Moving to uplink speeds, South Korea once again led the pack with an average of 18.04Mbps while Ghana tops Africa with an amazing 6.35Mbps and ranked 12th in the world, Rwanda comes in second place again with 2.40Mbps and ranked 25th in the world, Kenya in third place has an average uplink speed of 1.55Mbps and ranked 36th in the world.

Strange how Rwanda tops Kenya with far significantly better speed tests when they buy their broadband service through Kenya. Is internet service cheaper in Rwanda?

NB: In an attempt to keep things as even as possible, Net Index only counted results from nations in which tests were taken from at least 75,000 unique IP addresses.
Based on user test info generated over the past 30 days.

After 10 weeks of chasing up on getting my box connection at home, I got home today to find it connected.

First thing I got round to doing was hooking up my wireless network onto the IDU provided to me by KDN for free. I got the 1mb/1mb link broadband of course, and I have no idea what the contention rate on this thing is. No one at KDN gives that information out either.

Now we all know that KDN are the last mile service providers of Seacom in the region and have the largest fiber network in the region. For an ISP this big they sure are poor at following up with their potential clients and totally suck at marketing. I wonder if they have enough clients for their own liking.
Trust me, following up with these guys to get this link at home was no easy task. It is completely difficult to get hold of anyone at KDN who would have any useful information regarding your installation status, at times it is just impossible to get anyone on the phone (about 65% of the time).

Lets get down to the chase. After all the excitement of getting this connection, I faced nothing but DISAPPOINTMENT (typical from Kenyan ISP’s isn’t it guys). Now this link for one doesn’t even go through Seacom but through KDN’s fail over satellite links

Tracing route to www.facebook.com [66.220.145.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 204 ms 230 ms 254 ms l3.london.kdn.intersatafrica.com [212.113.15.97]

5 227 ms 370 ms * ae-34-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.97]
6 601 ms * 350 ms ae-44-44.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.137.78]

7 * * 262 ms ae-3-3.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.93]

8 264 ms 271 ms * ae-84-84.csw3.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.1
86]
9 261 ms 263 ms 266 ms 4.68.17.149
10 263 ms * 259 ms FACEBOOK-IN.edge3.Washington4.Level3.net [4.53.1
16.6]
11 262 ms 346 ms 267 ms ae2.bb01.iad2.tfbnw.net [204.15.20.88]
12 331 ms 400 ms * xe-1-3-0.bb01.sjc1.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.170]
13 330 ms 332 ms * ae1.dr02.snc4.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.185]
14 328 ms * 331 ms eth-17-2.csw01a.snc4.tfbnw.net [74.119.76.46]
15 411 ms * 350 ms www-10-01.snc4.facebook.com [66.220.145.10]

Trace complete.

Secondly the local loop connection just doesn’t do it for me. The latencies are so high & inconsistent it is unbearable, a simple ping to Access Kenya’s DNS shows this

Pinging 196.200.16.2 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 196.200.16.2: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 196.200.16.2:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 4ms

Reply from 196.200.16.2: bytes=32 time=79ms TTL=58
Request timed out.
Reply from 196.200.16.2: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=58
Reply from 196.200.16.2: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 196.200.16.2:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 79ms, Average = 43ms

So far this link is good for nothing. Really I have always complained about Access Kenya, but there link’s have been far more consistent and better. This product from KDN is a total rip off, more so because it simply fails on the local loop network too.

For now I will be hoping to see some sort of improvements made to this service and strongly advise anyone willing to go for this service to keep off for a while.

The first thing that came to my mind when I visited Maduqa was, WOW!! Now there is a new concept for the local upcoming online community, a free online store platform.
All a user needs to do is create their store and host their products, so simple. Maduqa in the meantime do the actual hard work of promoting the site, for the end user that is a bargain.

Maduqa offers online presence for small businesses and individuals. You can create and manage your online business/online shop anywhere, anytime. The aim is to give tangible online presence providing bigger market and outreach for the small businesses and individuals.

