Share what you know, Learn what you don’t. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
_ Kindo » Kindo in 116 countries and growing
Since going live on the 22nd of October, people from all over the world have been trying Kindo. Personally, it’s been an amazing journey as we’re able to see what countries people are joining Kindo from, and thus how Kindo is growing. As of today, the number of countries Kindo users are in has grown to 116
Pretty exciting stuff
Must have:
Beneficial to have:
To apply:
E-mail cover letter and resume to hello AT kindo DOT com
Subject header must have KINDO FLASH
We are looking for people to join our team so no companies please.
Check it out, something nice to watch on Google Video:
_ http://video.google.com/
From:
http://blog.kindo.com/
If you’re interested in knowing who’s behind Kindo on a daily basis, then take a gander - been updated today (show some, not all):
_ Kindo - About
Right now there are lots of proud moms and pops here at our Putney offices! Today we’ve just released our first public version of Kindo [www.kindo.com], along with some nice improvements to our baby:
Since we’re no longer in “beta”, you can be sure that your tree and pages will work as expected. So continue to build your beautiful trees, and share it with your whole family. And tell your friends to start their own tree too!
We feel we’re far from the finished article - Kindo will grow up, evolve, and get bigger and better all the time. We’ve launched a new Kindo forum [http://forum.kindo.com] too, which is a good place to ask questions if you need any help. Please tell us what you do and don’t like about Kindo, and also tell us how you want it to grow too!
Bye for now!
We’ve been working pretty hard the last few weeks to get Kindo to a Public release, so this week we started telling people around the world about Kindo, and asking for their feedback.
The result has been that we’ve now got people from literally all over the world (73 countries now) using Kindo, with the exception of a few countries/areas (Greenland, most of Africa, some of the Middle East, Mongolia, and two South American countries I don’t want to name here So it’s pretty exciting stuff! To react to this we’re going to be rolling out some more languages soon, and focussing on making the application as consistent as possible across all languauges (not easy given differing string lengths…).
Anyways, onto the blog posts and reviews that I want to say thanks for! (In no particular order at all)
Spanish:
Italian:
German:
Swedish:
English:
It feels kinda strange ‘cos we’ve just deployed another version of Kindo which does some good under the hood stuff, so in a cathartic sense it feels good to write about it now, and on the other hand it’s good to let people know where are.
Kindo is in private beta right now, which means that it’s not open for everyone (if you want the lowdown, please sign up at http://www.kindo.com and we’ll add you to the whitelist)
Kindo is where families get together, build their tree and grow. It’s about staying in touch with your loved ones, and finding out what they’re up to. Right now you can build your own family tree, decorate your profile with personal details, and invite your family members to join in - but there’s much more to come.
Improvements we’ve made so far:
You should experience faster page loading.
Kindo is in 9 languages, and we’re working on another 4.
Problems we’ve experienced:
Sending email in 9 languages isn’t as easy as it may seem - this is mainly due to accented characters in languages like Spanish and Swedish.
If you’d like to know more about what we’re up to, these blog posts may be interesting:
http://blog.kindo.com/whats-kindo/
http://blog.kindo.com/2007/09/13/update-to-kindo-beta/
http://blog.kindo.com/whats-kindo/en/
Cool - many more miles to go, but it feels good to have done the first 1.5
We’re looking for great people to join our team of web ninjas. If you think you fit the bill, then please do mail us and we’ll see what we can do from there.
Details below:
__________________________
A growing web applications company based in Putney Bridge, London, specialising in Web 2.0 work in the LAMP stack, seeks an ambitious, talented, enthusiastic and motivated PHP Developer.
You will have:
To apply:
E-mail your cover letter and resume to hello AT technovated DOT com
Subject header must have SENIOR PHP WEB DEVELOPER-LNDN.
Emails / responses where the applicant does not fit the above requirements will not be replied to.
_ Buy, Browse and Sell Art - ArtFlock.com
Check it out - one of the SeedCamp finalists
Good one Ed
This has been a long time coming, and it feels good to finally get there, albeit with a mountain still to climb!!!
Personal reflective blog post to follow soon…
A little while ago we released an Alpha to a small group of people, to gather valuable user feedback. Thanks to those great people, we’ve had our heads down improving Kindo, and as a result we’re releasing the Beta, and at the same time opening it up to a wider audience for more feedback.
