Your Money In Your Hand

Adamu Fun Bala CSA Entrepreneur, IT Specialist/Strategist, Software Systems

QUICK INTRODUCTION
It is for me a duty to share with you and indeed the public this service I have enjoy for many years now. I am surprise that you don’t find this sort of articles on the internet on this issue.

For those of you looking for better and secure ways to make online transactions without the hassles of the banking hall – you have had “convenience” on your finger tips, you just probably didn’t recognize so. It is no longer news that the fast growing consolidated payment scheme that offers cardholders convenience (to securely transact on their mobile phones) and the ability to carry out ATM transactions other than cash withdrawals.

QUICKTELLER
The Quickteller increases your convenience because it gives you the room to carry out an array of transactions on the ATMs, PoS and mobile phones because it does what you do at the bank. Other services include funds transfers airtime recharge, which enables you to top up your phone either with or without a PIN; bills payment at ATMs, web, bank branches and PoS for utilities like DSTV, HiTV, PHCN, Lagos water rates, Zain, etc.

A screenshot of the services “Category” tab

Other benefits are convenience to cardholders, increased revenue to partners, cardholders engagement and loyalty schemes, consolidated view of payment reports for cardholders and partners, and improved ROI on existing technology investment for partners. It enables the cardholder view previous payments.

HOW TO GET QUICKTELLER
Go to https://get.quickteller.com to download the right app for your phone/device >> Sign-up/Register a new account >> Register for eCash >> Fund your eCash
OR
Go to https://www.quickteller.com >> Sign-up/Register a new account >> Register for eCash >> Fund your eCash

Verve eCash
Verve eCash is a simple prepaid card linked to your email address and phone number. To get it Just visit Quickteller. Or click here. You can also dial *322*60# from your phone

How to topup your eCash account?

1. Online here.
2. At an ATM. See instructions here

How to use it – See here

Presenting; The Remember Card Feature for Verve Cards! – Coming Soon!!!

 

Here at Quickteller, we are constantly trying to figure out ways to make the on-line payment experience a bit more convenient, while at the same time maintaining the security and safety of transactions. One time-consuming feature repeatedly came to mind: why do users have to repeatedly enter their full card details each and every time they have to carry out transactions?

So we gave it some more thought….hmmm…. OK.

Registered users have Quickteller accounts, why don’t we find a way to tie in their card details to their accounts and save some time?

Quickteller in conjunction with Verve presents the Remember Card feature for your Verve Cards!!!

Features:

• Faster and more convenient
• Only CVV2 and PIN are required
• Safe and secure as it uses Quickteller login & Safetoken
• Ties all your ATM cards to your unique phone number* you used to register for Safetoken**
• Available on Quickteller.com, m.Quickteller.com
• Will be available on select partner sites shortly

*Your unique phone number must have been verified by the system
**Safetoken OTP required

If you want to enjoy Remember Card when carrying out transactions, just register your Verve Card for Safetoken at the ATM using your unique phone number and then verify your phone number on Quickteller.com. If you have not verified your phone number on the system, you will be prompted to do so while carrying out a transaction on Quickteller.

How it Works:

1. Enable your Verve card for SafeToken
2. Login with your Quickteller details (i.e. username and password). If you do not have one, create one at Quickteller.com
3. Verify the phone number used for Safetoken (please note that you can register all of your cards for Safetoken using the same unique phone number)

Please note:

If you have not verified your phone number on the system, you will be prompted to do so while carrying out a transaction on Quickteller.

A Safetoken One-Time Password (OTP) is required to complete transactions over your bank’s set limit. If you have not registered your card for Safetoken, you will receive instructions on how to register for Safetoken at the ATM, via text or email.

Coming soon: An article on how to make money using the QUICKTELLER platform

Adamu Fun Bala
MD/CEO – Lynxx Systems & Comm. Tech. LTD

Disclaimer: All information herein is correct as verified. However, you are acting out of your own volition

Cultivate Your Leadership Style

Three Questions To Help Cultivate Your Leadership Style

I can tell you with absolute certainty that I didn’t think about my own leadership style for a large part of the first decade of my career.

