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23 items tagged "Random and Thoughts"
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7:45
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Recently Merlin Mann wrote an outstanding post on what makes a good blog, and why they’re so rare. I’d suggest everyone read it, especially if you’re trying to figure out how to be a better blogger. Having said that, in honor of BlogDay 2008, here are 5 Africa-focused blogs that I think are interesting. Keep in mind, I’m particularly interested in African tech so that’s why they lean in that direction…
Nairobi Notes
I initially found out about Nairobi Notes through her Twitter updates (@nairobinotes) - they were interesting, funny and timely, which eventully led me to her blog.
Startup Africa
First off, I love their name - I’m just not sure how they got that amazing URL… How was it not taken? Anyway, Startup Africa does an excellent job of providing news on events, websites and startups in Africa, with a particularly good focus on South Africa.
TechMasai
Another new favorite of mine in the African web tech scene is TechMasai. They profile new African websites and services, often with some opinionated commentary which I like.
Mootbox
Short, interesting, and tends to be Nigeria-focused. In Omodudu’s own words, it’s about, “business, Micro-finance, Social Entrepreneurship, Small business development and other assorted randomness.” Follow Oz on Twitter too @Osize.
Jackfruity
I could just tell you that I like this blog because of it’s design - I’ve always salivated over Rebekah’s site design(s). However, she writes really cool and interesting stuff about Uganda, Sudan and humanitarian issues too. Keep her in your feed.
That’s all for this year!
 
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9:09
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Paul Jacobson is a lawyer and long-time South African blogger. He wrote a post today, “Blogging is, like, so 2007″, that triggered some thoughts I’ve had on blogging and growth. In it he talks about how the there are many more ways to publish your thoughts to the web other than your blog (lifestreaming), and how that fractured state leads to less value being placed in blogging.
Asymptotic Growth in Publishing
I think there’s more to it than just the number of ways to communicate, it’s also about the number of new people who come online each year with their own blog, Twitter comments, Facebook Note, etc. Each year there is more content being put online and so your own voice matters less relative to the sum of all noise out there. This applies to niches, and the web in general, and I refer to it as asymptotic publishing growth.
Put another way, even if your blog grows more readers every year, it shrinks in relation to the whole.
This is particularly apparent to first-movers in any new platform. At first you have an inordinate amount of “voice” in a specific sphere, which seems to erode over time.
Islands of Influence
One of my theories on what happens as these environments mature is that as they grow and there becomes more and more options for readers, that there tends to be a coalescing or readers around a certain few blogs or publishers. Though every one of the publishers is likely growing in size, there are certain “keystone” blogs to each niche that have an inordinate amount of influence relative to the general blog in that space.
For example, as a technology blog reader, I might visit 10 blogs every day. However, three of those are likely the same as everyone else.
I compare this to teen hangout locations. There are a lot of places to hang out, and everyone tends to go to a few of their favorite places. However, everyone knows the place to be on Friday night, and that’s the place where the majority of teens go.
In Summary
There will always be more noise in the blogosphere, or whichever publishing platform is your choice of the moment, than when you first started in it. However, those that provide the most value to the readers will continue to grow and also garner a greater relative audience than their peers.
Basically, asymptotic growth is a truth that we all have to live with, but there will always be islands of influence.
 
