ADEREMI'S NOTEBOOK

— Google now officially searches the Nigerian webspace (Temi) (2)

— Dare Obasanjo who works at Microsoft met Bill Gates last week. Bill wanted to have a chat about Nigeria. (4)

How to setup a blog and be popular (7)

I got an email today, it read “I love this blog thing, pls how can I have something like this? How will i be able to attract people to my blog?” My reply has turned into this post. Please join the conversation if you have more tips.

1. Start simple. Register with one of the free blog providers like blogger or worpress. This means you don’t have to worry any of the technical wits of setting up the blog.
2. Focus on a few topics. No point repeating BBC news every time. Try to put an angle on the news. Your audience will be interested in what you think. Take Bella Naija for example, she focuses on African fashion, Naija music and celebrities.
3. Do your research. This is important. Don’t write stuff you can’t back up. You’ll quickly lose credibility. Chippla does his research and it reflects when he writes.
4. Read other blogs and be inspired. Contribute comments to posts on those blogs.
5. Join webrings or groups of common interest. e.g Nigerian Bloggers and 9rules
6. If you think others will find your post useful, post it on Digg or Muti.

Keeping writing, someday someone will realise how amazing your blog is and you will be popular.

— A couple of guys at Imperial College, Folabi Ogunkoya and Lawrence Bassey-Oden have launched Caramellounge, “a social network for Africans, Caribbeans, African-Americans and anyone interested in Afro-Caribbean culture.” Read the press release. (1)

2007 TED Global Africa (0)

TED will have its first conference in Africa bringing together
individuals who are passionate about “doing something valuable for Africa’s future”. It will be hosted in Arusha, Tanzania. The date has been set for June 4-7, 2007. It will be interesting to attend. From the website;

Africans are starting to take matters into their own hands. Ingenious solutions are being applied to tackle some of the toughest health and infrastructure problems. Businesses are being launched that are capable of transforming the lives of millions.

Echoing African Uptimist’s comment, the work that Emeka Okafor and others are doing to showcase success stories from Africa is very encouraging. Hopefully this conference will take it a step further. (via Kenyan Pundit)

Ruud Elmendorp and Rocketboom (0)

Everyone can’t stop talking about how or why Amanda Congdon quit Rocketboom.

As I searched through Rocketboom’s archives, I was intrigued to discover Ruud Elmendorp’s videoblog, currently reporting from various countries in Africa. Ruud has done a few reports for Rocketboom. His latest report was a piece on mobile phone booths in Narobi.

I recommend you bookmark his blog for updates.

— Another beautiful idea. Just $100. (2)

Africa and Web 2.0 (0)

Dude, what’s Web 2.0? Paul Graham explains its in detail.

Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 apps as “second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online.” I intrigued by these apps because of the design and functionality that comes with them. Flickr and del.icio.us are good examples.

In March, White African wrote a business plan (pdf) on creating the African network (Zangu). It seems we are at a turning point, web 2.0 is finally coming out of Africa. Nicholas Ochiel is about to launch Cheeseforge, Zangu is progressing and now you can digg at Muti.

— BBC now has an official blog. It was about time! #

— College life, powered by Google. Has anyone else tried Google Reader, totally slick! #