Geekscribes - Latest Comments

Re: Transparent Windows with XNeat!

ElementalQuest — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:38:58 -0000

Is there any way to disable "Click Through" on a window? Right-clicking on the task bar doesn't bring up the transparency selection.

Re: Why Display Names Should Be Allowed On Social Networks

Chinmay Brahma — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:25:54 -0000

Yes , that would be a new and better definition for a Social network .
Great

Re: Using Microsoft Word To Write Your Dissertation? 10 Essential Tips!

RRikesh — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:10:06 -0000

Quote:
"There is a small quirk with the in-built Word Count feature of Microsoft Word: apparently, it includes spaces as words. So if you see the picture below, there are only 2 words, but Word Count says there are 3. If you remove the space, it correctly reports there are 2 words."

Isn't Word considering the number "1" as a word too? I think it's why it detects your heading as three words.

Re: Fundamentals of Programming: Part 2 – Pseudo Code and Batch Jobs

Tarikukassa — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:31:50 -0000

waw the programs are so interesting.So professionals participating in supplying this program are so wonder full.I greatly thanks you!!!

Re: Fundamentals of Programming: Part 3 – Style, Indentation and Comments

Inf — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:26:42 -0000

I'll give it a read. Send me the link when you're done, here or Twitter (easier) and I'll add you to the blogroll. Good to have other tech bloggers around! :)

Re: Fundamentals of Programming: Part 3 – Style, Indentation and Comments

Mozammil Khodabacchas — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:52:36 -0000

Notepad++ is my favorite.Very interesting tutorials. Keep up the good work. Also, as a side note, i'm setting up my blog soon! My first post will be on OOP :-)

Re: Why Display Names Should Be Allowed On Social Networks

Md. Mashikur Rahman — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:33:14 -0000

display name is good. thanks, for the system.

Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

khush jiraiya — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:50:35 -0000

manz r li bientot (mo croire ek esperer) tou moricien pou lever ek developer dans tou les sense du terme.

Re: Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

Inf — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:34:00 -0000

What a long comment, Raymond! Thank you for your time! I'll do same and go over each of your points.

Safety fears, as you have said, can be allayed if more companies would start accepting online payments and more people start using these services. Banks could also do some education campaigns to tell their clients "Don't worry, go ahead, you're safe. You're covered up to X amount if you use our services". That should be a good first start.

Lack of customers - this will be less of a problem as more people start shopping online. But's it a bit of a catch 22 since people are not shopping online because there are not enough people shopping online. There has to be a start somewhere, and as I said, as soon as the big names start offering ePayment services, we should start seeing some movements on the markets.

Postal services / Courrier - consiidering that Mauritius is relatively small, this service could have been introduced by the Mauritius Post itself and revive its dying services in the process. I don't think people will blame the courrier for breakage etc. The service could provide insurance, where you pay additional to ensure your goods get to destination safely. If you purchase insurance and there is breakage/lost, then the post/courrier handles that and refunds you up to some amount agreed. There remains the problem of the guy going to dangerous places and I guess regarding that, I can't find a solution. Maybe the Police should step up their game, maybe it's just because of living standards in Mauritius at the moment. At least, it's not a tech-related problem so I cannot comment on that.

Discussion forums - I know the pain. I was a moderator for quite a lot of forums, especially on Nubaz for a while. Discussions get out of hand very quickly and the dirty words start flying. Nevertheless, there WERE discussions! That's important imho, that discussions were taking place. Now that these forums are dead, there are hardly any discussion.

Interestingly enough, it's not that Mauritians don't want to discuss about national affairs! The radio shows "La Voix Maurice" etc prove this point. That's why I wondered why private radios didn't have their own discussion forums.

A forum also allows a great deal of activity to take place, for example, people discovering others that share the same interests, people buying/selling/trading goods online etc. It's a good place to start educating people, to conduct marketting campaigns etc. It's sad that Mauritius doesn't have an official forum yet. I wonder if local bloggers can pool together to re-launch a forum and manage it. Just a suggestion! A "Quora" for Mauritius would be great!

Bus route planning - I didn't know the service existed and I thank CarrotMadMan for pointing out the excellent service for me. It's a good start and I wish there were more features and information on the site. I also wish there are more services like that. How about a taxi-renting service? Or an "Explore-Mauritius-By-Bus" site?

