— LORDBANKS

Archive
Rant Zone

Dear Jambites: What To Do When JAMB Jams You

By: Bankole
24-03-2012
Inspiration, Rant Zone, Thought Log

Dear Jambites

There are about one and half million of you sitting this examination today. I wish you all the luck and success that there is and hope that you will get into the higher institution to study that course you’ve applied for.

But now I have to tell you the truth. Out of this number, not all of you will get into University this year. Because of a lot of random shit that can happen.

You might get late to your centre because of inevitable traffic, or because it’s just too damn remote. Your center might not even exist, although I doubt if that still happens. The exam papers might not get there on time. Sometimes, they never arrive at all. For those who find their exam venues and write the exams without incident, your whole centre could be implicated in exam malpractice, and the whole result annulled. Or just yours might be withheld. If your result is released, you might not make the cut-off point in order to be eligible for Post-UME. And even if you do make it up to Post-UME, the sad truth is that out for that one and half million of you that started out on JAMB day, there aren’t up to half a million admission spaces available right now in Nigerian Universities.

Only one out of three of you will make it into University this year.

Again, I pray for you – you will pass. But listen carefully. If it so happens that JAMB jams you, do NOT;

1. Lay down and die
2. Keep taking the piss

From me to you, it isn’t worth the trouble to write JAMB more than twice. Seriously, all that trouble for what University? The facilities are crap, they are on strike half the time, the lecturers who aren’t senile are greedy, the curriculum is obsolete, and when you’re done, there aren’t any jobs waiting out here for someone like you. Unless you can afford a private university, you might as well be wasting your time. Like it or not, as far as current Nigerian education is concerned, the deck is stacked high against you.

The truth: Not everyone needs to go to the University to succeed. Now don’t get me wrong — Learn, you must — but again not necessarily in a formal institution where they award paper degrees. The five years you’ve spent attending JAMB coaching and consulting “miracle centres” so you can write it a sixth time could have been employed differently. A three month photography class here, a two week writing workshop there, a 6 month web-design training…there are countless easier, faster and incredibly cheaper alternatives to the four to five year sham that you are trying to enroll for. Mark my words, in this brave new world that we’re in, paper certificates don’t count for much. They are just that — pieces of paper — it is what you can do and whether it is useful, adds value, and solves problems, that will matter.

I don’t have all the answers. I only know some things from my personal experience. I might as well have not gone to the University either — but that is a story for another day. Write your JAMB as best as you can and hope that it doesn’t jam you. If it does however, it will be a mistake to stay there, doing the same thing over and over, when it’s clearly not working. It would be insanity.

My friend, Gossy Ukanwoke , who’s also passionate about education is working on something really cool that I’m hoping will disrupt Nigerian education fundamentally. Maybe not too far from now, we can tell JAMB to take their exam and shove it up…somewhere. That would feel good.

If you can, please watch this video of Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005. I’m sure it will inspire you.

[image: Flickr/COCOEN]

Read More

What Do You Do When Your Car Breaks Down In Lagos?

By: Bankole
19-03-2012
Lagos Hustle, Rant Zone, Thought Log

lagos flat-tyre

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or how much money you have…in Lagos, everybody has problems. Moving up the socio-economic ladder has no bearing on this principle, for each rung you climb up to, you simply trade your old problems in for new ones.

Take for instance, the difference between having a car and not. Being car-less in Lagos is very uncool, you have to contend with reckless drivers, rude conductors, and millions more like you, some sweaty, some smelly, trying to find their way to wherever.

Having a car on the other hand comes with it’s own problems. Between cut-throat fuel prices and the accelerated wear and tear occassioned by Nigerian roads, the costs of keeping the car on the road are not for the faint of heart. Don’t forget, owning a car also means that when you’re stuck in traffic, you’re truly stuck, there’s no abandoning your car for an Okada ride. But of all the bad things that can happen to a Nigerian motorist, from experience, I am positive that having it conk out on the road has to be the worst.

In the experience I’m referring to, I was sitting in the back my friend’s car on the way back from work on Victoria Island to Yaba. You should know that our “friendship” was a serendipitous fallout of the recently concluded fuel subsidy removal saga. I was standing at the bus stop contemplating the circuitous and now expensive commute back home, when he drove past in his Camry, calling “Yaba!”. Since then, I part with N400 daily, in exchange for getting driven to and from work in relative comfort. The money goes to “subsidise” my friend’s fuel budget. He is still looking for two more regular passengers, by the way.

So we were enroute to Yaba from the Island, when according to my friend, the car began to decelerate of its own accord, and he only just managed to pull over to the side of the road before it came to a dead stop close to end of the ramp that leads up to the 3rd Mainland bridge, off Herbert Macualay way. What could have happened? My friend stepped out and popped the hood to investigate. After 15 minutes and a number of frantic phone calls to his regular mechanic, he hadn’t figured out what it was. The mechanic’s workshop was at Maryland, and no, he couldn’t come to have a look, too far, sorry.

By this time, the area boys were already upon us. They had been circling us vulture-like for the better part of those 15 minutes, and with every minute that passed, they grew bolder. Eventually, one of them, whose jeans were sagging just low enough to reveal a fringe of browning pubic hair, ventured to ask us what the trouble was. My friend replied with a curt “nothing”. But the tout, unfazed, only shrugged and resumed circling with their characteristic swaggering gait. The longer the wait, the more rewarding the spoils…and he knew they didn’t have long to wait. It was getting to 6pm, and with the impending onset of night, a stalled car sitting on a bridge was a sitting duck to be taken advantage off by area boys and Police alike.

Yes, Police. Our “friends”.

I’ve watched enough foreign movies to know about emergency call boxes that are placed at regular intervals on the highway. About highway patrol units that will be sure to find you and assist, especially if your car trouble might begin to constitute a traffic hazard to other road users. About a simple three digit number that puts the rescue mechanisms of the state at your disposal and summons help to wherever you are.

