April 2010

We finally made it to Loyangalani near the shores of Lake Turkana last night. A day-long drive that took us from Korr through the Ndoto Mountains and South Horr (where we had to clean out some rotten fruit in the wheel well – left overs from our time being stuck).

It’s amazing how green everything is. Even on the shores of the sunburnt and wind-blasted lake there is some grass and greenery – unusual, so I’m told. We took an hour to jump in the lake and do some fishing, but Erik only caught Tigerfish.

Along the way we got our first flat tire. The innertube became so hot that it separated itself. While we were changing it, Barak got out his sling. This is your stock David vs Goliath type device and it’s amazing just how far he can throw a stone with it. 200 meters is normal.

Barak grew up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea, besides the sling he’s got all kinds of neat gadgets and bush devices that I’d never seen before.

We capped the night off with a camp/cabin setup in Loyangalani, the night was warm and windy, and we ended up sweating most of the night in the tent. Today we head off to see a couple of water projects in the area, and I’m hopeing we make it to Gatab on the top of Mount Kulal for dinner and a cool night’s rest.

Due to a series of mishaps and bad luck on our trek up to northern Kenya, I find myself sitting in a hoteli by the side of the road in Laisamis eating goat stew and trying to type with only one hand (my left).

Let me start at the beginning.

My childhood friend works for Food for the Hungry in Kenya, and he invited me to come on a trip with him and his funders from Blood:Water Mission into the wild west of Kenya, the NFD (Northern Frontier District). I haven’t been up to the Lake Turkana area for years, so was happy to join up, especially as it gave me a chance to test mobile connectivity and try out some GPS mapping of water projects.

I was greeted early yesterday morning by a Landcruiser with the pungent smell of goats and birds. It turned out that the vehicle had just been used to ferry goats, and that we were presently carrying 10 guinea fowl and one peacock as we were to deliver them to the Mount Kenya Safari Club on our way. A few fowl got loose along the way, and I only received one head wound in my efforts to wrestle three of them into a box while hurtling down the road at 100 Kph.

The rains have come to these usually arid lands, and all is incredibly green and lush. By about 6pm we knew we were running late as we tried to reach Korr for the evening. We took a less well-known road, that locals said they had seen a car pass through that very day. It was dark by now, and we were able to follow the tracks quite well, even through a small river and a kilometer of boggy trails.

This is why when we reached a small stream, tested and waded it, that we weren’t overly concerned. Erik (my friend) gunned the engine and we dropped down into the water. What we hadn’t considered was that the already long wheelbase was made longer by a substantial bull-bar in the front and a big bumper in the rear. We promptly lodged ourselves between the two banks with only 2 wheels touching. We rushed to dig and push, but before a few minutes had passed, the river had eaten the soil out from under the tires.

For the next 3 hours we dug, pushed, rocked, cut branches and got no where, except about 2 feet deeper… At this point I would like to point out that the vehicle had shown up with 4 bad shocks and a flat tire (repaired and replaced in Nanyuki), no shovel, no winch, and a hi-lift jack that we soon found was broken. Not an optimal situation.
To keep the vehicle from becoming more submerged we built a dam near the front and dug about 5 feet of earth in the rear as a new stronger channel for the water to flow through. Our only tools were caveman-like sticks and a “simi”, a panga-like dual-sided fighting and all-purpose blade. The blade was excellent for cutting back the soil.
Unfortunately, at about 11pm, I was cutting the clay-like mud back and my hand slipped. Cold, muddy steel sliced deeply into all four fingers and the palm of my right hand. Quick action by the team cleaned and dressed the wounds, but I was stuck uselessly watching until we set up camp and fell to sleep exhausted.

The next morning Erik set off towards some hills 10 kilometers away, while we stayed with the mired down vehicle. He got through, and by 2pm our relief came walking in. He couldn’t reach us by vehicle from the front, as it appeared that the road was washed out there as well. I badly needed to get my hand stitched up and cleaned, so I slogged the 5k back with him through a road that had become a river. He dropped me off at a Catholic-run clinic in Laisamis as he went on to pull the others out from behind. The nurses sewed me up with stitches the size you’d use on a football, and the needle sticks into the wound felt great.

My goat stew is delicious, and Erik has just walked in. He tells me that they were able to jack up the rear and winch out the vehicle backwards just as another flood of water hit. The hi-lift jack and the shovel brought by the other vehicle were lost in the mad scramble for the quickly receding dry ground. Our gear is wet, scattered and dirty, but we’re all fine and on our way to Korr and, more adventure.

