ICT4d Experiences

Free Online Training Courses. Part II

2012-01-28T15:11:00.001+03:00

Make your own study timetable. Signup for free online training courses.

Computer studies

UDACITY - classes begin in February 20th, 2012
CS 101: Building a Search Engine. No programming experience required. Learn programming in seven weeks. We'll teach you enough about computer science that you can build a web search engine like Google or Yahoo!

CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car. Programming experience required. In seven weeks you'll learn how to program all the major systems of a robotic car, by the leader of Google and Stanford's autonomous driving teams.

Statistics 110: Introduction to Probability
An introduction to probability as a language and set of tools for understanding statistics, science, risk, and randomness. The course is taught at Harvard University by Joe Blitzstein in Fall 2011.

Lecture videos, homework, review material, practice exams, and a large collection of practice problems with detailed solutions are provided. You need: apple itunes

Accounting and Business free online training courses

M200 Indiana University free online training videos
You need: broadband Internet connection and microsoft silverlight which you can download on site

Video lecture topics available include: Marketing overview; Developing Marketing Strategies; Marketing Ethics and the Marketing Environment; Consumer Behavior; Global Marketing; Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning; Marketing Research; Product and Branding; Product Innovation; Services; Pricing; Supply Chain Management; Retailing; Advertising & Sales Promotions; Personal Selling; Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

A186 Indiana University video titles

Video lecture topics available include: Introduction to Accounting and Business; The Accounting Cycle; Merchandising Business; Inventory Flow, Cash & Controls; Receivables; Long-Term Operational Assets; Liabilities; The Business Organization and Financing; Financial Statement Analysis; Managerial Accounting; Cost Behavior; Cost Accumulation; Budgeting Process; Capital Investments.

Law School Free Online training Video Lectures

Jurist Legal Intelligence
Topics include current Events on Iraq; Corporate Crisis and the Enron Scandal; Terrorism, Civil Liberties and 9/11; Administrative Law; Antitrust Law; Biotechnology and Bioethics; Civil Rights and Race; Commercial Law; Communications Law; Constitutional Law; Contract Law; Corporations Law; Courts and Judges; Crime and Punishment; Cyberspace Law; Disability Law; Elder Law; Election Law; Environmental Law; family law; Feminist Jurisprudence/Women and the Law; Intellectual Property and Copyright; International and Comparative Law; Islamic Law; Labor and Employment Law; Lawyers, Lawyering and the Legal Profession; Law and Legal Theory; Law School and Legal Education; Legal History; Legal Scholars and Scholarship; Psychology and Law; Tax Law; Tort Law; US Supreme Court.

Similar titles:
1. Free Online Courses with Certificates - Make 2012 a year of Learning. Part I
2. 25+ Websites That Let You make Mobile Apps Without Programming Skills

Leave us a comment below, subscribe to our feed and Like us on facebook. You can join our forums to enjoy more free online super content.

Free Online Courses with Certificates - Make 2012 a year of Learning. Part I

2012-01-21T00:02:00.003+03:00

No more need to sit in boring classrooms, study online at your own pace

Lots of free online courses to improve your skills go unattended every year yet so many youth are looking for better quality education everyday. With the Internet becoming faster, affordable and more accessible around most parts in Africa, studying using the Internet is the new and cheapest trend to grow your knowledge and skills.

Here is a list of genuine free online courses from Stanford University. Sign up, watch and complete the assignments and at the end of it, gain valuable knowledge which will make you more competitive in today's job market. Our forums are have rich content on the free online courses as they become available, join the community to stay updated.

Stanford University Online Courses

Computer Science Classes (Click on course title to read more or sign up for the course.)

Design and Analysis of Algorithms I - Starts 23 January 2012 runs for 5 weeks.

Cryptography - Starts 23rd Jan 2012.
Crytography is a tool for protecting information in computer systems.
Probabilistic Graphical Models - Starts 23rd Jan 2012.

Natural Language Processing - Starts Jan 23rd 2012.

Machine Learning - Starts 23rd Jan 2012.

Human-Computer Interaction - Starts 30th Jan 2012.

Computer Security - Starts February 2012.

Game Theory - Starts end of February 2012.

Software Engineering for Software as a Service - Starts 20th Feb 2012.

Computer Science 101 - Starts February 2012. CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience.

Entrepreneurship at Stanford University

The Lean Launchpad - Starts Feb 2012.

Technology Entrepreneurship - Starts 23rd Jan 2012.

Engineering at Stanford University

Making Green Buildings - Starts January 2012.

Information Theory - Starts March 2012.