But this is Nigeria.

I’ve heard countless stories of people getting harried and extorted by law enforcement while they’re still trying to sort out their stalled vehicles. Already, a lone union tout whose affiliation I couldn’t make out had asked us in growling tones if we didn’t know that we were parked on the highway.  Like we meant to park there. It was only a matter of time before some random LASTMA official would discover us and begin to ask us for our particulars.

My friend and I were keenly aware of this and soon came to terms with the desperate circumstance. We had scarcely turned to engage them before the area boys sprung to our aid. One assured us that no one would challenge us, they were in charge, and not even the police would give us trouble while we were under their protection. Another, who would have us believe him to be an auto-electrician, promptly began poking under the car’s hood with instruments that had materialised as suddenly as his declaration of expertise. Yet another assumed the duties of traffic warden and began to direct oncoming vehicles away from our position. The rest looked on, hoping that their presence on the scene would be enough to assure them that night’s smoke money. To his credit, the area electrician discovered what was wrong (something to do with a broken timing belt), but pronounced that it could not be fixed that day. In the end, our car was pushed into a nearby motorpark that doubles as squalid accommodation for some people…they first balked at having a strange car parked in their abode, but were quickly shushed by the area boys.

We didn’t like the idea of leaving our car with these people, even for one night. But it couldn’t be helped. The area electrician assured us that he would look after it personally. Excluding monies given to the other park boys, he was expecting N5,000 for his trouble.  As we walked to the Bus Stop to catch a Danfo, my friend told me that the money he’d have spent if he’d called a government tow-truck (assuming we could find one) was much more than the money he’d given the area boys.

So what do you do when your car breaks down in Lagos? Surely, it can’t be a crime for one’s vehicle to develop a fault in traffic. Has anyone noticed if there are public services that assist stranded motorists? Or at the very least, shouldn’t we expect sympathy from law enforcement and traffic monitoring agencies?

First published on Nigerians Talk

 

[image: Flickr/iwouldstay]

Read More

An Open Letter To The President: I Am Tired Of Managing This Country

By: Bankole
25-01-2012
Nigeria, Rant Zone

This was posted on YNaija by my friend @Aninoritse. I was going to write it, but she’s said it better than I ever could. I’m tired of ‘adjusting’, ‘managing’. Shape up, Mr. President, or ship out. Over to you Anino.

Dear Mr. President,

How are you today? I trust you are well? Well why wouldn’t you be? You are eating 1 million naira a meal per day, so yes! I am sure you must be in excellent and robust health.

How is the Dame and the children, the baby-mama and aunty Didi (oops, sorry people didn’t know you two had some connection? Sorry it was a slip, it will happen a lot in this letter. Oh and let me apologize in advance, my mouth sharp oo)? I am sure the home front is good? Right! Let’s get down to some crucial matters. These are matters that concern our great beloved country.

Guy, YOU DRINK????

Why is Boko Haram terrorizing the North? Bombs going off by the day and you haven’t done a thing about it? Instead, you are busy reading out your copy and paste speeches? Wetin na?? Speaking of speeches; let’s take a quick look at the last one; the one for Kano.

In which seven persons were confirmed dead and others wounded. Among the seven persons killed in the incident was a reporter with Channels Television in Kano, Mr. Enenche Akogwu. – 7 people?? In whush Kano?? Kano in Nigeria fa? And it was 7 people?? Issokay!!! Hell is Real ooo…
President Jonathan who said he was greatly saddened by the incident which led to the loss of lives of innocent Nigerians – Really?? It took you 24 bloody hours to respond o. Oh sorry, you were too sad, you need composure abi?
Pledged to get to the root of the incident while assuring the management and staff of Channels Television which lost its Kano-based correspondent and indeed all Nigerians; that those behind these acts of terrorism would be made to face the full wrath of the law. – *snores* Sorry I dozed off, I didn’t realize you where still talking. This law that has wrath, me I haven’t seen it? Biko please Uncle, bring it quick.
And assured all journalists that “the Federal Government will continue to partner with the media in a robust and patriotic manner in the drive to build, institute and sustain the administration’s transformational values and programmes for our dear country and indeed Nigerians. – should we name all the journalists that have been killed in this country? Let’s move on dear sir.
The President further commended the media for its historic role in protecting constitutional democracy and the rule of Law in Nigeria – shamelessly quoting RSVP. Uncle Reubens, I see you o.
As a responsible Government, we will not fold our hands and watch enemies of democracy, for that is what these mindless killers are, perpetrate unprecedented evil in our land. – Bwaaaaaahhhhhhaaaa..ya funny Mr. President. I wish you read this out, I would have loved to see your face. Lmao.

But guy you fall my hand dangerously o ahaha!!

You didn’t even add any new words, same old story, same old speech I have heard all my life. Is there like a default book of speeches that your people just refer to and just pick words out when you have a 7 min speech?

Now I am a little confused? Can you help me out? I don’t get it. I mean c’mon even Mugabe is well into his 80’s and is still seen to have control over his country; and mind you, he is one of the most “Lambasted & Lampooned” presidents in the world!

Fuel Subsidy: Mr. President Do you actually know what fuel subsidy is? I mean really do you know? And not what aunty Didi, Big Mummy Ngozi and Uncle Lamido told you. You want us to trust you, yet you can’t even honour your own word. Oga mi, this thing nor good o. you tell me in each speech of how you feel my pain. Sorry but Mr. President with all due respect, you DO NOT FEEL MY PAIN! I am probably still one of the few people that belong to this “middle class” but yet, I feel the hardship; so stop telling me you feel my pain cos my dear sir you certainly don’t.

