on 14th December 2011 at the iHub. Crowdpesa is a location-based service aimed at providing the average consumer with the convenience of finding the nearest mobile payment service, financial institution, financial intermediary and retail outlet around the World.

The Whive team has been involved in the development of the Crowdpesa platform as both organizations share common facilitators i.e. Space Kenya Networks an Seed Incubator located in Nairobi, Kenya. Crowdpesa is also incubated at The Mlab East Africa.

Crowdpesa is a brand/trademark of Pesapay is headed by Mr. Patrick Maina, Legal Advisor to Whive.

This is a major milestone for Whive as it is the first 3rd party application to be built on Whive.

In his remarks to the guests who included Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Information Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Whive Founder and C.E.O John Karanja said;

Through our work at Whive we have discovered that there is no bigger social enabler in Kenya like SMS. SMS has powered mobile money solutions like Mpesa and through Whive SMS it is powering Crowdpesa SMS and Notification services. This will continue to ensure that Crowdpesa empowers Kenyans at the grassroots through technologies they understand and are already available to them.

We at Whive would like to wish the Crowdpesa team best of luck as they pursue the noble goal of providing financial informational services to Kenyans and the World.

See photos of the launch here.

You can learn more about Whive SMS here.

You can learn more about CrowdPesa here.

100 Free texts to Kenya

The first year of business as a company has been an exciting one for Whive.com. We recently hit the 100,000 mark in user subscriptions and we continue to experience modest growth.

We have also grown our contact base to around 500,000 contacts all whom will be the beneficiaries of our exciting offers in the year 2012.

Earlier this year we launched our Whive SMS and Whive Classifieds Nokia applications at Pivot25 the mobile competition for East Africa. We were also winners at the same competition in the Utilities, Entertainment and Gaming category.

Currently in partnership with Nokia East Africa we are providing a Free SMS service that will reach millions of SMS users in East Africa. This service will introduce many Africans to the Internet as a useful tool for communication and business.

We have grown our Small Medium Enterprise base to over 600 customers who use our services to send bulk messages as well as receive 2 way sms communications.

Through our classifieds applications we have provided 2,000 plus job listings and generated 60,000 views through using our social media services such as SMS, Twitter and Facebook. These efforts enabled us to win the Vision 2030 ICT award for innovation in the Youth and Gender sector in Kenya and we are very proud to be serving our community. See how we linked this application to open data here.

Our Facebook application is still number 1 in Kenya and we will continue to ensure we offer robust social media services.

All these applications have allowed us to build an SMS API Platform for developers to build and test their applications. This will enhance future growth for many upstarts that leverage on SMS particularly here in Kenya.

We have incubated two upcoming startups that are leveraging on the WhiveSMS API namely:

CrowdPesa.com: A mobile money mappings solution built on the Ushahidi platform that is being used to map the 25,000 Mpesa Agents in Kenya. This application will be used by Kenyans to locate mobile money services using their phones.

PesaPay.com: A mobile payments solutions that will allow for IN-APP purchases locally in Kenya.

We also opened a hi-tech Support Centre in January which has been housing all of the above efforts.  Plans are underway to triple our capacity in 2012.

In conclusion we at Whive would like to assure you of our commitment to delivering the very best in social media services for the next billion of users and we will be there to offer them the support they need in this digital age.

Signing off for the year,

John S. Karanja

Founder and C.E.O Whive.com

Space Kenya Networks Ltd

Camping Like Bees (Pic Google Images)

WordCamp Kenya (@WordCampKe) 2011 is finally here from Nov 12th-13th at Cray Fish Camp Naivasha. Organized by a good  friend of  Whive David Mugo (@Raidarmax) this will be a great opportunity for bloggers, readers, publishers and  advertisers to connect with each other and understand each others social media needs.

WordCamp is a fun gathering organized by local WordPress chapters around the world. The intention is to enhance blogging as a social tool for development particularly in emerging countries like Kenya.