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21:31
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Last weekend there was a live screencast of the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communications and Society, and one of the meetings that I tuned in to was the one on Media and Civic Engagement. The members of that meeting was a who’s who of media, regulatory and business moguls that are trying to, or have cracked, the online space (Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Marissa Mayer of Google, Peter Shane of the Knight Foundation, Dana Boyd, etc…).
Google on Anonymity VS Trust
I heard a very troubling comment during that discussion, and surprisingly it came from Marissa Mayer of Google (found at 52:45). That was how anonymity is the enemy of trust, and that she doesn’t see a future for anonymity online. It destroys community and promotes anarchy.
To give some sense of reference, without having to watch the video, here is a word-for-word transcription of Marissa’s comments. It starts with her talking about youth and misinformation on the web leading to apathy, she stated:
“…I think it’s really important as we look at tools to think about how we can support fact checking, how can we guard against misinformation, how is there going to be established an element of authority and trustworthiness? …I grew up with the newspaper and the encyclopedia, which you could trust. And now you have blogs, which are held often as news and often aren’t factual. Or you have Wikipedia, which usually gets most things right, but there are a lot times there is vandalism or corrections that need to be made.”
“When you look at the elements of anonymity and the lack of accountability that happens on the web, it really does start to create doubt in the fibers of who can you trust. Especially when you think of why should I engage? The sense of identity. If I’m anonymous and I’m not accountable for my actions and there are other people out there putting out a lot of misinformation of which the same is true, I think it does lead to apathy and a lack of engagement, which is why I think it is important as we look at these tools to understand the effects of identity. To understand the effect of accountability, authority, trustworthiness and make sure that we’re developing tools and social systems online that encourage an element of engagement and try to fight that apathy trend that says, ‘well I just can’t trust anything. Why should I care?’.
On the question of if there is a way to hone in on the issue of misinformation, beside media literacy:
“Well, I think there are two ways to look at it, on the institutional level and on the individual level. So I think that what you’re seeing is that there are institutions that are rising up online that basically have an element of brand and credibility and standards that they apply. When you look at the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, inherently the people who run those organizations are saying that here are stories I believe, I believe they’re verified enough that I’m willing to attach my brand and my name to it. So you can see that that’s starting to happen on an institution level online.”
“And I also think there are individual systems where people are verified or credentialed, or you have a profile that tells all about you and shows the other contributions you’ve made to the system. Just there’s greater accountability on the personal level… So I think a lot of the systems that support pure anonymity… I really believe that virtual systems should mirror physical systems. The physical world has been around for a lot longer, and in the physical world you really can’t do anything anonymously. So when you look at systems online that break that paradigm where you can be completely anonymous, or be whoever you want to be, without any since of history or of what you did last week, that’s not really reality and that breaks down the elements of trust and authority.“
That’s about where I jumped in with my comments on not being able to trust those who are monitoring your online speech. Where Marissa then answered:
“Well, I think anonymity has its place. So there’s certainly times, when you know you should have commentary or some type of act giving should be anonymous. But, by and large most systems should have accountability the same way they do in the physical world.”
Besides all of my thoughts swirling around the fact that the web really grew due to anonymity, I balked at this comment because I was surprised at hearing one of the highest Google executives speak so lightly of it.
Projecting Our World Onto Others
Maybe this is where I differ a little from my American tech counterparts. You see, there’s something about growing up in a country where you can’t pretend to believe that the government really has your best interests at heart that makes one a little squeemish about not having this anonymous free speech. For, if it wasn’t anonymous, then it definitely wouldn’t be free.
We have a way of projecting our world view on to those around us. In this case, I believe Google (or Marissa) is doing just that. Having these open, trusting, everyone-knows-everyone systems is all well and good when you live in the US. It’s not so good in other parts of the world.
It’s especially not good when you ask who controls all that personal information, and how they let outside bodies (government or otherwise) access that personal data about you.
I came to terms a few years ago about having a lot of personal information on the web, open to others. That’s a personal decision, and not one that any company should be making claims to knowing what’s right to do or not. What I hear, extrapolating from this, is that it’s okay if you don’t want to be a part of it, you can always opt out - but if you do, you also opt out of any meaningful part in the discussion. Frankly, I find that troubling.
Video Archive
Below is the video archive of this talk on Media and Civic Engagement, and is about 1.5 hours (browse the “on demand library” and it’s the 6th from the top on the list):
[Rachel Sterne of Groundreport created a great backchannel platform for viewers to discuss these items in real-time, and there was some direct discussion happening between online commenters and the participants in the room.]
 
