February 2009 – Kikuyumoja

Netbooks = AfriGadget

Over at AfriGadget, we usually call something an AfriGadget if it is a DIY solution to a problem or situation to which there just isn’t any ready-made solution available.

In places where you just can’t go to the next hardware store and buy a ready-made solution, an AfriGadget is such an attempt for a working alternative.

I would even go as far as saying that Germany, for instance, is a very modular country (with many regulations & technical norms) and consequently offers many ready-made solutions that can just be purchased and instantly used. Spare parts for cars, houses, technical equipment – you name it, there’s a norm on it and a place where you can buy it.

2888960873 91a4e7a7f4 Erik of WhiteAfrican recently argued that “If it Works in Africa, It will Work Anywhere”.

You may or may not agree with this provocative thesis, but it also shows that we are still consuming many products in the “developed” countries which were actually made for our consumer behaviour. And these things are also exported to Africa.

Anyone in the diaspora who has ever exported his older laptop for members of the extended family back home also knows that it may probably be broken once he/she returns during the next holiday.

Most conventional laptops are just too fragile to withstand the heat, dust, unstable power supply, malware and other threats the relatively rough life on “the dark continent” has to offer. And battery runtime with an average of max. 2h is often below par.

Netbooks are different.

Netbooks are simple, often light-weight small computers with a simple (but modern) CPU, enough RAM, a harddisk, a small screen (7″-10″), 2-3 USB ports, a sound card, WLAN connection and a card reader. They sometimes even come with an internal Bluetooth adapter so you can connect your mobile or other Bluetooth-enabled equipment to such a little machine. Oh, and it also has a webcam which is neat.

Most importantly though, many current netbooks are quite durable and even survive rough conditions.

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Take my netbook, for example. I’ve purchased this used Asus eee PC 901 a month ago – and while I am still struggling with it’s tiny keyboard layout – I just can’t stop thinking that it could or should actually be THE killer device for use in many developing countries.

My netbook doesn’t have a conventional magnetic (rotating) hard disk, but instead comes with (slow) SSD flash memory. Like the one found on USB memory keys. 12 GB for the operating system, programs and some private data. Battery runtime is beyond 5h on this little baby – which means that it’ll even survive the next power failure. And since the tiny CPU inside doesn’t consume too much power, it could also work from the electricity generated via solar panels (a technology that’s already quite popular in many rural areas).

And here’s the bonus: most future netbooks will be sold with an internal UMTS modem, so you just insert your SIM card and go online. From anywhere where there’s network coverage. (I am actually saving on an Asus eee 1000H Go which has a 10,2″ screen, a better keyboard and an internal 3G modem).

The term “netbook” may be a bit irritating though (besides of this legal battle) as we all know that Internet broadband connectivity is still very limited and expensive in many developing countries. Instead, these little computers are much more than just very mobile computers with very good battery runtime: they are sufficient for most needs.

I’d say that at least 90% of your average tasks can be done on such a machine. Surfing the www, checking your e-mails, writing texts, spreadsheets, games – you name it, it does it. The only thing it doesn’t have is an internal DVD player, so your illegal DVDs purchased at that junction downtown probably won’t play – unless of course you connect an external DVD player via USB.

As long as the iPhone or maybe also some new Google Android phones are the only mobiles with a decent web browser (@Nokia: the S60 browser is NOT a decent solution), netbooks may be the perfect alternative platform and substitute the missing alternative.

“If it works in Africa….”….no, if it works anywhere else, it will also work in Africa.

“70% of Netbook sales so far have been in Europe“ – where they are often only used as second computers or desktop alternatives to those who just want to surf the net from their couch.

In many developing countries though, Netbooks could imho be the entry platform and substitute the otherwise missing or broken (older) computer system. Why? Because they are cheaper, more durable, come with their own power supply and are mobile enough to be shared by many different members of a family or local community.

And that’s why I consider netbooks to be real AfriGadgets. A solution to a problem we have in the past often tried to cure with mobile phones and their still ailing browser software.

Jifurahisha 1208!

