Feeds
8078 items (0 unread) in 54 feeds
Welcome to Mashada Blogs! Read all your favourite blogs in one place.
«
Expand/Collapse
27 items tagged "Web"
Related tags:
Tools [+],
for [+],
development [+],
Kenya [+],
Stuff [+]
-
-
10:00
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Few people around Africa, or the world, are unaware of the injustices being perpetrated against Zimbabweans by their government. It has gone from being the “bread basket of Africa” to a place of staggering inflation and a broken economy. Through it all, there are a few voices online that help bring the real stories of what is happening there to the world.
One of those voices is Sokwanele (which means “enough is enough”), an excellent resource for background and news. Just recently they posted on their blog This is Zimbabwe about a project they have created to map breaches in the Zimbabwe elections using Google maps.
This map mashes up the data that Zimbabwe Election Watch has collected of government intimidation, via the media, with a Google map. Due to the hostile climate towards journalists, the urban areas get more coverage than the hard-to-reach rural areas. If anything, the creators of this map feel that the data is under-reported.
The interactive map aims to give a visual impression of the scale and many ways in which the Zimbabwean government has breached the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. Elections are a process, not an event, and the same applies to rigging: the scene has been set for unfree and unfair elections on March 29th, and the conditions on the ground have been developed through many months of non-compliance with regional electoral standards.
In just a few days Zimbabweans will begin lining up at the ballot box to cast their vote. It’s hard to voice your vote for the opposition though. There are reports of “underground” SMS messaging campaigns, but everyone fears the government (or their sympathizers) backlash if they are found out.
It’s a tough situation, one that technologists have been fighting to try and help with on two fronts: to keep information flowing internally within the country, and also to make sure that the rest of the world sees the images and hears the stories of what is going on within the Zimbabwe. This SADC Breaches map is a great example of external messaging and visualization.
 
-
-
0:00
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
[NOTE: This is different than the original time we asked for your help. We found out that was only to give us stars, but that vote doesn’t count towards the real ballot. Please go vote again!]
Ushahidi is an African initiated project used in Kenya to map reported incidents of violence during the post-election crisis. Our goal is to increase the scope and capabilities of Ushahidi so that it can be used by others around the globe who find themselves in the similar crisis situations. We need your vote in the NetSquared mashup challenge for a chance at winning some money to use in further development.
How to vote:
1. Create an account (or Login if you already have an account) at NetSquared.org
2. Vote for Ushahidi by clicking here, then click the red “Vote for My Mashup” button.
3. Vote for at least 4 other projects. Here are four that I recommend, but you can choose whichever you like. Just make sure you choose a total of 5 minimum.
4. Click “View/Cast Ballot”, or click here: [www.netsquared.org]. Be sure Ushahidi is listed as one of your chosen projects.
5. Click “Cast Ballot” on your screen. That’s it!
Thanks, and we’ll keep you updated on the outcome!
 
-
-
9:10
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 We’ve entered Ushahidi (background story here) into the $100,000 Netsquared Mashup Challenge for further development. We’re really excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons.
First, we’d love to get experts involved to help us with planning and development work.
Second, if you go help vote up our application (LINK), we have a stronger chance of being selected. Going and voting for us at this point is the biggest help you can be at this point.
Third, even though the crisis in Kenya appears to be over (thank God), we’re continuing to build out Ushahidi in order for it to be used in future crisis related situations around the world.
Here’s their explanation of the challenge:
This year’s NetSquared Conference will bring together a unique mix of people from the public and private sectors to develop and release Mashups designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe.
Those “people” are you — members of the NetSquared universe working on behalf of communities everywhere and the technical experts who care about these issues.
If we’re successful, we’ll learn something about cross-sector collaboration, meet new and interesting people, and build a unique gallery of Mashups that citizens, schools, and community-based groups everywhere can learn from, replicate, and build upon.
So, there you have it. Head on over to Netsquared, register and vote. I know it’s a hassle to have to register before you vote, but we would greatly appreciate it if you did. Better yet, if you’re interested in helping to extend Ushahidi even further, let us know!
Let’s see if we can make a global product out of an African initiated project…
[update: I’ve had a couple emails and messages asking where to vote. Once you’re logged in, you should see the following. Just click the + sign.]
 
