So, I've been settling in to my new home well. Admittedly, as I saw, all the action is down in Abidjan and Abengourou is a bit slower pace. It's relaxing though and as there is ready internet here, I have no complaints. There really aren't too many choices in landline internet and as far as I know, Aviso is the only one in these parts.
At $45 USD a month for 1.2Mb down and 384Kb up, as internet goes in West Africa, it's pretty reasonable and so far, pretty reliable. Yes, there are times when it is slower than others, but that just makes me have more of a purpose in online activities. The farting around aspect in being online gets largely reduced.
The only problem I'm having (and this is where the request for help comes in) is that this package came with this clunky USB modem to connect with. There are two and at times more of us who need to use this connection, so this simply won't work as it is a one to one setup.
From the US I brought two ADSL modems (a Zxyel and a Brightport) as well as an Apple Airport Express. I figured that at least one of the modems would work and that the Airport could be set up with a PPPoE connection to bypass this whole USB modem garbage. It turns out that this doesn't work and I'm stumped. In theory, everything should be happy. The Airport is set up and everything gives the appearance of connecting. The modem has a solid DSL light and seems to be happy. But, when it comes to actual browsing; nothing. Pages don't resolve, nor do attempts to ping outside addresses.
At this point, I'm kicking myself for bringing the Airport because, while compact, easy to carry, and hapy to switch between 120/240v, it is also without a great many options and I can't configure the WAN side of things as I would like to. So, is it the case that I need to spend another $100 of Aviso blood money to get their router/hub (which is the upgrade to this USB modem) or is there simply some setting somewhere that I'm not aware of?
Any help would be greatly appreciated and earn a Flag or Castel (the big one, not the small one mind you) upon sucessful wifi-ification of this connection. Thank you!
For the first half of this year, I'll be based in Côte d'Ivoire. I'm really quite excited and am looking forward to working with the local tech and blogger scene in the country, which is quite strong and with some really talented people.
While I've been to Congo and Ghana before, this will allow me a longer time to dig in to the local scene and hopefully be able to promote the projects that others are working on such as those in the Akendewa organization. Also, I'll be able to attend some really great events like the upcoming BarCamp Abidjan. This is also going to give me the chance to break out of the chicken-scratch mode of French that I don't really speak and to properly learn the language once and for all as it's pretty imperative that if you want to work on pan-African projects, you really need to be bilingual in English and French. Plus, it will make me seem far fancier than I actually am.
While there, I'll still be toiling away on Maneno and working with others to expand the architecture. There are a lot of great elements in the Alloco release, but the next one, Fufu is going to allow a great deal of external customization and more URL hosting options. Plus, we should be working to promote more BlogCamps in the region to get more people online and writing.
Most importantly, it will be great to get out of the cold, dreary days that California has had recently and dig in to a plate of Alloco (loved the Ghanaian version), as well as hopefully some of those beans in a red red, which I simply can't eat enough of, although I'm as to a loss of what it's called in Côte d'Ivoire or if it even exists.
So, while I'll be spending most of my time up in Abengourou, if you pass through there or Abidjan, let me know. I'd be happy to meet up for a bière.
Two suitcases with 23kgs apiece to last me until the middle of the year. That's pretty much what I have to plan for right now. When one isn't as much of a geek, this is an easier thing to plan. When one is me, there is all kinds of electronic crap and other tool crap that needs to be tossed in to the allowed 46kgs. As seen above, that is the bulk of my non-essential items, although, despite not being clothes or a toothbrush, I find everything in there to be essential.
I'll write more about this in a later post, but I'm heading off to Côte d'Ivoire for the next five months. For those unfamiliar with Sub-Saharan Africa, it may seem like I'm actually bringing too little. But really, it's not so much that these things don't exist there (they do) but more that I prefer mine, I have them, and I don't want to buy them again. That and I'm no fashionista, so I don't need 46kgs for clothing. Some people do and they scare me to no end.