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15:31
From: dkFactor
Read This Entry & More At dkFactor
The Africa of the very near future is plagued by multiple problems. Desertification and global warming are some of the biggest, which are further exacerbated by rapid urbanization. This spontaneous migration of people from rural areas in countries that have no urbanization policies in place, means resources will be stretched to the maximum. Where will all the food to feed these people come from?
Try and imagine growing food in tall buildings with a self-contained climate powered by renewable energy. A radical idea yes - but one that would address the need for arable land and year-round supply of food. These towering greenhouses immune to weather and pests might very well be the source of nutrition for generations of the future!
While I feel that this fantastic future 'might' be a pipe dream for now, our grandchildren might be forced to effectuate it by inevitable circumstances.
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12:28
From: dkFactor
Read This Entry & More At dkFactor
 I’m finally back after a 6 month hiatus from blogging and I want to start by addressing a very nagging question but I’ll get to that in just a moment. No doubt you’ve experienced social networking in one form or another (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc etc), and if you haven’t you’d better quit living in the 90’s. It’s all about creating and sharing information with friends, colleagues and basically everyone. The last 3 years especially have been witness to an explosive growth in the size and influence of these social networks. “Individuals finally have the power” - wow! (btw, that wow is supposed to be sarcastic).
The proliferation of social networks has led to a new fad… Data Portability. Data Portability is the ability to share information across multiple interfaces and web platforms using open standards. Once the data is accessed, it can repackaged, remixed, right-clicked… you name it. Basically your Facebook profile content for instance could appear on other social sites, and the flickr photos from your phone in return could appear on a google map. The basic idea is to mash together the infinite amounts of shared data (cue the scrolling Matrix code) and attempt make sense of it.
My nagging question is - does it all end? Mashing all this information together has led to an avalanche (more like a storm) of information that we have to deal with daily. For instance a news item can be mashed together with related YouTube links, google maps, flickr photos, message boards, stock ticker information, blogs and what your friends on Twitter think… the list is endless. By the time you’re done reading you’ll know all there is to know about Myanmar.
I have two problems; First can the human mind deal with the coming onslaught of information? Secondly, where does privacy begin and end, or should we just give it up altogether? Personally, I’m afraid that a super machine in the very near future will have the ability to assimilate together all this information, decipher it and draw very precise social patterns for every individual.
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14:25
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Everyone has to answer phone calls after midnight. Thankfully, it’s usually not the emergency that you’re dreading it will be, but a wrong number. Which begs the question, who calls someone after midnight without it being an emergency?
Advertisers, is it really that difficult to understand that you should advertise your value proposition not your unknown brand name? No one knows, or cares to ask, what ABCWidgets.com is or does. They might care that you create the right widget for their need, or that you’re the fastest delivery in the business, etc…
 Learn about saving the mountain gorilla in a conflict zone by playing this new game on your mobile phone. A Java game with an education component.
Saving your image files with a specific name (ex: soccer_ball.jpg rather than ns8743.jpg) is a lot better for both your sanity and your search engine traffic. Funny enough, but image search engines still use the file name as their key - so if you want to be found for a certain image, make sure you name it appropriately.
 
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14:27
From: White African
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[I’ve started, stopped and re-written this post 3 times since January as I’ve been struggling to come to terms with my thoughts on Ushahidi and what I should be doing. It’s long, be forewarned.]
The Kenyan post-election fiasco had a rather jarring effect on me. Why? After all, I grew up in war-torn Southern Sudan, lived through disruptions prior to the Kenyan elections in 1993, and have seen the repercussions of these actions first-hand.
I subscribe to the train of thought that you can’t care for everything. There is always a crisis happening in some part of the world, and no one is capable of caring about them all, much less doing something about each of them.
It turns out that I’m not alone.
A couple of years ago I read an article by someone who was discussing some of the points around what Oxford philosopher John Mackie calls self-referential altruism in a collection of his papers titled Persons and Values. The basic idea is that we find it easier to care about those closer to us. Adam Smith talked about it in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, on how it would be more troubling for a European to lose his little finger than to hear of the destruction of all of China (full quote here).
Steven Berlin Johnson, co-founder of Outside.In, calls this the “Pothole Paradox” and brings it to life in my digital world-view. He describes it like this:
“Say you’ve got a particularly nasty pothole on your street that you’ve been scraping the undercarriage of your car against for a year. When the town or city finally decides to fix the pothole, that event is genuinely news in your world. And it is news that you’ll never get from your local paper, or TV affiliate, or radio station…
…News about a pothole repair just five blocks from your street is the least interesting thing you could possibly imagine.”
So, What’s Important?
What I’m getting at is this: While people are being oppressed, fighting and dying in some foreign country what do you do? What about if it happens in your country? When does it become important enough to use your talents to make a difference?
Typically, it takes an event that directly affects you to make you go beyond thinking and to act. That’s why things that are happening in places like Sudan and Zimbabwe are on people’s radar, but so few are doing anything about it. You can only have so many things on your radar that you actually care about and fewer still that you do something about.
In the case of Kenya, it spurred me on to create Ushahidi, in the hopes that I could do something from my vantage point so far removed from the events taking place. Other Kenyans abroad worked on different, but equally important digital initiatives.
A digital world helps us to do that. Just decades ago those who were not in close enough proximity to an event were unable to do much, if anything about it. Today, we can successfully effect change through digital tools and be thousands of miles away.
That’s an encouraging and scary thought. Global tools that have real time read/write access are extremely powerful. Depending on ones motives, your impact can be good or bad. Even if your motives are good, your tool can be used for bad. How’s that for a quandry?
What does this all mean?
Quite frankly, I’m not sure yet. That’s part of the reason I’ve delayed posting this article for so long. I thought it would be helpful (to me at least) getting out some of my thoughts and theories on crisis, caring, action and the digital world.
I’d appreciate any thoughts and comments that you have on this too.
 