Pics by @justbarak

This is brilliant. Legends of Echo is a new free Java mobile phone, massively multiplayer role playing, location based game put out by the people behind the Grid in South Africa (Vodacom).

“In the game, the Echo is a parallel virtual universe based on the South African map. Instead of cities and skyscrapers, however, players will find rolling green fields, rocky outcrops and valleys to explore and establish their base.”

The best overviews are found on the News24 Games blog, in an interview with co-creator Nic Haralambous, and on Nic’s own blog (you’ll also want to read what Vincent Maher had to say about it). From what I can tell, without having played it yet, is that it’s a turn-based card-type game. You find loot, do battle and win more loot. Leveling is there, but it’s not as large of a component as expected.

“There are lots of different kinds of weapons, powers and items that you can pick up by moving around the country from city to city, province to province. Each one gives you a slightly different edge in battle.”

On top of the normal game elements, and an indicator that makes me believe that LoE might be better thought-out than most other games, is the fact that they built an economic system into the game from the beginning. Nic states, “There is a currency model built in to the game that allows players to spend airtime in the Echo Marketplace.” That’s a big deal, and it’s not easy to pull off if done right.

Legend of Echo’s graphics and visual appeal can’t be understated. They spent a good deal of time to make this game look and feel like a World of Warcraft competitor, and it shows. Visually it reminds me of Arcanum meets World of Warcraft.

Specs

You’ll need to have a high-end Nokia or Sony Ericsson to play Legends of Echo. I’ve got an old Nokia N95 sitting around somewhere, so my plan is to dust that off and give the game a run when I’m in Cape Town next month.

It also appears that you actually have to be in South Africa to play it, but I’m checking with Nic to see if anyone living in a country that The Grid operates in can play it as well. This is doubtful, as it’s based also on the Afrigis system, which is fairly Southern-Africa specific.

The game is available for free as a Java download to cellphones. To play Legends of Echo, SMS ‘ECHO’ to 33313 (50c/SMS) or visit http://www.legendsofecho.mobi

A teaser video:

Legends of Echo from Cow Africa on Vimeo.

Thoughts from a gamer…

• It seems that a web-based Java version of this game would be successful, if only because it would allow you to play on whichever device you have handy. Are there any plans for that?
• How much will LoE go the direction of Foursquare where they really use the location based systems to drive competition and increased game play?
• I’m impressed that they took the time to create a strong virtual economy.
• Will a real-world economy of people using real money to buy and sell goods develop online, as we’ve seen in other successful MMO games?
• You’re supposedly able to “Build special items with unique abilities”. I’d like to know more about the crafting system, as that can be one of the best ways to deepen interaction and make a game more unique.

South African, Matthew Buckland, has launched Memeburn a site that tracks emerging technology trends and has opinion pieces by key influencers.

Amheric/Ethiopic translations have been launched within Google’s applications.

Freedom Fone, a free and open source IVR (interactive voice response) system, which started out of Zimbabwe, has now launched. You can download v1.5 now.

Afrinnovator has launched a news aggregator for African tech news.

I was interviewed by CNBC about the iHub and Ushahidi.

Panacea, a South African mobile phone company has the first (legit) bridge between Africa and Paypal live on the continent. Finally, at least one country is able to send/receive payments via PayPal.

Kahenya, from Virn, is launching a new ad platform, called Metro, that distributes ads to all of their sites and affiliate sites. They anticipate to start Web Marketing Campaigns from as little as 500 Kenya shillings (

Rahim Kara is Adobe’s East Africa representative. They’re having the big Adobe CS5 launch today from the iHub (which is still under construction) in Nairobi.

Adobe’s Africa Problem

The biggest problem for Adobe in Africa has always been cost. It just doesn’t make sense for most African creative professionals to buy it, the return on investment isn’t there. Where this hurts the worst is when young creatives are just getting started, they have to start on other platforms (or pirated versions).

I don’t know if there’s an easy way to handle this issue. It’s likely not that important of a market for Adobe, so nothing will be done, which is too bad as there is some real talent here.

On to the Launch!

Now, I’m a big fan of Adobe’s creative suite, especially Photoshop and Illustrator. Both of which are being demo’d first. Really cool to see what’s happening with the way they have content aware tools. For a good look at Photoshop, head over to Thomas Hawk’s post. Flash Catalyst looks interesting too, but I’m not a big fan of Flash, so I probably won’t use it.

Production Premium looks awesome. Jason Levine (looks like the Wolverine), their product evangelist, is on camera talking about it. Something that I’m too much of a noob to use, but fascinating to see and watch demo’d.

