Category: webstuff

wiki-san

About half a year ago, Mzeecedric of m.zung.us finished his final diploma thesis on the “potentials of WiKis on the Intranet” (in german) for use within companies and discovered that this technology or rather: this approach to streamline transferable knowledge is still in its early years in Germany. CG, please correct me if I am wrong on this one, but still, when I – the bloody beginner – think about WiKis and their perfect use for any environment, I come to think of these two basic advantages:

1. WiKis provide a good way to share work.
Whereas publishing of content normally takes time (~ converting Word documents into PDFs or even HTML), anyone can register on a WiKi and edit the content. The benefit? Distributed working. Why should it all be left to one person if at the same time these things could be shared with the whole world?

2. The ease of accessing informations.
Imagine this scenario: you are an engineer or doing some consultant job and are looking for a solution to a bugging problem. It could be a technical issue, or maybe some legal advice that needs to be adjusted to the local scale? Back in the days, this required us to go through different literature. The amount of time spent for doing research on given facts (and let’s say googling isn’t always the best solution) sometimes exceeds the amount of energy pepole want to put into a problem to find a comprehensive solution. Not everyone is a student like me who enjoys doing research or spending 2hrs on Google trying to track down the required information.
Now, with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies which includes tagging articles and thus information with trackable keywords / tags as well as centralized information pools like WiKis, it seems to become much easier to find what you are looking for. Think of the “click-through-ratio” we know from analyzing company websites and you get the picture – how many clicks do I have to make, how many pages do I have to load until I get my answer?
The next generation of users isn’t used to go to libraries and do some scientific research. The MTV generation is focussed on retrieving information the moment they need it – no one reads all these different PDF files to get an answer. I don’t know if that’s good or bad in the long run, BUT!, it sure is an interesting trend/development and hence our information pools have to be adjusted likewise.
You’re out in the field and there’s no internet access available? Yeah, well that’s the reality. There’s this good friend of mine who did an internship in South Sudan and needed to retrieve some basic information that he normally finds online. However, out there in the desert, there’s no internet available. What to do? ==> Download the Wiki and have it on CD/DVD. Simple as that :-)

The reason I am mentioning all this is because I am looking for good Wiki software that I can use free of charge. My plan is to get this Wiki plattform for EcoSan on the internet. As far as I know, something like that is in the pipeline, but who knows WHEN these websites become available.
My advantages: a) I am a student, I can take time for this and b) I am very passionate about it, so I want this thing to become reality. Let’s see…

eyespot

Eyespot is just another sexy AJAX-driven website that does cool stuff for you. As mentioned earlier, Michael Robertson of Linspire & Co. promoted this sleek website in his newsletter & on ajaxlaunch.com which gives you the ability to do some video editing – online.



nothing to see here :-)

I tried it out, shot a video from the balcony with my Nokia 6230, sent that 91kb file via MMS to the eyespot server and just added one of the free audio files as background music. Nothing big, just a small test to see how this works.
Hence: Eyespot (I spot?) is a neat tool for editing & publishing videos on-the-go + it’s free of charge. Haiiaaa….I think I’ll be using this nice tool from time to time to add more “Kikuyumoja’s Blogcasting Corporation (KBC)” content in future :-)

Gates, AOL et al

Weil ich in letzter Zeit wieder vermehrt emails weitergeleitet bekomme, in denen irgendwas von “Bill Gates verteilt gerade sein Vermögen” steht, und es sich dabei eindeutig um einen langweiligen Scherz handelt – an dieser Stelle für alle meine deutschsprachigen Leser der Hinweis auf folgende Website, die vielleicht die eine oder andere weitergeleitete Peinlichkeit in Zukunft verhindern hilft:

http://hoax-info.de

Aber auch wenn diese Übersichtsseite nicht existieren würde, so gäbe doch alleine schon gesunder Menschenverstand den Hinweis darauf, dass bei der Macht des viral Marketings eine solche Aktion (“AOL/Gates/etc verschenken Geld”) viel zu schnell ausufern würde und es eher unwahrscheinlich ist, dass einem im Internet (außer freier Software & hilfreicher Web 2.0 Anwendungen) geldwerte Vorteile verschafft werden. Wer glaubt so einen Scheiss?
Dann schon lieber diese netten Briefe aus Nigeria, die wenigstens amüsant und unterhaltend formuliert sind…

Aber die bottom-line des Ganzen ist wahrscheinlich nur, dass man Aussagen jeglicher Art vor allem und am Effektivsten via e-mail verbreiten sollte um maximale Reichweiten zu bekommen.