Bought a Nokia 1208 mobile phone for someone else today because a local dealer had a 25% discount on EVERYTHING.

25% are quite a lot, so you can imagine that by the time I had arrived, almost everything was already sold out. Damn. 25% on an Asus eeePC 1000HE or 1000HA? Me likes! Well, maybe next time.

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Back to the phone. As recently mentioned, the 1208 comes with an internal flashlight and is one of the cheapest – new – phones you can get for as “little” as 30,- EUR. How much would you pay for such a phone in Kenya? 1800/= Kshs? Sijui, but its obviously much cheaper than in Germany.

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LED on the 1208 pcb

What I like about this no-thrills phone is that it just works. It isn’t the flashlight, it isn’t the enhanced battery life due to the small screen and relatively huge battery, it isn’t it’s compact size – no, it’s the dead simple Series30 operating system that never stalls and just delivers.

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Nokia 1208, 6230, 6230i (with 6230 keypad), N95

It took Nokia two years to deliver stable firmware for the 6230, 6230i and the N95. The more features a phone has, the worse it is.

I am actually longing to go back to a monoblock phone once the N95 retires (no slider phone, hence no E75 or N97) and thought about going for the upcoming Nokia 6700. It only needs to have WLAN connectivity but it doesn’t seem to have that feature…or does it?

The 1208 is one sweet phone and I would love to keep it as a backup – but then, there’s the 25% discount I still need to cash in :-)

tags, tags, tags…

I don’t know if something like the following already exists out there, but I was just going through my feeds on Google Reader as I had recently developed an interest in Japan-related blogs (Gaijin blogs, as I’d call them – much more interesting than traveller blogs) and thought about a website that lists sites in the way humans sort them.

For instance, I grouped/tagged all Africa-related sites as “afrosphere” and European sites with no particular topic as “Eurosphere” on my Google Reader. It may not be the smartest solution, but it helps me to quickly identify where something belongs to (again, according to my own understanding which may be different from yours).

You may also see from my folders that it’s sometimes difficult to caterogize one website into a unique folder. For instance, Steve often writes about the musical Golden Afrique on his blog – so I didn’t know where to save his feed: afrospehere or ngoma?

Google knows about this problem and consequently enabled users to save their feeds in more than one folder. In dubio pro reo – so I saved his blog in both folders.

I even read the wonderful “Everything is miscellaneous” by David Weinberger the other day and think that it makes sense to tag all content. However, it’s still my own tags/keywords – and sometimes I’d like to know what kind of classification others are using on their readers.

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One fine way is to check out delicious.com – that social bookmarking service I’ve been using for quite some time now – and see the tags ppl have used on their saved bookmarks. The screenshot above is a search for “Kikuyumoja” – lists 35 search results.

So the idea is to come up with a service that takes bookmarks / links from various resources (e.g. social bookmarking sites, feedreaders, etc.), looks at their tags and combines these with a link:

Kikuyumoja.com – my blog – would probably create a tag cloud like:

Kenya Germany mobile_blogging cool twitter Africa social_media blog moblog water ecosan internet mobile gprs Safaricom umts Nokia WordPress eee imagineering …

…and so on.

Again, I don’t know if something like that already exists, but the idea behind such an approach is not to display my own categorisation (because otherwise I would just come up with a tag cloud on the sidebar of my blog) – but instead a user / reader generated tag cloud: I am not interested in my own stuff, but in yours.

In other words: in case you’ve saved my blog on your feedreader – how did you tag it?

Technically spoken, I imagine a Yahoo pipes app – but how do you access those private tags on feedreaders?

DVB-T on the eee 901

I recently purchased a refurbished DVB-T (TV) USB stick for use on the Asus eeePC 901. I also have another – much bigger and older – DVB-T stick (Yakumo Quickstick, modified) for use on the other laptop:

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old vs. new // 8cm vs. 4cm

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The new stick is based on the Siano SMS 1000 chipset which basically are these two (tiny) chips as seen on the pcb above.

Such chips are btw also used on mobile phones that come with an internal DVB-T receiver and are really small (especially if compared to the conventional DVB-T USB sticks which are often even larger than normal memory keys).

