Nigeria is a third world country and surprisingly e-commerce is emerging at a very astonishing rate. The main key players in Nigeria are quiet innovative and patient. Although there are quite a lot of already abandon web projects along the years. Nevertheless we shouldnt forget that it is like that everywhere.

The Nigerian web market is very promising although it has not been infected with the normal “leap-frogging” factor which is a very common fate with technologies in her market.

The key players in the Nigerian web market are:-
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Spending too much money making calls via your mobile phone? MobileVOIp is just what you need.
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I have 5 windows Live messenger beta invitiations to give out, so if you are interested just comment so, and I would be glad to send you an invitation.

What it is?
Windows Live Messenger will be the next-generation MSN Messenger. It will have everything you already love about Messenger—your contact list, emoticons, and instant access to your friends via text, voice, and video—plus new ways to connect and share documents with almost magical ease. As always, it will be free to download Messenger and use most of its features.

What you will be able to do with it?
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A lot of people are looking for alternatives to kazaa, infact something better, and I would just say use torrent. The torrent p2p technology infact is the successor of kazaa. It is for the techies, one of my friend’s lamented. But that is not true, it is quite easy once you get used to it. So how do you download something using the torrent technology.

Its very easy. The process involves 4 main steps which is :-

1. Downloading and installing the software.
2. Using a torrent search engine to search for a torrent file of your needs.
3. Downloading the torrent file which takes an average of 1 minute, depending on your connection.
4. Clicking on the downloaded torrent file to run on the main software.

It is very easy as I said, and here is the elaborated process plus url sources.
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E-commerce to a layman, is simply a webfront, where daily transactions are being made by 2 or more parties, generally assumed to be an online store where commodity is sold by the majority, but in reality, it does go far beyound that. A good explanation can be found at wikipedia.

Nigeria is well known for its phenomenal leap frogging, in anything you introduce into its market. E-commerce in Nigeria for one, hasnt really been well adopted, although we might see a lot of mini enterprises and a few corporations striving hard to see it come out in shape. Thus, the leap frogging factor hasnt infected the E-commerce industry. So what might be the possible problem?

Ignoring my own perception and understanding of the system, I did a quick research on google, on what Nigerians in Nigeria, in particular have to say to it.

The inputs I got by browsing through a topic titled “Doing E-Commerce from Nigeria (the 419 Stigma)” on Nairaland, a Nigerian forum, wasnt really impressive, Although I shouldnt ignore to commend a few of those who, tried to explain a few local terms, although it might be unnecessary and useless, because it still doesnt show they really do understand the problem at stake. Most generally, either they lack the experience, or I should be pardoned to say, they lack the basic understanding, on how an e-commerce system should generally work, and even whether the 419 stigma does have a direct impact on the local penetration of e-commerce in Nigeria. I really dont blame them, nobody is really working hard on educating them, besides we are all trying to learn more daily. Aren’t we?

So I decided to research more, and came up with a very interesting and well elaborated entry on Nigerian Village square by Dr. Gbenga Bamodu (Dept of International Trade and E-Commerce Law,University of Essex (UK), although located in the UK, in his post entry titled ” The Legal Landscape for E-Commerce in Nigeria“. I think that post actually went beyound what I would have achieved in trying to explain, besides touching every aspect of it objectively with a little bit of techinical flavour.

As much as I would have love, to quote that article, at the same time I would prefer readers to go and give it a through read at the main source. So I encourage that anybody interested in knowing the problem with e-commerce in Nigeria, the current obstacle to it, should head there by clicking the link.

The Legal Landscape for E-Commerce in Nigeria”

In part 2 of this post, which I would try to compose and post as soon as possible. I would give my own perception of the present status, the present and the possible future, besides that, I would try, to go through the pre-requisites of attaining that possible future etc. So stay tuned.

Hello Google Analytics User,

This is a quick update to address some issues you may be seeing
in your Google Analytics account and what we’re doing to respond.

First, due to extremely high demand, we’ve temporarily limited
the number of new signups as we increase capacity. This allows
us to focus on our primary objective–to provide a great user
experience for our existing users.

Next, here is current information on the most common questions
we’re receiving:

1. The ‘Check Status’ button is being reworked to check for
properly installed tracking code. This should be fixed by the
end of November.

2. The ‘+Add Profile’ link has been temporarily removed until
we increase capacity. We’ll alert all current users when the
feature is restored.

3. While we increase capacity, you may see longer than normal
delays in data showing up in your reports. All data continues
to be collected and no data has been lost.

For additional help with your Google Analytics account, we
encourage you to browse or search our online Help Center at

http://www.google.com/support/analytics?hl=en.

Thanks for your patience as we improve Google Analytics and add
resources to ensure a high-quality service.

Sincerely,

The Google Analytics Team

Hmm they finally admitted. When would google stop under-estimating its market grip? Wake up google this is 2005.

Well i just arrived from a trip, and my rushing online to get updated was welcome with good news. Google makes analytics free. I just cant believe it.

I am currently integrating it to all my sites. Besides Google Analytics is an enterprise level of web traffic analyzer. It tells you all the information you wish to know about your visitors such as:

and more…

Flock, a new Web browser with a social bent has been released. Although still at its beta stage, I have been testing the “developer preview” version, and it does look promising. I really think they would beat firefox hands down. But who knows time would tell, especially with the current extensions and plugins firefox has.

You can download it here.

And from other sources it is stated that…..

