Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adedeji / a bunch of bananas ate a monkey /

Can I watch that please?

Online check-ins revolutionized air travel by letting you choose seats and meals. But why can’t we pick any movie for in-flight entertainment? Personalizing flights further would be amazing!

A gazillion year ago, you had to bribe the snotty girl at the counter to put you on a good seat. If you are snotty as she is, then you are out of luck. Trust me; you will end up sandwiched between two guys who could stink a hog into submission without any trace of metabolic conversion gene in their DNA streams.

Then some folks invented online check in. Now you could choose your seat. Then you could choose your meal. Ok, Delta invented paying to move your seat nearer the front of the plane and additional patent covered getting on the plane ahead of others.

Oh, you can even make calls on some flights now but at $5 a minute, it would probably be you saying your last good bye. Because if you were going to pay for that, how long could you talk? Poor man talk.

The screens on the popular sides are getting bigger so the movies are easier on the eyes. Sound is still poor though. Like some dinosaur gasping for last breathe.

So if I could choose my seat, select my chow, why can’t I just select all the crazy movies I want to watch on a flight? Maybe porn won’t be allowed but someone should be able to get Basic Instincts in between the list. I could select my magazine too or maybe my music selection. Can I tear off the screen and read/watch off my laps?

Poor Support and Initiatives from Payment Gateway Providers Kills ECommerce in Nigeria

My experiments with Magento and OpenCart revealed a lack of modules for Nigerian payment gateways, hindering e-commerce growth. Providers should offer plugins for popular platforms and improve support to boost online shopping.

In my recent online payment experiments, I worked with both Magento and OpenCart. While Magento is complex enough to make even a bishop go raving mad, it still came with some payment modules/plugins out of the box. Same for OpenCart. Conspicuously missing are the modules from top payment gateways in Nigeria.

From my own firsthand experience, handcrafting APIs for payment is a bore. It has significantly retarded the growth of ecommerce in Nigeria more than anything else.

If you want to accept payment online in Nigeria today, you are limited to payment gateways from:

  • InterSwitch and/or UPSL (ValuCard)
  • Banks and their proprietary systems
  • Other independent providers such as Pay4Me, etc.

Thereafter you are on your own. One, you don’t have any pre-cooked modules or plugins you can easily install on the most common payment applications such as OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, ZenCart, etc. and also their integration documentations are lame, non-existent or sometimes downright incorrect. Support is patchy and poor, and they want to charge you for every time you take a breath.

So how can life be easier? Payment gateway providers should make available modules or plugins that can be used for probably the 10 commonest online engines, including the venerable old WordPress and Joomla (yes, some people do use such). Also, they should have a vibrant support system such as an online forum – with sample codes, reviews, user interactions, blah blah blah.
This should create a network effect; as more shops go online, much more will like to go online. Ultimately anyone with a card will always have something to buy online.

Online Payment Sucks

Despite the government’s push for a cashless society, major retailers like DSTV and telcos lack integrated payment options. Swift Wireless excels, showing the need for smarter solutions from industry leaders.

Why isn’t the cashlite breeze blowing over to some of the major retail forces in the industry? I mean the government has stoked the cashless fire but I don’t know if guys over at DSTV are wearing fire-retardant pants or what not.

Ok. This is a gripe but then someone’s got to listen to me.
The other day I wanted to pay for my cable TV and still had to do it over QuickTeller. Given, those dudes have done some job, though it feels pre-historic at times but the gripe is why I have to go over to QuickTeller when I should be able to pay for this right inside my DSTV account? Why hasn’t DSTV integrated payment into their own website and make the customer experience sticky? Maybe this is a jamb question, which I would never know. Last I checked, I did mine eons ago.

Same for MTN and the other clueless telcos, you can’t buy airtime on their websites. They don’t have any mobile app. You can’t type in your card number and get some chatty airtime added as extra-life to your phone to harass some poor souls at the other end of the virtual wire.

Reality is sometimes big society change will only happen when some prime movers get moving. Time CBN and the big ole’ banks work on initiatives that can make impact on the market.

Sorry I forgot, someone got it right. Swift Wireless. Even when your internet subscription is up in flames and you can’t see any cat videos or lulz on the web, the payment gateways still work. Someone apparently thinks in that place but it seems they patented intelligence and MTN and folks wouldn’t pay licensing fee.

Saddest story ever

Akpos and his two friends went to China for vacation. Since they were new at the place, they had to stay in a hotel. They ended up being on the 60th floor. The policy of the hotel was that, at midnight, the elevator is shut down.

The next day, they rented a car and explored the city. They enjoyed themselves and arrived at the hotel pass midnight. The elevators had been shut down. There was no other way to get to their room than to take the stairs all the way to the 60th floor.

The first friend said, for the first 20 floors, I will tell jokes to keep us going. Pointing to the second friend) you’ll say wise stories for the next 20 floors, and (pointing to Akpos) you will cover the final 20 floors with sad stories.

They started telling jokes. With lots of laugh and joy, they reached the 20th floor.

The second friend started telling stories full of wisdom. They had learnt a lot on reaching the 40th floor.

Now it was time for sad stories. Akpos said; my first sad story is that I forgot the key to the room in the car.

Posted while on the move