In there are pretty regular things like: screwdrivers, set of metric socket wrenches (I own nothing in the American system), tape measure, hammer, network patch cables, a DSL modem, a wired router (wireless is already there ahead of me), surge protectors, multiple power adapters, power converter, and spare laptop batteries. No, I'm not planning to do any construction while there, but you only find out how useful some tool is once you don't have it. Honestly, if I had to choose only one, it would be my ridiculously-colored, purple Leatherman Juice XE 6. It's compact and has a variety of extremely useful tools; the Swiss Army Knife of the 21st century. My wife has the smaller C2 and finds it to have no end of value. Of course, as the dents will testify, the Leatherman makes for an incredibly poor hammer.
There a few non-geek-guy things on there that are probably noteworthy. The pillow (that rolled up white thing in the left) is essential. While I can stand a foam or hard pillow for a few weeks, on an extended basis, my neck gets really messed up as it gets no love from all the computer work I do either. That is a half kilo bag of tea with my tea infuser. You really can't leave home without that either or you're going to be drinking Lipton and anyone who likes tea won't like that. Lastly, at the bottom, there is a toilet seat. Yeah, that seems rather random to bring, but once I'm there, I'll write more about that on my other, personal blog. And no, I have no plans to host any bachelor parties. That is what it is.
My Weku writes up a breakdown about a new African photo sharing site from developer Kwabena Aning in Ghana.
Bumni Oloruntoba on A Bombastic Element points out a really well-done map showing the connectedness of various African countries.
Or, "The Explorer The" in German. Clement Nyirenda comments on the fact that Germany officially told people to get off Internet Explorer; a move of Germany's seconded by France just yesterday. I mean, think about it, how often do France and Germany agree on anything? So yes, Internet Explorer is that bad.
For those unfamiliar with it, The Daily WTF is a collection of ridiculous stories from technology. It has a decidedly geeky focus though, and at times, they mention a joke in some programming language that even leaves me scratching my head. But, there is an overarching theme to a great many of the articles that come through in that some geek recounts how he was hired to rehash some system, somewhere that someone cobbled together with something that somewhat worked.
While good for a laugh, it belies the fact that a lot of organizations simply do not have the budget to hire a tech or web person (at least prior to this global economic crisis anyways.) This in turn means that someone who is probably happier taking photographs or coordinating reports becomes the de facto in-house tech person and is forced to make a great number of decisions that aren't necessarily beneficial to the organization short of helping some goal limp to its finish. Then, somewhere down the line, someone stands back, shakes their head, and says, "Holy hell, this needs some advising from someone with the word 'technology' in their title."
I'm assuming that there is something of a similar backstory to this and is the reason that Tobias at Kabissa posted an open discussion about web solutions in Africa. It's a good thread, which most likely due to the tragedy in Haiti hasn't been seen by a lot of folks due to the work going on amidst the destruction there and the work that needs doing.
I just wanted to point it out as there have been a great variety of items submitted to the discussion. I wrote a lengthy chunk that I actually want to work over a bit and post here as I left out Google Sites as an option and a number of things could be refined.
Overall though, people were suggesting a great many of the CMS solutions that exist for free and for an organization with a limited budget present fantastic opportunities to leave behind whatever set of static HTML pages 27 people had added to over the last 10 years. More input is needed though and as Tobias pointed out after a number of posts had come through, there should be more of a focus on finding whatever most approximates a silver bullet insofar as a solution goes. Naturally this varies a great deal given the environment and focus of the organization, but still there are a number of different options that are all good, but most of us showed up to the discussion ready to ride our favorite bicycle, which probably hasn't helped the organization in deciding on what they should go with. I suppose it's because ultimately there is no perfect solution and so, the discussion needs more discussing.
Observations from a blogger who has come back in to the blogging fold after other social media systems have picked up in popularity. Definitely food for thought.