Mr. President you tell us to tighten our belt, biaa…whush belt you sef tight? I know how many cuts I am personally going to take in order to keep my own business afloat just because you have increased Fuel, I have even had to cut my weekend groove and drinks but I am sure you are currently passed out from a night of drinks as I write this. Abi na lie? Ideally, I should question you about the budget but I will let my other big brothers and sisters who use big English have their turn with you on that.

You are living in a Utopia world Mr. President alongside Reno Omokri, David Mark, Oronto Douglas, Labaran Maku, Emeka Wogu, DAM, SLS, NOI, Ringim and Ogar. Your worlds are quite far from our own realities, your nose seem permanently stuck in the air and the rest of them can’t get their faces away from your behind because its stuck kissing it. Uncle Jona, until you are ready to actually feel our pain, STOP SAYING IT! Have you visited these places up north that are been blown up? (Oh yes, you appeared in Kano on Sunday as part of you publicity stunt to show you “feel our pain”) or do you just rely on what your arse-kissers tell you? Guy rise from your drunken state and just do sonetin na.

Mr. President I felt very insulted when your ministers & co said that we youths that gathered are a paid crowd and we got paid ₦500 + pure water.

₦500?? A whole me!! So you are saying Chude Jideonwo, Kola Oyeneyin, ‘Gbenga Sesan, Funmi Iyanda, ‘Yemi Adamolekun, Omojuwa, StanVito, Yomi Badejo-Okunsanya, Akintunde Oyebode, Kathleen Ndongmo, Tolu Ogunlesi, Kunle Durojaiye, Seun Kuti, Yadoma, Dawisu, ‘Deji Ashiru-Balogun, The Ogwuegbu clan and a whole heap of others. Most of whom I can beat my chest and say they are honest hardworking men and women of society got paid ₦500? Are we so cheap abi we resemble paid crowd for una eye?

You blame twitter for your woes, Maku is worried that we insult you daily, Mr. President, may I remind you that you actually insult millions of Nigerians daily? Your friends at ‘Neighbour 2 Neighbour’ put advert for you saying you may not leave us good roads or power but you won’t leave us in debt. Hiaan!! Debt!! Uncle Jona nor bi insult bi this?? Err…is that why we are here?? Ahaha!!

Mr. President, I ask you to change your ways for the better, we don’t like this dictator style you are pulling; may I remind you 2011 was a bad year for dictators and the trend will carry on this year. I ask you to ‘Man Up’. You claim you are the nation’s C-in-C, well bloody act like it. Stop acting like you are a puppet, like you are being controlled or afraid. Stop attacking the innocent ones, deal with Boko Haram. Stop looking for people committing treachery just because we march the streets, guy e go shock you say we go enter streets again o.

Uncle Jona, you may see this letter as “an act of treason”, quite frankly, I don’t care. It is ok, come and pick me up. I am tired seeing suffering; I am tired of managing this country. This is a country and we the YOUTHS intend to get it back. We want a Country that WORKS. I expect to hear from you soon sir and we hope it is positive sir.

Mr. President, My name is Aninoritse Odeli-Serrano and I AM A NIGERIAN!!

Regards,

Odeli-Serrano, Aninoritse

@aninoritse

#irepNaija #ProudlyNigeria #IREPresentNigeria #OccupyNigeria

Read More

Occupy Nigeria Is Not About Fuel Subsidy, Not Really

By: Bankole
11-01-2012
Nigeria, Politics, Rant Zone, Thought Log

occupy-nigeria-londonOn Sunday the 8th, the House of Representatives convened an emergency meeting to assess the State of the Nation. Watching the show that our honourable representatives put on made me want to cry and laugh at the same time.

It made me sad because save for a few, the people whom we call our representatives are a sorry lot, I’m sorry to say. Expertly tip-toeing around the elephant in the room, they couldn’t seem to bring themselves to pronounce the words ‘Boko Haram’. Their ‘minute of silence’ in honour of the victims of terrorist violence barely lasted 15 seconds. Their interminable, cackling laughter amid grave issues on the table annoyed me no end. And I especially can’t get over the detached way in which they kept referring to “the government”, as though it were some entity separate from them, and to whom they could conveniently pass on the buck. As far as the concept of representative democracy goes, I’m  convinced that it’s totally lost on them, they certainly appear too well fed, too far away from the condition of the average Nigerian to claim to act on their behalf.

On the flip side however, the is fact that they were there, in the House, and on a Sunday no less. To discuss the issues that are foremost in the minds of Nigerians at this time. In what ultimately comes off as a grovelling attempt to acquit themselves favourably in the eyes of the people, the House of Representatives disowned Jonathan and passed a resolution opposing the removal of subsidy. I am impressed. Not with their sense of propriety or solidarity, both of which I personally believe to be acutely deficient. Rather I’m pleased with the effect that our actions over the past few days seem to have had on the legislative body. Between @NaijaCyberHack-inspired SMS/phone-call bombings and the growing power of the #OccupyNigeria protests, the legislators in the lower house seem to have had an epiphany and have elected to “stand with the people”. Whatever that means.

However, the memo that the government hasn’t gotten, or has decided to ignore, is that the occupy Nigeria movement is NOT about fuel subsidy removal, hardly, this development has only opened a festering can of worms that is decades old. It’s about so much more. It’s about challenging the corruption, waste and excesses of government at the expense of a groaning populace.  It’s an expression of the pent up anguish and frustration of a society that has been betrayed over and over again by the ones whom they have granted custody of their rights. It’s about the breach of social contract. In a country  where 70 percent of the population live on less than $2 a day, the cost of maintaining a bloated, corrupt and ineffectual government is heart stopping. This is not hyperbole, Jeremy Weate describes it quite clearly -

…the lived reality of citizens of the Nigerian state is that it provides little or no security, no infrastructure, no education and no employment opportunities…everywhere in Nigeria, the basic elements of civilised existence have to be taken care of house-by-house, compound-by-compound.  You must sink your own borehole for water, buy, install and fuel a generator for power, hire security guards to keep the wolves from the door, pay school fees to ensure your kids get a half-decent education because the public school system is in perpetual meltdown. And to earn enough money to get through the day, you must hustle.