Flock’s all about building Web services into a browser, but the Flock folks didn’t build a Favorites-synching service of their own. Instead, they built a friendly front-end for Del.icio.us, the popular, powerful, but somewhat geeky bookmark-sharing service. Among other things, that means you can get to the favorites you create in Flock even when you’re using another browser, as well as share your favorites with other Del.icio.us users. Right now, you’ve got to create a Del.icio.us account to use Flock’s synching feature, but the company says it’ll support other bookmark sites in the future.

The leverage-existing-services philosophy extends to blogging: Flock’s blog editor works with Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. And it talks to Flickr to let you blog about photos that you (or other people) have taken. A nifty drag-and-drop, clipboard-like tool called the Shelf lets you tuck away bits of Web content for later blogging.

Like I say, Flock is definitely still a work in progress: Its site notes that bookmark importing isn’t finished and that Movable Type support isn’t fully baked (which is why I’m not posting this from within Flock). The site also makes mention of Flock supporting some Firefox extensions, but the two indispensable ones I tried to install–Greasemonkey and the A9 Toolbar–wouldn’t work. (Although if I were to leave Firefox behind for Flock, I probably wouldn’t need A9 anymore, since Flock more or less replicates its functionality.)

As far as I can tell (and I could be confused here), Flock also doesn’t sync Collections you create between multiple copies of the browser, so the synching it offers isn’t truly comprehensive. (Wouldn’t it be swell if there was a browser someday that silently synched absolutely everything, from your bookmarks to your privacy settings, between all the computers that you used it on?)

It’s nice to see that the browser wars aren’t just continuing–they’re spawning new products tailored to the needs of particular types of people. Unlike Firefox, which does a sensational job of appealing to the needs of just about anyone who uses the Net, Flock is more focused. If you’re not a bookmark maniac and don’t have a blog, you may not find anything here to lure you away from your current browser.

Source: PCWORLD

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Internet search giant Google and network computing company Sun Microsystems have entered into a multi-year agreement to distribute Sun’s software technologies, a move some say is meant to offer users an alternative to Microsoft products

Well just an analogy but I mean lets face it, Google joins forces with Sun and then what? Dont ask me, but Sun, the developers of Java for goodness sake ?? Do you smell something fishy? They even refused to disclose what the pact was all about, as stated in the news and I quote

Both Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun CEO Scott McNealy kept mum on the specifics of the partnership, apart from announcing a deal to distribute the popular Google toolbar, which allows users to search both the Web and their desktops through Sun’s Java Runtime Environment, a software package that needs to be installed on a machine in order to run Java technology-based applications. As part of the deal, users who download the JRE software package will have the option of downloading the Google Toolbar.

Well but the question still remains, is Microsoft in trouble? Well we cant really say much as at now but time would tell. For Futher reading, visit the source @ http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/04/technology/google_sun/index.htm?cnn=yes .

In what I would call, a step to reduce the burden of sending cheques to adsense customers that happen to come from all over the world, google has introduced another adsense income withdrawal option, “The Electronic Funds Transfer“. The Electronic Funds Transfer which is still under Beta stage, would allow adsense customers to be able to withdraw their money to their respective bank accounts in their home countries. Well is this a technique to just plugin the “google purse” unexpectedly? Well who knows, but honestly this is a good move towards satisfying customer needs especially those in third world countries like Africa who face a lot of troubles in getting their cheques cleared. Even I personally, would love to use that feauture rather than waiting for weeks for the cheque to come by and then more weeks before it gets cleared.

But what happened to google purse? Is it still under developement? How soon. Would it be feature packed? I cant wait. But then again I have to . Lets wait and see.

How do I sign up for Electronic Funds Transfer?

To sign up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), you’ll first need your bank account information, including your account number and, depending on your payment address, your branch number, routing number, or other identifying information. The sign-up wizard will list the required information and includes brief instructions on finding each item.

To sign up for EFT:

1. Sign in to your account at www.google.com/adsense
2. Click My Account
3. Click the edit link adjacent to the Payment Details header
4. Select the Electronic Funds Transfer radio button
5. Click Continue
6. Enter the requested bank account information. Your account page will provide details on what information is required – if you’re unsure, please contact your bank to obtain this information. Click Save Changes
7. At this point, we’ll begin the process of depositing a small test amount into the bank account you specified. Check your bank statements after 4-10 days to find a deposit from ‘Google’ or from ‘BFS’

Once you have the test deposit amount:

1. Click the My Account tab

2. In the Payment Details section, click Verify this account

3. In the box provided, enter the test deposit amount that you received in your bank account

4. Click Next. Once you have entered your test deposit verification amount correctly, your
bank account will be approved and automatically selected as your form of payment

Well visiting the google adsense blog it says and I quote

Bye, bye, beta…
If you’ve logged into your account in the past couple days, you might’ve noticed that Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT for short) is officially out of beta. So what’s changed? Our process for verifying bank account information has improved.

After you submit your bank account information, we will place a small test deposit into your bank account for you to keep. Once you see this test deposit credited to your account, just input the amount of the deposit into your AdSense account to help us verify your bank account information.

Testing your bank account before we make your payments means a greater chance of an error-free deposit. From now on, if you choose to use EFT, you can rest assured that we’re taking the steps to make your payment successful.

We’re excited about this launch and want to thank all of you who took part in our beta testing phase. We appreciate your help.

What does this mean? that it is fully operational now? well Google you really need to remove the beta sign now