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17:02
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you get me in a room and we start talking about data, please forgive me if my eyes light up. You see, I confess to a certain amount of data-lust. Primarily because I believe that data is at the core of most great web applications. Secondarily, because I’m enthralled with how to move this data from a list of tables and spreadsheets and make it become real and understandable to anyone at a glance.
I wrote a post about African TLDs (the suffix that country domain names go by) a couple months back. Then, today I came across this visualization in a poster of the world of country TLDs. Simple, interesting and useful.
(You can buy this as a print at HistoryShots.com for $29)
Using graphics to represent data is nothing new, however, doing it well isn’t easy. The moment this became crystal clear to me was when I had the opportunity to listen to the incomparable Jeffrey Veen (before he left Adaptive Path for Google) discuss how to visualize rainfall data - going from database to consumer visualization. The main slides are seen below:
(It’s not nearly as good without his oratory, but you can see the Next Gen slideshow here)
There are now a number of excellent blogs, agencies and consultants who deal with this stuff every day. If you’re as interested in this as I am, you might enjoy these resources:
 
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10:22
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Those are the words that describe millions of Kenyan voters.
Disappointed at their current president, Mwai Kibaki, for playing Moi-politics.
Angry at their ministers of parliament, voting an unprecedented number out of office.
Jaded by the election results - wondering if bothering to come out for the next elections is even necessary.
Of the three, I would suggest that citizens being jaded is the most harmful for the long-term. Why bother voting if you can’t have the confidence in your government to count them openly and honestly?
Image by Afromusing
A short summary:
Massive turnouts for this election in Kenya. Many incumbents were voted out of their parliamentary seats. Raila Odinga was a heavy favorite over incumbent Mwai Kibaki for president, and appeared to be in the lead by a good 40,000 votes. Counting was delayed. The electoral commission claims that Kibaki won by 200,000+ votes. Riots begin, and a state of emergency is declared.
Blog coverage of these elections have been excellent. The Kenyan blogosphere is one of the best and biggest on the continent, and they did their jobs well.
Ory gave some of the best media coverage of the elections, better than the traditional media, on her blog KenyanPundit.
MentalAcrobatics claims that something is not right with this election and also has a good post on the Kenyan election experience.
More coverage on the Thinker’s Room.
Juliana has some great pictures of the elections from upcountry.
 