-
-
9:06
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Here are some thoughts, tips and tools that I have found useful, and thought other bloggers could benefit from as well:
Allow People to Contact You
Please, make it easy for your readers to contact you personally. They might have stories, pictures or thoughts that could help you out. I’ve seen way to many blogs with no way to contact the author, leaving it up to the reader to spam your comments section. If you don’t want to display your email address, use some type of contact form plugin on your blog.
- Those who are using Blogger (blogspot) or WordPress.com can just activate it within the service.
- If you’re using WordPress on your own site, consider the Enhanced WordPress contact form plugin.
- Want to make your own contact form? I suggest setting it up through Wufoo, it’s brain dead simple and free.
Getting Readers to Come Back
Make it easy for people to follow your writing. Almost every blog has some type of RSS as part of the structure, however you can make it even more user friendly by doing the following:
- Most people don’t know what RSS is or how to use it, so allow readers to signup for updates via email. Personally, I use Feedburner and just activate their tool. Simple and well done.
- WordPress has an incredibly nice little plugin called Subscribe to Comments. This allows anyone who leaves a comment to get pinged with an email when another person does the same (if they so choose). I’ve seen this really reader interactions.
Useful WordPress Plugins
Be proactive and get ready for problems before they happen. Whether your site gets hacked or you’re finding that you’re being overloaded by traffic, here are a couple WordPress plugins that can help:
- WP Cache - for when you’re getting slammed by traffic. Think KenyanPundit.com in the middle of the Kenyan election debacle, or if your story gets on a site like Digg.
- WP Database Backup - I have this setup to auto-save and email me the file each week. This saved me when my hosting service was hacked this last summer.
Anyway, I hope some of this stuff helps, I know it’s helped me over the years.
 
-
-
18:05
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
The last couple days has seen the launch of 3 new websites from established African bloggers and developers. Impressive work to say the least!
I Have No Tribe
A website dedicated to positive discourse on the Kenyan conflict. From the mind of David Kobia, part of Ushahidi and behind the now-closed Mashada forums. David showed it to me on launch as a prototype late last week, it’s amazing to see that it already has poems, thoughts and prayers from Kenyans all over the world.
Don’t tell him, but I think he’s just having fun with his newfound love of map mashups… 
Nudjit
 A high-tech gadget blog from some well-established South African bloggers (Justin Hartman, Gregor Rohrig, and Nic Haralambous). I’m a gadget guy, so I’ve already added it to the reader and to AfriGadget’s blogroll.
“The site aims to inform, entertain, and alert South Africans about the gadgets that are available to us. Our gadget reviews don’t just highlight the technical aspects but will also judge how well they work, where one can get them, and if our local technology infrastructure can actually support these electronic toys.”
Kabissa
Kabissa.org has launched their brand spanking new website. Kabissa is a social tool for African civil society organizations. What does that mean? Well, it’s a social networking tool for African organizations focused on social change in Africa.
This is another site created by individuals who are well-respected within the African digital scene, Tobias Eigen and Sokari Ekine.
 
-
-
17:34
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
David Kobia, part of the team behind Ushahidi, is the creator of one of the most widely used Kenyan forums: Mashada. I just got an email from him that is rather disappointing:
As you may already know, I’ve been having quite a problem regulating Mashada.com, despite having recently hired people to moderate the forums. It is starting to become a reflection of what is going on on the ground in Kenya. I’d hate for it to hinder our current efforts since I’m directly connected to it, therefore I’m having to shut down the forums until further notice. Facilitating civil discussions and debates has become virtually impossible.
The post-election violence in Kenya is horrible. Most of the people who use Mashada are part of the Kenyan diaspora based in the US and Europe, but also a healthy amount from Kenya. So, the vast majority of people using it are seeing and hearing about the atrocities happening to their friends and family and are rightfully upset.
However, that does not excuse the rampant and vitriolic discussions that have been taking place online. Choosing to resort to verbal thuggery, taunts and threats is not the answer.
It is disappointing to watch the devolution of life in Kenya, but to see it being mirrored online by Kenyans around the world makes it even worse.
I understand the frustration. I get that. What I don’t get is how any of the people involved think that this will make anything better.
We can do better than this. We can be better.
 