The sign up process hardly takes 1 minute, once you input the details for sign up it automatically logs you in and takes you back to the front-end of the site.
Clicking on myAccount gives you the opportunity to place your ads (At this point I had no shop yet)

The concept is good so far, but still lacking on areas. Will maduqa be able to pull this off? They have the potential to.

Firstly Maduqa are the first with such a concept locally, so this gives them the upper hand on things, they will be able to analyze the market before others come in with a similar concept.
Secondly they have a great idea of marketers going out to try and capture and convince potential clients to use their services, currently with three marketers they could get a bagful of clients. A simple workout would show that if each marketer got 5 customers to sign-up per day you would have 15 new potential shops a day, 375 shops a month!! With the number of exhibition stalls out there, there is no reason why that number is hard to target.

Where Maduqa lacks.
For one the site is just too dizzying, with the scrolls at the top and bottom its simply too busy for the eyes and tends to distract you. A simple amazon sort of layout would do wonders.
I tried to visit a few existing shops and there was no integration to payment gateways. I was required to email the owner in order to buy.
The site does not contain security (SSL) of any sort, what are the maduqa management planning in terms of security? How about buyer/seller protection? What will they do to ensure all sellers are legitimate and that all sales are concluded? I found no disclaimers whatsoever.
Inability to go back to homepage from any other page on the website, you have to alter the url in the address bar.

Maduqa plan on going onto the mobile web platform real soon to target the ever increasing mobile web user.

Maduqa has got a good concept up their sleeves, however they have a long way to go with plenty of room available for major improvements and enhancements. Maduqa have a great platform to build on.

Hopefully the next time I revisit this review on Maduqa, it will have more features to boast about.

After months of speculation, Apple finally unveiled its “tablet pc” the ipad. With mixed reactions, many hailed the iPad as an industry-redefining device, especially as an e-book reader destined to save print media.

While others laughed at the name, iPad and criticizing it as an over-sized iPhone.  So what exactly is the ipad, which at the moment has more of a negative opinion that a positive one?

The  iPad does indeed resemble a large iPhone or iPod touch. It has a 9.6-inch multi-touch screen, is a 1/2-inch thick, and is made of aluminum and glass. Like the iPhone, iPad has just four physical buttons. It can run most of the applications in the iTunes App Store, just like an iPhone or iPod touch.

While iPad can run those apps, it has been mainly designed for reading books, newspapers and magazines, surfing the Web, playing games, and enjoying media such as YouTube videos, HD movies, music, photos, and TV shows. You can also use iPad to send e-mail, touch up photos, edit documents and spreadsheets, and view PDFs. You hold iPad in your hands like a clipboard or book.

The iPad has a software keyboard just as the iPhone has. Early reports say this keyboard is fine for basic text editing, but probably isn’t ideal for complex word processing. Apple is offering two external keyboards to help with that (extra costs).

All versions of iPad have built-in Wi-Fi, while three versions also have 3G wireless capabilities &it should be possible to make VOIP and Skype calls from iPad, as it now is with 3G and 3GS.

Now the iPad may be an over hyped product lacking quite a bit

Notable features lacking on the iPad include a camera or webcam, SD card port (though Apple is offering an adapter for SD cards), support for Flash, and true system multitasking.

It’s surprising that iPad lacks a camera, maybe we will see on in the next generation iPad? Multitasking should have been part of the iPad as it is a “tablet pc” using one app at a time tends to become very annoying. This though is likely a feature in the next version of the iPhone operating system which powers the iPad. If iPad supported multitasking now, it would likely have far less haters.

The lack of Flash will be iPad’s major shortcoming for many. Most popular websites make use of  flash on their sites.

So, just a slight sum up of what we know about the iPad so far. What does it mean for the African market? Will we use it in our offices? Will we use it to read our daily newspapers? Our e-books? How about introducing it into our schools?

Really, I do not see any of that happening any time soon. Priced at $500 its too pricey for the African market. Many of us have the more pricey iPhone but its usefulness is more than that of the iPad.