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12:59
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Dvorak has written a scathing criticism about the OLPC ($100 laptop). Bill Thompson answers it in a BBC article:
“And he demeans the people who will receive the computers, asking his readers if they will feel “better about the world’s problems, knowing that some poor tribesman’s child has a laptop”, apparently contrasting a “tribesman” with a real person like himself, safe in his Western affluence.”
Who cares?
Why does it matter that two rich Westerners are batting back and forth over the strategies and benefits of a cheap computer for children in developing countries?
As someone who grew up in Sudan and Kenya, I care. I care because I continue to hear the argument, “why give kids a computer when what they really need is food and water?” I care because people need to stop talking about Africans as if they’re in need of another handout and implying that every child in Africa is living in squalor. Most of all, I care because I don’t hear many voices from the countries that are going to be using these new computers, only from journalists from western countries.
Let’s talk about the Africa we know
There will continue to be drought, floods, war, corruption and poverty - all of the items that plague many African nations and which are amplified by the media.
However, there will also continue to be a solid majority of Africans who live happy lives without the interference of any aid or development organization. They will live in their village, raise their children, send them to school and teach them from their rich heritage. There will continue to be children growing up in the city who love to learn and would blossom even more with access to technology and information.
If you grew up in Africa, do you think that there is a use for inexpensive computers in schools?
See the picture above. Why shouldn’t those children have access to these machines? They aren’t illiterate or under-nourished. How many of us remember this same type of schooling? I do, I was in a primary school very similar to this in Southern Sudan. Why couldn’t any of my classmates become technologically literate with access to the right machines? Why only the relatively affluent white child?
What is Africa anyway, and who decides what’s “right” for each country?
Let’s stop painting Africa with a broad brush. Let’s speak out and remind people that it’s made up of more than just “tribesmen”. That not every country is the same and that there are wealthy, middle class, and yes, even poor people. Let’s stop pretending that Ghana is the same as Ethiopia, or that what applies to Botswana applies to Chad.
Most of all, as people with experience living there, let’s own our part of this debate. Why should one more Westerner be making the case for, or against, a cheap laptop for kids in Africa? I’d rather hear two Africans debate it. I’d rather have a thought leader from some African country step up and make the case for, or against, it.
Just because we grew up listening to others decide what’s right for our countries doesn’t mean we need to continue in that same way.
Try this on for size: as an African, you are more of an expert on what your part of Africa needs than any self-prescribed expert from the west.
 
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10:36
From: White African
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8:13
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
[Brief rugby intermission]
 I had a hard enough time tracking down how to make sure I got the Rugby World Cup games at home in the United States, and then a number of people asking me, so here it is. There is only one way to get it, and that’s via the Setanta sports channel.
You can only get the Setanta channel in the US via satellite. Your choices are DirectTV or Dish Network. Once you order the service you’ll have to add an extra $15/month for the Setanta channel.
DirectTV tends to be about $5 less each month, but Dish Network has a bigger dish and gets less interruption (so I read somewhere). I ended up going with Dish Network, with Setanta sports, and I ordered a DVR for an additional $5 in order to record the games that I couldn’t watch live. All told, the package runs about $50/month, which is about what cable TV costs here - so it’s comparable.
One last item. If you want to do a month-to-month contract instead of an 18 month one, you’ll need to go through DirectTV or Dish Network, not their local dealers. So just give them a call via their website.
Hope that helps someone.
 
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20:04
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
This blog serves as my opinion on technology, generally related to Africa, the web and mobile devices. I also throw in personal updates from time-to-time. This is one of those times.
After 2 good years at eppraisal.com I’ve decided to move on, though I will still stay on in an advisory role. It’s a good company, with people genuinely passionate about changing the way you access information about real estate on the web. I’ll miss working with the team on a daily basis.
Why?
Over the last year I’ve been struggling with two issues:
First, “talking” vs “doing”. I hear a lot of people who talk about how things should be, or criticize the way things are but never do anything about it. I’ve always been a doer, and this is a way for me to gain some much needed time to work on projects that have need much more attention. (more on these projects at a later date, though one is AfriGadget).
Second, rejecting the big business theory of work, life and associated expectations. Malvina Reynolds sums this up brilliantly in her song Little Boxes. Success in life is not just about money, though that is needed (and believe me, I’m a capitalist). However, I don’t think that money is the only thing there is in life and that balance, life goals and family should be taken into consideration.
So what is it I’ll be doing?
I’m going to work independently as a web strategy and new media consultant (my company site). In the time that I am not focused on client needs, I will be pouring my time into AfriGadget and other independent projects related to Africa where my skills and experience can make a difference.
One of the perks is that I’m looking forward to spending more daytime hours in my home office, allowing for more time with my girls:
I’m really excited about the future!
Your normal White African articles will soon continue, thanks for weathering this brief intermission… 
 