And all of this where government officials receive unthinkable sums in allowances, send their children to school abroad, travel in intimidating convoys, go on foreign vacations at public expense, employ special advisers for their special advisers. Now, in the name of development, they would serve the masses grave austerity measures while they keep the gravy. It is atrocious. It is criminal. It is why we are angry.

Nigerians have managed to come this far, eking out a bare existence, keeping body and soul together, without a government.  But this same government has decided to take away the very reason why this shaky construct has held together all this time. They want Nigerians to make bricks without straw, and expect that people will carry on as before. Not so this time, as it turns out . The subsidy was merely the loose brick keeping the leaky dam together, and removing it has unleashed the pent up frustration and indignation that Nigerians have kept inside all these years. This time, it’s not Labour against the government. This is the people of Nigeria demanding their birthright, the right to a decent life and livelihood in a land that they call theirs. Surely, this cannot be too much to ask for. In spite of the unfortunate casualties, the protests are only going to get bigger, and the government will soon come to the inevitable realisation that this time, they’ve whipped the donkey one time more than they should have.

Nigerians are not against the removal of subsidy in principle. All we want is that things be done in a proper and humane fashion. Do not ask for our trust, because we do not have any left to give. If you want it, you must earn it. Cut government waste. Tackle corruption. Build refineries. Create economic buffers. THEN remove subsidy. Shirking your responsibility and asking the masses to bear the consequences of your incompetence, while you live lives of flagrant ostentation is not only totally unacceptable, it is an insult. And if you think throwing us dry bones, like that pathetic after thought of 1600 buses, will pacify us, then you’ve got another think coming. Nigeria is ours, and we will occupy it.

The issues are complex, and one can only gain the objective high ground by a reasoned appraisal of the facts. If you really want to know what Occupy Nigeria is and why it has come about, I ask that you take the time to read through this list of posts and articles and news reports that I’ve put together, the opinions of intelligent people on the subject backed by facts, figures, historical and political context.

 

More relevant links to come.

Read More

Uncle Jona’s New Year Surprise

By: Bankole
01-01-2012
Nigeria, Politics, Rant Zone, Thought Log

oil subsidy

Uncle Jona has just given Nigerians a new year ‘surprise’. Fuel subsidy has been removed. It’s not the removal itself that is so surprising, it’s the fact that he would remove it on the first day of the year. For an administration that isn’t particularly known for decisiveness, this is surely precipitate. But then, they’ve also been known to act swiftly when it suits them, like in the recent judiciary spat.

PMS is the lifeblood of Nigerian everyday life. It’s so fundamental that the only thing we probably don’t do with it is drink it. On the fuel subsidy, Teju Cole tweeted:

This was just about all they had, this small but consequential mercy from being citizens of an oil-rich country.

Now it’s gone. I’m not concerned with the rightness or wrongness of subsidy removal or the convoluted issues that attend it. I’m only concerned with the present reality, the fact that removing it will have real, adverse and immediate effects. Effects that given the credentials of the current administration, are not likely to be mitigated in the long-term. If there were alternatives – local refineries to stabilise market forces, better transport infrastructure and sustainable energy, electricity, maybe there would not be this much ado over the subject. But there are no alternatives. And considering that this is a commodity with a price elasticity tending towards zero, a commodity that regardless of how much it costs, we cannot do without, we have a real problem.

Without going out, I can already feel the change in the air, as all over the country the  prices of commodities silently double, treble even, and overnight. Tomorrow’s a public holiday, but the reprieve will last only that long because come Tuesday morning, our ears will fill with tales of the painful commute to work and place of livelihood. As I write this I’m seeing tweets about fuel being sold for as much as NGN 141. It’s already begun. In my new year commemoration post, I talked about bracing up for the storm to come. It appears that I might not have spoken out of turn or too soon. As seen on my Twitter timeline, GEJ had better have a plan to deal with civil disobedience, added to the subsisting security challenges all over the country. This is going to be a long 2012, and it’s barely begun. *Long sigh*

Naija, here we go again.

[image: Flickr/Ahef]

Read More

Symbian Will Die – Long Live The User Experience

By: Bankole
28-12-2011
Apps, Mobile, Rant Zone, Tech


Nokia-No-More-Symbian-4-Only-Symbian-and-Qt-MeeGo-2

Be advised, this is an exceptionally long rant.

We’ve heard everything about Symbian dying, burning platforms, diving marketshare, shrinking apps ecosystem, the apocalype. I don’t imagine that I’ll be bringing anything particularly new to the already tired Symbian fail meme, but this Symbian fan post on the Mobility blog seemed to need an answer, and I found myself writing a riposte which, as it turns out, is too long to be appropriate for the comments section. First I need to acknowledge that the writer of this post was merely telling us why he would continue to be a symbian adherent to the very last. His reasons are personal of course. But in that post, he made some assertions which I believe need to be put into the correct perspective. Not to be corrected, mind you, like footie fans a lot of us feel strongly about our preferred smartphone/OS platforms, and no one’s opinion is necessarily superior to the other. It’s simply a matter of individual context and perspective which should never be foisted on others. That said, there are certain facts of life which are independent of anybody’s context. One of them is the fact that Symbian, in whatever form it decides to morph into, is a terminal case. But I’ll get to that matter later, first let me address the major premise of the Mobility post.