Would be extremely interesting to hear what you guys have to say about it, so feel free to post your views and thoughts too.

For as little as ksh19000 you can get an acer aspire one Aob110b, the most basic model that has the 8gb SSD (solid state drive; the same technology used in USB flash disks) a 1.6Ghz hyper threaded processor and an 8.9inch screen that’s shipped with Linpus, A variation of Fedora Linux. This was instantly a hit in kenya and abroad! There are many models, some with larger ard disks and screens. HP and dell don’t really focus on the low end market with their netbooks, with their models being priced at ksh29000 upwards. At first local consumers were sceptical, but after a few trials owners were praising them. They quickly got popular! So popular that Wireless service providers have teamed up with banks to offer them on sale at pretty decent prices. Go to a hotspot and you’ll see a few owners using them… The key question is, why are people using them?

For Students, a netbook is extremely useful. Take for example an HP mini 2140 pictured below, A typical one would have a 160gb hard drive and windows XP home installed. The regular student on the go would use it for typing assignments, watching movies and surfing the internet. It weighs 1.19kgs and has a 10 inch screen. at Ksh29000 it’s priced fairly well, easy for a student to finance. It easily fits into a bag that has textbooks and notes. It’s light weight will not bother the student. One told me that “he rarely notices he’s carrying it around”, with his power cable included.

Even for ladies, netbooks have taken popularity with them. Not only can they fit in their designer handbags, but their light weight and interesting designs make it a positive choice over the bulky regular sized ones.

For office users, netbooks are useful for carrying their work out of the office. Those who do not need power find usefulness in netbooks. Their light weight make it easy to fit in a briefcase or sleeve.Bear in mind netbooks are not meant for serious gaming or graphics manipulation. they are meant for basic spreadsheet/word processing/database management, emails and internet use.

And then there’s desktop space. Netbooks unlike convectional laptops, have a small footprint (area covered by the body) which translates to more working space on the surface. Take for example those small tables at popular internet cafe’s, a standard 15 inch laptop covers more than a third of the table, whilst a netbook can fit inside the space occupied by the laptop’s keyboard. On the desk the netbook occupies very little space… Hence with a netbook, there is space for drinks, your meal and your documents! I find this very useful.

Personally, I think they’re the perfect tool for users in developing countries where GDP/GNP isn’t that high. Not many individuals can afford the high end notebooks that are made of metal and have optical drives and weigh abit heavier than netbooks. Decent prices, Good specifications and serious portability make these devices popular! I’d say they’re a mixture of both work and fashion; looking good while being able to perform.

batian

This should definitely rock the Internet service market and should have other ISP’s preparing their marketing teams to come up with new products.

This Barely a day after I posted about ISP’s not heating up the competition. I take my words back as Zuku have done just that with the introduction of bandwidth in double digits (Mbps) and a massive price drop.

Zuku who have share holding in TEAMs and available bandwidth from Seacom, have mentioned that they have 50Gb of bandwidth available to sell to the market compared to Access Kenya’s 10Gb, 5Gb from either fiber provider.

I am now surely looking forward to increased bandwidth and increased price drops in the coming months.

Its now been 6 months since Kenya finally went digital, and in these six months all I have seen is a gimmick – “Doubled your bandwidth for free”.

Dear ISP,

We are the customer! We are not stupid.

I have noted that there are only four major player in the industry at the moment – KDN, Access Kenya, Orange & Safaricom. They all provide the end user with internet access in one way or the other.

My main stress has been internet access for home users & SOHO’s

Safaricom - Safaricom’s main strength in the data market has without a doubt been the 3g modems that they have been selling for as little as 2000shs ($27). Almost everyone has a Safaricom line, and Safaricom banked in on this and started selling the 3g modems at a throw away price. They have provided bundles that are soft on everyone’s pocket in terms of cost of bundle but not usage. The more the use the more you pay. That is a major disadvantage as safaricom have really fast bandwidth and you may get carried away with your usage.

3g coverage is scattered and inconsistent. Safaricom customer support is extremely difficult to get through to.