Medicine at Stanford University

Anatomy - Starts 5th March 2012.
Anatomy is the most fundamental of all medical sciences. It provides the basic framework and vocabulary used in all descriptions and communications about the body. Click on course title to read more or sign up for the course.

Complex Systems at Stanford University

Model Thinking - Starts 23rd January 2012.
Models improve our abilities to make accurate forecasts. They help us make better decisions and adopt more effective strategies.

Other Free Online study resources

Codecademy - Learn to code.

N342 Server-Side Web Development Distributed Lectures (video and powerpoint)

MIT World - Distributed Intelligence

You may also like:
1. Free Online Training Courses. Part II
2. 25+ Websites That Let You make Mobile Apps Without Programming Skills

Leave us a comment below, subscribe to our feed and Like us on facebook. You can join our forums to enjoy more free online super content.

MTN Charges Mobilephone user Abroad to Receive Local Calls

2012-01-17T18:27:00.000+03:00

Make sure to 'juice up' or load a substantial amount of airtime on your MTN mobile phone before you travel away from home to Europe. A 'substantial amount' should be about Uganda shillings 5,000/= and above.

1. Receiving Local calls

MTN post call info showing how much you have been charged for receiving a call

While in Holland, I got a call from my brother in Uganda. Unlike the case in Uganda, where MTN does not charge users to receive a call, in Holland, MTN charged me 600/= for a call that lasted 41 seconds!

So mind how long you talk especially if you are only saying "yes, I have got off the plane safely blah blah.."

2. SMS

MTN partner in Holland - Vodafone NL

MTN charges for sending one sms from Holland

Sending an SMS using an MTN enabled, zte model, phone in Holland, would set you back 790/= per sms. Make sure to keep the little amount of airtime you have to communicating with whoever is to pick you up to avoid getting stranded.

In Europe, some operators charge you for receiving calls which is often not the case in Africa.

Why not buy a simcard to use in Holland? well, they are not sold on the street like tomatoes in Uganda. In some cases you may have to sign a contract with a telecom provider making the process more complicated than it is back in Uganda.

Leave us a comment below, subscribe to our feed and Like us on facebook so we can continue to serve you better.

Happy 2012 :)

Youth in Farming Blog Win the Youth in Agricultural Award

2011-12-07T13:31:00.001+03:00

Thank you for being a faithful reader of our blog. We need your help before 31st December 2011.

Our sister team, Youth in Farming, has been selected for the second round of the Youth in Agriculture Awards. To make it to the next round, please help vote for them in a few easy steps.

Go to the CTA Ardyis Project page, before 31st December 2011, where the selected 36 blogs are arranged in alphabetical order.

Do a Ctrl+F in your browser and search for "John Kibuuka" (without quotes). Make sure to tick the box right after "vote for this blog". You can vote for a maximum of 2 blogs.

Youth in Farming blog listed for youth awards

Scroll or move down to the bottom of the page and fill in the required information. Your name (2), email address (3). You can fill in "very useful agricultural content" in the box (4) asking you about what you appreciate about the blogs.

Fill in name, email, text, type black letters and VOTE!

Fill in the black letters in box (5) shown in photo above. Ignore the grey letters or numbers.

Click on vote (6) and you done.

Thank you very much.

Your support will go a long way in helping our team to bring more quality farming articles and experiences to online. Join the Youth in Farming facebook page or subscribe to the blog.

35 Services Our Internet Cafe Users Were Asking For

2011-11-14T08:32:00.001+03:00

Rural Wireless ICT Infrastructure (RWICTI) Internet Cafe sign

Internet Cafe services that can bring in a good income for the business, making the Internet cafe business profitable and more sustainable.

Can i get online here? Do you have Internet? Are you connected? Is there network? - Yes we are connected to the Internet. You can read and write emails using our computers here.

Take out that photo/letter for me from the computer (Printing) - Black and white and/or coloured printer to make beautiful photo prints is always asked for.

Can you put these photos in the computer for me? I need to use fax to send this document.. (photo or document scanning) - Scanning photos to be posted on photo sharing websites such as facebook, flickr or to send off to friends via email. Most places have an email address, making scanning a document much better than faxing it.

There are many benefits of scanning over faxing among which is privacy of documents scanned and sent via email remains with the intended recipient instead of faxing them to a machine where they spill out for all to read.

How can i make my computer faster? - this was the most frequently asked question from especially Microsoft windows users. Our best answer to the user was always to get off the windows bandwagon and use the more user friendly ubuntu, but installing such programs such as ccleaner often would free up a good amount of hard disk space, and making the computer faster.