It Is Up To You To Customise Your Experience?

speedometer
The post’s author likens a smartphone to a high-powered automobile whose true potential can only be maximised by an experienced driver who can push it to its performance limits. In the case of smartphones, he believes this can only be accomplished via the use of third party applications. First I think this analogy is hardly apt because driving a car below the limits of its performance specs is different from needing to mod it with performance accessories. The average motorist never has to retrofit their vehicle with with turbo chargers or nitro-boosters. Not doing these has absolutely no effect on the vehicle’s ability to deliver on it’s fundamental purpose, which is to be driven with the reasonable level of ease that is to be expected of a new car. Third party apps are definitely important, they greatly extend a device’s capabilities. But their absence should not handicap a device to the point where cosmetic user interface adjustments become absolutely necessary. Why a mobile phone should need third party apps to achieve basic UX objectives, like accessible homescreen functions or intuitive menus is beyond me. Second, leaving it up to me to customise my user experience is just a bad idea. And I’ll explain why.

Mobile Geeks Are Like Formula One Drivers…An Underwhelming Minority


Unlike Formula One drivers and other car performance nuts, normal people generally don’t enjoy spending lots of time under the hood of their cars, messing around with its innards. They just want to drive. And this is where most mobile geeks miss the point. We want to jump into our phone’s software, install apps with nerdy names like ‘DzSoft SettingBar”, tweak the phone’s settings until it responds to our every moustache twitch, use the latest NFC technology to bump vcards into our co-worker’s phones, mod our devices into neighbourhood ISPs, triangulate our kid’s every visit to the toilet with GPS…all of which is perfectly fine. What is weird is that we erroneously assume that every other person can and should subscribe to these geeky inclinations too. When in actual fact, people’s needs are deceptively simple. They don’t want their devices to pack the latest, greatest, space age gizmos. They just want to interact with their world in the simplest and quickest ways possible. Most people just want to call, text, take pictures and surf the web without having to dive under their phone’s hood every five minutes.

If It Doesn’t Work Right Out Of The Box, It’s Broken


If I understand the Mobility post’s author, he would sell us the philosophy that the quality of the user experience is dependent on the user’s willingness to customise it. This opinion, from business point of view, is hardly sustainable, people are just too busy (or lazy) for that.  The notion that people will pay for a device that’s supposed to get work done, only first they have to work on it is very mistaken, in my humble opinion. Like Formula One drivers, the number of advanced mobile device users who have the time and savvy necessary to create a custom experience are comparatively few, there are certainly not enough of them to matter to a device manufacturer’s bottom line. This is mostly Apple’s fault, but current consumer thinking is more along the lines of if it doesn’t work right out of the box, it’s broken. Yes, they’ll install a few apps, but how many of them do people actually use? Only the bare necessities, usually in furtherance of interaction (social networking, messaging, payments…), NOT user experience objectives, like a taskbar, volume rocker or homescreen manager.

The Prognosis – Symbian Has AIDS


The fact that Symbian’s UX woes are mitigated as you move up the Symbian price ladder to the Anna and Belle echelons will not prevent it’s inevitable demise. Quote me on this people, if Symbian’s 2000 and late UX is HIV, then Symbian has AIDS – Apps Incentive Deficiency Syndrome. Its UX issues made existing users balk…and leave. The dwindling userbase then led to a severe attrition of it’s developer community and consequent neglect by popular services. At this point in time, developers and services will typically develop their apps first for iOS. Then for Android. Then Blackberry. And lastly if at all, for Symbian. In fact lately the devs don’t even bother anymore, they just make a java version and bundle Symbian users with feature and dumbphone users. As a result, using Symbian means that by default you do not have access to most of the latest, greatest apps. Which then restarts the cycle, more users dumping the platform for greener app pastures. Now before you cry blue murder, check out this list of services that support everybody but Symbian.

  1. Most news services have  iOS, Android and Blackberry apps.
  2. Popular blogging service, Posterous, supports iOS and Android.
  3. Social media dashboards, Hootsuite, Ubersocial and Seesmic are available on iOS, Android, Blackberry and WindowsPhone 7
  4. Amazon’s Kindle app is available on iOS, Android, Blackberry and WindowsPhone 7
  5. Cloud Based Productivity Apps like Dropbox and Evernote
  6. Social networking site native support. Facebook has native Android and iOS apps, while Twitter supports iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry and WindowsPhone 7

Nope, no sign of Symbian anywhere here. Apparently all these developers and services now think that developing for Symbian is not worth their while. And who can blame them?

The Punchline

Three things I’d like to end with:

  1. It’s okay to pander to the geek community, but considering that their total number is a mere fraction of the normal people demographic, making phones as if they are developer prototypes flies in the face of simple business sense. Most normal people do not have the time or savvy to dive under their device’s hood to toggle uncountable settings, talkless of deploying third party mods. Remember that they are lazy and that for them if it doesn’t work right out of the box, it’s broken.
  2. People now care less about hardware specs, performance or resource efficiency, utilitarian concepts that just don’t cut it anymore, especially when you consider the ever decreasing costs of manufacturing high powered hardware and bandwidth costs vis a vis the increasing reliance on web and cloud based applications. Computing is now all about the user experience, ease of use and device empathy. Yes, in a world where attention spans are getting shorter, some people wouldn’t mind if their devices could anticipate their next move (can someone say Siri?). People already have enough work to do without you saddling them with the unavoidable responsibility of creating their own custom mobile experiences. Again Apple is the likely culprit responsible for this daunting UX standard –  If my grandmother can’t use it, it’s useless.
  3. A viable mobile platform is one that is to a large extent self sufficient, without external performance  props. Third party apps exist, not primarily as bug fixes for UX deficiencies but as a means of extending device functionality. In fact, the most successful mobile apps are the ones that create, capture or give access to experiences, whether it’ s news consumption, capturing and sharing photos with your loved ones, or just playing Angry Birds. Not the ones that offer alternatives to a deficient OS’s feature set. A stable and relatively bug free experience attracts users in droves, which is an irresistible incentive for developers and major service providers to create apps on the platform, thereby contributing to a more robust experience for all the stakeholders involved. To him who has much, even more will be given.