Access Kenya – Access Kenya had always set their sights on corporate clients, but when the fiber was close to completion they decided to move into the home user market with the introduction of access @home. @home is a WiMax based connection that has a lot of connectivity issues once the base station you are connected to starts getting saturated. Why am I telling you this? Because Access Kenya are known to saturate their base stations. At 6000shs +VAT ($80) for 512kbp/128kbps  and an additional cost of equipment & installation at 15000shs +VAT ($200), the average home user would never go for this because its too steep.

Access Kenya will really need to up the ante if they want to get into the home market big time. They may have broken their customer targets 2 months earlier, but the home users that are connected to their service are an extreme minority.

Access Kenya @home support team is much better than that of the corporate team and beat any of their competition hands down at providing good support.

KDN – KDN have for long been corporate solution providers, providing service through WiMax. They came up with the much scanty butterfly product for individuals on the move. KDN are still focused to providing corporate solutions and not really in a hurry to move into the home market.

KDN support is a major fail and their recent two awards are nothing compared to their image. KDN really need to review their customer support & sales team and how they work.

Orange Kenya – When Orange was Telkom Kenya, they had been the BIG boys solely because they were the monopoly. That is in the past now, and Telkom Kenya is now Orange Kenya and they are trying to come back into the market with a bang. Orange are finally connected to TEAMS Fiber and speeds are blazing. Orange Kenya have the real vision towards broadband roll out to home users via old copper cables and the use of a livebox with inbuilt Wi-Fi. At 4000shs ($54) for 512kbps/256kbps and additional cost of 3500shs ($47) for the livebox, Orange Kenya have almost got it right, they need to reduce the costs further and increase the bandwidth. Most of us still have the traditional phone lines and would not mind moving onto the service

Orange Kenya have re-vamped their Customer support who at least answer their phones now, but who really need to be taught a lot more on their products. Technical team has also been really improved and downtimes are a thing of the past.

New Players

Tangerine Broadband – With what they have been advertising as – for as little as 649shs ($8), they have a sales team that do not know what they have for sale. Not much information means they have nothing to sell.

Zuku – Double play package providers, providing TV & broadband from wananchi online. At 4500shs ($60) and additional setup cost of 3000shs ($40) with free equipment, Zuku may just have the chance to sneak in front of the competition. What really puts Zuku off is the poor sales follow up and the poor support. Complaints of extremely slow speeds (6kbps-15kbps) are also plenty.

I cannot be held responsible for any of the sites containing any unappropriate material, pop-ups/under or any other content.

Use firefox as your browser for a safer browsing experience

Audio Books

Librivox: One of the most popular audio libraries on the web. The LibriVox volunteers record books that are in the public domain and release them for free.

Oculture (Audio & Podcast): Offers a rich array of educational and cultural media. The site editor scours through the web to find the best cultural and educational media available.

Learn Out Loud: A one-stop destination for video and audio learning resources. You can browse through over 15,000 educational audio books MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. The site also contains various free resources.

BitTorrent

Mininova.org : What started as an alternative to the now defunct Supernova that went offline in 2004, Mininova has become the biggest torrent search engine and directory on the web. The site provides easy-to-use directory and search for all types of torrent files.

Torrent Portal : This P2P and file sharing site works like Google by linking only to .torrent metafiles and captures the caches of those files. It does not store files nor transfer data which are content linked to by .torrent files.

Now Torrents: The site scans torrent websites on the internet to provide the best results to users. Now Torrents provides an advanced real-time search engine for bit-torrents while at the same detecting and removing fake or dead torrent sites.

Torrentz: This Sweden-based torrent meta-search engine also indexes various major torrents sites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. It provides various trackers per torrent that would work when another tracker is not working.

ISOhunt: One of the largest most extensive torrent sites on the net. Trusted with no unsafe or malicious code.

Books and Documents

Scribd: A virtual place where you can publish, discover, discuss, and share original writings and document. With 50 million unique page views per month, Scribd is a great place to learn new things.