Can you just teach me how to open and read my emails? (Computer training) – We conducted training lasting half an hour, an hour, or less and computer training lasting several days. Users would be interested in learning how to read, write and send an email, access their email address box, join facebook, make friends on facebook, to learn to use the Internet, post photos on facebook, learn Word, Excel...

We were able to create over 200 free yahoo and gmail email addresses plus teaching the users on how to access and read their emails.

Do you computers have word? Can you reduce my photos so I can send them on email? To resize photos we would use programs such as gimp and google picasa software which is all free to download and use.

Can you write a letter on to my son/daughter/friend? (email signup) - Often parents with a son/daughter/relatives abroad who do not know how to use a computer. Often sitting with them and typing away a few words they want to send off would turn them into eternal users of our Internet cafe.

How can I see my friends on Facebook? - Helping people to use facebook to find their friends, classmates and relatives always made most of our users to spend much more time that they initially budgeted for, in the long run earning the Internet cafe more money.

Can I use my laptop to connect online via your network? - Offering apart a table and seat for users with laptops to use their own machines when they visit. Careful with network viruses if you have a windows-based local area network.

Buy a blank CD/DVD - Our Internet cafe was selling empty CDs, 4.2GB and 8.4gb DVDs, re-writable CDs and DVDs.

Play Computer Games - Especially during the school holiday seasons, this is one of the most asked computer services by especially young people. Most requested for computer games include motor racing, spiderman, mortal combat, gta vice city, soccer (fifa).. The super cool online games are more bandwidth intensive, graphics cards, computer memory, fast local area network..

Virus scans of usb flash disks, external hard disk and computers. Updating Clamwin antivirus running on a ubuntu computer quickly helped us to get rid of the most dangerous virus spreading around.

How and where to download especially antivirus updates, free antivirus software, ebooks, music videos, movies, mp3

Torrents and how they work - you can use torrent services such as btjunkie or torrentscan as sources of torrents to download using a program installed on your computer such as deluge, utorrent or bittorrent.

Where and how to upload photos to facebook, flickr, as attachments to send via email.

How to make free calls on the computer? Skype, yahoo messenger and gmail, all provide free computer-computer online calls.

How can I send free SMS online? Do you know any websites to send free SMS? (Sending free sms or bulk sms) - a list of websites where you can send free sms and also how you can use our website to send free sms to local mobile phone users.

Does your photocopy work? How clear is your machine? (photocopy), this is one of the most profitable Internet cafe services. Almost every document today needs to have a copy made for backup or storage. Also several copies of documents to send off to different employers or to open a bank account... list is endless.

Do you have a sealing machine? Do you do binding of documents? Sealing important documents makes them easy to keep for many years without getting affected by moisture. Binding is required to keep several papers of the same report together.

Can you type this report in the computer? Do you make beautiful greetings/birthday cards? (Secretarial services) – typing out reports or proposals; designing certificates, birthday or special season cards; editing documents...

Who repairs your computers? Do you have the machine to blow dust out of my computer? Simple computer maintenance tasks such as blowing dust out of the computer system unit, keyboard and screen; assembling different parts of the computer and installing windows or ubuntu would often be a good way to earn some money.

My ipod shows this error, can you help me? (Re-setting or reformatting Apple ipod software using iTunes) Connecting an ipod onto a windows xp computer running the latest version of iTunes often solved the problems.

What do I need to connect and see my mobile phone on my computer? (Computer-to-Mobile phone software) such as Nokia PC Suite, Samsung PC Suite.. etc

Selling video, ebooks tutorials found free allover the Internet on virtually anything, an ebooks google search turns up over 71 million results!

How can i learn to type so fast? Learn Typing lessons using Klavaro, mavis, some of the students have been able to reach over 60 words per minute from initial speeds of 2 words per minute! Also learning how to use both hands to type than using only one hand.

How to make a Curriculum Vitae or resume - using openoffice word in a format prescribed in different job adverts by prospective employers.

Where can i find donors for our HIV/AIDS non-profit organization? (donors, sponsors, partners, online) - Having a website or blog where the work of the non profit is displayed is the first step to attracting potential donors and partners. But other non-profits resourceful materials and websites such as 1% club and idealist are also helpful, just to name a few.

How do we advertise or get our message out without spending money? (free websites, blogs, forums, online marketplace) - there are free free blogging and website platforms online you can use to host your content (photos and text) about your project.

Am a good writer, can I earn a living writing articles on the Internet? (writing for online audiences) - yes, click here to check out a number of options listed in our forum.

I see all these Ads, is it true that you can make money online here in Africa? (Working online) there are a lot of resources that are being posted in our forum about working online that can give one ideas to pick and work with plus also how to get paid online.

