Technology

Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi

This afternoon, I am talking part in and helping host a Rising Voices chat on the HIV/AIDS and Citizen Media, to which you are all invited. The main chat host is Serina (Kipepeo Nyeusi). Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices. Rising Voices aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.

Recently Kenya has made big strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS for example in 2006 the estimated adult HIV prevalence rate was 5.!% down from a peak of 9% in 1997/1998. The number of annual deaths from HIV/AIDS in Kenya has dropped from a peak of 120,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2006. ART programmes have averted about 57,000 deaths since 2001.
However the still much to do and 85,000 people is a lot of people.

(Figures from National HIV Prevalence in Kenya written by The National Aids Control Council and STD Control Programme. Nairobi, Kenya June 2007.)

What can we as bloggers/readers of blogs/generators and users of citizen media do to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS? As they saying goes, we may not all be infected but we are all affected. Please note the examples I give are from Kenya as that is the country I know best, but this chat is open to everybody and I see from the Rising Voices email list that some of our brothers and sisters in Latin America will be joining us which is brilliant. This chat is open to all!
Please join us today at: 14.00 GMT for our online chat.

Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi

HIV/AIDS & Citizen Media: Proposed Agenda:

• Organization Involvement – What we hear, what we see, how we perceive it
• Importance of Citizen Media
• How can we ensure we focus on stories that main stream media avoids?
• How do we ensure that we focus on the human element of the story?
• Should our main role be telling the story or empowering those affected to use the tools we are using to tell their stories direct?
• What can we learn from others experiences on different parts of the planet?
• Technicalities / Technical challenges
• How do we select whom to approach to case studies for the project?
• How do we approach those we select?
• How do we deal with possible initial suspicion?
• How do we deal with language barriers?
• What computing tools are available?
• How can we best utilise these tools?
• Do these tools have any cost implications?
• Legal Issues
• What steps will we take to ensure we have consent from third parties documented?
• Will material be covered by copyright?
• If so who will own the copyright?

See you there!

The last two months have been eye opening not just for me but for all Kenyans and all friends of Kenya. I have been shocked by some of the nonsensical narrow minded views that swept through the country, and it has to be said, through the blogs. Undoubtedly some friendships will never be the same again as people could not help but show their true colours.

However, the blessing of being so involved in the response to the post election crisis that engulfed Kenya is that for all the nonsensical, narrow minded views that I encountered, for every person I came across who was hell bent on stirring up hate, I would find ten people who would do anything to pull the country back from the brink.

Patriots would put careers on the line, friendships on the line, family relationships on the live and others even put their lives on the line to stand up and be counted as an agent for peace not for division. While some bloggers would announce that they could never take someone from another tribe home to their parents, other Kenyans were busy organising a media event where couples with each partner from a different tribe would publicly declare that they will not be part of any nonsense which insisted they leave their partners to show their loyalty to tribe.

Apart from the personal relationships another trend which warmed my heart was that professionals would rise up and find ways through which they could utilise their professional services to help save the country. A group of writers gathered and formed the Concerned Kenyan Writers coalition which aims to use writing skills to humanise the crisis, the techie community such as Skunkworks offered technical IT and ICT support to the relief efforts, the legal fraternity came up with similar initiatives, the top musicians and producers in the country got into the studios, journalists as well. Bloggers usually wear more than one hat and in each of the other groups mentioned above you will find bloggers.

Some initiatives are blog driven, they were born in blogs and grew in the blogs, were lead by bloggers and publicised by blogs. They are blogger lead and blogger dominated. One such project which I am honoured to work on is the Ushahidi project which was born out of Kenyan Pundit thinking out loud on her blog and Hash hearing those voices and running with them. The site was born on the blogs and brought in to existence by David Kobia, a guy who has been a huge supporter of Kenyan blogs and bloggers, in JUST TWO DAYS. I am yet to hear of another project that launched so successfully, that proved to be so ground breaking that was launched in such a short period of time. Kenyans across the globe showing what can happen with cooperation and commitment.

Ushahidi is the Kiswahili word for witness.

From Hash
Ushahidi.com is a tool for people who witness acts of violence in Kenya in these post-election times. You can report the incident that you have seen, and it will appear on a map-based view for others to see.