Sheet Music Archive: The web’s most popular music web site.  The site contains more than 22,000 classical music pieces and more than 100,000 sheet of music. It offers hundreds of free music downloads and more for subscriptions.

Computer Books.us: The site offers high quality computer related books for free download. These computer books are all legally distributed and their authors have granted permissions for the site to distribute their works.

Docstoc: This is your ultimate resource for free legal and business documents. Docstoc does not only allow you to download documents for free but it also lets you upload and share your own documents.

Tech Books for Free Download: If you’re looking for free books on Java, Perl/Phyton or other computer programming related books, this site might be of help. It offers books covering technology subjects for free download.

Project Gutenberg: The most comprehensive repository of ebooks on the web. Project Gutenberg was built by volunteers and now houses more than 27,000 titles of ebooks in its catalog.

Free eMagazine Download – covers a comprehensive collection of free emagazines for free download.

eBooks

KnowFree: The site offers a virtual place to exchange ebooks freely., video training, and other educational materials . Know Free features a very nice search engine which enables users to search for a particular materias fast.

Spotbit:  Providing a paperless solution to publishing and for selling e-books, Spotbit makes e-book available in a different digital format than what is available on the web lately. Spotbit offers a simple Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology for E-books format.

Ebookshare: Provides link to either an e-books torrent files or direct download to the file itself.  E-books are categorized into broader subject and the site has a nice search engine to aid you in finding the e-book you want.

Ebookee: A free book search engine. Ebookee helps you in finding e-book titles that you are particularly looking for.  The E-books listed on the site are organized in general subject categories.

Wowio: The site lets you access legally available high-quality e-books. Wowio lets you read complete books online for free. If you want to download the PDF versions, Wowio charges a minimal fee.

Download Hubs

Softpedia:  The site contains more than 500,000 sofware programs Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac, Mobile Phones, Games and Drivers. Some of software programs in Softpedia are freeware while some are shareware.

Download.com: Cnet’s most comprehensive library of freeware offers free download.  Download.com contains tons of Windows software ranging from security software, digital photo software, educational software and more.

Open Source Mac:  A handy reference and useful tools that encourages users to utilize free and open-source software..  Open Source Mac offers a simple list of  the best and free software for the Mac OS X.

Free Downloads Center: Hosts a collection of free software, games and other desktop goodies which you can download for free. Free Downloads Center also offers a Give Away of the Day licensed software which you can download during the day only.

Tucows: The web’s original software download site. Tucows contains more than 40,000 software titles which are freeware or shareware.

Phazeddl: Hosts download warez, games, torrents, movies, software, apps, scripts, TV shows, ebooks, templates as well as key-gen of crack softwares.

Freeware

A+Freeware:  The site offers choice applications or “A+Freeware” which become useful only when combined with a valid operating system. A+Freeware lets you get copies of software for free.

Best Freeware Download: A free wares site which allows you to register and save links on the site’s member account areas. Best Freeware Download is categorized into communication desktop and games. Gamers would definitely want to check this site from time to time to check on new freewares to be added.

Free Ware Box: The site offers categorized summary of freeware software. Freeware Box contains open source software, public domain and other types of free software, all available for free download.

Freeware Zoom:  This site offers freeware for free download. Freeware Zoom is updated daily and it contains no adware or spyware.

File Hippo:  The site has considerable number of freeware, demo and shareware programs which are of high quality. File Hippo puts a premium on quality software rather than quantity. Hence the site offers only the best software.

Windows Downloads: Download.com’s Windows-only software download site offers softwre which were tested to be 100%  free of malware.

Major Geeks: Offers only the serious software meant for the serious geeks. It hosts the most comprehensive collection of computer utilities available on the web.

Brothersoft: The site offers more than 100,000 software for free download. Brothersoft does not only offer free software download but also thoroughly evaluate all the software submitted to them.

Fonts

Dafont: If you’re looking for some cool fonts to use for whatever purposes, you could probably pick up one or two font style at this site. Dafont offers freely downloadable fonts. You can browse fonts by author, by style or by popularity.