Watch Internet TV or listen to Internet radio - yes, you can watch videos on youtube and plenty of online radio but watch your Internet connection as it will probably not last until the end of month before it is out.

Can you make a copy of my CDs? (CD/DVD copy/Burning) Can I watch movies on CDs or DVDs on the computer? - user wants a computer with a working compact disk (CD) or DVD drive with a video playing programs such as vlc installed on it. Using Nero to make duplicate CD/DVDs always worked well for us.

How can I get rid of viruses? What is the best antivirus software? - New antivirus programs are coming out everyday, gaining a huge following and making a lot of money meaning the best antivirus is to get off Microsoft windows and use the more productive and virus-free open source linux operating systems such as ubuntu, which let you concentrate on getting work done than worrying about viruses.

Can I find genuine free online study courses or universities? yes, many online courses are listed inside our forums.

Entreprenuership resources I can use to develop my business? - check out our entreprenuership resources section in our forum.

18 Features an African Smartphone or Tablet Must have

2011-11-13T01:15:00.001+03:00

There was an article circulating recently about 2 Kenyans who have "contributed" to making the first african tablet. This was great news. Problem is their contribution was not defined. Maybe they contributed money to the making of the tablet, or design knowledge or knowledge about the smartphone industry in Africa, nobody knows.

This article got me thinking though, about what a truly african smart phone or tablet should have. These are ideas from experiences with the phones that I currently have and are in no particular order.

HP iPaq next to the widely used ZTE-g s213 dual sim phone

Weight, very light or as light as it can be.

Dual sim – has been the absolute minimum, though there are some people with 3 to 4 sim card phones. Different telecom companies offer different call rates on their networks or to other telecom networks. To advantage of these reductions in call rates, a dual sim card phone reduces the hassle of slinging around several phones from different telecom operators.

String-notch, for keeping phone around the neck while working away in the fields.

Long lasting battery, both charge & battery lifetime, should not be heavy too.

bright torch light - ZTE-G phone

Torch – very important. In Uganda, less than 5% of the population enjoy electricity out of a population of 34 million!

Memory card slot – ability to store different ringtones of favourite musicians. Also the ability to have favourite music to listen to when stuck in traffic jam or when the local radio are full of unending adverts. To store videos, games, ringtones, mp3 ebooks and lessons..

Radio/audio player – this is your only solace when stuck in winding jam such as this... (photo of ugly Kampala traffic jam)

Calculator – very important and easily accessible one. Most people do business when stuck in the traffic jam or by the road side. Having to quickly calculate what you owe with the dizzying sun overhead, at the same time trying to mind not to get hitting by a spending taxi or get your bag snatched by a hungry teenager, you need to be fast with whatever you are doing.

Made of not-so-easy-to-break plastic mobile phone housing no matter how many times it falls down, forget the fancy brittle stuff that is going to break anyway even when a coin is dropped on it, and think of a phone that cannot easily break even when dropped several times. It also has few openings on it that allow moisture to seep in or when dropped in water.

Easy to understand and use keypad - Do not stuff all the letters, numbers and weird characters all together on the keypad. This appears very confusing and frightening to most people. Instead a single key on the keypad where all the special characters can be accessed is much better. Of these phones, my mother finds the ZTE phone keypad easier to use and understand than the flashy HP iPaq phone.

Above - the widely used ZTE-g phone keypad, middle square scroll button

HP iPAQ Keypad

Loudspeaker and headphone jack - Loudspeaker is especially important if everybody wants to listen in on whatever is playing, headphones would be limiting sharing in such an event.

Great signal reception - most rural remote areas have low or no telephone signal coverage. Having a mobile phone with strong signal strength is a great plus

Camera - good enough to produce a clear picture.

Mobile phone Applications - absolutely the necessary! - phonebook, call center (call history & call settings), file manager (phone and memory card manager), SMS center, Multimedia (Radio, audio player, Games), Phone settings (simcard, network, security and connectivity settings), user profiles (General, Meeting, Outdoor, Silent, Headset), Organizer (Calender, Tasks, Alarm, Calculator)

Screen Display- Must show: battery usage icon, Network strength, Date and time, user profile (General/silent), received messages & missed calls.

Should be affordable - the continued success $80 tablets in Kenya just show that tablets could be the missing link to delivering content that can change lives in many parts of Africa.

Current buzz words: Mobile, social and location - Applications such as gps make it easy to map an area considering that Africa is one of the least mapped places. Interest in mapping local areas in Africa is just about starting to take shape with many young people showing interest to participate. Many africans are very social and love passing on to the others good funny stories fast.

