HASH – Page 66 – WhiteAfrican

Author: HASH (page 66 of 106)

Skunkworks Kenya

May 30, 2007 / HASH / 8 Comments

I arrived in from South Africa in time to make it to the regular “Skunkworks” meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. This is where many of the brightest tech minds in Kenya get together to discuss ideas and pertinent issues within the Kenyan ICT sector.

Skunkworks Kenya - May 29, 2007

Among those present were Riyaz Bachani and Josiah Mugambi, two of the BarCamp Kenya organizers. I also had the chance to meet Mugambi Kimathi, creator of Jahazi (covered earlier). Jean-Antoine Bord, behind Pajama Nation, was also present. So, it was fun to talk to some of these guys who are at the “center of the storm” of web development in Kenya.

Riyaz Bachani The topic for last evening’s discussion was the creation of a Linux Professional’s Association of Kenya, the positioning of Linux within the public and private sectors, and discussions on how to educate people about the benefits of open source operating systems and software. After having a long discussion with Heather Ford, Director of iCommons, which is based in South Africa, I can’t help but think that there is so much that can be done between these two groups.

At the end of the meeting, the consensus seemed to be that people in government, SME’s and even big business don’t really care about what the operating system is, so long as it works. If they can save money and run their business more profitably because of the decisions that their IT consultants make, then that’s a big extra. Having a local open source association that can provide success stories of companies and parastatals that have successfully implemented open source software will be a big help for further growth in this area.

Overall it was a great meeting that I really enjoyed sitting in on. The tech community in Nairobi was well represented and you can tell how passionate everyone is about creating a better tech sector in Kenya.

Evans Ikua - Linux professionals association of kenya

A Muti – MXit Mashup Presentation at 27 Dinner in Johannesburg

May 28, 2007 / HASH / 7 Comments

I’m currently in Johannesburg, South Africa. While here I’ve had the chance to meet a number of the bloggers and web application developers that I’ve come to know over the years. The 27 Dinner is a monthly event that switches between Johannesburg and Cape Town. It’s the one time each month where the bloggers and technologists get together to share some Stormhoek wine and swap ideas.

Pictures

Dave Duarte, the MC, asked if I would be willing to give a presentation. I agreed, but it was somewhat tough trying to figure out what to talk about. You see, this type of meeting brings out the best developers and the best bloggers in the area. You can’t teach anyone anything, and you had better be right about what you say since there’s bound to be someone there that knows more than you do about any given subject.

I finally decided to discuss mobile applications and opportunities in Africa. Specifically, I wanted to discuss how developers could leverage open source tools that are already out there to layer services on top of and create something that truly bridges the web/mobile gap. It ended up being a 30,000-foot overview of how you could integrate Jabber into current applications, or create new ones that worked with it.

Neville Newey, of Muti, was kind enough to throw together a great demo of how to mashup 2 services, in this case Muti (a place to link to great stories on Africa around the web) and MXit (the 4 million-strong mobile phone chat service here in South Africa). MXit is based on Jabber, an open java protocol that allows anyone to create a server and client. Some pretty big names use it, including Google Talk. It’s useable on your computer or your phone.

If you have an account with Jabber, Google Talk or Mxit you can access this mashup (and each other) by texting the words “hot” or “new” to muti@jabber.org. Muti will shoot back to you the top 5 stories for each respective area. You can then vote these results up or down.

An example:

It’s simple and it opens up Muti to millions of new possible users. The next step, of course, will be for Neville to allow MXit and other Jabber client users the ability to submit stories through their mobile phone or PC client.

For those who are interested, the full presentation is available here as a video:

(Download it as a 5Mb PDF)

Back to the Mobile eCommerce Problem in Africa

May 24, 2007 / HASH / 6 Comments

The New York Times is reporting on Bank of America going mobile, and BusinessWeek is doing the same for Barclays. That’s all well and good, but I doubt mobile banking has as much potential in the US and Europe as it does in places like Africa.

Mobile eCommerce in Africa This brings me back to the issues that we find in Africa when it comes to opening up eCommerce to the continent. (For those interested, I first wrote about it a year ago here, and more here.) The base problem is that there are no options for entrepreneurs who don’t have some type of “connection” to get into the game. There is no way for them to build micro-credit or micro-debt. There is no way for them to accept payments by credit card.

The International Market Problem

The Local eCommerce Market Problem
A team of bright young programmers in Uganda decide to create “the next eBay or Amazon for East Africa” application. It will be the trading platform used throughout the region. However, there’s a small problem. How will people pay for the goods? The final connection is again missing.

Okay, but how about some of these other services? What about the mobile payment options that are cropping up in South Africa, Kenya and some other countries?