A really fantastic graphic about Americans and how they give to charities. Basically, they give a lot, but not necessarily wisely. Take a look, it's mostly pictures!
If you haven't give it a try. This could really change things a great deal in the video arena for those of us on slower connections. Of course, it doesn't work on every video on YouTube, but the fact that they're deploying this is quite cool.
Just this last week, @googleafrica fired up and started tweeting. Now, this account has been around for a very long time and was completely unused. I can't really fault them for just wanting to hold it. Given the massive adoption rate that Twitter has seen, it was inevitable that they could easily lose out on what is there name. From the first tweet on January 6th, they've already amassed 200 followers. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Anyone who reads my blog with regularity knows that I've been very critical of the Google Africa blog with what I feel is good reason given that it doesn't relate pressing news or give much information in general as to Google's work in Africa--and Google does a lot of work in Africa. I'm very curious to see how the Twitter account will work out.
I find blogs to be more of a broadcast medium and Twitter to be more of a social medium. For the Twitter to go anywhere, that will mean engaging the audience a great deal more than the blog does. It's obviously too early to pass any judgment on this, but I am curious as to how they'll approach their Twitter account. Of course more than anything, I'm really interested as to the "Why now?" element in all of it, except that it's the start of a new year.
On a separate note, they're following 43 people. If you look through that list and are familiar with Twitter and bloggers in Africa, you'll see a lot of the same names are on other lists. It's a bit scary to think that the list of those important to Africa (a continent of one billion people) on Twitter is just 43 people. I think that more than the tweets they produce, who they follow in time, or put on lists will be more interesting if they work to engage the Twitter medium more.
It appears that this site has been registered since 2006, but I'm not sure how long gate2home has been in its current incarnation, which quite honestly, kicks ass. This site is an onscreen, virtual keyboard that allows you to type with the characters you need in your language and then paste them in to whatever text program you need. And while it may initially look like it's one of those hunt and peck things that you can use in other systems, it's not. You can actually type from your computer keyboard and it maps the characters accordingly. The fellow who created it did so out of personal need, which is where I find a great deal of the best projects come from.
The reason that this caught my attention was the fact that when you open up the initial dropdown to choose your language, right there, bam, at the top is Akan. But, the African languages don't just stop there. There is also Bambara, Bemba, Fulfulde, Ga, Hausa, seSotho, Lingala, Yoruba, and a wonderful slew of others. And naturally there are a lot of other language beyond the African ones, such as the developer's original Hebrew.
Having dealt with installing keyboard language packs and dealing with all the issues around the fact that American operating system manufacturers don't really care about languages in general, this is a godsend. Obviously, I probably wouldn't use it on an incredibly long-term basis (language pack, you are there for me on that for now...) but for short things, or maybe even decently long ones, this is really, really cool.
For anyone who writes and speaks in a language with characters beyond the extended Latin set, I really recommend checking this out and see how well it works for you. Or just keep it in mind if you, like the developer find yourself in an internet cafe trying to use the local keyboards. I'm still traumatized by the Belgian French layout.
Following on my prognostication for 2010, I came across a page on Wikipedia for the total number of language speakers in the world. I applaud the fact that this list was created as it is interesting to see. It's just a shame that some of the figures are insanely inaccurate, which is probably why it has been proposed to delete the article.
One of my barometers on anything to deal with world languages is Croatian or Serbo-Croatian if you will. On this chart, it lists it as the 50th most spoken language in the world. That really doesn't seem correct and a great deal of the numbers are out of whack. Digging deeper, I see that some of the African language totals are worse than a stab in the dark. For the most obvious starter, take a look at Kiswahili. It's listed with 5 million native speakers and 80 million secondary speakers. Most accounts I've seen have it listed at 100-150 million speakers. Some documentation is needed there.
It's little things like this that make this list need a great deal of love and it's unfortunate to see that despite all the activity on it, so many of the figures are quite inaccurate. So, I ask of anyone out there with some language knowledge to document and contribute to this list in order to make it something a great deal more respectable, at least on the African front if nothing else.