1001 Free Fonts: This site has a big collection of TrueType fonts which are either freeware or shareware. 1001 Free Fonts offers free fonts for both Windows and Mac platforms.

Download Free Fonts: A simply designed online resource for thousands of free fonts. Download Free Fonts contains free fonts for Windows and Mac. You can use the site’s search box to find the font you are specifically looking for or browse through the font categories.

Show Font: The site lets you download fonts for free. Show Font contains TrueType fonts for both PC and MAC. It also provides font editor and font management tools.

FontStruct: Aside from offering freely downloadable fonts, Fonstruct also has a font editor and font management applications available online. FontStruct lets you build fonts, share it with others and download fonts made by other people as well.

Games

Liberated Games: This is a simple listing site offering free downloads of legally available games. It’s a straight-out listing of these different games including their download links.

NDS-ROMS: This is a heaven sent site for NDS gamers. NDS-ROMs offer free downloads of publicly available ROMs.

Iwin:  The Internet’s largest selection of free game downloads. You can choose to play games in the  popular categories.

Donwload Full Version PC Games: This is a blog site containing 100 best legal, free, and full version of games. The site covers free action games, free action games and 3rd person games.

Abandonia:  If you’re up for some good old DOS-based gaming experience, Abandonia may have those games. Abandonia offers DOS games which have been abandoned for so long.

Best of Games: The site offers various old games and certainly has many of them on the site. Best of all, Best of games offers these games for free download.

Free Games – A search engine for free games that can be played online or downloaded to your machine. It also covers cheat codes.

Movies

ZML: One of the Internet’s most useful download service. ZML offers update subscriptions and lets you find out about current movies by subscribing  to ZML.

Free Documentaries: offer free Streaming Independent Documentary Films, Environment Documentary, Israel, Palestine, War, George Bush, Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11, Globalization, Media, and more.

Moving Image Archive: A comprehensive library of  free movies, films, and videos uploaded by the site users.  Moving images include full-length films, news broadcasts, cartoons and concerts. Not all of the videos are free to download though.

MP3

eMusic: The world’s biggest online retailer of independent music and audio books. eMusic holds more than 40,000 independent labels and almost 5,000 titles of audio books from top publishers.

Jazz on Line: The web’s most comprehensive online resources of digitalized Jazz music. Jazz on Line hosts only songs which are in public domain.

Jimmyr: A search engine for mp3 music and other digital files. Jimmyr crawls through the various mp3 resources available on the web using Google Custom Search Engine.

Music Download: The ultimate source for legally available and freely downloadable digital music on the Internet. It’s from Cnet.com, so you are pretty sure that most of the files are safe to download.

beeMP3: A music search engine useful for finding mp3-audio files available on the web. BeeMP3 currently indexes around 800,000 mp3 files.

Download Any Stuff: A digital file search engine that provides download links to free stuff over the Internet. Download Any Stuff lets you search for MP3 files, softwares, drivers, games, movies, ebooks, even Torrents and more.

Skreemr: Another music search engine that you can use to locate audio files available on the web. Skreemr currently indexes and crawls more than 6 million mp3 files from 100,000 web sites.

iLike: A social music discover site that allows you not only to discover music playlists available on the web but also to share your own playlists to the world. iLike also links to iTunes and Amazon music stores.

eMP3 World: A free mp3 download site. eMP3 World currently holds around 85,000 mp3 download links on its database.

Jamendo/: An online community of free, legal and unlimited digital music content. Jamendo offers only those music which have been licensed under Creative Commons. The site lets you share your own music and create your own widget playlists which you can embed to your site or social networking profiles.

Online Video

Vixy:An online video converter that you can use to convert a Flash video / FLV file or YouTube videos to MPEG4 format. Vixy uses a compressed domain transcoder technology. You can enter a YouTube link to have it converted into MPEG4 online.

Keepvid: The site lets you download streaming videos from YouTube, Putfile, Metacafe and other video streaming sites. After downloading you need to convert it into another format depending on what media player you are using. Or you can use FLV’s own media player instead.