-
-
8:40
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
A big thanks goes out to Nick Rabinowitz who saw what we were doing on Ushahidi and offered up his technological expertise in the mashing up of timelines and Google maps. This is really cool stuff, but beyond that, it’s incredibly useful for visualization as well.
One of our hardest problems with the current Ushahidi UI was trying to show the chronological implications of the data we were receiving as incident reports. What the Ushahidi Timeline allows you to do is see what, where and when it was happening - all on one screen.
How it works:
- You can scroll the timeline by dragging it from left to right. As you do that, the events on the map dynamically update to what is being shown on the timeline.
- Clicking on an event will open the “detail bubble” of the corresponding event on the map.
- Within the detail bubble, you can click to find more information about that incident.
A Kenyan Shortcode Number for Reports
Thanks to some fellow Kenyans, you can now send reports directly via your mobile phone to 6007 in Kenya.
An Ushahidi Blog
Ironically, Ushahidi was started by bloggers but a blog was one of the last items that we put onto the site. Well, we now have a blog up so you can find out more information, helpful links, updates, thoughts and videos there. Send in stories from Kenya too, we’d like to post them.
What About a “Global Ushahidi”?
What we’re starting to see with Ushahidi is a template for public-facing crisis information. Over the last two weeks I’ve been working with Ory and David to come up with an overview of what a global site might look like, its requirements and how interaction with NGOs and the public happen. We can’t build that product without funding though, so contact me if you’re interested in seeing the document and potentially supporting it.
 
-
-
18:40
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Vuma Kenya! Concert in Boston
A group of young Kenyan professionals in the US has been working hard over the last 2 weeks to put on a fundraising concert in Boston. The event will take place on February 02, 2008 (7:00 pm) at the Roxy downtown. If you’re in the area get there! If not, you can donate through the website at www.vumakenya.org.
I’ve had a chance to be on a couple of the conference calls with these guys, and I can tell you that they are passionate and committed to making this a success. The group is politically ambivalent in this initiative, choosing to band together in times of crisis rather than fracture over tribal or political differences. Let’s support them and hope that we see more of this in Kenya too.
Catch the Africa Cup of Nations on AfricanPath
Joshua Wanyama of AfricanPath has been hard at work growing his site. African Path will broadcast the Ghana 2008 Africa Cup of Nations from January 20th till February 10th, 2008 online. The games will be available as both live feeds and as saved games for those who missed the live broadcasts. In addition a forum on the African Path Village will provide an ample platform for all soccer fans to discuss the games. Enjoy the games!
 2008 South African Blog Awards
Nominations for the 2008 South African Blog Awards are starting up on February 11th. Here’s hoping that there is a lot less controversy than last year. If this blog post is any indication, then I think it’s off to a good start.
It would be interesting if someone were to put together a pan-African version of this type of thing too. Beyond the general ego boosting that these events have, I tend to find a lot of really neat niche blogs that I didn’t know existed through the nomination process.
 
-
-
18:28
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 A couple of us have been doing interviews and trying to get the word out about Ushahidi to as many news and media outlets as we can. Why? In hopes that by reaching out and talking to a broad selection of media more people will hear about it and that the news of Ushahidi will trickle down to the Kenyans who need it most.
The BBC recently did some interviews with those of us involved with Ushahidi. You can listen to the piece at the link below (4:30 long):
BBC Audio Interview on Ushahidi
BoingBoing and the TED blog each did a write-up about Ushahidi and the TEDsters involved with it.
Well known VC blog VentureBeat has a story on Ushahidi, as well as Global Voices on the broader picture behind cyber activism.
On Business Daily
Good Magazine
We’re trying to spread the word even further. If you know anyone at a media outlet in need of a story, consider helping by directing them towards Ushahidi. This is a newsworthy cause that only gets better the more people know about it and use it.
 