I didn’t care at the time. It wasn’t relevant. Although in hindsight, I certainly had a style, it was more muscle than finesse.

My focus was on driving results through people and pushing, pushing, pushing. It was a simple formula. Drive results + make bosses happy = growth in responsibility and income. And it worked. The results were there, but the relationships were shallow…mostly transactional, and the work was less than rewarding. There was little consideration for the bigger picture of the people or environment I was creating.

Some Important Run Commands

These commands can be very handy to all you command nerds. I have found this priceless-ly  helpful and quick shortcuts to a many rather cumbersome procedures

RUN Commands !

1. Accessibility Controls – access.cpl
2. Accessibility Wizard – accwiz
3. Add Hardware Wizard – hdwwiz.cpl
4. Add/Remove Programs – appwiz.cpl
5. Administrative Tools – control admintools

MAKE MONEY FROM SHORTCODE

using a short code

SHORT CODE: Are special telephone numbers, significant shorter than Full telephone numbers that can be used to address SMS AND MMS messages from mobile phones or fixed phones. They are also known as short numbers. They are new, easy way for media outlets, brand owners and others to use mobile phones to reach and interact with target audience. Short codes are based on text messaging, a service available on almost all digital mobile phones. Instead of a 10-digit number, short code is five or six digit in length, and the digit can

Correspond to a brand name or phrase. They are easy to remember and

Samsung Launches Three New Galaxy Tab 3 Tablets

On Monday Samsung Electronics America introduced three new tablets in the Galaxy Tab 3 family: the 7.0, the 8.0 and the 10.1 measuring 7 inches, 8 inches and 10.1 inches respectively. They will be made available here in the States beginning July 7 costing $199, $299 and $399, priced according to size, with pre-orders starting on Tuesday.

Freely Browse the Internet Using your Blackberry Plan

How to use a BlackBerry Plan on any other devices

Assorted Smartphones

BlackBerry plans are relatively cheaper than other straight data plans mostly because of the way the service is designed. Often times, I get asked if it is possible to use the a BlackBerry service plan on other phones. The answer to that is yes and no…in the sense that it is possible in some instances and won’t work in others. Again, it depends on the way the service is configured by the network in question.

Right now, here in Nigeria, it is possible on two networks, so I will share how you can on both, however, you should note that the data access via this means may be as a result of oversight, if that is the case, it could be shutdown anytime.

Airtel:

• Activate a BlackBerry plan on an Airtel Nigeria sim by texting BSM to 440 or Dial *440*4# costs N1,200. Or by texting BCM to 440 at the cost of N1,400.
• If your Phone does not have the Airtel APN set, set it up as follows APN: internet.ng.airtel.com  Username: internet Password: internet
• And that’s it. Your device will access the internet using the BlackBerry plan’s data. You should note that the Airtel plan has a 1Gb cap.
• If you exhaust the data and want to purchase another, you will have to first deactivate the current one by texting DEACTIVATE to 440.

Airtel 1+1 Offer:

To be eligible for this offer you must have  subscribed to one of the above blackberry plans at least once. After the expiry (30 days) of the bundle you do the following:

• Recharge the same Airtel SIM with a minimum of N1,500
• Dial *440*161#
• Voila!!! Your data account will be credited with 4,192MB (4.1GB) of data, valid for a hooping 60 days, (great, is it not?)
• You can now insert the SIM into the modem or any device you use for browsing
• ENJOY

Globacom:

• Activate BlackBerry Social Plan on the Glo by texting SoWeek (costs N400 and has a 700mb cap valid for a week) or SoMonth (costs N1,200 and has a 3Gb cap valid for a month) to 777.
• Change the network profile settings on your non-BlackBerry device to the following: APN: blackberry.net; Access number: *99#; leave username and password blank.
• And that’s it. Your device will access the internet using the BlackBerry plan’s data. The plan is automatically deativated when the data is exhausted, so you can straightaway activate a new one.

