I'm currently based in Spain. There is good connectivity here. In fact calling it "broadband" is a fair term. But for some reason, I am constantly getting errors like the one you see above on Facebook. I don't know what's causing it, but contrary to the message in the window, I am indeed very much connected to the internet.
AJAX is a cool system as it offers one the ability to grab a snippet of a site and in theory, incur much less bandwidth in making that request, thus speeding up website interactions for those on slower connections. There's just the problem of latency as well as a great many other issues when it comes to how you actually implement AJAX. Personally, I know how easy it is to think, "Sure, that request is fine. No problems. I never have to worry about it failing." But in reality you do. Modern web design is sloppy this way and if you don't chain AJAX events to be dependent on one another, you get results like this. We talked about this a good deal at the AfricaCodeCamp as it isn't just a good design strategy for African websites, but also a good one for any website.
In Facebook's defense, at least there actually are error messages, but still, they could do more. I have to hand it to Twitter, as I have far fewer problems with their site from where I am and they know how to make the site degrade properly. For instance, if you try to click on the Sign In link on the main page before all the JavaScript and widgets are loaded, you'll go to the more basic, non-fancy login page. It's a small detail, but it improves the user experience. With how much Facebook is copying what Twitter is doing, you'd think they would copy some of these things as well.
While it may date me to a certain extent, I remember the short-lived days of having to design a site with a maximum width of 600 pixels. Man, those were ugly days. But, what could you do if someone's monitor was only 640 pixels wide and you wanted to make sure that with scroll bars and everything else, your site would fit on their screen? You designed for 600 wide, that's what you did.
In 2000, things quickly changed and 750 became the standard width as you designed for an 800 pixel minimum width screen. Then in 2005, we started to really go nuts and make things 950 wide as the thinking was that most people had a screen that was at least 1024 pixels wide. This day and age, folks are generally pushing 1000 width and sometimes more depending on the market. The trends are quite excellently illustrated in the table below, which you can see in their entirety at the always excellent w3schools.com.
| Date | Higher | 1024x768 | 800x600 | 640x480 | Unknown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2009 | 57% | 36% | 4% | 0% | 3% |
| January 2008 | 38% | 48% | 8% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2007 | 26% | 54% | 14% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2006 | 17% | 57% | 20% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2005 | 12% | 53% | 30% | 0% | 5% |
| January 2004 | 10% | 47% | 37% | 1% | 5% |
| January 2003 | 6% | 40% | 47% | 2% | 5% |
| January 2002 | 6% | 34% | 52% | 3% | 5% |
| January 2001 | 5% | 29% | 55% | 6% | 5% |
| January 2000 | 4% | 25% | 56% | 11% | 4% |
Naturally one might ask, "Why not just build a site of flexible width instead of fixed to solve the problem altogether?" I have yet to see any site that expands well. While they may look good at smaller widths, once expanded, they always funk out in my opinion. If anyone has an example that works well, let me know.
But I bring this up as a day or two ago, a fellow contacted me asking about the proper screen width for a website that would be focused most entirely on African users. Essentially his organization wanted to try and figure out the ideal width for a site so that it wouldn't be too wide for users to see on the screens they're using. It's a naturally question given that screen widths on a per country basis, not only in Africa, but around the world, are very hard to come by.
It is true that a number of the old website width rules come in to play as a great deal of hardware from North America and Europe ends up in Africa, whether to use or be dangerously recycled and dumped.
Of course the big question to ask, is where in Africa are you talking about? If it's countries like Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, or others with a burgeoning online community, you can most probably design for 1000px as from what I've seen personally, those who are online are using either brand new or relatively new hardware that is not only at least 1024 in width, but often 1200 or more. If you need to take in to account all of Africa, then okay, you probably need to think about things a bit more as undoubtedly there are a number of 800x600 screens still floating around. There might even be some 640x480 tucked away, but I doubt they'd still be functional at this point and there are a lot of newer, wide CRT monitors coming in for those who can't afford to upgrade due to so many individuals and companies in North America and Europe switching to LCD screens.