From Kenyan Pundit

So what’s Ushahidi.com about… (for those who don’t know Kiswahili, ushahidi is the Swahili word for witness). The website was mainly set up to document incidents of violence, lotting etc. during the crisis (and soon to follow - information about ways to help on a micro-level). The website is still very much a work in progress and will be updated as we go along.

We believe that the number of deaths being reported by the government, police, and media is grossly underreported. We also don’t think we have a true picture of what is really going on - reports that all have us have heard from family and friends in affected areas suggests that things are much worse than what we have heard in the media.

From Afromusing

We want to continue mapping not only the violence, but also the ‘doves’ or peace efforts happening in Kenya. The last two months have been traumatic to our collective psyche, and we would like to be well equipped to continue this important project. While we will not hide from the trauma of the events; we want make Ushahidi even more relevant to other countries in Africa.

Since the launch of ushahidi the support from within the blogging community and from the main stream media as well, has been phenomenal. I have lost count of the number of radio and print interviews that have come my way because of interest in the project. Now Ushahidi needs your help again. Ushahidi has been entered in to the $100,000 Netsquared Mashup Challenge for further development. This is big in very many ways. It helps secure the future of the project and it helps secure the independence of the project, it allows the project to grow beyond Kenya, it give the opportunity for a powerful and increasingly necessary tool to achieve its potential.

Please show your support for Ushahidi by voting for the project on Netsquared you have to register to vote, registration takes less time than it took you to read this sentence and voting takes even shorter. Help us to drive this project forward. Please read and link Hash’s post on the Ushahidi NetSquared challenge and remember to VOTE!

This morning I am at the Fourth Web for Development Conference at the UN complex in Kenya which goes through to Friday. Web4Dev is …

… a forum for the web community of UN agencies, and international development civil society organizations interested in using their expertise to show how the Internet can promote development.

So Web4Dev is like a BarCamp where UN and government bigwigs turn up. You have a bunch of techies doing brilliant things in techie world, you have a lot of activists, development people, concerned citizens doing brilliant things in the development sector and you throw them together and see what they come up with together. Should be very interesting and informative.

Last night a bunch of us from Skunkworks met with a group of Web4Dev delegates at Pizza Garden. It was one big idea exchange. I heard many innovative ways on how to get more people involved in our online conversation, new exciting things you will soon be able to do with RSS, cooking with grandmothers! Oh and I got to mess around with an iPhone for the second time in 4 days.

Today’s programme at web4dev is full of the usual opening ceremony formalities and expert panel discussions. Tomorrow we dive into the code and projects.

Aside:
Apparently the UN complex in Nairobi is actually in Italy!

web for development

BarCamp Nairobi 2.0 is in full swing at Strathmore University in the heart of Nairobi. In the first two hours we are discussing everything and anything to do with everything and anything with a technological bent. The final two hours we will focus in on this year’s theme, Innovation.

The short talks cover a wide range of issues (as you would expect at a BarCamp!) so far we have:

• Alex Gakum – Protecting Innovation
• Wesley Kirinya – Schools working with companies
• Edgar Okioga – .net innovation
• Nathan Eagle – Mobile Epemology Apps
• Riyaz Bachani – Demonstrating the One Laptop Per Child laptop
• Valentine Wambui - Call Centre set-up (using Asterix technology)

this list will grow as more people turn up. If you are in Nairobi and reading this, get to Strathmore University NOW (Ole Sangale Road, off Langata Road, in Madaraka Estate. If using public transport, take matatu number 14, which leaves town from the corner of Ronald Ngala and Mfangano Streets and goes directly to the entrance of Strathmore University (the last stop).

We are recording as much of the sessions as we can and will upload them as podcasts.

barcampkenya

Get Your Smell On today at Skunkworks

When: Today the 26th of June 2007
Time: 18:00
Where: Training Room, Wananchi, 1st Floor Loita House, Nairobi
Presenter: Kip (do you have a website bruv?)
Topic: ADSL, Broadband stuff in general.

Come and find out why your internet is so slow and hopefully what you can do to speed it up (hint: may involve having to lay your own private submarine data cable).

