The Communication Authority of Kenya(CA) & National Cohesion and Integration Commission(NCIC) published guidelines dealing with bulk SMSes and social media[PDF] for public consultation. The entire document is an interesting read and I encourage you to read it yourself; I would love to hear what you think in the comments. For this post, I’ll focus on Part 2 of the document: Guiidlines(sic) with regards to the use of social media for political messaging.

Tech blogs in Kenya suck! It’s something I’ve said before in other platforms and fora. I knew it empirically but didn’t have the hard data to back me up. I do now.

Let’s get into why I’m the right person to be talking about this:

• I’ve been reading tech news on an almost daily basis for more than 8 years now
• I’ve been following the local tech scene almost as long.
• I have a degree in Computer Science.
• I’m a part of the ecosystem.
• I have the skills to do this analysis
• I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, almost a year

While it’s entirely possible to analyse more than one blog I decided to do only one as a sample. The blog I choose for this is Kachwanya because:

A lot of musicians in the the country have been complaining about their inability to make money from their art. The reason they give for this, well the one that comes out loudest, is piracy.

I have a different view from that but this is not the time for it.

Recently stakeholders from the music industry released the final version of the music policy document that they hope may become law or inform it in some way or form.

Microsoft made a secret book for Nokia employees before its takeover The coolest way to introduce one company to another is to chuck out a book that shows the history of both companies. The book isn’t just a bunch of words but includes several cool illustrations.

In the months leading up to Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s phone business, the two companies approached Shoreditch-based media company TCOLondon to secretly build a unique book for the nearly 20,000 Nokia employees set to join Microsoft. The 128-page book was edited and illustrated in London before being printed and shipped to employees in more than 90 cities in 53 countries.
It’s a celebration of the rich history that Nokia and Microsoft both share, including etchings of Nokia’s origins in a paper mill in Finland and Microsoft’s roots in New Mexico. Illustrations range from the first-ever GSM call to surgeons using the Kinect sensor for operations.

Half of Kenyans fear torture in custody This is so sad. Like I wrote in my post about the legality of the Somali crack down, it’s entirely too easy to take the government to court over human rights abuses. More than that we have a judiciary that seems happy to smack down both the executive and the legislature and put them in their place, in fact I’d say they’re looking for every opportunity to do so.

So I was just watching news at 9 on NTV, first time in maybe in 2 months or so. I feel that watching it is pointless as most of it is political bullshit and the rest depressing. But today two things caught me First the murder of post graduate student, Mercy Keino, who died in rather mysterious circumstances over the weekend. Was actually going to do a post on it until a second story came along.