This is the width of this site and the target width of all sites on Maneno. In fact, for most sites I contract to build, I typically aim for 900 in general as it allows the site to show up perfectly fine on anything from the newest monitor down to a 1024 width screen. I mean, for the purposes of this site, over the last month, there were less than 2% of the visitors who had an 800 width screen, none with a 640, 18% with 1024, and the rest (about 78%) with a screen of 1200 pixels or more. Yes, you read that right in that nearly 80% of the users have a width of 1200 pixels or more.
So, while that 2% will have to scroll some of the content, the other 96% will see the site perfectly fine and even have room for it to expand. And that's the thing as I know a variety of website entities out there have mandates to serve the absolute maximum number of users. For instance the BBC still supports Mac OS 8&9 and Windows 95&98 (their testing lab must have some ugly, dusty boxes in it.) But in trying to slim down your site to reach every single person, you are limiting the possibilities of the website. As an example, you probably will avoid a lot of JavaScript if you have to support old Netscape or Explorer versions. This in turn creates a second-rate product. And why should Africans get a second-rate product?
I'm of the opinion to build websites with the same line of thinking no matter who is the user in that you build for the masses and try to maintain accessibility for those outside what the masses are using. From everything I'm seeing that means that if you're targeting African users as a whole and not just specific countries, build for 900 and within two years, 1050. The next two years are going to see some massive ICT growth on the continent. I'm going to laugh heartily if some developer in Nairobi is building a site in 2011 and grumbles about having to keep it to 1200 maximum width instead of 1400 in order to support all the users in the US still using old machines.
I've recently come across the site Online Africa which really picked up publishing steam in this month of October. The site has great loads of promise, working to cover connectivity issues across the African continent. No small feat obviously as there are a great many countries and a great many issues.
One of the things that the site is trying to do that makes it relatively unique in what it's covering is to break down data in to individual countries. There is a great deal of data out there and it's good to see someone else trying to make use of it and present in an easy to digest form.
Of course, there are others writing about these topics as well, so people may ask as to what is the point of another blog? I would counter that the point is to have more of a conversation and to have as many people covering what happens in regards to the connectivity for the billion people living on the African continent. When Apple has the smallest of bowel movements, there are literally thousands of blogs echoing news about said bowel movement. When a cable lights up internet for millions in Africa, are there even 100 blogs that cover the event?
So, I'm really happy to see Online Africa start up. I wish the site a great deal of luck and hope it will grow and cover more over time.
These things always start small enough. One twit begets another twit which then begets an official site and before you know it, a barcamp is ready to happen. Such was the case leading up to the BarCamp Africa UK which is happening November 7th in London.
Ethel Cofie started the twit about having a BarCamp Africa in the UK as to date there hasn't been one. Quickly the movement gathered a great deal of steam and a number of other people signed on as organizers: Richard Tandor, Conrad Taylor, Tony Burkson, Prince Kwadjo Ofori-Kuragu, and Julius Sowu. The best thing about this group is that in reading over the details of the event, they really and truly get what a barcamp is. They're not trying to have what is basically a conference and call it a barcamp. No, they're building up the event organically, keeping it free, and only having one keynote speaker. Of course it helps that the organizers have been to other barcamps before so they understand the format.
The organizers are mostly a group of Ghanaians and I was curious if there was a direct focus to the event, as sometimes a barcamp will have one. Ethel told me that they are much the same as other BarCamp Africa events which are to foster connections, grow ideas, and showcase success stories. They're all noble goals which is probably the reason why they've been a regular set in a lot of these events.
I'm happy to say that I'm going to be able to make it to the event as it's just a short flight for me at the moment. I can only hope that there will indeed be others from the African continent who are able to make it as well, given that the distance (and cost) is a far deal greater. However it turns out, based on the registration and sessions wiki it looks to be a pretty solid day in the center of London. I still can't get over how our social technologies allow something that starts out as a musing thought to morph in to a full fledged event in a matter of just a few weeks. Obviously, you can make it take longer if you want, but why wait when there's barcamping to be had!