Well, the problem there is that they are tied down locally to a particular carrier or bank. Again, the need for a platform agnostic system is greatly needed. Something that lets people without traditional banking needs get started. A secondary reason is that, thought they are a great step forward, they only answer the banking handled in a specific region. Many of those same transactions are still done in cash and there is little need for that mobile payment system.

At the end of the day, we might estimate that there are billions of dollars of commerce NOT being done in Africa, primarily because there is no means for the transaction to happen. The good news is that I’m convinced someone will move into this space soon and really start innovating. How could they not, when there is this much money being left on the table?

(Photo via Ken Banks Mobile Gallery of Kiwanja.net)

Controversy: One Laptop Per Child vs Intel

May 21, 2007 / HASH / 17 Comments

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative has been working for years to bring a $100 laptop to children in 3rd world countries. They have gotten all the way to the mass-prototype phase, meaning they’re getting a lot of these computers created and put into the hands of children. In order to get to a full-scale production operation, they need 3 million of them ordered by the governments of these countries.

Enter the bad guy: Intel

OLPC vs Intel

(Image via Wired)

Intel, suddenly seeing the importance of being relevant to this future massive consumer base, has designed their own version of the $100 laptop. Called the “Classmate”, Intel’s version will have it’s chip inside instead as opposed to the OLPC which will have their competitor, AMD’s, chip.

The hard part comes when you start thinking about OLPC’s goals. If they really do want every child to have their own laptop, doesn’t Intel’s Classmate boost the chances of that happening, even if it’s not the OLPC computer?

I’m all for competition and an open market. However, the problem I have in this instance is the proof that Intel is playing dirty. They are actually going to the same countries that OLPC is going to, trying to take the funding from the OLPC and get it invested in them instead. They’re trying to kill the OLPC. (Interestingly enough, the document proof is out of Nigeria)

Aren’t there enough poor countries in the world where the children could benefit from these computers? Surely there is enough that OLPC and Intel can both go out and sell their wares without fighting over the same turf. Intel loses this one on poor form and scores a bad karma point.

Make sure you watch the video of this, and read some more to get the whole story.

4 Sites that Make Your Photography Pay

May 18, 2007 / HASH / 5 Comments

If you’re a budding Ansel Adams and would like to make some money off of your better photographs, there are a number of options to help you sell your photos. These sites will sell your photos (and sometimes vector art) and share the revenue with you. Don’t think that you can submit just any old image though, most of these services have editors to make sure the quality stays high.

These are also great websites for designers to know about (as I’m sure most already do), since you can find more interesting images to use than you will find at the normal stock photography sites.

iStockPhoto
One of the more established sites, iStockPhoto has been around long enough to have a really solid inventory of images. They have a section for movies, Flash, vector files and normal photos. If you’re looking for something eclectic, you can probably find something here.

Lucky Oliver
One of the newcomers to the show, Lucky Oliver is both original and high quality. I’ve had a chane to meet one of the founders, and his vision for Lucky Oliver is something that will make designers and photographers happy – keep an eye on these guys. I use them regularly, and highly recommend becoming a part of their community as either a designer or photographer.

Shutterstock
Shutterstock gives you vector and normal images, just like the other two listed. How it’s different, is that you pay on a monthly or yearly subscription, not on a per image basis. They seem to have a good selection and if you need a lot of images, this might be a good service for you.

Spy Media
SpyMedia is a place where you can take advantage of being in a good, or lucky, situation. Say you’re out at a show, a sporting event or catch something newsworthy with your camera – well, now you can sell that image directly to news outlets. Members can place “bounties” on getting a certain type of picture, or a picture of a certain person. Fulfiling that bounty allows you to get paid. A similar service to this is Citizen Image.

[UPDATE: Here is another great micro-stock photo review, an article on why micro-stock photography is displacing traditional photography business models, and a blog post from a professionals perspective.]

African Signals & AfriGadget Update

May 16, 2007 / HASH / 1 Comment

Besides WhiteAfrican.com, I also write two other African technology-related blogs. AfriGadget is a team blog, dedicated to showcasing African ingenuity. African Signals is a multimedia outlet for interviews, videos and podcasts on news and news makers in Africa.

African Signals
The last week few weeks have been very interesting for me, primarily because I’ve had the chance to do a number of Skype interviews with entrepreneurs and technologists around Africa. I’ve found that video and audio editing is time consuming, but the experience has proved to be extremely rewarding. I’d like to start adding a weekly news overview, so look for that soon.

Besides interviews, I’m starting to push more of African multimedia content towards African Signals. With my upcoming trip to South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania look for more interviews and reports from those countries soon.

Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Author: HASH (page 66 of 106)