Add in peer-to-peer networking, so that the phones can communicate with each other finding the best and fastest route to the recipient, in some cases without the need for a telephone mast. This would greatly improve reception in low telecom coverage areas since people within same community communicate more together than they do with people outside.

An African Smartphone or table must not have:

Mobile phone Touchpad as scroll button – I currently have an HP iPAQ running windows mobile 6. I received a couple of days back as a gift from a friend. It looks very fancy, very nice gadget. But I could not figure out how to scroll and move around to select different options on the device such as selecting messages option to read and send sms.

My brother, who works with phones everyday for a living, helped me out. The scroll button is right in the centre of the phone. To scroll, you have to move your thumb over it like a you do when using a mouse touchpad to scroll on a laptop.

Middle round scroll button on HP iPaq smartphone - difficult to use

I know so many other people who would fail to figure this out or find it hard to use this sort of phone. Please do not put any more such buttons on an African smartphone. I have also witnessed first hand so hundreds of times in an Internet cafe people just getting scared of using a laptop touchpad as a mouse, leave alone getting scared to use the laptop. Most people are not comfortable at all at using a laptop touchpad as their mouse.

Do you have features you want to see on your smart phone that are not available, leave it below in the comments. You may also consider subscribing to our feed or Like us on facebook.

25+ Websites That Let You make Mobile Apps Without Programming Skills

2011-09-19T16:44:00.000+03:00

build your mobile Apps: android, apple, MS windows, blackberry

There are websites that allow you to make mobile phone apps without the need to learn programming skills. You only need to click a few times and you have an app done. You can have a mobile App for your website, product or service ready in as few as 10minutes! Just sign up and start clicking away.

Free DIY App Websites

1. Google App Inventor for Android - Login with your gmail email address or create one if you don't have. After login, there alot of tutorials to help you get started. You can build apps that inform and educate or fun games. Get in there and get your hands dirty, you never know, you would haul out a million dollars!

2. AppMakr, a free Web-based tool, uses a simple, step-by-step wizard to guide you through the process. This website takes your online feeds and turns them into an app for you. The feed can be from your website, blog, twitter stream, add a photo and your app will be done. Publishing your app to the AppMakr gallery is free but costs $199 to publish in the apple store.

3. ViziApps - MobiFlex, a more advanced Web-based tool that lets you build apps that work with a phone's camera and GPS. MobiFlex charges $99 to publish an app in the Apple or Android app stores, plus a monthly fee of $10 to $199, depending on the size of the app and number of users.

4. Swebapps - charges $499 one-time development fee for the basic version developing apps for both apple and android. The easy, low-cost option for small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and anyone targeting a mobile audience!

Google App Inventor - use your Gmail email address to start

5. My App Builder - is a tool that takes your content and turns it into an app for you for a low monthly hosting fee. for $29/month, you sign up for a monthly service, builds your iPhone/iPod Touch Apps for you. Just submit your content (videos, books, etc.) and we will take care of the rest. Take advantage of Apple's wildly popular iTunes Store that you won't find anywhere else. You no longer need a technical background or a small fortune to develop your own iPhone/iPod Touch applications.

6. Snappii - Create your app without programming in minutes, customize look and feel with our WYSIWYG Editor, see your app work on your iPhone in minutes with Web2Phone Copy. Affordable: No set up fees. Only $39/mo

7. Red foundry - Build the mobile app that you want. No code, unless you insist. complete solution for building and managing mobile apps. Without coding, our unified platform enables everything from stunning content based mobile apps to powerful enterprise solutions, while reducing the mobile app development cycle from months to days.

8. Genwi - Tablet and smartphone publishing platform where you publish interactive, social and live media apps all popular mobile devices, including iPad, iPhone, Android, and HTML5. They offer a 30-day free trial while the basic package is $99.

Apps can also include various revenue generating capabilities for businesses like Ads, coupons, in-App subscriptions etc. You also get comprehensive real-time analytics that provides insights your into Apps usage.

9. TapLynx. A powerful iPhone framework. Rapidly develop iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps without learning Cocoa, monetize your Apps through sponsorships, ads, and download fees and great support.

Created especially for Agencies & Designers to make beautiful, dynamic apps without writing code

The SDKs are free to download and evaluate, and once you are ready to push to production all you’ll need to do is purchase a license key. TapLynx license for iPhone is $599 and for an iPad app $1,198

10. AppBreeder - A number of options to choose from as well as creating an app that can be used on the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android platforms. Creating web apps is free.