-
-
6:09
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
As I mentioned in my last post, it would be good for us to have a tool to chronicle the incidents of violence happening around Kenya. That is the basic premise behind a new site that was quickly scratched together by a couple of us this weekend.
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. Ory and Daudi are working with local Kenyan NGO’s to get information and to verify each incident.
What you can do is get the word out about Ushahidi so that it’s utilized to it’s full potential. This especially extends to talking to the people that you know who have seen things in Kenya and getting them to the site as well.
the Ushahidi.com Homepage
At the beginning of a project like this the technology portion can seem to be the hardest to get off the ground. In the end, it’s just the tool, and the hard work will come from people in the field who are working with NGO’s to keep this information accurate and to chronicle as much of it as they can. If you want to help, get in touch with Daudi or Ory to get started.
When all the dust settles from this in Kenya, don’t be one of the ones saying, “I should have done something”.
[A special thanks goes out to David Kobia of Kobia Interactive for stepping up and shouldering the load and developing this site in just 2 days!]
Get the Word Out!
If you would like to raise awareness of Ushahidi via your blog or website. Feel free to use one of these buttons that I created, or make your own. (You can grab them from the Flickr set too)
 
The code for the bottom one would be like what you see below, which you can just copy and paste:
<a href="http://www.ushahidi.com"><img src="http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ushahidi_v2c_250px.jpg"
alt="Ushahidi Button v2c 250px" /></a>
 
-
-
7:32
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Sometimes there’s nothing more that you can do at the time than report what you see. That’s the idea behind the project that Ory thought up while reporting on the Kenyan elections. Basically, let’s create a mashup that people can report into on incidences of violence that they see.
Basically, you have an incident - that hopefully someone gets a picture or video of. A report on what happened and who was involved, and a location. That information is submitted and then populated into a map-based view that is easy to search by location and/or category.
It seems to me that the easy part is the mashup. Many past examples of map mashups pull from a database (or RSS feeds). In this case, a new database would need to be created. It too could have an RSS feed for “new” reports though and become the nexus for cataloging post-election incidents in Kenya.
An Example:
Below we see a reported atrocity in near Eldoret, Kenya shown on Google Maps. Imagine if this was done with all such incidents of violence throughout the country.
(click on the flames)
View Larger Map
An image of what happened:
Something like this, but more centralized and easy to access by anyone around the world.
 
-
-
18:08
From: White African
-
-
19:10
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you’re an African blogger, and you’re not yet a part of Afrigator, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Afrigator is an African blog aggregator that keeps you up to date with bloggers across Africa, but beyond that it’s a valuable tool. They provide analytics that allow you to see how many people are visiting your site and from where.
Afrigator Gets Even Better
They have just released their new beta of their service, completely redesigned and with added functionality. I’m extremely impressed with how polished it seems, but that’s to be expected from the guys working on it. There’s no reason for me to do another review of all the changes, those have been covered well by Charl and Marshall.
So How Many Bloggers are There in Africa Anyway?
 That’s a question that I keep asking, and one that’s hard to measure. Afrigator might give us the best start in finding that answer.
I asked Justin Hartman if he would mind sharing what their numbers are by country. He graciously obliged, and you can see them at right.
Because Afrigator is developed (and marketed most) by South Africans the blog count is heavily tilted that direction. However, the rest of the countries are fairly accurate relative to each other. We know that Kenya does indeed have one of the largest populations of bloggers in Africa as does Nigeria. I do notice that there is a lack of North African countries, and I know that there are a lot of bloggers from there.
What I’d like to see is a true representation across all of the African blogosphere. With some intelligent spidering, I would think that Afrigator is best positioned to tackle this challenge.
What we can all do is help spread the word to our other African blogger counterparts and get them signed up on Afrigator, helping to legitimize our region by organization and ease of finding good bloggers in any country.
 
