Coffee drinkers the world over are well-known for needing their coffee fix wherever they might be. This can lead to rather burdensome life requirements of course as was shown by a friend of a friend who took an entire espresso machine with him when he went to DR Congo. He was Italian of course, so I have a great deal of respect for the attention to detail.
I never really got in to coffee. It's not to say that I don't like it, as I do enjoy a dark, straight cup as they make it in Spain, Bosnia, or Turkey, but at the same time, I just really don't need it. And I really don't need that whipped cream, cinnamon sprinkled joke they pass off as coffee at places like Starbucks.
Snicker as you may (or if British, nod in approval) but I happen to be much more of a tea fan. This is fine when in Eastern Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, or a number of other African countries that have vast, wonderful tea fields, but when traveling at large, you often have to BYOT (Bring Your Own Tea.) For instance, when in Ghana, I found that there was indeed Lipton and it was better than the bagged version you get in the US, but it still just wasn't quite "there". If you lob the phrase "tea snob" at me, I probably won't duck it at this point as I've just had so many crappy cups of tea while traveling that I generally pass if it doesn't seem up to snuff. I'll try not to sneer if in your company, but I make no promises.
The travel woes changed a great deal with the discovery of this bad boy, which is a very portable tea leaf infuser that's rather affordable. It's large enough to let the tea steep properly, unlike the ball, but small enough to fit anywhere. Naturally one might be looking at this and thinking, "Um, buddy, why don't you just travel bag-enabled?" I did this for awhile, but I have to be honest with you in that once you go loose, you can't go bag; thank you very much, Fortnum & Mason Assam. I assume it's something along the same lines as grinding your own coffee beans prior to brewing.
But that's about it. I can take this little fellow with me anywhere and it will span just about any cup. I can bring my own leaves or just try what is locally grown. Boil up some water, send it my way, and you've got a happy tea drinker. Bill, I'm hoping to get over your way soon to try some Cameroonian tea as well and I will be there, infuser in hand.
I have to admit that this was all inspired by this article on Twiga which shows that you absolutely don't need to go the fancy infuser route and may very easily find a local metal smith that can construct one out of recycled materials. But, just a bit of travel tea-lore for some of my fellow drinkers out there who might be staying in the shadows because it seems that few folks write about tea and travel as if one excludes the other, to which I say, "Hardly!"
One of my main hobbies is maps. Not really making them so much, but more seeing them and staring at them. That's why these couple of maps I found quite cool.
Yeah, I know that a lot of people think that malaria is a "mostly-African" problem. Truth is, it existed a great many places in the world in addition to Africa. This map from 1870 in the US shows that it was indeed a rather massive problem there as well. It can definitely be eradicated with time, but it's tough when "winters" are like the really fantastic 25C days I experienced in Ghana.
The description breaks it down a lot better than I could ever hope to summarize. It's been around for some time, but I still find it really cool. See if you can figure out which parts are most likely the African networks.
Iris Amuto: The African Paradox
Video of a young Kenyan speaking about perception in regards to Africa. She has some really great points, one of my favorite being, "The word depression does not exist in most African languages." I've found out in further talks with some people that where it does seem to exist, it's really a loan word from a European language. That has to be one of the most telling sentences about what the real Africa is like.
At the BarCamp Africa UK, a good many of us had a common problem in that while the event took place at at the Vodafone headquarters in a very slick, new building, Google Maps was nearly no help in finding it. The actual address is 1 Kingdom St,London W2 6BL. As you can see in that link, it does indeed pull up an address that is near the event, but is not the actual event. That address points you to a series of row houses on the other side of the train tracks going to Paddington Station. The actual location, I've shown below. As you can see, it's close, but no cigar.
The quick, obvious moral of this is that you can't entirely trust Google Maps. But, that is getting harder not to do as we rely on technologies like this for a great deal of our information because more often than not, they are a great deal more correct than traditional sources. While Google is taking a great deal of effort in trying have more community involvement in their mapping projects, you still end up with maps like this one of central Mombasa. Sure, whatever automatic system they used to generate this worked decently well, but at the same time, in the map version, there are streets going across the water! And of course, a lot of things are unnamed. While many would say that this is a cost of crowdsourcing which is far outweighed by the eventual benefit of more data, unlike Wikipedia, Google is a corporate entity. They make money off these maps (through related ads) and as such, I believe that there is a good deal of responsibility to make sure that things are accurate. For anyone who is in development communities, you know very well the difference between the "nightly build" which is often bleeding edge and very much broken vs. the "stable release". Google seems to be releasing their "nightly build" for general consumption. Yes, I realize that it may encourage others to come and fix it, but what about those who see it, see that it's Google and take it as cartographic gospel?
While Google is one of the few companies really striving to have their products work in Africa, it seems that there is an underlying principle of "good enough" in some of what they're deploying. Because the fact that there were no digital maps of Mombasa or other cities available before, what they're offering is better than that because it's "something". But all this is doing is quashing some kind of local group or even OpenStreetmap (their view of Mombasa) to flourish.
