I was happy to find someone at Slashdot had supplied a link to the first 9 minutes of the movie Serenity that I talked about in an earlier post. This is a completely legal preview, set up by Universal/United Int’l Pictures. You can trust the website you’re going to.
Also, if you happen to have read Ender’s Game
I’m not sure what to think of this movie yet, but at the very least it looks interesting. From what I can tell from the preview – it’s about two Palestinian friends who go out to be suicide bombers, and their choices on whether to do it or not. As I said, interesting.
Here’s the link to the movie: Paradise Now
I thought I knew the geography of Africa fairly well, especially East Africa. However, I was doing some reading recently and realized that I did not know that the Republic of Somaliland had declared itself a country almost 15 years ago (1991). Somalia does not have the best reputation in the world, whereas Somaliland has been fairly quiet and peaceful as far as internal conflict goes.
Because Somaliland is not recognized, the IMF will not lend them any money. This has made it difficult, but it has also been a blessing – Somaliland is virtually debt free! The government is run on a couple million dollars per year, and because of this lack of money they have little corruption within the government – another amazing fact.
It appears that the BBC did a special on unrecognized countries called Places That Don’t Exist. Somaliland was highlighted, along with Transnistria, Taiwan, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh.
They rebuilt their country after a devastating civil war with very little help from the outside world, but with sheer hard work and a belief in their own national identity they’ve been able to build a functioning state.
– Simon Reeve, BBC News Correspondent
Not even a week after I posted an article about 37 Signals and their great products, they go and launch another one: Writeboard. Think “wiki made simple” and you’ll understand what writeboard is.
If you don’t have a clue what wiki’s are, a wiki allows anyone, using a web browser, to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the web site including the work of other authors (Wikipedia being the most famous)
Here’s what they say about Writeboard:
Writeboard makes it easy to…
Writeboard is perfect for…
Now, I swear I’m not on the payroll of 37 Signals (though maybe I should be), I just like their products and how they do it.
MIT has been working on a $100 computer project for their One laptop per child movement. The program has backing by the likes of AMD, Google, Motorola and Samsung and will be rolled out in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa.
The Linux OS based laptop is built of weatherproof rubber and includes a manual crank to recharge the battery if there is not power source available. The power cord and AC adaptor convert into a carrying/shoulder strap (we’ll see if that works!).
Overall, I really love this idea and believe it can make a significant change, in Africa in particular. There are a few obstacles in the road to connectivity utopia though, one would be the fact that it is the government of these countries that do the purchasing – always a problem in corrupt places. Also, $100 seems inexpensive to those of us in the US and Europe, however that is a very sizeable portion of the average Kenyan’s budget.
Connectivity to the web is another issue – and is where this project can really provide it’s worth in the long-run. It might be possible to find some inexpensive way to get online, maybe that’s why Google is backing it. With the new GoogleNet, they might be able to provide free Wi-Fi or WiMax hotspots.
[Update: I just watched the movie, and unhesitatingly recommend it!]
A friend recently put me on to last years TV show from Fox called Firefly, by . The best way I know to explain it is it’s “Star Wars meets a spaghetti western”. I’m reminded of the fun Han Solo side of Star Wars – smugglers, close calls and humor. Throw in some six-shooters and a few bar fight scenes and there you have it!
Firefly ran 14 shows, cultivated a group of devoted followers, then was axed. Fox saw fit to air it on an evening where it would get few viewers, aired it after sports programming (suicide), and then best of all – they aired the shows in the wrong order, thereby confusing everyone. It was a masterfull stroke of seppuku.
Because it had such a devoted following, Fox saw fit to fund a movie of the show – Serenity. Joss Whedon (the writer) and the cast from the show are all in the movie that was released today. By all accounts it has received great reviews, doing what Lucas has hoped to do in the last 3 installments of Star Wars (but has failed miserably).
Check out the movie trailer for yourself: Serenity Movie Trailer Link. This White African strongly recommends both the show and the movie.
Similar to eSnips, which I outlined in a previous post, Backpack is a personal organizer, project and data management tool. Backpack has a big brother that goes by the name Basecamp, which is useful for the small- to mid-sized business as a project management tool. While I’m at it, I might as well mention their free Ta-da List tool, which is a free list management tool that you can share with others.
The following quote is what I love about this company:
Who is 37signals?
We’re a company of five committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We’ve been in business since 1999.
You can’t help but love a small company who provides simple and useful web-based tools – tools that aren’t overdone or overcomplicated and that actually make your life easier (imagine that!). I suggest reading 37Signals Manifesto as well, it helps why they make their products the way they do. An example:
Some have called Backpack “a wiki with out the wacky.” Others have called it “blogish.” Others have said it’s a project management tool for all the little things in your life. Some say it’s a application that helps you get things done. Some have called it Basecamp’s little brother. Call it what you will. We call it useful and hope you do too.
37Signals is a savvy enough web team to realize that you need to provide a free offering for each service, so you can try out any of their products for free and if you like it enough, just upgrade. I haven’t used the Basecamp product yet, but after reviewing Backpack over the last 2 months, I firmly give it a thumbs-up. My one knock on their products is that they don’t have as much storage space as you get from an eSnips or Gmail account.
Is this a regression in technology or a progression in regressive technology? Actually, PocketMod is really a neat tool. You can create a personal day-timer, planner, shopping list, etc… All you need is a computer, one sheet of paper and a printer to make this work for you.
Some benefits:
An added benefit is that with the new desktop-based application, you don’t even need to get on the web to make your planner.
(Thanks to KikuyuMoja for the tip)
A few months back I wrote about The Perfect Travel Laptop, where I focused on the Flybook and spoke briefly about the OQO. These are the new ultra-travellers computers that go by the moniker “Handtop”. Two sites where you can learn more about handtop computers are:
The new OQO comes with some nice upgrades, I especially like the fact that they’ve bumped it to 512 Mb RAM and that it has USB 2.0 now. However, though they’ve upgraded the hard drive to 30 Gb, I’m a media hog and I wish it had something more in the 60 gig range. Since the OQO 01+ will be retailing for approximately $2000, it will only be bought by that niche market who really needs the ultra-portability.
National Geographic recently did a special edition (September 2005) on Africa. I, of course, find the whole magazine interesting, but especially the focus on Nairobi – land of my childhood.
Inventing Nairobi is a refreshing change from the normal news/magazine coverage of Africa. It doesn’t focus on the animals, the incredible scenery, the rural tribes or the upper-class decision makers. Instead, we get down into the nitty gritty of what true Nairobi residents think, and how they overcome the rusted cogs of beauracracy provided by an outdated government based in colonialism.
Binyavanga Wainaina has done a wonderful job of writing, and you can see and hear him first-hand through this link (which I highly recommend).
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