Oh, and this Siano 1000 device (sold as “Terratec Piranha” some time ago) is also capable of receiving DMB and DVB-H (not supported in Germany).

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Some sources said it *may* not be compatible with GNU/Linux but I am yet to test that with MeTV (my fav app on Ubuntu for TV) and see if that’s really true. I mainly bought it because it was cheap (hey, refurbished! :-) and because of its tiny size. The initial plan was to mod my eeePC and install this thing inside the laptop but it would still require an external antenna (proper DVB-T reception really depends on a decent antenna) so I somehow gave up along the way and am now just using it as an external USB device because it’s already much smaller/shorter than the other DVB-T stick.

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This way (with the antenna on the back side of the display) it is still portable enough – although I am still tempted to directly solder the antenna cord to the device, omitting the antenna connectors.

This TV stick currently receives 22 channels of which most are just crap. Maybe that’s why we never invested in a proper TV set?

Twestival, or why Twitter is the better alternative

Today is Twestival day and I am also attending the local gathering of Twitter users – which also happens to take place in my favourite pub here in Frankfurt (aptly named “the place to be“).

Twestival is a world-wide, almost simultaneous event (live streaming) and attendees are encouraged to donate some money to Charity Water, an NGO active in Ethiopia.

Somehow in a Prof. George Ayittey-way and having previously gained some experience on NGOs, the water business and having a different perspective (of an African/European intellectual) on it, I do of course feel a bit discomforted with such mass-donation events that a) promote water as a sexy (and innocent) cause and b) provide absolution to some Westeners who “want to do good”. Sorry, but sustainable approaches just don’t work that way. I would rather prefer institutional changes than the drilling of wells for areas on which we do not even have groundwater maps. But maybe that’s just me and my scepticism.

On the other hand, I somehow adore how they are making use of social media tools to mobilize the masses. Maybe this is what it takes to reach the masses. And this is also very cool:

“Tweet some facts” via Twitter.

I think we should also use this for ecological sanitation projects. Using social media to mobilize the masses. Kudos to CharityWater for this really smart approach!

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One of the reaons for the success of Twitter and other micro-blogging services, I think, is also the lack of alternatives.

Yes. Even in 2009, there’s still no decent mobile blogging client except for Twitter & Co.

What I am looking for is an application designed for a smartphone that enables me to quickly post an update to my website, with annotated images, maybe also video content and the ability to edit all of this as well as moderate comments. All of the previously mentioned apps for Symbian S60 phones and plugins for WordPress.org installations just don’t do the job for me. And I don’t know about this on the iPhone. Is it any better? Would be a reason to switch phones.

So, even though Twitter is just a micro-blogging service with a limitation to 140 characters / message, it helps to serve the basic idea behind blogging: connecting people through conversations. And besides, with this character limit it is also compatible with another popular service: SMS.

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I really like the idea of combining social media tools with the sector I am active in: sustainable sanitation.? Maybe that’s just the way forward for me.

Frankfurt 101 and the mouse

Bought this mouse for the netbook today – an A4tech X6-60MD in black – which has this retractable USB cord and comes with a somehow smarter “GLASER” diode/sensor which is said to also work on a glass table (most optical mice don’t).

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X6-60MD mouse compared to the wireless desktop mouse

Attaching the mouse to the netbook actually adds a lot of convience to the system – the keyboard and tiny (yet brilliant) screen, however, aren’t that comfortable to work on. The keyboard on this 8,9″ netbook has the same size as the one on 7″ netbooks – next step would have been a 10,2″ netbook though which again adds another 0,3 kg. So this combination will have to do fo the moment. Connecting the netbook to a UMTS phone is a matter of seconds, so it really is a perfect NETbook – even on the road.

I’ve btw stayed with WinXP on this netbook (instead of EasyPeasy 1.0 or eeeUbuntu Standard) because of the special function keys that just work perfectly well with WinXP. Resizing the screen resolution to a compressed 1024×768 (instead of the normal 1024×600) is a matter of one key press. This may of course also be possible with a tuned Ubuntu, but again: not as easy as with XP and I just don’t have the time these days to figure it out. Besides, some of my fav. apps only work with XP and not under (the Windows emulator) Wine.