When it comes to web technology trends, there is typically one that is the sexiest one for that year. For example, "mobile" was the one for 2009.
I'm going to go out on what I feel to be a rather thick limb and say that 2010 is going to be the year of language. We've been seeing multi-lingual efforts grow by leaps and bounds over the past years and it seems that we're getting to a point where most people I know say, "Hey, Google Translate doesn't just simply translate literally, but it's actually quite good." The web has matured in the possibilities it allows in being able to cross the borders formed by language.
Nowhere is this more the case than in Africa. I see 2010 as a pivotal year in African languages getting online. Jimmy Wales wants more African languages in Wikipedia and there has been a good deal of push by Google in this department with their Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge that the Google Africa blog covered two weeks after it was over--how timely. But, the fact is that while all kinds of money and effort can be tossed at getting more African languages in to a digital format, if it doesn't come from Africans, it's not going to take root.
While a great many African languages were alphabetized in to Latin character sets a century ago by missionaries, it's unfortunate to see that despite this, so many languages, while spoken, as not able to be read or written (Kiswahili and a handful of others are indeed working to buck this trend.) I would posit that while these alphabets exist, for the most part, they weren't created by those speaking the languages from birth. They were an artificial, external force that didn't stay around.
By comparison, a bit before the time that missionaries were traipsing about Africa, putting these historically oral languages to text, the Romantics in Europe were busy standardizing their languages. Pompeu Fabra, Vuk Karadžić, Ferenc Kazinczy, Alessandro Manzoni, and a slew of others were refining the languages that they had grown up with. But, instead of formalizing their languages in order to spread religion, they were doing so in order to spread the language.
It needs to be said that Amharic and other languages in Africa did indeed have established alphabets, but compatriots of these European Romantics were busily trouncing African languages through Colonialism. While enforcing English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish as lingua francas may have been practical (yet brashly inhumane) in the artificially created borders of a colony that may have had upwards of 100 or more languages and dialects, it set up a system that we still see in place today. This is especially in Anglophone or Francophone African countries where the local languages are spoken on familiar, yet not official terms. There have been strides made to try and stem this linguistic undertow of the last century as seen in Tanzania, Mali, and others, where education in the local languages is either being proudly enforced or at least investigated.
The problem in all of this is that spreading a language in an official capacity is expensive and English has (like it or not) become the business language of the world. Dictionaries are not cheap to print and institutions are not set up overnight, let alone the fact that you need people able to read and write in these languages in the first place who are in constantly dwindling numbers. Taking on the creation of language institutions for an entire country to function are not easy to propose, especially if there are several languages to consider.
So enters the internet and more importantly, the point where we are at with language on the web in 2010. Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others (such as this site) are all taking the fact seriously that any 21st century web business model now needs to include a multi-lingual environment to reach the maximum number of users.
Kiswahili has been the golden child in all of this, making use of many of these crowd-sourced technologies to bolster its online presence. While Google is trying to promote competitions, these linguistic efforts can be self-started and homegrown. In fact, to truly succeed, I think that they have to be, as people need to convince themselves first and everyone else second. Of course, many people will very well be asking, why bother?
Google doesn't need to destroy all the data it can't index because it's going to reach a point where if it isn't online, then it will disappear from our collective knowledge. We're at a pretty crucial tipping point where all the languages that are going to be carried forward with us need to get online now, or they will simply cease to exist due to the original speakers dying off or a language like English or French supplanting them. While a monolingual culture may seem easier for people, the fact of the matter is that your identity is tied up in your language and if you lose your language, you lose your culture. The global corporations would love for us all to have the same language and buying habits, but I'm of the opinion that losing the languages and cultures which define us, we basically lose us.
So, let's keep the languages jumping as this new decade takes on the digital preservation of all our languages.