Netfliix - Not coming to Mauritius any time soon. Why? Slow internet speed and a market dominated by satellite TV providers and MyT. But I wanted a service where you can ship physical DVDs around the island. Again the courrier problem comes up. Again the online payment problem arises. As long as these issues are not resolved, we're not getting that. Also remains the small problem of Mauritians liking to keep things for themselves and not returning them...

SME - If not Alibaba, at least we could have the Etsy-equivalent for Mauritius. I believe SMEs are not in the limelight enough and such a site will allow SMEs to promote their products. I know people like to buy from big names but what if you could get the same products at much cheaper prices from SMEs locally. Especially if you can see what other users have said about the SME and have rated it positively?

Local Knowledge - I don't care if all it contains is "marchand boulette divan discotheque 123". It still counts as local knowledge. After some time, people will start sharing their favourite "baz" with others and then, the Mauritius web-space gets more populated. You mention very valid concerns regarding people wanting to boost up their friends and lack of activity in Mauritius, plus low ads revenue. You are right and I don't know what to add to counter that. Low ads revenue, we can work around by having the sites promoted pay a yearly fee to get shown higher in the list of restaurants for e.g. I don't know if that'd be unfair, but it'd keep the site alive for a while. Also, regarding people promoting their friends, we can leave it to crowds to moderate the site and eventually bring down the score.

You have not said many negative things - you just told the truth and I thank you again for your long comment. I wish I get more people writing comments like this.

Re: Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

Raymond — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:04:23 -0000

Hmm, where to start? First I'm glad I finally got the RSS feed to your site working. I don't know if being in China has something to do, but I usually get a failure on trying to subscribe to blogs. Now, be prepared for my long comment:

Safety fears -- very reasonable, but it having the endorsement of big companies in it would help to reduce such concerns. If the big companies are found to be using e-money for local daily transactions, it would allay the deep rooted fears that many of us have towards not being able to see the flow of money and therefore safely knowing where our money are.

Lack of customers -- well, Mauritius is 'small', so we would always suffer somewhat in that respect. As the population is not that large (yeah, I know, we're on a tiny island making it look like we're overpopulated now), client base will undeniably be very small, making viability of e-commerce a question.

Postal service -- I agree it has a lot to improve. Maybe an express charge to ensure prompt delivery, although that will impact cost factor when buyer is making transaction. I was talking to an aunt just last week about Mauritius needing someone to set up a courrier service. In China, we have many such companies, and their deliveries are quite spot-on. Not saying there are no hiccups, but on the whole it's reliable and not that expensive. They will deliver on stated date, which might be the next day or later, depending on location. I would say the problem with this (and it relates to another point I'll make later) is the safety of the delivery guy in Mauritius. As we all know, Mauritius is not such a paradise. There are aggressions and thefts on a frequent basis. Requesting the delivery guy to go to remote or 'dangerous' areas could create problems.

Portal/discussion forums -- last time I checked into something similar, Servihoo was hosting such facility although the discussion topics were pretty poor. That was like a lifetime ago. I also once registered with a Mauritian forum that was hosted in Canada I think, but it died afterwards. My personal opinion is that like most forums, a .mu one suffers the bane of being populated with young people who have too much idle time and want to 'prend nissa' on everything rather than try to help, plus the latent racism that inevitably flares up. And of course, all the 'go**t', 'pi**n'. 'tr.. f..e' etc turn the ladies and newbies off the site. And whether we like it or not, a certain feminine presence is necessary to keep a healthy forum.

Regarding moderating a forum, I would like to say it's not as easy as one think. I have done a little moderating for a while for an expat forum in Beijing before. One could say that some problems occur due to a relatively laid-back approach and repetitive absence of the owner/admin. However, more importantly, it's being able to have mods who will actively encourage discussions and steer arguments and flames back on track that is so hard. It's not enough to say, "Okay, I have been on this site for a while, I know most users' character, I will be a mod. I will delete/ban users that curse, or remove bots/spams." You need people who collectively can be online all the time and keep the forum alive and reasonably clean.

Bus route planning. I think it's a good thing that this now exists. Maybe the site should get more visibility and be linked to more Mauritius tourism/govt sites as they would be of great help to visitors of our dear island. The bus fares might have a note added as to when the price list was taken. The pricing variance (adult/child/student?) is not clearly explained and having the first/last bus times also appear on route search would be good. Anyway, I'm digressing.

I had a discussion a few years ago with my uncle about a Google-like map that is updated by interested people, university students, volunteers, etc. We were talking about how it could help people to plan their travel, to know where such and such place/shops are found, etc. It would be great if this could be set up. It's certainly feasible.

