Actually a friend of mine and myself have been pondering on creating a web based platform where by people can save files from docs to ,videos to music e.t.c and meanwhile these files can be shared for public downloading or privately storage. But we are been skeptical if Nigerians uses such platforms. Your suggestions are welcomed.
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Not to discourage you but this is basically what Dropbox, Gdrive and Onedrive does. Are You planning on bringing any new thing to the table? Perhaps you guys can come up with a superior compression algorithm. 
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I feel like it will be a good idea if you had the servers in Nigeria and somehow had them mesh networking with each other (like within a community or interstate/intercity) in order to save the cost of data as well as increase speed, instead of having the servers internationally or having to route through international servers to get the data or files like how the internet does. In other words if you and your friend can create an interstate/intercity network like an internet based in Nigeria and only for Nigerians, it will be a GREAT idea but to depend on the present internet protocols, DropBox and others have you beat.
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I remember seeing a Nigerian version of twitter some years ago. The site doesn’t open anymore. Reason: nobody needs it.
Nobody needs a Nigerian Google Drive.
PS: Not because it’s Nigerian, but because it’s (there’s already) Google Drive.
Pick one of the millions of problems in Nigeria and solve.
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Mehn sounds cool but crazy , lol…
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Yea… U are right…lots of entrepreneurs I told said the same thing about Google drive, drop box doing the same… Except that dropbox or Google drive dont have a general feeds for the shared files…I mean when users login , they can have a feed of files shared publicly.
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Hahaha, new compression algorithm …seriously I wished … except for feeds containing publicly shared files , nothing new perse…probably the house could share some more features that could help…
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Tho also we are thinking we might go for a podcasting uploading/sharing platform considering the competition of the file sharing platform… But the issue is how many Nigerians listen to podcast or even venture to create a podcast…
You still have 2 others options in my opinion.,
- You can host the data/files on your server, and then convert the data/files to sound or dtmf and deliver them to users through a phone call and upload in the same process. This will save alot of money. Think of dial-up internet that people used back in the days. You’ll have to create a modem (which is not that hard) .
- After hosting the data/files on your server, you can convert the data/files into RF/RW (Radio Frequency/Radio Waves) signals and deliver them through radio. Like radio transmission of files but try not to choose something popular like 107.5 FM, 102.7 FM or 99.9 FM. Tell the user what station to tune into and they can use an antenna, headphones or some signal picking device and they’ll receive it. Cheap as hell but I wouldn’t use this for confidential or secret documents because anybody can pick it up and see what you are transmitting/receiving.
There are many more ways so please don’t be discouraged. Just try to be creative/innovative.
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Actually this sound super nerdy… Like u mean one can do that to a .pdf files…seriously…
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YES SERIOUSLY, you can. People have done it before and are still doing it. Have u heard of Pangea? They are using data over voice (i,e sending files as a phone call), They were suppose to launch back in May in Nigeria, but I don’t know what happened.
I haven’t heard of them tho…but if my users should pick the data via their phone call or radio signal as u said …is it that the content of the files will b read in voice…!still amazed!
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Yeah after you convert the data/file with a software (encoder/modulator) into an audio/signal and send/transmit it through a medium (like air, phone lines or water) the device (mobile phone) will pick up the phone call (audio) or radio signal (radio wave) and the software in it (decoder/demodulator) will convert the audio/signal back into the file as requested. That is how the internet used to work back in the day.
Read about pangea now, its a cool innovation… Will read through how one can achieve that …but seems like a long one…
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Wow…cool…and talking about podcasting… Do Nigerians listen to them? Hopefully wanna start one on a tech niche…
Well, I think it might be long for them because they are based in Romania and their users are in a different continent. If you are based in Nigeria and your users are based in Nigeria as well, and since most people either are using Java-based Dumb Phones, Java-based Feature Phones or Android SmartPhones (which is similar to Java), then you can quickly hack or code up a Java-based (J2ME, Java Me or Android) modem. The problem you might have is sending it through the phone line, because I don’t know what bit rate or frequency band Nigerian phone lines use.
I think Nigerians do listen to podcast but they listen to them through radio (since it is more accessible and cheaper). If internet was cheaper, more Nigerians will listen to podcast on the internet.
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Cool ideas on here. About data to audio and back, you guys heard of chirp.io? (I sent them an email about this a while back, There’s a limit to audio bandwidth) Also, broadcasting licenses don’t come cheap. You have to get one from the NCC before you send anything over the air. Keep iterating though.
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Yeah I heard about Chirp.io. A great creative/innovative company. Still they (the chirp sounds) don’t send the data/file, after the data/file is saved to their servers, they just send the link to the data/file and from there you need the internet to go to the link and get the data/file.
Yeah, they are not enough sound bits to represent the full spectrum of the data alphabeth. The pipe is too small for what we’re trying to pass through it.
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So you and @simply_yomi are working on this project together?