Javimoya: Another good video downloader site. Javimoya supports many video streaming sites including YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace Music, and more.
VideoDownloadx: The site allows you to download videos from YouTube and save these videos to your PC. You also need to download an FLV player to view the videos from your local hard drive or convert the file into other formats that can be read by your media player software.

Download YouTube Videos as mp4 Files: This blog post gives a detailed instruction on how to download videos directly from YouTube in mp4 format. No need to use a third-party site to scrape the video off from YouTube.

Kiss YouTube: Offers an easy and simple way of downloading and saving YouTube video directly to your computer. You can enter the URL of the video on the Kiss You Tube site, or add the word “kiss” on the URL of the YouTube video to download the file. Either way, you will still download the file from the Kiss You Tube site itself.

Download YouTube Videos: This site lets you download YouTube videos faster and easier. You just nee to enter the YouTube URL of the videos that you want to download

keepHD - lets you download HD videos off Youtube. It also lets download the mobile 3GP version for your mobile devices plus the standard MP4 and FLV format.

Photoshop and Design

Adobe Market Place and Exchange: Adobe’s online resource containing tools, services, and innovations relating to Adobe’s various products. The site also let you discover Adobe AIR runtime applications.

Pixel Chick: Offers both free and paid Photoshop brushes that are compatible with CS2 and CS3.

Vecteezy: Serves as an index of free vector graphics that are available for download from the web. Vecteezy’s vector graphics were created by famous designers.

Busheezy: A huge collection of free Photoshop brushes and patterns. Busheezy is updated daily and also accepts submission of Photoshop brushes from online users.

Vector 4 Free: A free vector graphics site for Adobe Illustrator AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, and Corel Draw CDR. All the vector graphics  are free for personal and commercial use.

Get Brushes: A directory of brushes personally handpicked by the site owners. Get Brushes contains various brushes including over abstract and text, gothic, coffee pills and more.

Q Vectors: The site offers free high-quality vector images and graphics. Q Vector also accepts user submissions.

Archive 3D: Host more than 17,000 3D graphics model. Archive 3D models ranges from Beds,Shkaps, Chairs,Tables,Sofa, Sanitary Ware, Decoration, NVAC, Tools, and more.

Vectormix – This site has a good collection of vector graphics submitted by users and arre free to download.

Stock Photos

Stock.Xchng: One of the web’s leading stock photography site. Stock.xchng offers a full gallery of high-quality stock photos  available for free download or for sharing on blogs, social networks and other sites.

Free Digital Photos: Contains thousands of royalty free photos available for download and can be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Free Digial Photos does not require registration to download stock photos from their site.

Morgue File: The site provides high-resolution stock photography images for free regardless of whether the photos will be used for corporate or private use. Morgue File is the place to keep post production materials.

123RF –  The site offers a daily dose of free high-quality images aside from the paid stock images that it sells.

System utilities

Open Drivers: A free driver download service. Open Drivers is categorized by device category and driver manufacturer. It also includes step-by-step process to install and uninstall the drivers.

DLL Files: A very useful site for users who keeps on getting the missing DLL prompt from the machine. DLL Files contains a comprehensive databased of dll-files that you could possibly need.

Download 3K: A huge archive of free and free-to-try software programs and games for Windows. Download 3K is categorize into 15 main categories and the site is updated with around 300 software everyday.

Free Codecs: The ultimate resource for all types of codecs available online. Free Codecs offers video codecs, audio codecs, codec packs, codec tools and more.

Open Office: Home of the free open-source office software suite. Open Office contains word processing, spreadsheets, database, presentations, graphics, and more.

Web Design

Open Source Web Design: A collection of web designs submitted by the community members. Open Source Web Design offers free web design for download that can be used for personal blogs to a full-featured content management systems for businesses.

Free CSS Templates:The site offers standards compliant CSS templates for free. Users are free to use the templates for personal or business purposes.