-
1:22
From: Mentalacrobatics
Read This Entry & More At Mentalacrobatics
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
© Mentalacrobatics for Mentalacrobatics, 2007. |
Permalink |
2 comments
Add to del.icio.us
Search blogs linking this post with Technorati
Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Kenya, Skunkworks Kenya, Technology.
-
-
13:58
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I was doing some research trying to find an obscure suffix for a domain today and got sidetracked into trying to find all of the African TLD’s (Top Level Domains). I couldn’t find a list that had just the domain suffix for each country in Africa, so created my own:
| TLD |
Country Name |
TLD |
Country Name |
.AO |
Angola |
.MG |
Madagascar |
| .BF |
Burkina Faso |
.ML |
Mali |
| .BI |
Burundi |
.MU |
Mauritius |
| .BJ |
Benin |
.MW |
Malawi |
| .BW |
Botswana |
.MZ |
Mozambique |
| .CF |
Central African Republic |
.NA |
Namibia |
| .CG |
Congo |
.NE |
Niger |
| .CI |
Cote D’Ivoire |
.NG |
Nigeria |
| .CM |
Cameroon |
.RW |
Rwanda |
| .DJ |
Djibouti |
.SC |
Seychelles |
| .DZ |
Algeria |
.SD |
Sudan |
| .EG |
Egypt |
.SL |
Sierra Leone |
| .EH |
Western Sahara |
.SN |
Senegal |
| .ER |
Eritrea |
.SO |
Somalia |
| .ET |
Ethiopia |
.ST |
Sao Tome and Principe |
| .GA |
Gabon |
.SZ |
Swaziland |
| .GH |
Ghana |
.TD |
Chad |
| .GM |
Gambia |
.TG |
Togo |
| .GN |
Guinea |
.TN |
Tunisia |
| .GQ |
Equatorial Guinea |
.TZ |
Tanzania |
| .GW |
Guinea-Bissau |
.UG |
Uganda |
| .KE |
Kenya |
.ZA |
South Africa |
| .LR |
Liberia |
.ZM |
Zambia |
| .LS |
Lesotho |
.ZR
.CD |
Zaire
Dem Rep of Congo |
| .LY |
Libya |
.ZW |
Zimbabwe |
| .MA |
Morocco |
.KM |
Comoros |
| .CV |
Cape Verde |
|
|
If I’m missing any, let me know. If you want a full list of all the country TLD’s around the world, try here.
 
-
-
11:04
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you write an African blog and are taking part in today’s Blog Action Day, please let me know. I’ll continue to add to this list as the day goes on.
[UPDATE: For more extensive coverage, make sure you read Juliana’s post on Global Voices]
 
-
-
22:10
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Afrotechie is a blog written by Andrew Heavens, of Meskel Square, it’s an excellent blog that covers the gamut of news on the African tech scene.
His most recent story is about the way the governments of Sudan and Ethiopia are blocking certain websites. It’s a fascinating read that discusses how the motives behind the action move the government’s hand.
In Sudan it’s religion. In Ethiopia it’s politics.
This highlights the very reason why technology can make such an impact in Africa - it can be used to bypass inefficient and corrupt regimes. For every government action to block web and mobile communication, there’s a technologist waiting to bypass their often ham-fisted actions.
 
-
-
21:23
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Blog Action Day is an initiative started by a bunch of international bloggers who want to see what will happen if we all write about the same general topic on one given day. In this case, that day is right around the corner on October 15th. The topic for this year is to write something about the environment.
I’ve decided to commit AfriGadget to the task of writing one story about the environment. If you have a story of African ingenuity as it relates to the environment, I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment here, or send me an email through the contact form.
Of course, you can participate yourself by committing to write a piece about the environment on October 15th as well. Let’s see if we can get some good African representation.
 
-
-
18:23
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I just got an email from one of the editors at Deutsche Welle asking me why there are no Africans taking part in their annual Best of the Blogs awards. I hadn’t heard of the awards, so I headed on over there to find out what was going on. It turns out that the Best of Blogs (or The Bobs) is sponsored by some pretty big players (Technorati, Global Voices, Toshiba and O’Reilly to name a few) and looks legitimate.
What’s wrong with this picture?
When it comes to how Africa is portrayed on the web, we are partly responsible for what the rest of the world sees. We have no right to be upset when Africa is excluded when we won’t even take the time to promote each other, the countries we come from and the ideas for which we stand.
There are a great number of exceptional writers throughout Africa. I finally chose to submit one of my favorites - Chippla’s Weblog, but I could have just as easily chosen any of the excellent bloggers elsewhere. With all of the bloggers in South Africa and Kenya alone, it’s a small wonder there hasn’t been any submissions yet from those 2 countries.
(small correction: it looks like there are a few blogs representing North Africa from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco)
 
