Category: thoughts

msie & work

A company’s seriousness about the implementation of web technologies clearly shows when it comes to the browser question: what kind of? browser are we using today? MSIE 6.0?? Are we going to give our? users the rights to install any add-ons or extensions to a browser? etc.

Chris, a? knowledge management and communications specialist and a? really nice fellow I met through? Mzeecedric? (of Zungu.net) &? a recent barcamp in Frankfurt/M, compiled an introduction to knowledge sharing within Enterprise2.0 earlier last week. And although it’s just an introduction that symbolizes the tip of the iceberg -? an iceberg which stands for? the much awaited change within companies and their pre-cluetrain / web 1.0 world – there are still so many basic things that just have to be explained over and over again.

Social bookmarking, for instance. Although the installation of any add-ons is strictly forbidden within this institution, I took the liberty to install a del.icio.us add-on for MSIE 6.0 anyways (ooops? :-). I’d of course prefer using a better browser and already tried runing Mozilla Firefox from a USB stick (as mentioned earlier), but then: MSIE 6.0 actually is ok for the time being. I don’t want to change the system, all I want to do is getting things done. And with a social bookmarking tool like del.ico.us, I can actually share my trouvailles with others and contribute to that pre-selected pool of interesting websites – the bonus which makes social bookmarking so interesting and advantageous.

These web worlds of course aren’t everything, but I just can’t drop that crazy idea of informing my colleagues @ work about the wonderful advantages of using Web 2.0 technologies for many office jobs. We have to start somewhere, really.

Oh, and maybe I should start by convincing my boss of using a service like twitter – which would make it much easier for us to track her down and/or? forwarding calls.

questions notes of the day

Is there any decent solution to send out serial emails? Something that a) works out of MS Outlook or b) any freeware that does the job?

Building websites these day – do we still have to use a huge CMS, or will WordPress substitute all these website needs we had in the past?
What I like about using WP instead of any bigger CMS is the ease of installation and training future content editors.

How do bulky Nokia S60 phones actually match with recent fashion trends in form of skinny jeans / cigarette pants as portrayed by hip THE bands?
Just where are you supposed to put your phone if your trousers don’t even leave enough space for your keys?

“Second Life? Get a first…” [via Life 1.0 conversations over a Stöffche with my mate Té, the 61440 dude]

to be continued…

nationalism & the 21st century in Germany

What’s this?

SANY0494

A print ad on polo shirts which are decorated with flags (I’ve just added the white arrows).

Interesting to note, though: you would probably never come across such a shirt with a German flag on it, unless it is a soccer shirt. That is, I also can’t imagine anyone wearing such a polo shirt.

There’s something wrong with this country since 1945 1919, I think.

Africa!

Pan-Africanism is… when you save & share your bookmarks via del.icio.us and come across recommended tags by other users who have already saved that page, tagging it with the word “Africa” when it comes to describing websites from e.g. Kenya.

Africa, nothing else but Africa.

(to be continued…)

HelloHowRUIAmFineOkGoodBye

It’s almost like as if they are already keeping the thumb on the phone’s red button.

Trying to call someone in Nairobi from abroad is easy and cheap, lakini most jamaas there – it seems – are used to 10 seconds conversation: no long greetings, a very short smalltalk and then an abrupt ending.

“Hellooo?”
– “Eh, hello, this is JKE calling.”
“Oh, r u in Nairobi?”
– “No, I am calling from Germany…so, how are you?”
“Oh, here everything is just fine.”

… (~ 20 seconds)

“Ok, goodbye & thx for calling.”
– “Ah…?”

-click-

Irritating, especially since I am the one who is calling and paying for the call.

AOB: came across this textbook on “Swahili for Starters” yesterday while strolling through our local (university) library.

SANY0464

I just had to borrow something as all the books I went there for were already taken by someone else and since the really interesting stuff (as pictured below) wasn’t available for lending.

07-05a-000

Kikuyu-English Dictionary, by T.G.Benson, Oxford @ Clarendon Press, 1964

(and the best thing I saw there was a Lingala-English dictionary…*sigh*)

07-05a-001

nimekuchagua wewe

Ingawa wapo wengi wazuri mamiii, lakini nimekuchagua wewe, tabia zako sawa na sura yako, nimeridhika kuwa na wewe…(“Afro”, Les Wanyika.)

It was a blessed morning, and something had made me get up early. Last night’s dream brought back pictures of an older Nairobi , the city whose sights & sounds had been lingering in my head for a while. For quite a while.

Finished watching “The Last King of Scotland ” last night. Despite of the story that somehow tries to paint a closer picture of Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda, one thing about that flick instantly made me fall for it: Ishmael Jingo ‘s “Fever” – a track the world has been blessed with since Duncan Brooker (where are you, man?) unearthed it some time ago and put it on his still marvelous “Afro Rock Vol.1” compilation we had been talking about earlier .

If there’s one thing that best describes situations, it should be music.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, the legendary polish journalist that died earlier this year just a few days after my Mzee, added another point that had left me thinking. In his book “The Soccer War“, he mentions the bars and pubs people had been attending during those days back in July 1960 when Patrice Lumumba was the man. Kapuscinski, who was supposed to fly to Nigeria only, took a flight to Cairo instead, another one from Cairo to Khartoum, and from there he and some other journalists somehow managed to drive into a completely lost Congo.

Would you take such a journey upon you only to spend the biggest time of the day locked up in a hotel somewhere in a boring 1960 Stanleyville , or Kisangani as it is called nowadays?

“The African Bar”, Kapuscinski goes on explaining Lumumba’s approach on people, “is like the Roman Forum (…). This is where people started listening to Lumumba’s speeches…(…)”.

So you’re sitting there, reading these lines and thinking to yourself: did this actually change since 1960?
Maybe there are less idealists out there since Lumumba – and where Kapuscinski still talks of Partisans who fought for uhuru & other theoretical goals, today’s world seems to be made up of HipHop proclamations and cyberwars. Welcome to the 21st century.

It’s one of those days that I start dreaming and think about how life must have been in the 1970s Nairobi. Life, as in nightlife. Clubs? Music? Styles?

It certainly was different from what I witnessed while growing up in a very futuresque Tokyo (Japan) in the 1970s. And what exactly is it with Nairobi – this once “Green City in the Sun”?

“Nairobi”, the lady asked me, “why would you want to live in a city like Nairobi? I stayed there for a few month and didn’t like it. All those houses with barbed wires and high fences – I wouldn’t like living behind a fence…” – “Well”, I replied, “neither would I…but maybe you never saw its real beauty” .

Home is where your heart is, and mine is still somewhere out there (with a very Kenyan “somewhere there”, the hand pointing in no particular direction).

@AfroM & EGM: what happened to the Nairobi Architecture Group? Maybe a FlickrGroup?

AOB: doing a search on Nairobi via del.icio.us reveals blogs like Paul‘s that somehow remind me of my own blogged worlds (this & this, this & this, etc.)…his blog definitely is a must-see for all Nairobians in exile! :-)