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1:11
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I use a Moleskine notebook to keep track of things during the day.
I try to keep it on me at all times. It’s useful for taking notes at a conference when I can’t use my computer (or the battery is dead), when I’m sourcing stories for AfriGadget, when I’ve got a “brilliant idea” while out and about, or when I need to take notes from a phone call.
It’s not like you couldn’t use any old notebook to do the same thing - I just happened to buy into the Moleskine story. Sometimes the answer isn’t gadgets or the web, it’s what our grandparent’s grew up using.
Technology’s great benefit is simplifying complex tasks. We need to guard against complicating simplex tasks.
Moleskin hacks:
 
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17:53
From: White African
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I have this theory: Books are like food.
You see, there’s the stuff that’s good for you, the stuff that helps you grow, some have certain types of vitamins to help you fend off diseases and sickness, others are like junkfood, etc…
When I travel, I tend to read a lot of “junkfood” books. Thrillers, fantasy, sci-fi - you know the type. It’s kind of like grabbing a candy as a snack, since you know it’ll be good and keep you going. Of course, you can take a bad analogy to far, so I’ll stop here.
By the way, once in a while you find some gems. Interesting books that I’ve read in the last couple weeks include, all of which I recommend:
 The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks
This is rather interesting, no one knows who the real author is - he “lives off the grid”. It’s an Orwellian story, much like a modern day 1984. Very compelling ideas, even if rather fantastic in nature. I wouldn’t suggest any ludites or conspiracy fanatics read it.
 American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Odd. That’s all I have to say. Very well written and interesting, but odd… It’s the story about the decline and clash of the “old gods” brought over to America by immigrants and the rise of the new “tech/city gods” of the modern world.
Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs
Not junk food, but a useful book on the art of persuasion. A lot of good tips and thoughts on what to do to ensure that your ideas get agreed upon or “win the day”, whether at home, work, school or presenting.
 
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8:14
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Four of the AfriGadget editors descended upon Limuru, Kenya to visit the NEST orphanage - a home of children whose mother’s are in prison. The orphanage lies about an hour outside of Nairobi and has 70 children ages 7 months to 15 years old. The true capacity of the home is 96 children, but the they’re resource-strapped as it is and the 70 they have is a lot.
95% of the children’s mothers are in prison. Only four mothers are in prison for capital offenses, the others are in for drugs, neglect, prostitution, or some other type of petty offense. Since the majority of children are neglected, there is generally a large amount of medical attention needed - which again stretches their resources.
Juergen, who writes as Kikuyumoja and originally asked us to take a look at the place, has set up a blog for the NEST home (www.thenesthome.com). It’s been up for a while, and it helps keep up to date with what is happening at the orphanage. If you would like to support them, you can there.
Afromusing has a moving blog post up telling a story about one of the abused babies that was given into the NEST home’s care.
(more…)
 
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6:00
From: White African
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Fun!
I finally got out to see the third installment and it now joins my list of favorite trilogies, along with:
- Star Wars
- Indiana Jones
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Matrix
 