Grasscutter vs. Agouti
Yeah, let's do it. I want to see a showdown between these two rodent delicacies. I haven't tried either one yet, but I hear they're both quite good. Unfortunately I find them to also be quite cute, so if someone presents one to me someday, please present it in meat form, not in "fresh" form. But I want to hear from those who have tried both. Which is better and why? Or does it really just depend on the sauce as it seems to often be the case in West African foods?
The end of telecenters in Senegal
While earlier I wrote an article about the decline of internet cafes in Senegal, the PDF report in this new link talks the initial inception of telephone landlines in the country, the increase of them, and now the decrease as mobile phones have taken off. Sorry, it's only in French.
Ivorian blogger, Manasse's blog. Yes, sorry, only in French again, but it's quite easy to use Google Translate to read what he's writing and he's a solid blogger, so it's worth your time.
Attention shift to local content
I always enjoy Rebecca's articles and this one is even more interesting to me as whenever I meet African web developers, I always put out the question of: Why not develop African content for Africa hosted in Africa? It's typically a very reserved response that I get, but now that Kenya actually has a fund aimed at stimulating local web content growth, it will be interesting to see what becomes of this. Probably a good test case for if it can take off or not.
I'll not get in to the specifics of what IPv4 is as you can read this very thorough Wikipedia article if you want to know the details. For the purposes here, all you need to know is that if you've ever had to deal with setting up a router at home or seen something like 192.168.0.1, then you have been in contact with an Internet Protocol address, version 4. We've been using this system for three decades to give a physical point where a website or piece of hardware can exist on the internet. For instance, when you type in subsaharska.com, you're actually going to the numerical address 74.50.48.186 as is translated by another system called DNS, but we'll stay out of that for now.
This addressing system has worked pretty well for us and it wasn't really thought to have any problems as given that each 8 bit chunk of the available addresses can be a number from 0 to 254, which in turn gave us a total of 4,294,967,296 to play with. It seems like a lot, but most predications show that in the next two or so years, we're actually going to run out of addresses because in addition to every website in the world needing one, every computer (other other device like a mobile phone) in the world also needs one when online. This is a problem for everyone in the world, but because of these addresses being a scarce resource, they were assigned in large blocks to each of the countries in the world and naturally, as if often the case, Sub-Saharan Africa got shafted. Here is a run down of about 40 countries on the continent and the number of physical IPv4 address that they have available: Angola: 50,432; Benin: 18,432; Botswana: 77,056; Burkina Faso: 30,464; Burundi: 2,304; Cameroon: 68,096; CAR: 3,328; Congo: 1,024; Congo DRC: 15,872; Cote d'Ivoire: 113,152; Djibouti: 12,288; Equatorial Guinea: 2,048; Eritrea: 4,096; Ethiopia: 16,384; Gabon: 155,136; The Gambia: 11,264; Ghana: 180,736; Guinea: 66,560; Guinea-Bissau: 1,024; Kenya: 336,640; Lesotho: 12,544; Liberia: 1,024; Malawi: 22,016; Mali: 24,576; Mauritania: 32,768; Mauritius: 271,360; Mozambique: 123,904; Namibia: 148,480; Niger: 17,408; Nigeria: 479,232; Rwanda: 156,672; Sao Tome: 0; Senegal: 92,416; Sierra Leone: 15,616; Somalia: 0; South Africa: 15,045,120; Tanzania: 122,112; Togo: 12,288; Uganda: 156,928; Zambia: 42,752; Zimbabwe: 43,520. Look up more if you'd like. And thanks to a bit in this article which started me thinking about this.
You can see that there are some pretty large points of inequality happening. For instance, Mauritius, which is a tiny island has over a quarter million addreses, while Sao Tome (also a tiny island) has none and Somalia (a very large country) also has none. Naturally South Africa was given about 15 million, which is the most out of whack country on the continent. Ah, but before you think that this may be unjust, how many addresses does a country like the United States have? 1,477,921,534. Yes, 1.5 billion. That's 3,000 times more addresses than Nigeria which has a third the population of the US.
If you revert the math (and I hope I'm doing this right) an American citizen will have access to 1,000x more things online than a Nigerian. You can see the disparity and even when taking America out of the picture, you can see how this has played out in Africa in that South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and other countries with larger IP blocks have a much more vibrant web community than say, Somalia or Burkina Faso. And as I pointed out earlier Mauritius with its large block that is out of scope, even has a datacenter, which is impressive given that it only has 1.2 million people.
