Archive for the ‘mobile computing’ Category

Wish List: My Telecom Service Provider Needs

Looks like the economy is back in the open, but the lingering effects of the COVID19 pandemic have driven a more digital focus on life and work. Looks like our local service providers have not really made any moves over the last 2 years

Here is my checklist based on my exposure across the places I have lived

  1. Having a buffet of services that are paid off at a regular cadence (rythmn)
    • Voice minutes for on-network and off-network – removes the need for multiple simcards
    • Data – mobile data and broadband data
    • SMS messages (yes I still use them)
  2. Family plan to help me manage my household telecom needs (I have teenagers who are due to get their own phones and numbers)
    • Ability to add and remove numbers to a plan, I would be happy to pay for batches of 5 numbers
    • Happy to pay a service fee for each number added to the plan – I already do this when gifting airtime and data
    • Shared pool of minutes across the plan both on and off network
  3. Tax invoices as they are required by URA for tax purposes and/or clients for reimbursements
  4. Weekly/Monthly plan options since this helps manage cash flows and cater for usage pattern changes like school and holidays
  5. Ability to measure usage by different members – who is using the services the most, this is by the default account on the plan. Better if it is an online dashboard so that I can check it regularly and adjust accordingly
  6. Unlimited Internet access in the suburbs outside the CBD with fairly high FUP (350GB and above per month)

What are your telecom service needs – what are they doing right or not?

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Agile driven requirements wishlist for Integrated Telcom Service Provider Packages

I am constantly frustrated by having to remember voice, data and SMS bundles not only for my own use but for my family and dependants, and I am envious of family data plans in the rest of the world.

Being an agile practioner here is my user story

As a telecom service customer I would like to purchase and track a single package for the users in my household and dependants

Acceptance Criteria

  1. The package includes the following services at a minimum
    • On-net voice calls
    • Off-net voice calls (same country)
    • SMS messages
    • Internet access
  2. All phone numbers on the package use the services transparently
  3. The package is paid for monthly, with the ability to purchase additional optional services as need
  4. Ability to add and/or remove numbers at will
  5. Ability to pay for additional batches of numbers e.g., 5 numbers – the service fee helps the telecom cover losses due to the service discounts
  6. Weekly and monthly payment options – to help manage cash flows
  7. Generation of tax invoices for the service payments
  8. Web/app based monitoring of service usage broken down to a daily usage
  9. Ability to set usage thresholds for all user at least 2 levels – I know individual thresholds may be difficult so nice to have
  10. Reminders to pay for services before they expire

What do you have on your wishlist for your telecom provider?

Crowdsourcing Validation Rules for Uganda National ID

I am curious about the ability to validate that the Uganda National Identification Number (NIN) is well formed. However this does not validate that the NIN actually belongs to the person presenting it or that it is correct.

The rules that I have been able to gleam are:

  1. Must be 14 characters long
  2. First character is a letter of the alphabet. C seems to be a common letter – does it stand for citizen?
  3. Second letter is either M or F – male or female
  4. Characters 3 and 4 are numbers, which are the year of birth. Cannot be after 00 since that would make a person below 18
  5. Characters 5, 6, 7 are numbers

How can you help? Which of these rules do not match your NIN? Share any additional patters to build a repository of rules that can later be mapped to programming language validations – Regular expressions and validation frameworks

TechTip: Installing Airtel Uganda Huawei E3131 on MacOS Sierra

If you are like me, there comes a time when you need to whip out old tech tools to solve a need. In my case it was Internet access in Hoima, which has MTN and Airtel as useable networks.

I have an old modem, which intially had a data simcard gone bad (that is a story for another day) however it was discontinued in 2012, so there were no drivers for Mac. The installation package terminates with errors so I was stumped.

Step 1 was finding the model which involved opening up the modem as below

img_20170725_110050.jpg

Step 2 was to find an installation package, which after about an hour of Googling and reading involved using an Huawei Mobile Partner (https://www.dropbox.com/s/v33lsoe7qok0zsl/MobilePartner-MAC-V200R003B015D16SP00C983.zip?dl=0)

Once installed you can now use your modem readily. Hope this saves someone else some pain…

Styx Technology Group Launches Poultry Farm Revenue Calculator App

As part of the Styx Technology Group mission to leverage technology to support executives identify, implement & refine strategic technology interventions in their business & target market segments, we are proud to partner with Kkungu Poultry Farm Enterprises Ltd to help bring relevant, useable cutting edge technology to Uganda agriculture executives.

Leveraging the experiences shared in this post Poultry Feed Economic 101 – Changing the Supplier Scenario, the team has built a simple easy to use calculator to address this question using minimal inputs to help poultry farm managers:

  1. Estimate their spot profitability based on the cost of inputs and revenue from sales of eggs
  2. Use simple data to decide whether to make the feed change based on the impact on the bottom line.

Download the application today from Google Play store with this link http://bit.ly/poultry-farm-calc

Please do share your feedback and let us know to improve this by sending email to poultrycalc at styxtechgroup dot com

Screenshots below:

Layer Profitability computation

Layer Profitability computation

Sample Layer Profitability computation

Sample Layer Profitability computation

Feed Switch Comparison Computation

Feed Switch Comparison Computation

Sample Feed Switch Comparison Computation

Sample Feed Switch Comparison Computation

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