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7:04
From: dkFactor
Read This Entry & More At dkFactor
 I think I’ve just about had it with these environmentalists and would love to tell them to stick their hypocritical message up their rear. Ask them to give up their cars and heated homes and you’ll be all alone in the room. Global Warming is the new Con - if you open your eyes, you’ll see that this is driven purely by marketing. I actually gave ExxonMobil credit for not pretending to be a ‘Green’ company like BP or Shell - the main purveyors of oil, the root of all our ‘problems’. Pumping gas at a BP, I noticed their new tagline, ‘Beyond Petroleum’ — ??? Ha! Give me a break.
We (Africa) have arrived at the table very late in the game. Developed countries are almost done sucking fossil fuels out of the ground - the very substance required to support the quality of life everyone craves (including environmentalists). As China & India fight for the remaining crumbs to satisfy their explosive economies, I can’t help but wonder where this leaves us. The last major oil reserves have already been discovered, and the remaining options can only be compared to pulling teeth.
- Solar Power
Extremely clean, and there’s plenty of it on the continent. Unfortunately technology hasn’t advanced enough for us to harness it efficiently. Right now, this form of energy is just a romantic dream that is still out of reach.
- Hydroelectric Power
Has been extremely reliable for years. Also, it requires large dams that displace people and destroy ecosystems. Ultimately our future lies here. Africa has taken advantage of only 7% of its hydroelectric potential compared to 75% in Europe. It is however going to require massive dams that translate to massive investment on a still volatile continent.
- Methane Gas (NEW!!)
For a moment there I was convinced this was the Silver Bullet solution to our problems, a green almost endless supply of energy. As stated in this BBC News article and on Afromusing, Lake Kivu in Rwanda is holding enough unexploited energy to meet Rwanda’s (and the regions) needs for 200 years. In all the excitement, finer details like the fact that methane is a extremely explosive gas were left out - more details here.
I’d like to go on, but I think you get the idea - we are literally going to be pulling teeth to come up with a solution. Ultimately, the environment will be a casualty if we want to get what everyone else has.
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14:37
From: White African
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14:07
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 So, I’m out in San Francisco for the second week running. This week it’s for the Ad:Tech conference on marketing and advertising. Basically, I had enough time to go home for the weekend, watch some rugby and play my new Nintendo Wii. Fun times!
Thoughts on Behavioral Targeting in Advertising in Africa
Advertising and marketing, especially online, is an ever-changing beast. I just sat through a good session on behavioral targeting, and wish I had a chance to discuss some of my thoughts on that with some of Africa’s leading websites and news portals. Is anyone doing any behavioral targeting in African advertising?
If I were an advertiser on any of the African online newspaper sites or forums, I would like to make sure my money was being used to target the demographics that wanted my services. For instance, if I have a product that is better for locals at the country level versus wanting to only reach people in the African diaspora in Europe. It’s a big difference and means a lot to me as far as ROI goes.
Of course, there’s a difference in brand marketing and actually trying to get a transaction, but that just provides another difference that I wonder if the platforms are reaching out to?
  
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21:42
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
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Diving - close up, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
Coming back from the Web 2.0 Expo, I happened to be seated with a number of the Humboldt State University rugby team. They mentioned that the US Division II rugby playoffs were taking place this weekend at a facility near Orlando, Florida.
Realizing that I didn’t want to see a computer, blog, check email or think about the web at all, I set off for the pitch with to try out my new camera in a real “sports” setting.
The image above, of a guy diving to tackle as the other dives for the try, is my absolute favorite of the whole day. I took about 1400 pictures in the space of 3 hours and came out with 250 decent pictures. Of those, only 50 would I consider “good”.
Today I’ve learned a few things about sports photography:
- It seems to take a lot of luck
- Having a massive zoom lense makes your life easier
- It’s NOT easy
- It’s a lot of fun
The rest of the set can be found here
  
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17:28
From: White African
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4:07
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
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Microsoft = Internet’s Rectum, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
There are more pictures and slides from my Web 2.0 Flickr set for it, this one just happens to be my favorite. David Hornik, of VentureBlog, gave the talk, which was BY FAR the most entertaining one yet. (Update: In context, it’s not as bad as it sounds, more on the presentation)
Other highlights have been the Eric Schmidt/John Batelle interview, the presentation by Technorati’s David Sifry and Hitwise’s Bill Tancer, and of course, meeting up with Colin Daniels of the Sunday Times.
All together, it’s been a really good conference. Some of the sessions have been a little dry, but the conversations and ideas are as rich as ever. One day left on the agenda, hopefully more good stuff will come from that.
  
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These appear to be more than the normal sale-type jobs that they have hired for in the past. Particularly, I’m interested in the one that has to do with mapping. It’s interesting that Google finally thinks that’s worth doing better in Africa. (hat tip 
I’ve started to contribute (sporadically) to a new website called Thought Leader out of South Africa. Here I talk about the problems that we face in Africa with regard to running businesses online. There are no real payment and merchant options that fit the needs of Africans. 
I entered into the 