Update: Seems the Glo plan doesn’t work any longer, MTN though now works as described below:

MTN

• Activate BBC or BIS on the MTN by texting BBC or BIS to 21600 (costs N1000 (BBC) or 1500 (BIS) respectively and has a 2.5Gb cap valid for a month).
• Change the network profile settings on your non-BlackBerry device to the following: APN: web.gprs.mtnnigeria.net; username and password are both web.
• And that’s it. Your device will access the internet using the BlackBerry plan’s data.

Most phones require you to restart before changes to the APN are effected so if it does not work as soon as you alter the APN, restart the phone.

You should also note that I haven’t personally tried any of these so I may not be able to comment on what the experience is like. I have seen them work though, so it legit works.

BlackBerry Complete: Features: BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), BlackBerry Email and Instant

Messaging with Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. Included is full access to browse the

internet, BlackBerry App World, Social Networking such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace

and one Web-based Email Account such as Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.

BlackBerry Social: Features:socializing and connecting on Facebook and Twitter and

browsing the internet, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), BlackBerry Email, BlackBerry App World

and Instant Messaging.

We are specialists, we definitely can HELP!!!

Adamu Fun Bala CSA; MD/CEO Lynxx Systems & Communication Technology LTD; 08035158065
Information Technology Expert: Database Design, Development and Management, Webdesign, Content Management Systems (CMS), Data Analyst etc.

Android 5.0 “Key Lime Pie” UI Concepts Hitting the Web, Give Us Very High Hopes

As we approach the rumored date for Android 4.3′s launch on June 20 (at least, that’s what our sources say), many have already come to the realization that we should not expect Google to introduce a new interface for the OS. It will still be called Jelly Bean and nothing too crazy will happen. What most in the business have their money on is that we can expect to see Google change up Android’s look in the iteration after next, being Android 5.0 “Key Lime Pie.” That’s when we will see some new colors, icons, wallpapers, etc. take place. 

Graphic designers appear to be already creating their very own concepts for what they would like to see in Android 5.0, playing more with lockscreen widgets and revising the Android homescreen look. Artist Jinesh Shah took to his Google+ page recently to post up a few pictures of his own ideas, some of which we have become big fans of. While it comes off as minimal and clean, there is enough information on any given homescreen and the lockscreen to give off the sense that this concept would be highly functional and practical for users.

The lockscreen widget shows a comprehensive look at this user’s upcoming meeting, even showing a map preview of its location. Below that, we can see upcoming flight details, all of which would be able to be customized under new settings that would come with KLP. As for the homescreen changes, what sets this concept apart from others is the idea of “hidden” widgets. With swipes and other gestures, you could reveal other widgets that don’t necessarily have to be on your homescreen when not being used. It’s a fantastic concept, one that we probably wouldn’t mind seeing implemented.

Share your thoughts on the Android 5.0 concept below!

originally posted on: http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/14/android-5-0-key-lime-pie-ui-concepts-hitting-the-web-give-us-very-high-hopes/

You look sweet

The way you dress does matter. In fact, by most accounts, it matters a lot.

According to Cynthia Nellis, a style expert at about.com, you have to always put forward your best image: “If casual wear is acceptable at the job, it has to be freshly cleaned and neat to take it a notch above others that presume casual wear means sloppy. They will never make a good first impression.” Just behind communication and presentation skills, how someone is dressed was the most important attribute in getting and keeping a job, according to a study by Total Executive, Inc. and Syracuse University.

We’re Not Casual About Casual Wear

D’Boss Cleaners

Sure, you may be able to wash your casual clothing at home, but time spent doing that along with the most hated household chore — ironing—only takes away time from family and other pursuits. We have the skills to make your clothes look and feel their best by creating a crispness that simply cannot be duplicated with home care. No matter what the surroundings and circumstances, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