Having less available IPs in a country raises the cost of getting online due to the fact that you need to have an IP and in order to get one, you will have to pay more in Sub-Saharan Africa because there simply are less of them than in the US. This is another reason why there are so many datacenters in the US, which has in turn led to people from any number of countries hosting their website there despite it incurring a slower response time and not fostering local jobs and development. It's a fact that it's cheaper because the US horded so many addresses when they were being handed out (along with ICAAN, but that's another article...)
Plain and simple, it's IPv6 which is the next generation of internet addressing. IPv4 has 2 to the 32nd addresses while IPv6 has 2 to the 128th addresses. Basically, so many more that I can't reasonably type that number. I'm sure that one day we'll figure out a way to use all of these up as well, but in theory due to how the addressing system works, we can just assign massive and very much equal top-level address blocks to each country, meaning that every one of the 195 countries in the world would get their own block to exhaust however they wanted. There would also be plenty of room to add more top-level blocks if places like Darfur or Southern Sudan officially become their own countries some day.
It's obvious to see that (I'm assuming) the US assigned address blocks based upon internet access, so it's actually rather good timing that adoption of IPv6 is slowly happening now due to more countries the world over being online than at any other point in years past. There is little one could say to justify the US hording a third of all the available addresses like it did. Of course, they did it before, so it could easily happen again and thus vigilant we all must be as companies are already starting to buy up IPv6 blocks.
Probably one of the fortunate aspects in being interested in African affairs is the fact that unfortunately, most people are not interested in African affairs. So it's often the case that you can visit exhibits and museums that have a focus on African without having to worry about crowds.
Such was the case with the musée de Quai Branly in Paris. While the museum sits at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in a very lovely modern building constructed just for the museum and has a multitude of cultures on exhibit, it is quite easy to pop in to for a nice look around. There are basically no lines and you mainly share the museum with a few random people and the occasional school group who seem to mostly focus on the featured exhibit halls.
While there are exhibits from the Americas, Asia, and Australia, I was most interested in their Africa exhibit. Obviously the most famous museum for African art and culture outside of the continent is the Africa Museum in Brussels which shows most of the items that the Belgians stripped "collected" from the continent. But, having not been to Brussels yet, I don't really have much to compare with, although the Quai Branly is quite respectable as it is.
While the collection doesn't cover every single country in Africa, it covers the west and central regions quite well in addition to touch of items from East Africa. Works range from the always ubiquitous masks, to jewelry, to clothes, to fertility dolls, to this massive obelisk type sculpture from Cameroon that sits near the entrance to the Africa section. Overall, I have to say that while many of the pieces were ones that I'm already familiar with, there were quite a few new ones that made it interesting (such as the obelisk.)
A section that I noticed most people missed, but is definitely worth taking some time with, are a series of sliding doors that display a hundred different small pieces that are primarily jewelry items, but also some general beadwork. While they don't have the impressive lighting of the larger works, they're still quite nicely display and more to the point, this method allows one to get quite up close with the work to really see the craft that people put in to them. And this is probably one of the best facets of the museum in that these truly are museum quality pieces on display. They aren't the chintzy pieces you find these days that are made for tourists as most seem to have been gotten in the very early 20th century if not in the 19th century.
The other big takeaway from the Africa section of the Quai Branly is that one can see how the art and craft varies massively between even the smallest regions in a country. It goes further to emphasize the ridiculous natures of today's country borders in Africa that were forcibly carved up by the colonial powers.
If you're in Paris and want to take a breath from the aggressively camera-riden throngs at the Louvre, Orsay, Montemarte, and Eiffel Tower, head on over to the Quai Branly. You might even experience something you may have thought you'd never see in Paris: French tourists.