Google and other companies need to really be called out on things like this and have a great deal more accountability. If their maps other other data are going to become the de facto, then someone needs to certify that things actually are correct because in my book, you simply cannot half-ass data collection; it's full-ass in or don't do it at all.
While more was made out of the domains in non-Latin characters announcement, there is actually another item which wasn't covered nearly as much as it should have been. Basically, it's the fact that DNSSEC is going to be deployed in January. In short, 'DNS' is the system that translates domain.com in to a numerical address on the internet where the server for that alphanumeric domain name resides. The 'SEC' part of it is a secure extension being added on in order to digitally sign these names and provide a level of security to know that the names we type in are indeed being pointed correctly.
This is something we've needed for some time. Much like email, DNS was built with little security in mind as the initial systems were created for a small, clustered group of people to use in government and education institutions. Once the sweaty masses got our hands on these systems, spam, phishing, and any number of other nefarious elements came about.
It's just unfortunate in how this system is being both implemented and released. For starters, it is being released in January, before the release of the non-Latin character domains. So, what happens if this system blows up? The extended character domain release is obviously going to be delayed. Is it going to blow up? Probably to a certain degree. The obstacles to making it work well are all possible to overcome, but it's going to be an immense strain on our DNS network for the following reasons:
- Additional communication between servers to authenticate and distribute the keys
- Additional data needed to be stored in the root servers for the millions of domains in existence
- Additional bandwidth needed for lookups.
Rebecca Wanjiku picked up on this last element in an article she published recently. It's a definite concern. Just like how all this cloud business is going to create new barriers for participation in low bandwidth areas of Africa, so too will DNSSEC. A basic zone file is a minimum of 512 bytes or half a kilobyte. I have yet to find any hard data on the size of the digital keys, but it's going to increase the size of these lookups a great deal. Let's just say that they're using a 128 alphanumeric key. That requires an extra kilobyte of transport space thus making a secured, DNSSEC request 1.5kb. For those on broadband, this is nothing. For those on anything less, this is crippling as it needs to be made for every new domain request. If you're on the equivalent of a dialup connection running at 56kbs, you get 7kb of bandwidth, meaning that DNS requests are going to hog up 21% of your available bandwidth! In addition to this, there are two more pings to the DNS server in order for the authentication process to function which means if you have a connection with high latency, you're also going to be hurting.
I have to admit that it's been awhile since I've done straight IT work and had to deal with the math involved in making DNS and all that work, so if anyone has any hard data and wants to gently (or forcefully) correct me on what I'm guestimating, please do. I would very much love to be shown the light, especially if it drives the numbers quite far one way or the other from what I've tallied up.
Now, while some security on the internet has to happen at some point, why does it have to happen now? Why can't it wait another two years for more broadband deployment to make this so, so much less of an issue? I'm going to put on my conspiracy hat for a minute (yes, it's made of tinfoil.) There's something interesting that people haven't linked up just yet. Windows 7 has just been released. That's not really news at this point, but what is news is the fact that Windows 7 has been built to take advantage of DNSSEC out of the box. This is being celebrated as something great and it most definitely is as Windows has been a notoriously insecure operating system for a long time.
But here's the thing. A lot of people will undoubtedly upgrade to Windows 7 through the end of this year as they buy new computers. Again, not a big deal as this is a pretty regular thing. But it just happens that DNSSEC is going to be thoroughly deployed on the 20 root nameservers around the world in January. In January, Apple has its MacExpo to show off new products. As far as I've read, DNSSEC is not a core part of OS X or OS X Server and as time goes on, this secure DNS is going to become quite important in securing the internet. Wouldn't it take a great deal of wind out Apple's "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign if suddenly Windows had the edge in security? Yes, yes it would.
So, am I saying that it's possible for Microsoft to have "pushed" some folks at ICANN to release DNSSEC at this specific time to bring back in to the fold, those who have strayed from the Microsoft flock? Yes, yes I am, because honestly, I have a very hard time trusting ICANN as despite the US relaxing it's oversight lately, it still is a US institution with not nearly the amount of transparency needed for a group that controls access to the sum of our digital knowledge.
It wouldn't be surprising for Microsoft to put marketing ahead of its potential users in low bandwidth regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, which is why Google is going to thrash them as the internet is more and more available. But the one singular thing that could make all of this a great deal better would be to offer the option not to use DNSSEC and just use standard DNS. Something along the lines of an option button in the Security Center next to, "Thanks, I'll monitor my DNS queries myself." Or better yet, have a system that is able to detect your bandwidth and adjust things such as this accordingly. And there you go, what could be a potential barrier to countless millions, sidestepped for the time being until bandwidth is more available.
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.