I and the Mobility post’s author agree on something. Third party apps are essential to the full enjoyment of a device’s capabilities. But the popular adoption of a mobile OS platform is a cycle that originates from the initial user experience. In my opinion, initial experience has to be intuitive enough to attract a substantial number of users which in turn creates the incentive for app makers to develop on the platform. When this happens, major services that people use will ignore the platform at their peril and will take it upon themselves to support its users by pushing proprietary apps. In its hey-day, Symbian enjoyed this sort of patronage from Opera, via Symbian specific versions of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, which is why many of us were able to put with the crappy pre-Anna default browser. But as is illustrated by the apps list above, they hardly have it anywhere else. Now Nokia can only hope that embracing the WindowsPhone platform as the future of their mobile business will put them back in the good graces of the developers, service providers and ultimately, the end users.

Ironically, there isn’t much point to this argument, considering that Symbian’s exit is a done deal. Like Nokia, we might as well give it a rest. Symbian will be fondly remembered, but the lessons from its tragic flaws must be learnt and turned to the advantage by surviving players in the space. The user experience is everything. One that is easy to use, unobtrusive, gets outs of the way when work needs to be done, and enjoys robust integration support from the other inhabitants of the ecosystem. The indices for determining if these vague criteria have been met vary largely with individual preferences, but all geeky arguments are moot in the face of where the people choose to put their money. And just how much of this money is Symbian getting? Your guess is as good as mine.

[photos: flickr/Andrea, flickr/Jason Thorgalsen and flickr/Josh Liba]

Read More

The New Tweetdeck Is Tweet Trash

By: Bankole
17-12-2011
Apps, Rant Zone, Social Media, Tech

TweetDeck by Twitter copyTwitter’s been pretty busy lately, rolling out updates across a number of their desktop and mobile client platforms, unveiling the “New, New Twitter”, yada yada yada. Upgrades are an accepted part of life, and barring a few change resistant luddites, we (users) usually accept with equanimity, no problem. Most updates solve pertinent problems or add needed functionality and are very welcome. However, when the upgrade turns out to be a downgrade in the user experience department (is there any other department?), then I’m forced to rant. And this particular rant has to do with my formerly beloved Tweetdeck for Chrome. Which, in my humble opinion, Twitter has succeeded in turning into tweet trash. While the new Tweetdeck still looks substantially like the one I used to know, it’s definitely become a mere shadow of itself , it’s now missing a lot of seemingly innocuous but very useful features that I found invaluable back then. I’ll list the ones I can remember before the app was upgraded while I wasn’t looking. Yeah, that’s what appeared to have happened, I didn’t even notice when the Chrome app updated itself.

new tweetdeck

Thumb Downs

Retweeting is now hell. Before, when I clicked retweet, I got a box that let me edit the RT before sending. If I didn’t want to edit I just went ahead and clicked the send button. Now I get a box that asks me if I want to quote the tweet before I can access the edit function, essentially making a function that used to need two clicks to now require three. Fail.

Conversation tracking is dead. And I’m like, what the… I can’t see conversations? How am I supposed to make sense of the firehose that Twitter is without putting it in the context of conversation threads. Jeez.

Update: I just found that conversation tracking is actually there somewhere, only it’s hidden. When you hit the reply button, you have to scroll UP to see the rest of the conversation. *Sigh*

Dropped support for other social networks. Okay, they paid 40million for the app, so it’s not like we didn’t see this one coming. Facebook’s kicked Twitter off Snaptu, a platform which was likely one of their biggest user bases, so you might say they’re even on that score. To their credit they’ve chosen not to deactivate linked Facebook accounts for people who already added them prior to the new tweetdeck. Issokay.

Inline media viewing for photo and video sharing services is gone, now the links open in another browser tab and you have to visit the media site like everybody else. Mega fail.

No more keyboard scrolling while navigating among your feeds, especially to get the ones that extend outside the available screen real estate. That just sucks, and no I don’t want to use the ‘really intuitive’ navigation bar that I have to go all the way to the top of the screen with my mouse to use.

The desktop app used to be an Adobe AIR powered social media powerhouse packed full with features like new follower counts, show what’s popular, twitter trends, enhanced profile viewing insights, drag and drop media/link support, e.t.c. But given the strained relationship between Twitter and Adobe, Tweetdeck is now off AIR, so the new desktop app is just the same junk that the web and Chrome apps are. The former AIR powered app still works though…for now.

It’s Not That Important

These are all the fails I could come up with in one sitting. I wouldn’t describe myself as a power user, but I found the above features useful and suddenly I no longer have access to them. Considering that Tweetdeck used to be the cream of the crop of powerful social media dashboards, I’m just disappointed that Twitter has decided to dumb it down this much. Thankfully it doesn’t appear to be showing any weakness in the speed department, it’s still looking to be as fast as it was before Twitter got to it. But maybe I’m not being fair, I might at least allow that subsequent updates might address the above listed deficiencies right? Well it’s not really important, it’s not like this post really matters, after all I’m just one user. One user who’ll have to find another Twitter client that is actually useful. I’ll be back when the new Tweetdeck is.

Read More

Don’t Be A Weist – 6 Things To Do During ASUU Strike

By: Bankole
17-12-2011
Learning, Nigeria, Rant Zone, Thought Log, Tips

6 things to do when there is no school

ASUU’s doing what they know how to do best. And it’s certainly not teaching. They’re on strike again, same old drama replaying itself like it has dozens of time before. As always, it’s the students, unwitting and unwilling participants in this charade that emerge losers, paying for our elders’ stubborness with extra years in an already unnecessarily protracted ‘learning’ process. But I’m not going to rant about ASUU or the Federal Government, there are more than enough pundits who are only too happy to proffer a gory prognosis of this malignant cancer. Right now I’m more concerned with answering the question that a young undergraduate friend of mine asked me just after the strike was announced.