While briefly staying in Paris, I hit up La Cantine to be a bit social in my computering endeavors. This is a coworking space that started up nearly two years ago. It's located in the center of the town, by the Grands Boulevards Metro just off Rue Montmarte in this super cool covered alley called Passage des Panoramas. The alley is cool in its own right as it's lined with restaurants that Parisians actually eat at and a number of enjoyable antique shops. And of course, since Paris has enacted a no smoking ban inside buildings (yeah, I know, how is it possible?), there are always any number of people sharing a smoke and having animated conversations along the alley.
As to the space, it's quite slick and very large at about 1250 square meters. They have one open cafe area where people can just drop in for a coffee, tea, or juice and surf for free, which means you often meet some cheap, scabby tourists there. They have another area which has large tables where people can cowork together, as well as a meeting space that acts as a spillover for when events take up the coworking space. Then upstairs they have more permanent coworking spaces for people who pay a higher rent. You can view a list of the coworkers on their wiki.
There are always events happening. In the 1.5 years they've been open, they've hosted something like 40 barcamps in the space, which definitely gives me a "Wow!" moment. Then there are a number of other blogging meetups and other conferences happening daily. This is great and makes it a lively hub, but you need to know this going in to it. It's not a library-like place. There are people talking and working to collaborate. Much more of a cafe-like atmosphere than an office one. This may bother some people who come to it. If your comprehension of French is quite basic like mine, then you can easily switch off listening to it so that it's more of a buzz in the background, punctuated by the steam of the coffee machine making a fresh cup of "inspiration juice", than anything else.
While here, I talked with the folks who run the place and discussed the possibility of an African BarCamp happening here as they space holds about 80 people or so for such an event. Unsurprisingly, it's very similar to PariSoMa in approach, which is why the AfricaCodeCamp was held there.
It is interesting to see how cultural perceptions can be opposite of one another though. While Americans have no problem grabbing on to a theme surrounding Africa and having a barcamp about it, the French I've met are of the general idea that an African barcamp should be held in Africa. Having it in France makes little sense to them unless it is for the diaspora living here and if someone non-African were to do it, they would consider downright offensive. It's an interesting point and I'm still trying to figure out if it has more to do with what is culturally proper or a disinterest in African affairs. If it is more the former aspect of thinking, then this is something people should really take in to consideration.
Personally, I wouldn't be organizing it as I most unfortunately not based in Paris. I'm only hoping to plant the seeds and that one of our board members based in Paris will pick up the torch on this one and see if the prospect grows legs or is seen to have little merit.
On a broader level, La Cantine is interesting because it does not support itself financially. I mean, how can it at 10€ a day to work there? They've done quite well to raise funding from several private corporations including mega-giant telecom, Orange. These corporations are what keep the space going. It's a similar thing for PariSoMa in San Francisco who are funded by their parent company, fabernovel. Although PariSoMa is working towards at least breaking even if not even being profitable, La Cantine seems to want to be more of a hub and networking space than anything else.
For those who have the backing, coworking is proving to be an interesting area to play around with in regards to format and the end result. But because most start out with no intention of profitability, there is little to stop someone from opening up a space somewhere in Africa and seeing what happens. Because again, while rent may be cheap, internet in Africa is not and are you going to charge someone $100-200 USD a month in a country where a technology worker may earn $400 total? Most likely not, thus making the space not profitable in a single-minded, bottom line perspective. We talked about these issues at the AricaCodeCamp and came up with little in the way of solutions except for just getting in on the ground and trying things.
There already are a couple of spaces on the continent who are indeed trying things and often they grow up organically in internet cafes. But I predict there will be a great many more as it seems that one of the things a large company wants to get out of funding a coworking space are innovative ideas that could turn in to profitable projects. Or there is the case that they want to establish a hub of solid technology workers who they can turn to for work. In the case of Africa, paying a couple of thousand dollars a month to maintain a cheap space to meet these ends is a great deal cheaper than paying a fulltime salary to some personnel staff to maintain it and not get the same kind of loyal community around the efforts. Whether it's Africa or North America, a community is always the wiser choice as everyone takes ownership in the greater good of the enterprise.
I can't see how companies wouldn't want to have coworking in Africa. Obviously there is that one minor roadblock of making sure to have someone on the ground to manage it. If you don't have that, then you're probably up a very brown creek without a paddle and doing no one any good. But beyond that, it seems that from the ready talent in the various countries I've visited, a coworking space would explode for both the sponsoring entity and those working at it.