Everyone welcome, yes that includes you, your better half, your clande, your clande’s better half etc.

Know your WLAN from your LAN?
Know your Java from your XHTML?
Know your PHP from your CSS?

Ama the only Java you know, or care about, is the one that used to sell Death by Chocolate?

Want to dazzle us with your knowledge of networks?
Want to dazzle us with the libraries you have complied?
Want to tell us why Asterix rules?

Ama the only Asterix you know is that chap who runs around with Obelix?

Want to hang out with sexiest guys in Nairobi?
Want to find out the difference between comedy and comedi?
Want to look popular and clever?

Then get your smell on at Skunkworks Kenya, 6pm 29 May 2007 (TODAY), Wananchi, 1st Floor Loita House.

General info on the Skunkworks philosophy here.

(Don’t worry if you are not a techie, I am not one either, you will still enjoy. I don’t know what half that stuff up there is about to be honest. These Skunkworks guys are a nice bunch, techie but nice. If after a few minutes you don’t know what they are talking about and find yourself floating - like I found myself when I went for my first Skunkworks last week - just smile, nod your head and if someone asks you what you think just say “what are the parameters?” Then you look like you know what’s going on!)

10 days to go before TEDGlobal kicks off and the anticipation is building like crazy. I’ll say this about these TED guys, they look like they sure know how to organise a conference. Well that’s easy to say 10 days before everything begins but if their organisation on the day is as good as it has been thus far then things will be great.

This conference is unlike any I have ever been to before in that I have no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, what kind of conference to expect. There is a wealth of information on the conference but it just highlights that I should expect the unexpected.

One thing I do know for sure is that I will be rooming with one crazy dude called Hash a.k.a White African. Now really it does not get any crazier than that. I wonder what TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor will do once he realises that he has put two techie and blogging members of the Front Row Union in the same room. (Hash, I hope you play tight head because, bruv, I’m a loose head!) If we don’t blow up something while trying to plug in all our gear into the one wall socket in the room, we’ll probably be busy forcing encouraging all kind of interesting people to talk to us. I notice that Yvonne Chaka Chaka has stopped organising her calendar to take in my conference dates instead Youssou N’Dour will be doing his thing.

Other KBWers who are representing are:

• Afromusing
• Bankelele
• Kenyan Pundit
• Ndesanjo

Any others out there (I’m sure they’ll be a couple attending chini ya maji a.k.a undercover)

I’ll post some more details on the proposed Madaraka Day (June 1st) KBW, Tedsters, Skunkworkers, techies, wanainchi, anybody, everybody meet up over the weekend. Come one, come all.

(Isn’t it interesting how many of the people who branded us traitors/sell outs/neo-colonial appeasists for going to the Digital Indaba in South Africa in September last year because it was “white” are happily gobbling up all that TEDGlobal can throw at them with not even a little sense of irony? Hmm the contradictions, the contradictions )

Tags: TEDGlobal

If you check out the Safaricom website today you get a message saying:

The Safaricom website is temporarily unavailable.
We apologise for the inconvenience.
You may reach us at the address shown below
Thank you for visiting Safaricom - The Better Option

Safaricom House, Waiyaki Way, P.O. Box 46350, Nairobi
E-mail: customercare@safaricom.co.ke
Land Line: 254-20-427 -3272

Click here for a screen shot.

This is probably in response to the website getting hacked/cracked/defaced by some person calling themselves Mambo Yoye.

I first heard about it when Asim left a comment on my blog. Click here for a screenshot of the first attack.

Yesterday M4 sent me a second screen shot which has the “Mambo Yoye”. Click here for the screenshot.

At Skunkworks yesterday the guys said that looking at the urls on the safaricom website which looks like:
default2.asp?active
it looks like they are using the default out-of-the-box settings for whichever CMS they are operating to run their website. If you know what the CMS is, with a little bit of messing around you could probably get in and cause chaos a la “Mambo Yoye”.

(May I just say that me I had nothing to do with this, kwanza the way everything sinister that happens on the Kenyan web quickly gets blamed on Mental! )

The Alpha Quadrant has just shared that the Kenya presidential aspirants debate scheduled for today is to stream online at Icecast at 14.00 Kenya Time (12:00 GMT) i.e/ right now.