This will also enhance the development of the Social Pillar under the Vision2030 goal that the people of Kenya have committed themselves to.

In this regard we at Whive will facilitate the Social Media Needs of all attendees for FREE over the weekend. Particularly 100 Daily FREE SMS for social texting on both days. The same will be available on the following social platforms:

FACEBOOK: facebook.whive.com

TWITTER: twitter.whive.com

MOBILE: whive.mobi

WEB: whive.com

DOWNLOAD APPS: whiv.eu/n

Important times to remember for leaving for Naivasha are: [FULL SCHEDULE]

8:30am
Assembly outside Alliance Francaise on Monrovia Street, opp View Park Towers. Please keep time, be there at 8:30am sharp so we can get you into your seat on the buses.

9:15am
Departure from Nairobi for Naivasha.

You can follow the twitter stream #WordCampKe and Whive @whive

Remember to have Fun and Share the Buzz…

Vint Cerf Creator TCP/IP at the iHub (Pic by Unknown)

Last week Kenya hosted the Internet Governance Forum Summit at the United Nations Gigiri, Nairobi.

Whive Founder and C.E.O John Karanja was a panelist at the Emerging Mobile Opportunities workshop. He made a presentation on the mobile applications being developed in Kenya that are addressing the market opportunities in Africa.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a multi-stakeholder forum for policy dialogue on issues of Internet governance. It brings together all stakeholders in the internet governance debate, whether they represent governments, the private sector or civil society, including the technical and academic community, on an equal basis and through an open and inclusive process. [1] The establishment of the IGF was formally announced by the United Nations Secretary-General in July 2006 and it was first convened in October / November 2006. Ref: WikiPedia

Prime Minister Hon Raila Odinga & Whive

The government through the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology recently released a treasure trove of Open Data to Kenyan developers about 3 weeks ago at an event officiated by the President Mwai Kibaki at KICC.

This was in response to the challenge posed to the Kenya ICT Board and Ministry of ICT by Kenyan developers to make this data available. We are glad that they have responded in a timely fashion.

Eager to make use of this Data and come up with useful tools we at Whive set out to discover how we could best use this data to enhance our platforms.

We decided that the information would be most useful in providing situational context for our content. In particular we at Whive crowd-source daily Jobs at Whive.com for our readers and we wanted to immediately create locational context for this information .

Say for example you view a job listing called Administrator Jobs in Mombasa. The Whive platform should be able to detect that Mombasa is a County in Kenya and give you more information about it! Well this is what we have done and you can have a look at Open Data working on our platform on this screen shots below.

Visit Whive.mobi

Browse Classifieds

Select county listing

Open Data is Embedded

Open Data is currently available on Classifieds on our mobile platforms at www.whive.mobi and on our classifeds apps at apps.whive.com. We will be rolling out a fully fledged implementation over the next few months as we learn how from our users experience with this newly integrated applications.

Kikuyu Application

Whive.com launched the world’s first Kikuyu Mobile Application on 20th July 2011 at @KamemeFm radio station between 7PM-8PM.

The Application dubbed Aterere has been in development for the last one year and is the first in a series of localized and colloquial applications developed for Africa.

Whive recently won Kenya Vision2030 Award for innovation in ICT for Youth,Gender and Vulnerable groups. It is in our agenda to developed applications for vulnerable/marginalized groups which sometimes can be ethnic groups. We believe that mobile applications in local languages will help create local markets and increase opportunities for Kenyans as envisioned in the new Kenyan constitution which respects our cultural heritage.

The application also allows the user to switch to English and Swahili languages which will also allow individuals to learn this languages by word association.

We are grateful to all the users who participated in the crowd-sourcing of translations for this application.

Already the application has received 659 downloads within a space of 12 hours which is very encouraging for developers looking to monetize the vernacular space.

You can download the application at http://apps.whive.com

We still need help in translating to more languages so please do contact us through the contacts on this website.