I didn't change my Twitter account to have a green background, nor did I change my location to Tehran, but when the protests erupted after the recent elections, there were great cadres of people ready to show their support and "Iran-ify" their Twitter. This has been one of the great strengths of social media in social causes in that people are are able to start grassroots movements for no costs. It's a wondrous thing and it's interesting to note what happened with Iran as it's one of the first moments that I recall a unified, immediate force trying to contend with injustice in the world.
It's going to take a long time to find out of if these types of movements will actually have any effect. They are often spearheaded by those not in the country from the safety of their own home and getting that to manifest in to something physical in the real world can be a really tricky conversion. For instance, despite all recent movements (digital or physical), Tibet is still part of China, Ahmadinejad was re-elected to be president of Iran, and Darfur is still part of Sudan, just to name a few.
But it's interesting to note in all of this that African causes have yet to really see any online movements form around them. The obvious exception is the aforementioned Darfur, but many are saying that's just because it's been marketed well and while I'm in no position to pass judgment, it is true that most things Darfur-related have not grown up organically. I'm talking more about situations like the recent elections in Gabon (dead president's son won; results disputed), upcoming elections in Cote d'Ivoire (current president has been in power without being properly elected for five years) and most importantly Guinea, where a military coup took place at the end of last year and elections are supposed to happen in January.
These injustices are not only largely unreported in popular media, but are often avoided in social media as well. I'm curious as to why this is the case, especially as I've been doing what I can to help a number of people who have been writing on Konakry Express to try and at least have some information out there about Guinea as there is very, very little in general. This is especially sad given that nearly 200 people were killed in an opposition protest just last month.
What is the "critical meme" that needs to be reached before a movement will "go Iran" and maintain a mass of individuals interested in reaching out digitally to support a group of people in the world? I would say that it's when the affected area is English speaking and thus the reason why problems in Francophone Africa are unknown, but Iranians speak Persian, so that can't be it, although I'm sure it has some effect depending on the region.
Is it that it has to start with people living in Europe and North America? Or is it that the digital movement needs to be prodded by traditional television and print media? This would make sense in Iran as it is often covered. It would also make sense why issues in Africa go uncovered as the traditional media cares little about what happens there, often reporting things vastly wrong because news desks are copying each other (that's a damned good read) and have basically stopped reporting.
The perfect victim is a white male professional, 40 years old, at the height of his earning power, struck down at his prime.
That is from the beginning of A Civil Action and it is the perfect personal injury lawsuit. On that note, but in a completely different vein, I would put forth what it seems is the perfect storm for social media to take off on an African issue:
1) English speaking or a large number of people in the group being able to speak English.
2) Large pre-established blogging/twitter presence around the issue/region.
3) Established traditional media coverage of the affected region.
4) Possibly being a former British colony as that often fires up the BBC to report.
5) ?
As you can probably see, Kenya fits this profile quite well, which would go to show why we heard so much about the post-election violence in 2007 and had Twitter been more popular, it could very well have taken off in digital circles like Iran did. It also explains why Guinea is being ignored due to their being a Francophone country, having very little in the way of blogging and social media community, and not having large media outlets covering it. As another example, Congo has traditional media coverage, but no blogging community (only a few traditional journalists doing blogging as a side affair) and is also a French speaking country.
I believe that it's imperative for blogging/twitter to be established for a digital movement to build upon. This can be fired up a good deal by traditional media being established, but it doesn't have to be. Blogging is free (beyond the cost of an internet connection of course) and it can start wherever it has to. Maybe once it does, we'll see more movements grow around African issues when they arise because I don't want to think that these problems going unnoticed is just because people don't care and more that they just don't have access to real, personal information.
I can't even describe by how many ways how incredibly cool this is. I just hope that the library grows more and more with time as it is often very hard to get ahold of African films outside the continent. Definitely check this out.
Definitely not strictly an Africa thing, but mighty useful if you want to block your wifi signal from leaving your premises. I'd love to see some of the anti-mobile signal paint be lathered in generous amounts at my local theater!