We’ve made the following progress:
Our mantra has become “Speed, Simple, Pleasure“, so in a nutshell that means we’re always trying to make Kindo faster for you, simpler, more intuitive and perhaps most importantly a pleasure to use.
Our new URL is http://beta.kindo.com/.
What can we do to make Kindo better?
If you dont like it – tell us why.
If you do like it – what are you missing?
Join the conversation on our blog, we’d love to hear your opinion.
Don’t worry – the same login details apply, and your data is all still there.
Have fun!
Babyfy goes through a second design iteration… I think it’s much better
_ Babyfy.com, the ultimate online resource for parents and parents to be
Nils is being secretive about our Alpha, for good reason. There’s been a lot of talk about the pro’s and cons of stealth startups, and I guess we’re one of them for now.
It feels kinda counter intuitive not be talking about it openly, but then bearing in mind what we’re trying to do and who we’re up against, it’s totally the right thing to do…
Check it out:
_ The Alpha
The last three months will probably never been forgotten amongst the people that have put this Alpha release together. We’ve assembled a pretty large team from more than a few different cultures, and we’ve managed technically to develop something which in my humble opinion is truly cutting edge. Most importantly, we’re doing something which we feel will really benefit our users in the long term.
Living and breathing what we’re doing every day sometimes means that often we don’t see the wood for the trees. Having people external to our team try out what we’re doing then give us feedback, is such a valuable process, and we’re hoping that it will help us to discover new bugs, problems, and cultural differences that will enable us to give our users something truly exciting. Of course, we are already aware of many bugs, but having our friends help us to find more is both important and rewarding. We like to think of it as continually polishing our masterpiece.
To do that we’ve created an area we’re using to discuss everything related to what we’re doing, because we want to keep things real. We’re hoping that as we grow and develop further, you’ll help us to make the right decisions about what features we add, and tell us what you think we’re perhaps doing the wrong way. After all, we’re only people, and we’re making the assumption that getting things right for users is going to be an interactive process involving everyone!
So today, while getting the Alpha out the door, it felt incredibly rewarding, both to be working with such a cool team, but also to actually get something out that people are using and testing.
Our initial stats show that the trend we were hoping for is in fact happening, which is also very rewarding. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to take something very complex, and turn it into something visually simple and easy to use. I’m not saying we’ve achieved that, but we’re certainly most of the way there.
So, it’s almost time to go home and do some more work, but it sure feels like today (even though it feels like we’re in a heat wave) was a good day
I’m the first to admit that I’ve had my head in the sand the last few months, and have received many emails asking what’s happening with Tech for Africa... So I thought that posting something public would be the best way to communicate what’s happening for everyone to see
Must say that the last few months have been a blur…
Since January of this year, Technovated has gone from 4 people, to 10, to a venture funded project with 14 people in all, over three office moves and many many late nights and long weekends.
There’s a blog post coming up about it all soon, but the long and the short of it is as follows:
So, in truth I’m not 100% happy about it ‘cos I’ve been talking about it for a while and I’m the kind of person to do rather than talk wherever possible, but I’ve taken some good advice from people who are helping out, and the consensus is that we should be aiming for around March / April next year rather, to give us more time to get points 1 through 4 above right. I certainly don’t want to spend time, effort and potentially my goodwill only to get great speakers out to SA and the event is a dismal failure and costs me more money than I have or can afford!
Anyways, this isn’t a sob story if you were thinking you were gonna be reading one.
A lot of people have either told me to give the idea up, or told me that I’m crazy, but I believe that they’re wrong. I’m pretty sure now that the original format and idea that I had bubbling in my head is going to have to be re-thought to take into account the difference environment, the cost of long trans-Atlantic flights, and the relative expense that something like this is when compared to someones monthly salary.
That said, I think the direction to take is to adapt and give more time to finding the right dates so that the right speakers can congregate for the event. Once that is done getting sponsorship will be easier and therefore the chances of success higher.
So, bottom line is that I’m still personally 100% committed to getting this off the ground and happening in Africa, even if it has to be delayed some - I would rather delay by 6 to 8 months and make it a good one where everyone benefits, than rush to make it work in October and end up with something that is mediocre…
So, I ask you to bear with me, and to stay tuned. It will happen.
Welcome to the personal blog of Gareth Knight. On web 2.0, technology, living in London, business, software, the web, Africa and sustainability. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