-
-
13:05
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Africa is massive. Made up of 54 countries who don’t work together sharing information that frequently, and with governments who are more concerned with “other matters” than sharing the accurate mapping of their country. Companies in some of these countries do go about this themselves, and charge a high price for their product.
How does the “average person” then get access to geographic data about off-the-path areas? Google Earth of course.
Being a self-proclaimed map addict, I love playing with Google Earth and enjoy trying out different features. Tracks4Africa is an organization based out of South Africa that has integrated their services into Google Earth. Their goal is to focus on the rural and remote areas of Africa that aren’t well defined and who’s roads, bridges and villages shift over time.
Using GPS devices, the Tracks4Africa community when touring Africa do meticulous record keeping of their travels. From this huge repository of high quality GPS data we have created a super accurate GPS map called the T4A Map. But the T4A Map is more than that, it is the collective navigational experience of the T4A community over the past 7 years. It shows Africa the way it is and how it is constantly changing.
To show how useful the service is, I went into Google Earth and zoomed in on what appeared to be a rather remote section of southern Tanzania, near Ngajira in the Ruaha National Park.
Google Earth showing the remote area - NOT using Tracks4Africa:
The same area shown with Tracks4Africa data embeded in the map:
Crowd Sourced Mapping of Africa
I find what Tracks4Africa is doing incredibly interesting because of the way the are going about it. Anyone who is in any area of Africa can take part in the mapping of the area that they know. It does require having a GPS system in order to store the coordinates, and then the ability to email that data to the Tracks4Africa organization.
The important thing to see here is that the amount of data that they are collecting would cost a for-profit business millions of dollars to put together. Even then, Africa is large and the ability to get to all remote areas for mapping purposes would likely prove too expensive or difficult.
Instead, you simply ask everyone who travels around Africa to send in their data. Of course, this tends to be expats or tourists with the equipment, but other organizations and individuals can take part if they have the GPS tools themselves. It’s inspiring to see, and kudos go to Google for making it more available through access on Google Earth.
Google Earth is not being used to it’s full potential in Africa - yet. Imagine when everyone starts sending in the data for other data points in Africa besides roads and tourist lodging. I for one, would love to see the data for mobile phone towers being submitted and having the ability to start plotting mobile phone coverage on our own, instead of relying on cell phone company data.
 
-
-
9:48
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Heather Ford of iCommons gets her Wikipedia page.
Heather is the head of iCommons, which has it’s world headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa. iCommons also organizes the annual iSummit, held in a different country each year. I had the chance to sit down with her for a chat and can tell you that she is an amazing woman. I’m really impressed with how she has grown the awareness of open source issues outside of the US and Europe.
(Sidenote: What’s up with these graduates of the Rhodes University School of Journalism, they pop up everywhere!?)
iCommons.org Launches a New Community Focused Website
iCommons has also just launched it’s new website, which is a HUGE improvement over the previous version. It’s now a very interactive site that encourages you to register and dive in as a member of the iCommons community. This only makes sense due to the open nature of what they do. If you have an article, report or event to tell people about, do it here.
Top new features on the iCommons website:
- A Digg-like voting system for interesting and important stories
- An internal wiki for iCommons related issues
- A new iCommons blog
- There is now Culture Database
- Create a “Node” - which is a way for people to submit projects for consideration by the community and by iCommons. “A node is a project that is focused on progressing one aspect of the open content, access to knowledge, open access publishing or free culture.”
iCommons has the respect and ear of many people. Africans around the continent should take advantage of the fact that it is headquartered in Africa. Contact Heather and her staff and find ways that you can work together. She mentioned to me more than once that she would like to have iCommons plugged into the local tech communities in each country - a great example would be the techies at Skunkworks in Kenya, or BusyInternet in Ghana, and iCommons working together on something.
A good place to start would be taking part in the iCommons community - register and see if you can add to the conversation. I know they also look for helping hands on organizing the iSummit each year.
 