Becky will also be keeping us up to date on her blog.

I have heard a lot of noise about how internet connections within Kenya are super fast, let us see!

Exciting!

(Logo designed by the talented White African.)

The most exciting event happening this coming weekend in Nairobi is BarCamp Kenya. Put together by David Kariuki, Eric Magutu, Riyaz Bachani, Josiah Mugambi and Nick Muttai BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

Date: Saturday - 31 March 2007
Time: 13:00 – 18:00
Where: University of Nairobi, Civil Engineering Lecture Theatre, Directions, call 0724-334558 if you get lost
Price: Mandela a.k.a free

This is going to be such an interesting event, go to the website and check out the presentations already lined up. But this isn’t your typical conference. Come along yes, but come along ready to participate, engage, network, and share ideas.

I have met a few people who think you have to be invited, or that it is going to be a formal event. Some think that this is going to be one of those massive international conferences. No no no! Turn up and let’s talk. That is what it is about. No excuses!

A special plea to our sisters: come out for this and get involved! The list looks very male heavy at the moment.

(and people tell me there is nothing going on in Nairobi! There is a lot going on in Nairobi).

Tags: barcampkenya

From The Guardian:

A trial will kick off later this year enabling UK Vodafone customers to send money to people in Kenya. This should appeal particularly to the estimated half million Kenyans living in the UK who between them send home some £78m each year. The service will expand to allow cash transfers to countries in Eastern Europe and Asia such as Poland and India …

In the case of Kenya, recipients will be able to get their money from one of a network of 400 outlets, including the offices of Kenyan mobile network provider Safaricom (an affiliate of Vodafone) and branches of state bank Postbank.

A Safaricom pilot that allows people to send payments by mobile within Kenya has proved hugely popular in a country where few people have bank accounts or plastic money. A global rollout will be targeted mainly at migrant workers, but it should also be useful to Britons sending money abroad, such as parents transferring funds to children on gap year travels.

Vodafone will charge users a fee based on the amount of money they send, expected to be half the cost of the equivalent services from Western Union or Moneygram. For example, sending £50 to Kenya for instant collection now costs £12 at both services while sending £500 sets you back £37 at Western Union and £36 at Moneygram.

Exciting news indeed, perhaps mobile phones not plastic cards will mean we finally have a quick, secure, reliable global payment system.

I wrote this post at the WSF at Kasarani and then battled with the WIFI connection for over an hour before I gave up. Most of the volunteers I have spoken with are not even aware that the whole conference is meant to be a WIFI hotspot and those who do did not have any clue as to what was wrong or where I could get help. Unfortunately I have seen nothing that has shown me that this situation will change. So I have got all that Celtel airtime for nothing!

This beautiful lady proudly holding her flag was part of a demonstration by the people of Western Sahara calling for, “Uhuru” (freedom).

The World Social Forum is in full flow here at Kasarani stadium. The energy around is infectious. It is brilliant being around thousands of people who are all passionate about something or another. The jargon being thrown around is daunting. If you don’t know your HIPCs from your P8s or whether or not you should be supporting EPAs then you can hide in the food tents (and while you are there eat a 75/- samosa). Everyone is friendly and smiling and the sessions seem passionate. The logistical nightmares continue, the professional journalists are pulling their hair out because they haven’t been able to go online and the electricity keeps cutting (the 10 seconds between the power cutting and the generators kicking is more than enough time to lose the 6 page article you just typed.)

My main aim here is to get a picture with Desmond Tutu so if anyone sees him around let him know Mental “The Rhino” Acrobatics would like a word.

All my pictures will be in my World Social Forum Flickr set.

Information for the masses:

• When the WIFI is working the connection is still free to the public. Do not do what I did which is load up your free celtel SIM with KSH 1000/- in anticipation of the USD 15 wireless access fee because so far the network is unprotected and you can just log on.
• Do NOT buy a Celtel SIM card as I advised earlier. You get a free one when you register.
• There are shuttle buses running from the city centre for KSH 150/- each way which is a lot cheaper than the KSH 1000/- cab drivers are charging. But where you catch the buses and where they drop you is mystery.