Template World: Offers top quality, creative and unique web site templates created by certified web professionals.

Iconspedia: The site offers free icons download. Iconspedia are arranged in various categories including animals, food and phones.

Free Icons Web: The site contains 15000 high quality icons for free downloads. Free Icons Web contains icons for Windows XP, Vista, Macintosh, and Linux. Icons are for personal use only. Commercial users have to pay a certain amount of royalty.

1000+ Classic Icons for Free Download: Probably the best collection of free icons available online. Icons are in png, icns, ico-formats as well as .EPS vector files.

Spotbit: The site allows you to publish and sell e-books using a fast, easy and free method. Spotbit lets you create your e-books and published it on Spotbit.

Smashing Magazine’s 40 Professional Icon Sets for Free Download: A list of 40 high-quality professional icons for desktops and web design which are all free for download. The icons can be used for private and commercial purposes.

Now before you jump of your seat to run to your nearest Orange store, this new offer was made available for Orange home users in the UK.

Orange UK also introduced 4 new price plans starting from as little as £6.50 (Ksh 815) Per month. None of the plans are restricted or limited to data caps. As part of the new deal, Orange UK’s Home max package will include evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. Home Ultra, one of the new plans introduced, comes with an Orange Livebox wireless router that can connect upto 10 computers at a time. The package also enables the users to make calls to 30 countries ant any given time, this includes calls to UK landlines. Home Ultra costs from £10.50 (Ksh 1300) per month for postpaid users & £13.50 (Kshs 1700) for postpaid users.

This can not even be compared to the pricing structure available from any ISP within Kenya at the moment where 10 times less bandwidth – 256kb/s costs from about £21 (Kshs 2600), with no extras such as free minutes.

Kenyan ISP’s really need to review their strategies and encourage more users to get online locally on better connectivity options. One of the major hindrances to new users is the huge investments required for equipment followed by extremely unfair high pricing for minimal bandwidth.

The Internet has spread around the Globe like wildfire, and Africa has not been left out. Its now Africa’s turn more than ever to display its true potential, its Africa’s turn to showcase its whizz kids.

The need for local content is growing, with international content not meant for everyone due to drawbacks such as language barriers, differences in social and traditional values, and general usefulness of information, local content will cater for the exact needs of the audience looking for it.

Local content can also bring down Internet costs, by ISP’s providing access to users only to the local loop for local content delivery. This way the users are still informed about their surroundings and are able to keep up with what is happening around them and also communicate with other users online at cheaper costs.

Content does not just happen to come from anywhere, it needs to be created. With so much content coming in from developed countries, to be content providers in developing countries could be discouraged from moving forward with actually providing their content, simply because they would feel who will get to their content within the region.

To reverse the discouragement, these content providers need to be encouraged and ICTvillage.com are doing just that. ICTvillage in partnership with KDN have come up with a local content hub idea, a local digital village. For as little as 3000 shs ($40) a month (subject to terms and conditions) one can setup a digital village and provide access to free LOCAL INTERNET within their building enabling the users to perform the following tasks online for free:

• Send & receive Email
• Read local newspapers
• Visiting websites hosted in Kenya
• Download government content
• Make & receive phone calls (on-net)

This should spearhead a surge in local content development. To make this even more successful, local hosting charges should then also be revised and brought in line with those of developed countries where anyone from anywhere in the world can get hosting for as little as 750shs ($10) a month.

This is the opportunity web developers have been craving for, this is where they can now make their presence count as they target their websites to the intended audiences much easily and much faster, this is where geniuses will emerge and their work recognized online.

From what I have seen ICTvillage.com do have a a slight drawback as home users cannot quite take advantage of the service unless you happen to live in apartments that have been hooked up to the service. The service is open to schools, office buildings, government offices, restaurants, clubs and no mention of residential areas. Please do not forget residential areas make the large number of users for content.

As always your comments are welcomed, lets get a discussion going and see what else we can do to improve on local content.

Meanwhile I am off to get my site locally hosted (provided it not going to blow a hole in my pocket)