Googleardhi, part 5

Having blogged about Google Earth before here, here, here and here, there’s something new to add, something we’ve all been waiting for: new maps!
I don’t know if all these maps are THAT new – but they are more detailed at least.
I read a story on a german IT website about GoogleEarth doing this for Germany, and so I thought I better check Kenya as well. Et voilà, our new Nairobi map:
naiorobiearth.jpg
Cool! (dito Eldoret Airport, Kisumu, Mombasa Airport (MIA), etc. :-))

As for Germany, some maps improved, some were edited or even worsened while others are just horribly detailed.
tempobremen.jpg

That red object is my ‘89 VW Golf II in front of the house….go figure…

 

ajaxWrite

I received this newsletter from Michael Robertson, founder of mp3.com & Linspire, today and there’s something to this typical & sometimes also strange personal marketing approach ("hey buddy, look what I’ve made for you" etc) we are also used to from guys like Steve Gibson of grc.com or even Steve Jobs of Apple Computer – something were you would go: "oh, okaaaaay, now that’s cool". An approach that these guys have brought to perfection whereas a lonely ranger like Bill Gates still needed to learn that consumers want to be approached from this "look, I’ll explain this to you in simple terms" level instead of "my company is SO great and we have this high-tech blablabla" level. Keep it simple.

So the cool news of the day is that Robertson & "a guy named Hishem" have come up with something called ajaxWrite.com – which is an online word processor for your instant needs. The advantage? Well, instead of buying word processor software or even just downloading free office packages like the OpenOffice suite, what we get here is an online word processor based on AJAX technology for instant use. And this is what it looks like:

shot3.png

Bookmark this in your del.icio.us account and when you’re in a cybercafé with limited resources at your hands, point a browser window to ajaxWrite.com and you can still have access to basic word processor functions, write some text, format it and then save it or even print it out! I think this gets us one step closer to a more independent IT environment. No more need to buy software or the hassle of installing it, but instead the convenience of using technology whenever you need it – free of charge and at reasonable size. And Robertson goes on saying: "It’s a slim 400K. You read that right – its size is less than one megabyte, which means it runs equally well on a low-powered laptop as well as a high-powered desktop."

Low-powered Laptops? Huuuu….doesn’t that make us think of the US-$100 OLPC initiative?

And yes, there have been other ajax & web-based programs out there – however, this one gives us the feel & look of Word & OpenOffice, so there’s less adjustment to a new user interface. After all, all we want is to get things done. Also, there will be more ajax-based applications to be launched on ajaxLaunch.com in the coming weeks, so let’s stay tuned for more goodies. Enjoy :-)

P.S.: Yes, I know that there are a lot of computers out there that don’t have 24/7/365 access to the internet – however, I think this is a good start in the right direction anyways. As for the OLPC initiative – I can well imagine a scenario where these laptops are connected to a local server via wlan which could be running the ajax application…

switching environments

vmwareplayerubuntu.jpg

There are those moments in life when you just want to switch operating systems for various reasons. Be it that you want to check your website’s layout under a different OS & browser; maybe you just want to access a few pages on the internet from a much more secure plattform; maybe you need to share a computer via a remote access connection; or maybe you’ve just always wanted to use a fancy Linux distribution such as Ubuntu and you are such a lazy bone that you don’t want to install it or even only use the live cd which would enable a complete Ubuntu environment running directly from your system’s RAM & CD-ROM drive. Yani, the computer would be required to restart and we don’t want that. All we want to have is instant access to another plattform/system/operating system – another "virtual" machine.

VMWare Inc., the makers of VMWare®, provided the player you see in the screenshot above – and all I am doing here is running a special Linux distribution of Ubuntu right from my WinXP environment. Imagine, two operating systems running on my (rather old) AMD XP 2000+ desktop pc at the same time! I think that’s pretty cool, also, the argument of "niiaaa…this xyz piece of software doesn’t run on Linux ‘nway so I’ll stick to WinXP" doesn’t count anymore because why worry if you can switch systems at the touch of a button?

Want to try it out? You’ll need the VMWare player and (e.g.) this Ubuntu distribution. Enjoy :-)

national frequency table in 5Z4

The public version of Kenya’s “table of radio frequency allocations” (PDF, 2,4 MB) as issued by the Communications Commissions of Kenya in 2002.

I was longing for such an overview chart for a long long time – and now I just had a short glimpse at their (CCoK) website and found it. Haiiiaaaaa! :-)

(…someone should run a list of GoK websites that work and of those that are “temporarily” offline or “under construction”.)

Update: How do you succesfully take a website OFFLINE for a relaunch?

Well, according to the webmasters in charge of the GoK websites you apparently just have to remove the index.html (main / home / root / etc.) file and leave the rest of it ONLINE.

The Ministry of Water and Irrigation
The Parliament of Kenya
etc.

The launching of the all-important Parliament website is long overdue says George Gopal who believes such an enterprise should not be held to ransom because some 40 errant MPs have not submitted their CVs. George suggests that Bunge should just publish whatever is available. Says he with a hint a of sarcasm: “After all, we have seen that even some of the MPs in the august House with impressive CVs still perform far below par.”
(source: The Cutting Edge, DN, 3/22/2006)

Aren’t Kenyans reading their blogosphere? The unofficial link to the remaining info on that Parliament website has been posted a few times on the blogosphere…