Technorati:
wsf | world social forum | wsf2007

So what does the USD 100.00 laptop look and feel like? Luckily for us Samuel Klein, Director of Content at the One Laptop per Child association, carried one to the Global Voices Summit in Delhi. This is the fourth one ever made and the second one of the assembly line. (The first two were put together by hand apparently.) These things have serious cool factor. They look better than most laptops. The operating system is Redhat and all the software is open source. It has a battery pack which you can charge with either electricity or manually by hand winding/foot pumping. Using the manual method you get approximately 10 minutes computer time for each minute of winding. Here it is:

Technorati: gvdelhi2006

The Global Voices Summit is in full flow. You can participate remotely through listening to live audio stream or logging on the IRC chat channel. All the information is on the Global Voices website. Or if you are more of a voyeur the pictures may interest you. Congratulations to Nicolás Luco who managed to catch my question and link on the audio stream. I’ll say hi to Rosario when I see her!

The African contingent here is strong led by the brilliant Ndesanjo. Gaphiz and Inktus are also representing Tanzania and Uganda respectively.

As with every other blog conference there is a lot of controversy in the air. Why did they take so long? What were they thinking? What excuses would they give? Will he stay? Will he go? I am of course talking about Monty Panesar and the whole world – v – the England selectors. Monty finally got his chance to attack the Australian batsmen in the third test of the Ashes. The brilliant thing about being in a cricket mad country such as India at this time is that we can talk cricket all day and all night as there is so much cricket going on. We tut tut as the England bating line up collapses faster than Uchumi. We wonder whether reverse spin was just a myth, we wonder which India batsmen who are struggling in South Africa would make the English team and vice versa. Yesterday Rezwan, my cricket loving brother from cricket mad Bangladesh, and I had a long discussion on which countries should get test status, whether Kenya should replace Zimbabwe as a test nation, whether Kenya is still better than Bangladesh in the one day version of the game.

I threw down the challenge; Kenyan bloggers –v- Bangladesh bloggers in a 50 over one day game. KenyaCricket, we need you to whip us into shape bruv. (I’ll bat at number 5 or 6 and field at 2nd or 3rd slip – I’m a rugby forward don’t you dare put me on the boundary!) On the coach to the conference this morning, Georgia and I gave Ndesanjo a quick lesson in cricket. Georgia is from Trinidad and Tobago which is where I hear the Kenyan cricket team will be based in before going to St Lucia in next year’s cricket world cup. T&T has enjoyed a fantastic sporting year the highlight of which was the Soca Warriors playing at the football world cup.

A couple of things about these conferences; if you want to make friends fast carry a multi socket electric extension lead. That way when you commandeer a electricity outlet for you laptop you can share it with your grateful neighbors and look well organised. Secondly, if you aint got mac, you aint got game. Us PC users are hiding our laptops under the tables as the mac boys and mac girls strut their stuff with their apparently superior machines. Thirdly it’s all about the stickers baby. Stickers on laptops are back in. Not useless brand name stickers but cool obscure stickers. The best one I’ve been so far is has a black ground and in big white letters “will work for world peace” that’s currently flossing on Rebecca’s laptop (which is mac of course).

Technorati: gvdelhi2006

The United Nations children’s agency (Unicef) has launched the first computer game in Kiswahili, aimed at halting the spread of HIV and Aids.

The game called “What would you do?” (Ungefanyaje?) takes players through various scenarios to explain the importance of prevention and testing.

The first ever Kiswahili computer game? That didn’t sound right but then again I can not think of any other Kiswahili computer game. Perhaps someone out there knows of one? If so please share it with us. I have not tried Ungefanyaje yet however, by releasing it UNICEF have done well. Instead of perpetuating the lazy stereotype which suggests that you can not get a message across to Africans through technology, UNICEF has adopted technology as a serious tool in the fight against AIDS. If they wanted a much bigger and much wider impact they should have designed a game for mobile phones. Maybe that’s where we’ll come in!

As for the game itself, I’ll wait for a review from our resident gaming expert