How You Can Help

Stains and soil left too long can be impossible to remove. Studies by the Dry cleaning & Laundry Institute show that after aging for only one week, 20% of stains cannot be removed satisfactorily. After three weeks, this increases to 47%. If staining occurs, bring it to us as soon as possible. Don’t press stained or soiled clothes. Heat is another factor that makes stains more difficult to remove. Please point out spills such as those from white wine, fruit juices, or soft drinks, or other stains that may not be visible, when you bring in your cleaning. These invisible stains require special attention by us in order to prevent them from permanently discoloring your item. Perspiration can cause dyes in fabrics to change color so, if possible, protect your garments from excessive contact with perspiration. Always allow lotions, antiperspirants, perfume, and other toiletries to dry before you get dressed. These products can contain ingredients that cause color loss or color changes in your garments. Protect your garments from prolonged exposure to direct sunlight or strong artificial lights. This too can affect the color in your items. Before putting clothes away for storage, have them cleaned to remove stains first. This prevents insects from causing holes in the fabric, and stains from aging and discoloring. Clean all matching pieces together. Whether your work surroundings call for appropriate casual or traditional attire, we know that how you look does matter. That’s one of the reasons we work hard for you and all that you wear.

Who Gets Rich in the Tumblr-Yahoo Deal

Tumblr’s $1.1 billion exit has minted a number of new millionaires—and made some rich folks even richer.Here’s who made what, according to PrivCo, which studies private companies. These are the revised figures corrected by PrivCo after initial numbers showed even more lavish returns for several venture-capital firms,setting off a Twitter war.

STAKEHOLDERS	PERCENTAGE HELD	PAYOUT (in millions)
Union Square Ventures	18	198
Sequoia Capital	19.8	217.8
Spark Capital	18	198
David Karp	19	209
Other Series A individual investors	8.8	96.8
Series E venture capital firms (Greylock, Insight, CrunchFund, DFJ)	10.4	114.4
The 178 employees of Tumblr	6	66

(Data from PrivCo)

Some of the biggest winners, of course, are the venture capitalists who got in the earliest. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, for instance, are each pocketing a 1,423 percent return on their investments.

But a few millionaires are definitely coming from within Tumblr’s ranks as well. According to PrivCo’s data, 178 employees will take in six percent of the $1.1 billion purchase price, for an average payout of $370,787. PrivCo calculates that fully vested employees who were among the first 10 to join Tumblr would make $6.2 million each, while those within the first 30 would make $3.6 million.

Steven Johnson, the author of Future Perfect, argues in an essay on Medium that the chance for nonexecutives to get rich is what makes tech different from other generators of wealth in the U.S.:

“Sure, companies went public or sold for staggering sums, but companies have been going public or selling out for generations without creating tens of thousands of millionaires along the way.The defining difference between Silicon Valley companies and almost every other industry in the U.S. is the virtually universal practice among tech companies of distributing meaningful equity (usually in the form of stock options) to ordinary employees. Before companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard began the practice fifty years ago, distributing stock options to anyone other than top management was virtually unheard of. But the engineering tradition that spawned Silicon Valley was much more egalitarian than traditional corporate culture.

It is not just startups that follow this credo. Citing In the Company of Owners, a book from 2003 about stock options, Johnson points out that the top 100 technology companies granted 19 percent of their total ownership to nonsenior executive employees, compared with 2 percent for the rest of corporate America. Johnson’s essay does not address the Tumblr acquisition directly; he was responding to George Packer’s article about the politics of Silicon Valley in this week’s New Yorker, which lamented the rising inequality of northern California, where growing ranks of poor live near startup millionaries. One solution to widespread inequality, Johnson suggests, would be “to make the rest of corporate America act more like Silicon Valley.”

Skeptics will question whether the creation of more millionaires can really be held up as a sign of progressive policy (in part, that’s what Packer’s article is all about). But it sure has proven to be a powerful way to create new tech companies. The lifecycle goes like this: Young engineer joins or founds a startup, gets equity, cashes out, and begins investing in or starting new companies that pay young engineers with equity. The PayPal (EBAY) Mafia and Facebook’s (FB) early generation of employees are two cases in point.

Tumblr’s employees are getting a relatively modest return by comparison. In part, Tumblr became so valuable with so few employees that many people came on after the stock options were worth relatively little; Tumblr had no more than a dozen employees for its first three years. A similar dynamic could mark the eventual exits of companies such as Twitter and Pinterest. Also, Tumblr raised a lot of money from investors. Several people involved in the venture capital world cited a rule of thumb that about 20 percent of the option pool would be set aside for employees. But that goes down with each subsequent investment, and Tumblr raised a lot of money.