‘What do I do during the strike?’ she asked me.

And going by ASUU’s precedents of how drawn out these affairs can be, lasting months in many cases, it is a pertinent question.

One thing is sure, that time won’t be spent reading school books, you know this. From my experience with ASUU strikes, almost nobody does. A lot of people spend that time cycling through all the channels on DStv, drinking booze, sleeping in till twelve pm and generally being weists. By the time we got back to school we’d hear about the guy in our class who got in trouble with the police, or about the girl who got knocked up by the dude next door, his school was on strike too. The devil just loves idle hands. And when the strike occurs just before exams, you can be sure that an academic tsunami will take place when the strike is over, mass failure. Because folks usually never get over the inertia of spending that much time away from the study environment, at least not in time to prepare for the hastily conducted lectures and exams that are necessary to make up for lost time. Multiply the effects of these by the wasted years spent acquiring a sub-standard education, and the fear of strikes is perfectly understandable. But not exactly necessary, if you choose to make the best of it. In fact, when viewed from a certain perspective, ASUU strikes might be a good thing. How, you ask? Well because the duration of the strike might be your best chance of learning/doing stuff that is actually useful and will avail you for life and the future, as opposed to the crap that they’re force-feeding you at school. And I have a few ideas that might be worth your while if you try them out.

Six Things To Do When There’s No School

strike

*Rapping in JayZ’s voice* Hey yo, hey yo, here’s six things you can do, even while you’re outta school, that’ll make you look cool, while your friends sleep till noon… That kinda ryhmes, doesn’t it, hehehe. Okay here we go.

1. Acquire a skill: This one’s a no-brainer, there’s all kinds of stuff you can learn in a few months, and some in just weeks. How about using that time to improve your IT skills, learn a new language, pick up a musical instrument, receive lessons in Kung Fu?…seriously. If money’s a concern, there are truckloads of free/subsidised learning resources, if you know how to look. It will surprise you where these skills will prove useful down the road.

2. Get a job : That’s right, get a job. With what certificate, you ask? Who says you need a certificate to get a job? There has to be something you know how to do, get out there and look for someone that needs a hand at their office or company, even if you’re going to work for your father and for free. Yeah I said it, work for free if you have to.

3. Start a business: Although it seems like a more glamorous alternative to getting a job, this one is far more challenging and is certainly not for everyone. However, even those who start and fail would have learnt invaluable life and business lessons that only such an experience can teach.

4. Become a volunteer: Aside from the feeling of accomplishment and fulfilment that comes from serving humanity, volunteering can be one of the most rewarding activities you can engage in, given the potentially high levels of training, travel and connections that such platforms expose you to. What’s more, most volunteer organisations have programs specially tailored for young and student volunteers that allow you to conveniently sustain your volunteer activities even while you’re in school. Examples? HIV awareness platforms/NGOs, Red Cross, Organisations that care for the homeless, paraplegics, convicts, etc.

5. Attend seminars and industry events - You might not know it, but there are always interactions and discussions going on around your chosen discipline on many levels, manifesting themselves in seminars, trainings, meetups, exhibitions, expos, symposia, book readings, concerts and much more. A lot of these are free or subsidised, especially for students, and again there is the opportunity to gain exposure and make valuable connections.

6. Work on that idea: You know what I’m talking about. That song that came to you in the shower. That niggling question that your lecturer refused to (or couldn’t) answer. That book manuscript that has been gathering dust in the corner of your wardrobe. Those ideas that you’ve been too busy going to school to explore. Now is the time to work on those things. You might never get a better opportunity.

As I write this, I have resolved to update this post whenever I get wind of opportunities/platforms that relate to the above points, so you might want to bookmark this post and visit it again. You might also want to follow me on Twitter or add me on Facebook to get similar updates.

Big Fat Lemons

life-gives-you-lemons

That’s just what ASUU strikes are in my opinion. And you can trust me, I’ve drunk my own lemonade. With the exception of volunteering, I have personally used all the examples I gave above, and I’m better for it, the most productive periods of my time in school were the times I spent out of it…during ASUU strikes when I learnt most of the stuff that I do now. You can choose to gripe and complain to everyone who cares to listen about how many extra years you’ll have to spend in school, or you can transcend the situation and make the best of it. My fellow yoots*, ASUU strike is no excuse for being a weist*. Take charge of your life.

PS: If you’ve got any other productive activity to add to the list please bring it to our notice via the comments, it is appreciated in advance. I also want to use this medium to call upon any interested and kindhearted citizens who have or are in a position to know about actual activities by way of seminars, skills acquisition platforms, volunteering, jobs paid and unpaid, e.t.c, that young ASUU strike victims can engage in for the duration. You can contact me here, on Facebook, or Twitter, and I will do my best to update this post to reflect those opportunities or pass them along via any other medium that is required. Thanks.

Images:
6 things to do – Image via Flickr. Text by me.
Students on a bench – Jide Odukoya Photography
Lemons – via Google

Read More

Molue Meditations – The Law Of Expectation

By: Bankole
15-11-2011
Nigeria, Rant Zone, Thought Log

molue meditations

Those that follow me have probably figured out by now that I spend a lot time in Lagos traffic, constantly hopping from one bus to another. While I would certainly prefer to commute less, there’s an upside, in that it allows me see and ponder all kinds of interesting things. This post is largely inspired by one of such bus rides, where I witnessed a passenger getting told off by fellow passengers for tossing the wrapping of whatever she’d been eating out the window. The lady in question seemed genuinely surprised to have been called out in this manner, “since when did we begin to care if there’s junk on on the road?” , she asked, looking frantically around for a sympathetic opinion. Unfortunately for her, there was none to be found, and judging from the vigorous dissent of almost all the number in the bus , I’m guessing she would have done better to keep her opinion to herself. Okay, I confess, I kind of derived some perverse pleasure from every moment of her discomfiture. At the same time however, I also couldn’t help but marvel at how the catch phrase “Eko o ni baje o”1 seems to have taken on a life of its own and created a new set of expectations in the hearts and minds of Lagos people.