Netflix -- I won't comment since I don't know the internet situation in Mauritius.

SME -- Alibaba is a success but it also has problems that I won't go into. Anyway, it works because it is able to reach a large audience and clientele in China. In Mauritius, we could have B2B, but having diverse companies posting enough items with sufficient details is not easy, because, especially in the beginning, it would require a large amount of time to keep updating prices, new products with pictures, keeping an online presence to reply to customer queries (even if only for work hours/days). Also, many small businesses are not going to have internet. It is easy to say, have the craftsmen to put their arts on as well as contact details, so that even if they are not online, people can know about and contact them. But sites like Alibaba charge the companies/individuals for membership. Do you reckon the craftsmen would be willing to fork out the money? Maybe if done under some sort of 'association artisans' where requests are redirected to relevant persons. But paying money just for the off-chance someone might one day want to order a large amount of local crafts ...? They won't be so happy.

Also, we more often than not, tend to stick to ordering from big companies / shops that we are familiar with. As you said, some education is needed on how to shop online. The site would be more interesting to overseas clients, and if new products are made available. Although we can be sure some other companies will try to import similar product and sell them at lower price pretty soon. Haha! For overseas clients, not that many items would realistically interest them.

What did I want to say ... Oh yeah. If I remember correctly, Alibaba has its own method of payment called Alipay and I believe it was partly created because at first Paypal was not available in China either. I think Mauritius could set up something similar since based on your article Paypal cannot be used locally. Let's call it Dodopay. It would work like Paypal in that you transfer money from your bank account to Dodopay, and you then use Dodopay to buy things. And you can keep the money in your Dodopay low in case your account somehow gets hacked/stolen, and you only top up the money when you are going to make an online purchase. Of course, the charges involved in the transactions bank-Dodopay-bank need to be figured out by someone who's more into these kind of things.

Back to the courrier service. In China, when I buy online, I usually try to find a supplier who accepts 'Payment on receipt of goods' since I don't have Paypal, Alipay and other e-payment methods. Blame it on not being able to make a local e-transfer the first time I tried with my e-bank account in China. I just lost the will to try again. Anyhow, here, the courrier comes with the good, I (should normally) check the goods, sign receipt and pay them the money I owe the supplier. The courrier agency normally gets a fee for such transaction, and you are told beforehand how much that would be in addition to the fee to be paid to the agency.

In Mauritius, I can see the courrier being accused of damaging/stealing goods, people trying to steal the goods without paying, or robbing the courrier (see my point around beginning of my comment). This would therefore create restrictions on delivery areas, cash amounts acceptable, etc which need to be addressed first.

Local knowledge -- I was thinking of something like cityweekend.cn (local site in China) that offers info about events, restaurant reviews, etc. For restaurants I usually use dianping.com which is completely in Chinese but more comprehensive (except no events section) and have more people contributing (since more locals than expats here, haha) with reviews of places, hotels and restaurants among others. In Mauritius, it would be difficult in that most restaurants offer food of different standards every meal. :D Also, you might end up with more 'marchand biryani devant magasin XYZ', 'marchand boulettes devant discotek 123' than proper restaurants. And unfortunately also with too many contributors with vested interests trying to boost their own/friends' restaurants while flaming others down. Ultimately, it will boil down on the site being able to keep up to date and posting events that will attract visitors. And we know that there's not that much happening in Mauritius. After a while, the interest in the site cools down, and low ads revenue makes it hard to keep the site online.

I know I've said a lot of negative things. But I do believe e-commerce can happen and bloom to a certain extent. It will require a lot of work and patience and cooperation with the local authorities. Finding the persons willing to do it as well as the funds to start is the hard part.

Re: Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

carrotmadman6 — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:03:25 -0000

Online shopping + auctions. The paypal/CC thing are valid concerns & the slow post as well. Despite all those shenanigans with the Mauritius Post, people are still doing their online shopping on ebay. Which tells you that there is indeed a market for it. Except no one has cracked the right formula yet. Perhaps it's time for someone to start an alternative local courier company. ;)

Forums. There are a few specialist forums for Mauritians. The ones that comes to mind is the cars forum, the dota forum & the expat/tourist forums. But tech forum? None that I know. :(

Local knowledge / Search service. http://www.mauritiuswebguide.c... started out as nice initiative to link all local websites. Eventually was taken over by spam bots.

Re: Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

Yashvin Awootar — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:21:21 -0000

Very interesting analysis.
If am not mistaken, there exists online merchant systems set up to accept credit card payment in the island. I know that MCB offers such a service but from the feedback I previously gathered around, it seems that the cost associated are quite high and not profitable.

