CodeLagos

CodeLagos is an initiative by the Lagos State government to teach 1 million Lagosians how to code by 2019.

Recently, they celebrated the end of the pilot phase with a video on Youtube detailing their achievements in the first phase.

The video summarizes the milestones achieved by the program during its pilot phase. Despite early criticism by naysayers, it is good to see it reach this milestone.

Finding Software Alternatives

If you are looking for a software alternative to any software. You have two alternatives:

1. Google for software alternatives and try every one of them
2. Take advice from others

The first means that you are going to learn from your own experience. In my own experience, this is a slow and painful way to learn.

A much easier way is to learn from the experiences of others. At that is where AlternativeTo comes in.

AlternativeTo is a website which lists alternatives to web-based software, desktop computer software, and mobile apps, and sorts the alternatives by various criteria, including the number of registered users who have clicked the "Like" button for each of them on AlternativeTo.

Unlike a number of other software directory websites, the software is not arranged into categories, but each individual piece of software has its own list of alternatives, permitting a more tailored listing approach.

Searching through AlternativeTo was how I found a number of software tools that I currently used when I decided to stop software piracy.

APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book

Once in a while, you read a great book and cannot in Good conscience keep it to yourself. Today I finished reading APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki.

Although the book was last updated in 2013, it does everything is promises to do. Starting with the authoring of your book, this book helps you navigate the world of digital publishing.

I was amazed that despite its age, the book didn't seem off the mark. It was well worth my time and I finished reading the book inspired to continue on my journey on self-publishing.

If you are interested in self-publishing, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book is a must read.

Uchaguzi

Ushahidi is a platform for incidence reporting. It was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election violence in 2008.

Earlier this year, it was used to monitor post-election violence in the United States of America. It was a thing of joy to see a product from Africa achieve that feat.

Now it comes full circle as on the 8th of this month, Kenyans will be voting again.

To this end, the company has launched Uchaguzi which is a platform to monitor the Kenyan elections happening this Tuesday.

It a nice homecoming for Ushahidi.

KDP POD

As someone with an interest in digital publishing, I am always on the lookout for new trends in the industry.

Amazon KDP allows you publish ebooks while CreateSpace allows you publish paperbacks. Both companies are owned by Amazon.

Today, a new trend is emerging that will make Amazon KDP a one stop shop for all things publishing. I would like to call it KDP POD as there isn't an official name for it yet.

KDP POD from my experience will come to replace CreateSpace eventually. At the moment, the company will work through all the bugs and the customer experience, and then one day, when they are ready, they will put CreateSpace out to pasture.

In my sincere opinion, if you want to do any publishing, use KDP POD because you are better off growing with the platform.

Have a great weekend.

AiLiveComplete Download

AiLiveComplete allows you to run App Inventor without internet connection. It runs the entire App Inventor infrastructure entirely on your computer.

Downloading from the site tends to break alot. As a result of this, I got the download link and so rather than download it from the site, you can place the link in your download manager.

Copy this link -> https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ailivecomplete/AppInventorOfflineJune222016.zip?r=&ts=1500049837&use_mirror=netix

Have a great weekend.

7 Free Content Creation Tools

Welcome to a new month.

I apologize for not posting in a while. I was seriously busy at work. I start the month with a list of 7 free content creation tools. This is taken from a post by Shopify.

If you don't want to read the post, below is a list of tools along with links to their respective websites:

1. Meme Generator
2. Lumen5
3. Fake iPhone Text Generator
4. GIPHY
5. Canva
6. Qzzr
7. Playbuzz

Have a great month ahead.