11. MobDis

everything made as easy and intuitive as possible. Drag-and-drop interface. One click publish. Intuitive animation controls. Cross-platform compatibility. Produce beautiful rich media mobile ads and sites within minutes.

Pay As you Go package - where you pay only what you need when you need to. You get charged $0.02 per microsite access. Special pricing plans available for resellers, Educational or Non-profit organizations, contact support team.

12. BigForge- LocalBeacon platform - Using LocalBeacon, you can produce custom iPhone applications that can be deployed on the app store, or published via the LocalBeacon engine.

Our platform gets used for a lot of things, including medical applications, tour guides, reference applications and many more. We love hearing about new ideas and you might be surprised how easy it is to get your idea turned into a working mobile application.

13. iPhonify - Create an iPhone version of your site. It's free and takes less than a minute.

All your site requires, is an RSS feed. After that, you can add your site to your home screen with the '+' button in the iPhone's browser. Your url: http://iphonify.net/XXXX where XXXX is username for your website. Simple and easy to use.

14. EyeMags - Its Free to build your own Apps in minutes for Android, iPhone/iPad, Nokia, Samsung and most other phones. Has support for all Java phones, iPhone, iPad and popular touch phones.Login with your facebook account, if you have one otherwise email support for access.

15. GameSalad - A game creation tool for people who don't speak code. Create games for iPhone or iPad, works on all iOS devices. Publish your games instantly to GameSalad Arcade, powered by HTML5 technologies.

16. UppSite - Get FREE native apps for your website. Push your apps to the stores - FREE Push your content to the readers

Mobile Websites and Applications

17. Shoutem, - They call themselves "The world's simplest Mobile App Maker." - turn your websites into Mobile Location Based Services overnight!

We integrate with your website, your YouTube and Flickr channels and take all that content across mobile platforms.

18. UnityMobile - Build and deliver the best. Whether you are making a mobile website or publishing a mobile application, UNITY’s integrated platform is simple enough for any user, regardless of technical skills.

Africa: Make an app today!

19. Widgetbox - Create a mobile web app that visitors can access on the iPhone and Android smart phones. Recommended browsers are Google Chrome and Safari as they closely resemble the mobile interface thus better at rendering previews. Gold plan is $25 per app per month

20. Runrev - Use RunRev's proprietary “LiveCode” – an English-like language for programming apps — and develop apps for iOS. They have a number of video tutorials on the website to get you started.

21. MotherApp - Reach millions of new customers on iPad, Android, fast and secure distribution of your content. It is also start risk free - pay only for traffic and keep all the profit.

22. Saasmob - create ready-to-deploy apps in minutes and submit to any app store.

Have no time to code your app? Submit your Mobile App ideas

23. Apps Incubator - From the guys themselves: If you have an idea for an iPhone, iPad or even Android application, you can submit it directly to the App Incubator for a shot at getting it made. If your concept passes our challenging set of criteria - from originality to functionality - we will design, develop and market your app. You don't have to pay a cent for any part of the process, and we'll share a handsome portion of the profits with you

Apps for: DJ's and Producers, Bands and Musicians, Bars and Nightclubs, Restaurants and Bistros

24. My App is the easiest, fastest and most affordable way for you to create and manage your own iPhone and Android app without any technical knowledge using our Do-It-Yourself platform. Build your App for $299.

25. MobBase - Fast and easy. Build it once and distribute it on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Android, and Desktop. Your music, photos, videos and more wherever your fans are.

Mobibase - Apps on display

Mobile App commerce stores

26. MobiCart - a free and simple way for you to build and manage your m-commerce store as a native or web app. MobiCart works on its own, or link it up to your existing website.

27. Zubibu - internet shopping becoming mobile. It allows you to immediately set up a browser-based mobile version of your online shop on a number of mobile devices.

A mobile version of your online shop is available in the web browser of popular smartphones. In order to make purchases, mobile customers enter the familiar address of their online store and zubibu ensures that they are provided with the version suited to their devices. Try a 30-day free trial without requiring a credit card.

Depending on your budget, most of the tools listed above can help you create a mobile app for your product or service. Others will help you create a mobile app for your store where you can advertise and let customers know about new products or discounts, raising awareness about your products and services hence tapping into the ever expanding mobile devices market.

If you like this post, consider subscribing to our feed or leaving a comment below.

My Takeaway from the G-Uganda Business day Event

2011-09-13T22:20:00.002+03:00

Google team members present at the G-Uganda business event

These are notes from the G-Uganda Business day event held at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel on the 8th Sept. 2011. These are my notes as the presentations took place and from some of the sessions I was able to attend.