“Experience blazing fast playback due to the new Mercury Playback Engine, an enhancement to Premiere Pro.”

Creatie Suite “Web Premium” looks great.

Besides the whole, “design in Flash and compile for the iPhone” thing, it’s a really impressive build. However, I agree with Jeremy Schultz, “Of all the CS5 apps, Photoshop impresses me the most. Merge to HDR Pro, Content-Aware Fill and the painting tools are striking.”

Some Kenya/Africa Notes

Rahim is now tells us that Adobe South Africa and East Africa are working together to bring all the creatives together in one place. This initiative is called Go Create, and it’s about “doing more as a continent”. We (Africans) are able to do more and better than the world realizes.

• They’re trying to figure out a way to get a new licensing structure set for Africa, but no final word on that.
• There will be official Adobe authorized training centers in Nairobi, hopefully within the next 6-8 months.
• The first Adobe user group in Nairobi is the InDesign user group that happens at Kenya Polytechnic each month, it averages 350 people per session.
• Photoshop and Flash user groups will be starting soon.

Maduqa is a fledgling web startup in Nairobi. Their goal: make it simple, fast and easy for any Kenyan business owner to get their own store online in just a few minutes. Surprisingly, there’s nothing else out there quite like this (that I’ve seen), so it’s an excellent example of local entrepreneurs taking ideas from the global stage and localizing them to Kenyan needs.

It’s a simple website, with a focus on two things. First, it’s online shops for ordinary businessmen, whether you operate out of your house, a duka or a business frontage. Second, it’s a classifieds listings site.

There’s a lot of draw in figuring out how to crack the Kenya classifieds market, and the web is littered with a dozen mediocre attempts at this from Craigslist to the Nation Media Group, much less the everyday sites that others throw up. In this case, I think it’s a diversion from what should be the focus: online shops.

We’re starting to see more Kenyans paying attention to the web-side of their business. For most, that just means that they know the internet is out there and might be valuable in attracting customers. Those are your medium and upper-class businesses. The upper-class ones will go out and design their own websites, Maduqa isn’t for them.

Instead, Maduqa is for the businessman doesn’t have any marketing budget to speak of, she might be a hairdresser or a person running their business at night from their home. They don’t have the time, energy or know-how to setup a store on their own, but they could set up a Maduqa site. It’s free too, so the cost of failure is low. Your worst case scenario is that you are finally searchable by name online.

There is a small team of individuals who are going around and trying to sign up new businesses into the site. It’s analog, and not nearly as efficient as if you were running a pure viral or digital marketing campaign, but then their target end-user probably wouldn’t see those anyway. Any other type of marketing is even more expensive and untenable for this bootstrapping startup.

So, let’s say they have three guys walking around town trying and they each aim for 15 new Maduqa shops online each day, that’s 45 shops per day total. Not bad, especially if you extrapolate that out to 20 working days per month with a total of 900 online stores per month added to the website. In three months they would have 2700 online shops.

Now we’re talking some serious mass. Maybe even enough to get on the radars of consumers, especially as all the marketing for the store websites will be done by the store owners themselves, as they tell everyone about their new website.

I met up with Kachwanya, one of the duo behind the site and walked through the site with him, discussing both the pros and cons of this type of service and the site itself. Here is a quick rundown of what I liked/didn’t like, keeping in mind that it’s an early-stage website.

What I like

• Anyone can setup an online shop now. Conceptually, this is very easy to grasp.
• Nice use of javascript and overlays that make the site easier to use.
• There is a team of Maduqa reps going around and signing up new business owners.
• The potential to take over the online stores market in a country.

What could be improved

• Scrap the classifieds, stick to one thing: online shops.
• Let’s see PesaPal (or its equivalent) instituted on this site. I can see no better win-win situation for Maduqa, the end users or PesaPal than this kind of partnership.
• Parts of the site look nice, but it also feels a little cluttered, some design and usability tweaks would help.
• Get more feet on the street, sign up more businesses and get up to critical mass even faster.

I’m impressed by this simple and workable concept. They have the technical acumen to do it, there is no doubting that. Will they have the business acumen to balance? Time will tell if they will pull this off, but I’m optimistic that they can.

There’s no greater joy in (work) life than doing what you love with people that continually amaze you and with whom work isn’t considered work.

Two years ago none of us would have realized that an ad hoc group of blogging friends and techies would grow and become an organization of our own. I don’t work at Ushahidi due to the tech or the challenges, though both are great perks. I stay here because of the people I get to work with every day (virtually).

This is a picture of the Ushahidi core team (minus myself). It’s been a pleasure to work with each of them, even through the hard stuff.