-
-
19:44
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Here are a couple of websites created by Africans for the African community. The first two are social networking-type sites, while the third is a personalize homepage.
It’s good to see individuals trying new things for specific niches, and even though some are built using prepackaged solutions. As John from Bwanji mentioned in a comment recently, using prepackaged solutions is the easiest way to get something out the door in a cheap and timely manner. However, it does constrain the product’s roadmap over time.
 Bwanji.com is a Zambia’s social networking website. Bwanji is a community site dedicating to connecting Zambians. There looks to be about 3000 users taking part in it. I’d be interested to know what the percentage of users from the diaspora are compared to those within Zambia. On Bwanji there are the normal tools for interaction; a photo album, the ability to gather friends, a blog engine and forums. All in all, it looks like a healthy community and a useful tool.
 Akopo, a blogging, chat and games platform, was created by another fellow African blogger: Nino. It was created using the LifeType open source blogging platform, and seems like it has quite a bit of traction (hopefully Nino will fill us in on the numbers). Though most of the blogs seem to be in French, there is an option to create a blog in English as well.
Afrikeo is a dynamic website homepage site, built using the Portaneo Posh tool. The default page comes loaded with African news feeds from Muti and Afrigator, and the BBC. If you’ve used tools like Netvibes or iGoogle before, you’ll recognize an interface that allows you to move modules around, add feeds from your favorite sites and create new pages for additional content.
 
-
-
15:37
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
This is the year or the rebirth of news coverage in Africa. It’s driven partly by the growth in non-traditional news stories brought about by blogs, but it is also a part of the greater change on the internet that is taking place. More people are getting involved - and the people are in control.
We’re seeing the beginnings of a new wave of websites and a new way of reading news. Here is a basic rundown of the current new offerings that cover news on a pan-African level:
African Path
 Joshua Wanyama started African Path at the beginning of the year. He acts as an editor, bringing in stories from the AP and Reuters, filtering them for the most interesting news in Africa. More importantly, African Path has a stable of 38 bloggers who weigh in on issues that are interesting to people in the diaspora and within Africa.
AfricanLoft
 AfricanLoft launched in May, just last month. Imnakoya, a well known African blogger living in the US, has put together a website that aggregates African news, African blogs and creates a sense of community. There are areas to upload images and video, as well as a stable 20 bloggers (which I’m sure will grow soon), that also write about Africa-focused issues.
Afrigator
 Afrigator, also launched this year, is a blog aggregator for Africa. The Afrigator team informs me that they are tracking close to 800 blogs from 32 countries. Though the number of bloggers, and those who read African blogs, is still small Afrigator represents the beginnings of a new trend. Where African Path and AfricanLoft pay homage to their blogging roots, Afrigator IS the voice of the African blogosphere.
AllAfrica
 I can’t leave AllAfrica out of this mix. They have been part of this transformation, and on the forefront of news coverage in Africa for a long time, specifically they aggregate the newspapers from all over the continent. That’s no small task! They have the best connections in this space, I hope that they continue to innovate so that they remain relevant.
Muti
 The last piece of the puzzle is a community-based approach to African news. Muti allows anyone who finds an interesting tid-bit of news on Africa to provide a link to it in one centralized place. It’s a filter for “interesting” for both bloggers and news readers alike.
In Summary
I’m excited about the way technologists are stepping up to solve the information gap in Africa. I’m even more interested in seeing how these different entities will evolve through this year. Knowing most of them personally, and knowing the amount of hard work and time they spend on their websites, I’m convinced that continued growth is in order.
[Update: if you feel that I missed a particular site, especially if it’s not in English, please let me know. I am burdened with a language barrier called French, so many times those great Francophone websites are missed by me.]
 
-
-
6:40
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you’re a budding Ansel Adams and would like to make some money off of your better photographs, there are a number of options to help you sell your photos. These sites will sell your photos (and sometimes vector art) and share the revenue with you. Don’t think that you can submit just any old image though, most of these services have editors to make sure the quality stays high.
These are also great websites for designers to know about (as I’m sure most already do), since you can find more interesting images to use than you will find at the normal stock photography sites.
iStockPhoto
 One of the more established sites, iStockPhoto has been around long enough to have a really solid inventory of images. They have a section for movies, Flash, vector files and normal photos. If you’re looking for something eclectic, you can probably find something here.
Lucky Oliver
 One of the newcomers to the show, Lucky Oliver is both original and high quality. I’ve had a chane to meet one of the founders, and his vision for Lucky Oliver is something that will make designers and photographers happy - keep an eye on these guys. I use them regularly, and highly recommend becoming a part of their community as either a designer or photographer.
Shutterstock
 Shutterstock gives you vector and normal images, just like the other two listed. How it’s different, is that you pay on a monthly or yearly subscription, not on a per image basis. They seem to have a good selection and if you need a lot of images, this might be a good service for you.
Spy Media | |