Google is in Africa and trying to;

- make Internet relevant

- train businesses, developers understand the value of Internet

- Uganda is one of 7 countries that are being focused on, others are Egypt, Ghana, SA, Nigeria, Kenya

- products are being launched specifically for Africa, e.g. Google baraza, trader

- bring Google caches, training, competitions e.g. Developer challenge

- they are looking for people to help Google make the Internet an integral part of peoples everyday lives

Why is google in Africa? What is the value?

- to empower the market

- to improve the quality of their lives

- more than half of population in Uganda is youth (UG has youngest population on the continent)

- Google is here to partner, to get more users online, and using Internet to give access to their products

- 54 countries on continent, but Google is willing to partner & invest

- Africa has a great opportuntity to leverage technology

- there are alot of tools from Google

- they're committed to helping Africa develop

Victor Munyua, commercialization Sub Saharan Africa - A Digital Revolution

What is going to happen...

We need to begin building businesses that are going to offer services for all the people going to come online!

2 billion+ people worldwide with Internet access via a PC
5 billion people with mobile phones
4 billion+ online searches everyday
500 million+ active facebook users
48 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute

If you are a business, are you going to get involved or stand on the side?

Either you get online and engage your clients or somebody else will come online & take your clients

Projections: Internet in 2010 - 1.8billion; In 2020 - 5billion people

Nature of media revolutions

Advertising; Technology; Users; Content - Adoption cycle

Local content all over the world!!

If you are business, think of transfering whatever you are doing OFFline online

Put your info out there, figure out what they want, and how they want it,

Online media is growing up!

blogs are huge

consumers are screaming

Google Maps - can your business be found on maps? Use Google Maps and Google MapMaker

How many people watched the Royal wedding?

25mil on TV,
101 mil on Youtube, 5million page views per minute

Marketing is the new finance - Tracking & measuring ROI, tools are available

Use digital to compliment all the other things you are doing

Marketing is changing!!

the 4 B's

Be present
Be found
Be relevant - mobile friendly website
Be accountable - make sure your business does what it does

Internet Insights & Trends in Uganda & East Africa; By Ayite Gaba - Business Development, Dakar - Senegal

5 countries in East Africa; Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi
135million people (2 times France population)
swahili spoken by 40% people
4% of Africa's GDP, highest in Kenya $30B
KE, UG & TZ make up 90% of Internet users
16million users online in EAC
60mil+ devices sold annually -feature phones
Most people browse the Internet using feature phones are dominating the mobile access market, bought at less than 120,000ugx.
Mobile phones are of recent but their growth is very close to computers
60% of mobile phone users access the Internet once a day compared to those accessing the Internet via PCs
Number of internet users is increasing greatly

By 2014: 20 million Internet users will be online representing 15% of EAC population

Most searched in EAC:

1. News,

2. entertainment,

3. sports,

4. local information,

You have to optimize OFFline events, online; tailor your message to that what drives traffic to your website

Luisella Mazza - Google Webmaster Tools

How can i use that to improve my business???

Google Ads: Organic results & Sponsored results

Search results

Organic results (Natural search results) - using Google algorithm with over 200 parameters in algorithm especially how relevant info on page is (how useful)

Sponsored results - bidding system used in Adwords

Why are you taking your content online?

Increase market share
Stand out from competition
New business opportunities

Give visitors what they are looking for

What are pple searching for?? Use Google Insights for Search

top & rising queries: www.google.com/insights/search/

Modify the filters for your country

time interval, category

CONTENT IS KING - Create relevant content.

why content is king??

Google's mission - organize world's information and make it universally accessible and useful

Help Google understand your Content

What users sees Vs What Google sees

Search engine are machines but Google may see it blank

Search engines understand text only version of the image. Turn brochures into text.

Example: To run the text on how search engines views your website,

Go to your browser e.g. Chrome, firefox, IE, thunderbird;
type this in the address bar (URL bar): cache:http://URL ; for instance: cache:http://www.ruralict.com

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Make interaction easy
Allow people to leave comments
Comments create engagement, foster communities, and add valuable content
Use safe plug-ins
Watchout for SPAM

Stand out from the Crowd

Let visitors recommend your content on Google Search and share it on Google+
See what your social connection have +1'd
Put the +1 button on your pages
Visitors are reminded to pay special attention if page received +1s

More: ww.google.com/+1/button

Find your "small business" voice
Make sure of google relevant content on the page
Make sure you have relevant, nice sweet content
Make sure its fresh and updated
Get some help

How to choose a search Engine Optimiser - improve useability of your website.

choose wisely before paying for Google No.1 ranking!