“When you raise a lot of money, folks who came on earlier get diluted down,” says Anand Sanwal, the co-founder of CB Insights, which studies the venture capital world. “The flip side of that is when you raise a lot of money, you’re not worried about your job every day.”

Marco Arment, who worked with Karp from the beginning on Tumblr, said that he won’t make “yacht-and-helicopter money” from the acquisition. “But as long as I manage investments properly and don’t spend recklessly, Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that’s exactly what I plan to do,” he wrote in a post on his blog.

So Tumblr may well spawn its own diaspora of new startups and investors seeded with proceeds from the sale to Yahoo! (YHOO), even if it’s a group that doesn’t quite have the resources and reach of those who came before it.

Brustein is a writer for Businessweek.com.

Why Your Unstructured Data is a Blessing, Not a Curse

If you’ve opened up a business magazine within the last year, you’ve likely read articles from big data evangelists, proclaiming that unstructured data is a problem that can sink your company’s time, focus and money.

You know the oft-repeated, dire facts. Rich media data types have exploded in number and in kind. The majority of the data received or produced by your company is messy, unstructured and terribly difficult to manage. The tools that allow anyone to create video, audio and other rich file formats have outpaced the tools we use to capture, store, search and analyze that data. Your employees spend much of their day swimming in a pool of unstructured data.

The data problem is like your garage at home. It’s easy to dump stuff there, but hard to find things later. Since slowing the accumulation of your stuff is nearly impossible, your options seem limited to two choices, both painful. You can begin cleaning your garage, trashing everything except what’s currently being used or obviously valuable. Or you can begin organizing your things before you toss them into the garage, making them easier to retrieve later.

Here’s the problem: Premature destruction of your data is riskier than allowing your data storage bills to grow. It’s impossible for you to determine which pieces of information will not be needed in the coming years. The other problem is that premature organization carries its own risk: the destruction of your employees’ productivity as they try to discern which data is truly valuable.

The alternate solution starts with realizing that your spaghetti tangle of data isn’t the problem you think it is.

Let’s go back to the garage metaphor. What if, among everything you stored in your garage, there was a box of old baseball cards. When you tossed the box in your garage, the cards were worth less than $10, but with the passage of time, now some of your cards are worth $10,000.

Good thing you didn’t try to purge your garage back when the cards were nearly worthless. And good thing you didn’t waste your time organizing the several items that are still worthless.

Now you can focus on finding your cards; the value of your rare collection more than makes up for the cost of storage and search.

The same principle applies to unstructured data. At least some of the media you store will be like those baseball cards: assets that have locked-in, increasing value, just waiting to be uncovered.

Using advanced extraction techniques, you can do the same thing with your unstructured data:

1. Find the relationship between documents. You can gather documents, spreadsheets, images and other data types that were generated for one project. It doesn’t matter that multiple people created the different files or that the project lasted for two years. A good algorithm can find the needle in the haystack.
2. Extract metadata. Useful information can be pulled from your unstructured data, like names, dates and locations. There’s no need to have a staff organize the data beforehand.
3. Redact information. In the days before big data management matured, a request for information in a business required a secretary to take a large black marker and cross out sensitive information before a document could be passed on. This isn’t the case today. Unstructured data tools, can determine what information needs to be hidden.

So don’t get overwhelmed by the sight of your data. And don’t make the mistake of throwing it away before it appreciates in value.

Instead of forcing your business into rigid records management, embrace your unstructured data with the confidence that you’ll one day use it to find valuable insights. This approach saves you from wasting time and effort layering a structure on your data before you know what should be analyzed.

The skyrocketing amount of data your business produces may seem like a curse, but it’s really a blessing. The data you capture today may become a valuable resource for your business tomorrow.

As CEO and founder of LatentView, he has over 18 years of experience in management consulting, technology and global IT services management. Before he founded LatentView, Venkat was part of the global leadership team for Cognizant’s Communications practice, where he was in charge of strategy and business development. Venkat holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from IIT, Madras, and an MBA from IIM, Calcutta.