HASH – Page 74 – WhiteAfrican

Author: HASH (page 74 of 106)

What’s Up With Africa in the Bloggies – Seriously

January 30, 2007 / HASH / 20 Comments

I just had a very pissed off moment – actually, it continues into this little rant. I just took a look at the 7th Annual Bloggies finalists and realized that they have categories for everything, spreading the wealth as it were. That’s good.

There is a category for “Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog”. Someone tell me why the hell people cannot seem to separate Africa from the Middle East? It’s a different continent! Let me get this right… You can separate UK blogs from European blogs, but not Africa from the Middle East? [expletives deleted]

Best of luck to the two African blogs who were nominated though: My Marrakesh and Dotty Rhino

Introspection – A Strategic Action

January 30, 2007 / HASH / Comments Off on Introspection – A Strategic Action

Not growing up listening to any music of my own has led to me forming a rather eclectic taste in what I enjoy listening to. Here are a few of my favorite artists:

Looks are deceiving though, I’m really not that eclectic. Upon closer inspection of their songs you’ll realize that many of them are ballads – at least the ones I listen to. It turns out that what I like is a good story.

Companies tend to be the same way – you can’t always tell what their story is or what their strengths are at first glance, and few people within them take the time to go under the surface. However, that’s the job of the president or anyone in a visionary or strategic role – you have to understand the deeper meanings and underlying truths of why your company does things and what it does best.

Taking the time for introspection and deeper thought is not just a good idea, it is vital.

Microsoft to Enter the Online Micropayments Space (It’s a Good Thing)

January 29, 2007 / HASH / 2 Comments

The ability for eCommerce to thrive and flourish is directly correlated with the ability of merchant and buyer to trade money – to transact a payment. I keep hitting on this because I see it as one of the key factors in developing a viable African eCommerce industry.

It turns out that Microsoft is also very interested in figuring out some answers for this space. Particularly as it results to micro payments. These can be considered payments of $10 or less that end up costing merchants a relatively large amount to the credit card companies.

For instance, when we offered “Premium” eBay templates on List’d last month for $1-$5, the best rate we could find was through PayPal’s micro-payment system – and that still wasn’t very attractive (though much better than your normal merchant fee).

Microsoft’s move into Internet payments could threaten credit card companies’ online profits. Gates described a system that would undercut credit card fees, making it profitable for an online newspaper to charge small fees for individual articles, for example.

“If you want to charge somebody $0.10 or $1 a month, that will just be a click…you won’t have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing,” Gates said.(link)

I am very interested in seeing where this goes. Depending on the strategy that Microsoft uses to implement this, I think it could be groundbreaking and completely change the dynamics of eCommerce as we know it.

(via ArsTechnica)

Visualizing Economic Activity

January 29, 2007 / HASH / 5 Comments

The Geographically based economic data project is a study by Yale University that captures economic data by country and maps it. (read more)

Below is a map showing economic activity by country. Click on the map to watch the full flash movie on their website.

African Digerati: “M” From Thinker’s Room

January 25, 2007 / HASH / 1 Comment

“M” is the third in the African Digerati series of interviews. His cryptographic alias is part of the brand that he has built within the Kenyan Blogosphere around his blog Thinker’s Room. If popularity of a blog is shown by the number of commenters on any one blog post, then it can be argued that Thinker’s Room is at the top of the list.

One of the projects that M has worked on, which is not mentioned in this interview, is Mzalendo, a website whose mission is to keep “an eye on Kenyan Parliament”. They do this by showing profiles of politicians, voting records and providing news and transparency in an historically opaque arena. It’s this ground breaking website, along with his community on Thinker’s Room that makes him a force in digital Africa.
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Google Biased on “African Ingenuity”

January 24, 2007 / HASH / 4 Comments

Kikuyumoja just pointed out that BoingBoing has a short piece on Google being biased. It turns out that if you type in the words “African Ingenuity”, Google will ask you if you really meant “American Ingenuity”… Nice.

Try it (and let’s see how long before they fix this)

In other news, it’s cool to see AfriGadget as #2 on the search engine results. Remember, anyone can send in AfriGadget articles and I’ll post them.

[EDIT: Google is pretty fast. One day later and it seems that they have fixed this little problem]

The World Social Forum in Kenya

January 24, 2007 / HASH / 5 Comments

Not having the chance to attend this event, I thought it would be beneficial for others who are in the same shoes to see some of what I’ve been reading about it. Here are some pretty interesting blog articles about the dramatics and ironies around the event:

Kikuyumoja talks about the ironies and has a few good pictures. I found the pricing scheme the most disturbing – maybe it’s because of growing up in Kenya that I came to dislike how I was charged extra for my nationality, even as a resident.

And then there is this chart showing the registration fees:

Individual participants      Kes       Euro       USD
Africa                                                       50          5                7
Rest of the South                         2.000          20             28
Northern Nationals                     7.900          80             110

Mental Acrobatics has been attending the event and has a series of posts, with pictures of the event.
Drama about food #1
Drama about food #2

A couple other blog posts:
Music and Youth
On Youth’s Protesting

The official site and the WSF Blog.

photo courtesy of Kikuyumoja

Muti Now Allows Comments

January 22, 2007 / HASH / 3 Comments

Looks like this is the week of Muti and it’s creator Neville. In what I think is a rather big development, because I believe it will grow the number of users considerably, Muti now allows commenting by registered users.

I know Neville was torn on implementation of a comments system on Muti for the past year. This was due primarily because if he allowed comments on Muti, it would likely mean that fewer people would leave comments on people’s individual blogs. This is probably true at a macro level, but at a micro level we find that it isn’t that significant.

First, the ability to comment on Muti should see it grow and become an even stronger online entity. Secondly, it’s okay to start conversations on different platforms. Some might be even more open to commenting on a “neutral” field such as Muti, as opposed to someone’s personal blog.

From what I’ve seen of this type of thing on Digg and Reddit, I can only think it’s a great feature. Go sign up and give it a try. Once again, “kudus” Neville!

South Africa’s M&G Goes Mobile

January 22, 2007 / HASH / 2 Comments

Last week South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper went mobile (actually, they had a closed subscription-based service prior, but this is open to everyone). You can find the mobile version at http://wap.mg.co.za. What was particularly interesting about this was how simple of an interface they came up with, which made it possible to develop in a day and test for one week (that’s insanely fast by the way!).

I had a chance to catch up with Vincent Maher, their online strategist, to ask a few questions. I asked what technologies they had used, and why they had decided to go with them. It turns out that they used all open source platforms and that they are very much committed to web standards in implementation. Of all the things that Vincent said, the next quote is the most telling to me:
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African Digerati: Neville Newey

January 21, 2007 / HASH / 15 Comments

[Disclosure: Though I think Neville is doing some truly unique things, I must in full disclosure admit that I have been working with him over the last year on some different web projects.]

Neville Newey is the second in the African Digerati series of interviews. What he wouldn’t say here, because he is too humble, is that he takes his own initiative to create change. Anyone who has worked with him knows how open he is to discussing ideas and features – this is a rare trait to have in our profession, where everyone seems to get their egos tied up in their work.

Many people don’t know who is the magician behind Muti, that would be Neville. He created it from scratch after he saw how powerful the idea was at Reddit and that something similar was needed within the African web space.
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Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Author: HASH (page 74 of 106)