Although the online purchases work extremely well worldwide, it might not become popular for purchases within the small island, Mauritius, at least, not for all services/products offered.
While people might easily adopt advance booking of cinema tickets or entries for events via internet, same cannot be said for other products widely available through branches set up round the island.

As a frequent online shopper, I would be enthusiast to know that there are Mauritian shops offering clothes or electronic devices on the web. But unless there is a real motivation for me to buy online, I would still prefer to go to the shop directly. Motivation can be anything, for example, better prices/discounts/cumulative points, free gifts, etc.

To confirm : Air Mauritius provides online booking and the prices offered online are much more interesting than the same ticket sold in any other office.

Keep it up! Nice work!

Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

Inf — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:52:50 -0000

I had forgotten about YCombinator. It'd be good to have such a company in Mauritius, i.e. a Startup Launcher, but I don't think there are that many startups forming in Mauritius at the moment. Also, you need investors and money and I don't think you'll find many investors in Mauritius to put money in startups just yet.

But you are correct. Mauritius should stop trying to copy others e.g. Singapore etc, and come up with our own solutions. Who knows, maybe we can come up with something better than them. We have knowledgeable people and we only need the will to try instead of copy.

We might even sell our skills to other countries someday. Mauritius as a true services hub. Not bad.

Re: Online Services Mauritius Does Not Have And Why

Jean Gray — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:46:24 -0000

I've just read about the Online Shopping and the Why? and IMHO there's a forth reason. The cost of hosting such a service. I once had a talk to a guy who custom make leather bags ('Cuire/Simili-Cuire'). His designs were simple, classy, elegant, not-that-expensive and more importantly LIMITED EDITIONS (you won't expect to be seeing a thousand of these back in the streets of port-louis or at UOM...). I asked him why he didnt have his own website, with an online catalog, online shopping etc, and he simply replied, it costs a lot to host AND to maintain such a website. And to my amazement/disappointment, his solution was FACEBOOK... #imareadtherestnow

Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

Roy Mathur — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:38:22 -0000

I agree with just about everything you say and only a couple of hours ago, I would have probably written a similar post (though a little less well researched than your own). I moan about this stuff all the time to anyone who will listen.

We need start-ups yes, but most people haven't got en sous to rub together here, so we need money, expertise and a climate conducive to nerdly endeavors. We need something like YCombinator (http://ycombinator.com/) here in Mauritius, preferable in Cyber City. When I spoke to the government representative of the ICT/NCB Incubator scheme (http://www.gov.mu/portal/sites... at InfoTech 2011, everything seemed upside down. They offer some biz training, no angel investment and expect you to pay THEM!

I'm sure Mauritius could could totally pwn other countries technologically speaking, its just a matter of the right kind of encouragement, i.e. MONEY, training (like hard-core programming skills, NOT school certificates) and the right environment (e.g. a 24/7 hour high tech geek campus in Cyber City and regular transport to and from this nerdvana.

That's my deux sous.

By the way, if you are a Mauritian games coder (or any other kind of tech nerd, blogger whatever...), please get in touch. I'd like to interview you for the Independent Daily.

http://roymathur.com

Re: PostgreSQL Database Cluster Initialisation Failed Solution

Abc — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:07:50 -0000

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Re: 4 Innovative Tricks To Save Printer Ink

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Re: PostgreSQL Database Cluster Initialisation Failed Solution

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Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

guest — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:50:25 -0000

Yep, it's all about having the "cyber" culture, and culture short also. It will not be very fun, but very funny ... Student loans ... frankly the rs 30,000, I understand may not be affordable to all purses, but these are the "entry level" prices in the international market ... Successful start ups, even the call centres and BPOs are setup here as well as overseas by graduates or students of the 1500 best universities in the world, culture, and education need to be dramatically scaled up for this.

Re: PostgreSQL Database Cluster Initialisation Failed Solution

Talaksiew — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:23:22 -0000

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Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

InF — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:42:00 -0000

Interesting. I didn't know that site existed.

Anybody used TCL Online Store before? A review would be welcome!

Re: Mauritius is not a cyber island yet. Here’s why.

UZz — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:31:48 -0000

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Have a look friends... http://www.tclonlinestore.com
Cheers Guys

Re: 4 Innovative Tricks To Save Printer Ink

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Re: PostgreSQL Database Cluster Initialisation Failed Solution

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Re: 4 Innovative Tricks To Save Printer Ink

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