This article came up on the ever-sporadic Google Africa blog. Basically, those business owners who want to geographically target their AdWords in Kenya and South Africa can now do so. It's good news, although when it comes to Kenya, we'll see how it works out as the satellite connections they use to a large extent are notoriously hard to track location on due to the identifying land IP they get being the one where the connection touches down. So, if the satellite link you're on touches down in England, you appear to be from England, even though you're actually in Nairobi. Obviously this will change a great deal with the new cable lighting up, but for the time being, it's an issue that I'm rather curious about as it completely cripples this new system how I see it.
The other thing that I'm vastly mystified about is that there is no mention of how people from Africa are to either pay for AdWords or for content publishers to be paid for AdSense displays. As I've mentioned before, Google has no practical payment set up for anywhere in all of Sub-Saharan Africa. I've looked over the Adsense blog to see if I missed some recent announcement, but nothing pops out. Surely it would make sense to have a blogger writing in Nairobi who talks about some new restaurant that just opened up to get paid AdSense revenue if the owner of that restaurant wants to use AdWords to promote it next to the article about it. That's how the model works in the rest of the world and it seems logical to me they'd want to continue it here. While it sucks to criticize new innovation in Africa, there seems to be a tremendous disconnect here that is really not helping out anyone and I'm really hoping that I'm daft to something awesome that's happened recently.
Moses Kemibaro gets a real taste of proper broadband in Kenya. Honestly, I'd be happy to get the speeds he was experiencing in San Francisco!
For those unaware "mzungu" means "white person" in Kiswahili. Tumwijuke relates a number of quotes she's heard from white friends in Uganda. I have to admit that I never get tired of posts like these because even when North Americans/Europeans mean well, we still blunder in to saying things like these.
The U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Mike Ranneberger... [drumroll] has started using Twitter. First the US Embassy in Kinshasa and now this. Twitter knows no freakin' bounds!
Kiswahili Tech Projects are Falling Apart
Good article talking about all the issues in creating a local African language version of software and other technology. I know the pains all too well and as the article points out, people often end up using the English (or French) versions which does little to motivate Microsoft or anyone else to bother in the first place. Damn you, chicken and egg!
Many thanks to Rebecca for pointing out this video. Appears that the solar powered mobiles have hit the market in Kenya and they're selling out like crazy. This video gives good coverage, unfortunately in Dutch, but with English subtitles. The phones look pretty cool, although on cloudy days, one must revert to the way of the charger...
A couple of smaller things that happened recently and I felt like sharing in case you hadn't heard.
Good, quick article on about life in the post-Seacom landing era. Is it crazy good times internet or just sorta the same as before but with the possibility of high speed... somewhere? Appears a lot of folks aren't too sure.
Bado Kidogo Google Translate: Swahili
Really fantastic post about the pluses and minuses of Google's new translation option in Swahili which I mentioned previously. In all fairness to Google, their system does indeed get better over time. Very common languages like French and Spanish wickedly sucked two years ago and these days, they're getting quite decent. Of course, as the article points out, Kiswahili is massively different than European languages.
Mobile XL goes Orange. Hits Cameroon
These guys seem to be making good progress on getting a foothold in a lot of markets. Unfortunately you can't find this as a news item on their site, but they've partnered up with Orange Cameroon (who also don't update their news items) to distribute their browser there. Why should anyone care? As I mentioned before from Erik's article the browser's information delivery is powered by SMS. No data plan necessary. It all sounds pretty cool although I have yet to really play around with it myself. Maybe if I manage to somehow get to BarCamp Cameroon I'll satisfy my curiosity.
I read the Google Africa blog whenever there is new content, which honestly, isn't that often. For some reason, the fact that their Google Translate can now translate between all its current languages as well as Swahili and Afrikaans hasn't been mentioned there. I mean, this is huge! This is great! This is... reported on an unofficial Google blog?
I assume that a bigger announcement must be coming soon and they're just checking to make sure that all the conditionals are closed in the code before letting everyone know. For instance, three days ago, before the Afrikaans option was in there, I actually had to translate something from Afrikaans to English. I used Dutch for the source language option and magically, it translated fine, which it shouldn't have given the dialectic drift from Dutch at Afrikaans. I can only assume that Google Translate auto-detected the language as Afrikaans, which was lurking somewhere in the background.
There are implications with this that go above and beyond a simple announcement, specifically for Swahili. A year ago, I talked with some of the guys who work on Google's linguistic endeavors and they told me that the required corpus for Swahili machine translation was at 40% of what was needed and that was the highest for any African language. This means that in the last year, there was either a huge batch of pages in Swahili which Google had missed or there was a 250% increase in the amount of Swahili text available on the web. I'm guessing it's some combination of both as well as Google paying something get a dictionary in there because Google really wants to get established in Africa.
Whatever the case, it's quite excellent news for languages in Africa as these are the first two African languages to be included in this system. If you create the tools, you grow the language. Here's to more and soon, although I don't know what this is going to mean to the Kamusi Project...
And now apparently the Google Africa Blog has decided to write about this over a week after the fact. I feel so incredibly ahead of things right now.