Now, please forgive any subsequent appearance of grandiloquence, but it is at this juncture that I would like to reveal the first of my “original theories”, conceived in a Molue2, and propounded after many hours of grueling mental exertion and acute philosophical soliloquy, I assure you. Following protracted consultations with all my associated alter egos, in the persons of Bankole, Lordbanks and Naijadude, we have unanimously resolved to call it…(drumroll please)…the Law of Expectation.

To state it simply, I posit that:

expectations, positive or negative, which are fulfilled and reinforced by subsequent practice will over time achieve normative status and thereby become default behaviour and the generally accepted state of affairs – Lordbanks

Real corny, huh? Blame it on Law School. I wouldn’t know if this theory exists and is better articulated in some dusty old sociological treatise somewhere, but since I haven’t stumbled upon it yet, I just had to make this up. Anyways, the gist is; if people get away with doing something for long enough without raising a substantial number of eyebrows, it’ll become normal, no matter how weird or counter-intuitive it actually is. What then happens after is that we adjust our default states to anticipate these ‘normal’ behaviours, even if they go against our principles, what we would do in ordinary circumstances. Think about it…how bureaucrats will refuse to do their work, until they’ve been given the obligatory tip. Or how we can never get people to form an orderly queue, even if it were to save their lives. I have no idea how African time came about, but I can safely say that somehow, we’ve taught ourselves to never be on time, because the other person we’re expecting isn’t likely to be punctual either. And save for the white markings, a Nigerian knows that Zebra crossings are no different from any other stretch of road that must be respected by looking left, right and left again before one ventures across. I’m operating on the assumption that we agree that all this isn’t exactly normal behaviour. In the unlikely event that you don’t…but I’m sure you do.

Ironically, refusal to conform to this aberrant form of normal will not only earn you a reputation as an oddball at the least (sanctimonious bastard being the other end of the scale), but also cause you a good deal of inconvenience.The bureaucrats will hate you and delay or even mislay your precious files. Your sense of order and propriety will always ensure that you ‘carry last’ when there’s anything to be distributed. Getting stood up by tardy associates will become a fact of life. And you run the risk of being run over, should you be crazy enough to use the Zebra crossing in the exact manner for which it was intended.

So there you have it, a tale of warped expectations, giving rise to all sorts of social anomalies that this rant can’t even begin to explore. But the good news, however, is that expectations and the behavioural patterns that form as a result aren’t immutable. All that need happen is that the existing expectation be superseded by a superior one. Take Lagos for example. Time was when people had to claw and kick their way aboard Molues and Danfos. Now they line up patiently, waiting for the BRT. Bus conductors now pointedly refuse to open the door before they get to the bus stop, preferring to annoy a few impatient passengers over submitting the day’s earnings to LASTMA officials in fines. Paying tax used to be a joke. Now ordinary Lagosians point at specific infrastructural improvements in defence of it. The quickest way to book an appointment with the psychiatrist might be to drive against traffic. And it would be incredibly remiss of me to list all these developments without a mention of Oshodi, what it was, and what it now is (news clip from Channels TV). What Fashola has done is to create a new set of expectations in place of the old, the assurance of incentives or consequences resulting from specific actions and behaviour. In just over four years, Lagos has become a much saner, cleaner and safer place than it used to be because  its inhabitants have largely subscribed to the Eko o ni baje credo. The effects of this sort of social psyche transformation take a while to be really apparent, but we’ve seen that it can be done.

Satisfied that my fellow passenger had been taught a fine lesson in decent public etiquette, my mind to turned to deeper concerns. Like how she could have easily won the argument if we were in average company (the said event did not transpire in a Molue). And that’s the problem, there are too many people who think it is perfectly fine to throw trash anywhere they please, or expedite their passport processing with bribes, or throw lavish thanksgiving services after serving a jail sentence for looting public coffers. And nothing will change until we tip the scale of public opinion in the opposite direction, substantially so. I can’t say how or when it began, but in my opinion, much of what ails this country can be traced to  a process of gradual conditioning, one that took place on all levels. Like is ongoing in Lagos, the emergence of a new Nigeria will require fundamental changes in the way we think, in our perceptions of the probable consequences of our behaviour. A change in our expectations. How this will come about? A matter for another day perhaps. For now we have come to the end of this Molue meditation.

1Eko o ni baje o: Lagos state credo, introduced and popularised by the Raji Fashola administration.
2Molue: Huge yellow and black striped Lagos buses.

Read More

Just Do It

By: Bankole
05-11-2011
Learning, Random, Rant Zone, Thought Log

I remember back in school, I and a lot of other guys wanted to be designers. Right now, I fancy I’m one. Most of the other guys however are still where they where five years ago. They want to be designers.

It was back in school too when I and another set of guys decided we wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Now I play the guitar. The other guys still want to learn how.

Only one difference between me and those other guys. I wanted to learn design, so I designed. I wanted to learn to play the guitar, so I played the guitar. I just did. So simple, yet so hard.

It is my thinking that the difference between what we are and what we want to be, where we are and where we want to be, who we are and who we want to be is doing.

So what is it that you wanted to do? Just do it.

Read More

About Banks

My name is Bankole, and I can't stop learning. My Lagos hustle is on Nigerians Talk. I rant about my country on Nigeria Dialogue. I talk tech on TechLoy. Find me on Twitter

Dig A Little Deeper

© 2012 —LORDBANKS. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Wordpress.

Designed by Wpshower