Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

Show Notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep21.md Uncut Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfFPT7fUcPk Topics SDLUG Meetup Laracon Announcements More drama at the PHP FIG Rasmus Lerdorf: All frameworks suck How we broke PHP, hacked Pornhub and earned $20,000 The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com

Who knew that a little quarterly update by a publicly-traded Swedish investment firm could get Nigeria’s e-commerce fraternity all worked up? Not we. So, as Kinnevik was going about its business last week, the firm released its Second Quarter Report which detailed the performance of its subsidiaries around the world. That simple act of due diligence on Kinnevik’s part (which admittedly is something that happens every quarter without fail, but only garnered media attention in Nigeria this time round) allowed us all to get a sense of just how well Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce platform, Konga, is doing— which in turn fuelled speculation around the health of Nigeria’s e-commerce sector in general. Perhaps the most shocking revelation contained in the report was that Konga only has 184,000 active customers— which translates to approximately 1.1% of the Nigerian population. In a word, that number is disappointing. It has lead to vigorous debate both on social media and in the blogosphere about why Nigeria’s e-commerce industry appears to be stalling, and what interventions may be required to turn the situation around. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Data costs need to come down significantly if Africa is ever going to realise the dream of making access to the internet available to every single person living on the continent. As things stand, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, an estimated 590 million Africans still do not have access to electricity, to say nothing of reliable web access. However, South Africa’s largest telecoms operator, the government-owned Telkom, has announced some game-changing 4G/LTE data-led mobile packages that may signal the beginning of the end of exorbitantly high data prices in that country. Aside from throwing down the gauntlet towards its rivals, Telkom seems to be committing to a business model that seeks to sign up the masses and incentivise them to consume ever increasing amounts of data, as opposed to attempting to profiteer in the short to medium term. What’s not to love about that? Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I speak to Frank Schutte, the former Retail Product & Marketing Managing Director of South Africa’s largest life insurer— Liberty, to found a startup called MobiLife, which is “Africa’s first 100% mobile insurance offering” that aims to transform micro-insurance in South Africa. Listen in to find out what would possess Frank to take on the well-heeled incumbents who currently control South Africa’s highly-competitive multi-billion dollar life insurance industry. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Show notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep20.md recorded July 21st, 2016 Topics SDPHP Downtown Meetup Some changes that are coming to Laravel 5.3 How one Regex string brought down Stackoverflow PHP 7.1 hits Beta How Facebook can decide to revoke your license to React.js On a side note, we would like to welcome the newest member of the PHPUgly family, Nolan Congdon, new son of the host John Congdon. All our best wishes go out to the entire Congdon family. The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com

Jaco Van Zyl is the co-founder and MD of the South African startup, PulseIt— a company which is looking to give online voucher firms like Vouchercloud, Groupon and Shazam a run for their money. In this chat Jaco Van Zyl explain swhy so many VC’s and African tech firms seem quite bullish on the online voucher business, and why he thinks his startup has what it takes to steal market share from more established international players and fend off newer players like ttrumpet who are just as hungry for success as he is.

There’s no doubt that online education is a hot ticket at the moment. While the folks at Andela are probably still celebrating landing $24 million worth of investment courtesy of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and others, the New York-based Codecademy has closed a $30 million Series C investment round led by Naspers, through its Naspers Ventures division. Codecademy plans to use the funds to extend its global reach, build its mobile presence, and beef up its course content. It does seem that formal education business is well and truly on its way to being disrupted. In this week’s African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku catches up with Jaco Van Zyl, the co-founder and MD of the South African startup, PulseIt— a company which is looking to give online voucher firms like Vouchercloud, Groupon and Shazam a run for their money. Andile asked Jaco to explain why so many VC’s and African tech firms seem quite bullish on the online voucher business, and why he thinks his startup has what it takes to steal market share from more established international players and fend off newer players like ttrumpet who are just as hungry for success as he is. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Show notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep19.md Uncut Video Version of the show can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH2AaP0zSHw Topics PHP 5.5 Reaches EOL SDPHP Downtown Meetup The Security Vulnerability of target=_blank Many projects that use the bad practice of extract ($_GET) PHPStorm Plugin Ideavim gets an update Github gets syntax highlighting for Blade Templates Amazon's AWS buys Cloud9 Cloud IDE New service for reading PHP Internals called Externals.io Running your RaspberryPi with PHP The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com