Sooo….blogging from the netbook (I am currently writing this post on the eee 901) is ok, but due to the keyboard not as convenient as it should be. You’ll quickly end up using 3-4 fingers only. :-(

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Someone from Asia also needs to explain to me one day why there’s so much plastic involved in the packaging of such gadgets. A simple cardboard box would have done as well! At least this one could be opened easily and didnt require the scissors. Stupid.

Another thing to note about A4tech products is that their drivers are much better than the Logitech software package which bricked my desktop system the other day.

Oh, and it’s really amazing how long the battery lasts on this netbook. @E-Nyce: the wear-out level is down to 93% on this used battery/netbook, which is still ok I think.

Once my 15,4″ notebook (= desktop PC with an external 22″ monitor and external keyboard/mouse) retires (hopefully not too soon), I’ll probably go for a 12,2″ or 13″ notebook from either HP, IBM or Samsung and also make sure that it has a bright enough screen (= not as pale as the one on my 15,4″ notebook).

AOB:

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Took this snapshot earlier this week right here in Frankfurt am Main because it reminded me of Taipeh 101.

I am now officially registered as a resident of Frankfurt/M. It may not be the best city to live in, but it has Germany’s biggest airport and is located in the middle of Germany which means I can reach Hamburg or Bremen (in the North) and Munich or Freiburg (in the South) in 3-4h only. Strategically convenient.

What I like about Vienna (part1)

Two and a half days aren’t enough to explore the full potential of a city. That’s why I can only present a few snapshots this time. Besides, I am too tired for a decent post these days.

Have been working on another professional blog for a paid project (no URL, pole) the last couple of weeks and whenever I open my own blog, I think about a relaunch. After all, I am still using the same template since 2006!

I urgently need to get some sleep asap and refocus my agenda on other, much more important matters (like my thesis, for instance).

‘Nways, back to Vienna and some visuals:

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What a roof!

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THE best ticket machine I’ve seen in Europe so far. Took us less than 10 seconds to buy a ticket for the metro. See my ramblings on RMV/Frankfurt am Main to understand why this is so important to me.

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Lovely street-art next to Hotel Orient.

No, don’t ask. Garen showed us that place…

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Best ice-cream and Italian sweets in town. Even at 11 pm and when it’s like -7°C cold outside.

Oh, and they have good coffee.

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Still need to figure out why they’ve put this number on all waste bins.

Interesting to compare German German with Austrian German.

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I will actually go for almost any beer, but – just for the records – they also have Guiness.

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Now this is very impressive. Even have a panorama shot of this somewhere (I still need to go through all of my snapshots and upload them on flickr).

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The obligatory service for tourists. But a nice one indeed!

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Compared to buildings from the past, modern architecture is as uninteresting as most modern cars that will break down after 100.000 kms.

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Modern art + her.

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Vienna Magic

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The globe

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One of those Friedensreich Hundertwasser buildings.

I grew up on his art – maybe everyone in Europe who is somehow interested in art did – and I really, really like it. Hundertwasser also published a manifest on dry toilets in 1975 which is just another cool reason to adore this great visionary artist and intellectual.

You won’t have to visit Vienna to see his work, but since he was born in Vienna, they have the best collection around.

I’d even go as far as saying that Hundertwasser is one of the few visionaries that put my vision of a better world in a clearer picture.

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Foyer @ Wombat’s Base – a great, clean and cheap city hostel. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s still looking for good accomodation in Vienna.

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“We’re sinking, we’re sinking….” – “Wot are you thinking about?”

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Errr….well….

Ok – that’s about it for today. These 2 1/2 days weren’t enough and you can see by the pictures that we even didn’t have enough time to enjoy everything during daylight (due to AfrikaCamp, see previous post). Train ride from Frankfurt to Vienna is quite convenient though. Took us 7h – even the above mentioned hostel is next to the railway station. What a luxury!