Become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work,
Read Google's SEO starter guide,
Do research on the industry,
Google algorithm changes very frequently, no one can promise to make your website no.1, rank higher
No one can guarantee No.1 ranking on Google.

USE ALL OUR RESOURCES

Visit Google Webmaster Central - already 9/10 questions are already answered. Read the blog. Watch youtube. Google Webmaster Central Help forum, youtube, etc

Content-see what your competitors are offering;
Google seo guide
Make your website popular, participate in online discussions
Get recognition for incoming links
Make content relevant

Google Website Optimizer - Natalia Marmasse,

Download the Website Optimizer presentation

Website testing - process of showing different variations of your site to your visitors

Makes testing quick and easy

Consistent user experience

Give the experiment time.. at least 2 weeks to rule out seasonality - like weeks or weekends;
Depends on how much traffic your website is getting; more traffic less time to wait to take action on what works and what does not.
very small traffic, wait a bit much longer - 1month or 2 months..

Pick a Page to Test; decide page to test - which is getting a lot of traffic;

What to test?

Get ideas on what to test

headlines, Images, calls to action, forms, page layout, donation options, payment buttons and shapes...

Where to find optimizer? Go here to Google website optimizer

Stages of setting up an experiment

A/B Testing - testing different variations of a page

Give name of your experiment

fill URL of origial page

fill in the URL of convertion page - eg. "thank you for filling this page" "thank you"

Paste the control snippet on top / bottom of page

sit and wait for enough time to get data in

test 2 - 3 on a page receiving little traffic

How website optimizer was used by Obama Campaign

Obama online $500 million,
McCain $201,
Obama Offline $156ml

Always Test - don't trust your intuition - you will be surprised!

know your audience and optimize the most

Why you should be testing?

It comes down to clicks and conversions
You pay money to drive traffic to your page
Consider your traffic percentages
Wait at least 2weeks for results (bare minimum)
Iterate, iterate, iterate

start testing the big stuff, test but don't test too many

Publisher Tools: Custom Search Engine (CSE) and Adense For Search (AFS)- Chris Kiagiri; Technical lead, Google Kenya

CSE - harness power of Google for your website

use google for your own website search function

Who to use CSE?

Any website whose search is less effective than searching same site using google.

Why does the quality of search on my site matter??

Increase traffic to your website, user engagement, and ultimately increase revenue for you.

you want people to know your website as a place where they can get whatever they are looking for - this is what has made Google so rich!

Make a prominent search box on top of your website

Show me the money

Use the Google Custom search page - Make money link, just towards the bottom.

CSE features

Search entire website or specific pages
Host the search box and results on your own website
Customize the look and feel of results
Improve customer retention and converstions
Provide fast & relevant search results
Make money with Adsense for Search

Here is the link to Google Custom Search Engine

Monetize your unique Content - Overview on Google's advertising solutions for publishers - Paa Kwesi/Vignesh Anand - Partner Solutions

Users from Uganda find more relevant content, unique because it is your content

many types of content - images, music, video, websites...

users in Uganda visit global US sites; most ugandans have low incentives

In Uganda, most searched for;

Daily Monitor
Job mart
Red pepper

Social media

news

soccer

email messaging

other sports news

Example of queries

daily monitor
soccer
live scores
skype
al jazeera

Google Tools

Google webmaster tools

Google insights for search

Google for publishers suite

Google custom search

Google Adsense for search - targeted to users keywords in your search bar

Google Adsense for content - Ads on content you publish

Double click for publish

Google page speed - optimize your web performance

Youtube

DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) - hosted management solution

Software Engineer @Google - Mike Springer, - Improving your user Experience

What makes a beautiful design?

10 UX principles: product useful; fast; simple; engaging; universal; beautiful; personally, innovate

Everything you make online should strike a balance with all these 10 points, apps, websites,

1. Focus on the people, audience, user of your product

Google search, maps, docs

2. Every millisecond counts

0 - 0.6seconds; 2.5 - 8s; 5s+ they are going away

speed is very important

Chrome is fast, but more importantly - the perception of the product. The more people perceive your product, they can easily stick with it.

3. simplicity is powerful than complex

E.g Google search page

4. Engage beginners & attract experts

eg on Google people search alot "how do i google?"

Designed for the experts but great help for beginners

Eg Gmail - easy users; Google Labs - Experts

5. Dare to Innovate

Just because somebody does it 1 way doesn't mean that its the only way to do whatever they are doing!

6. Design for the world

World is a big place, with internet its becoming smaller place

products in UG can be used all over the world; more impact & end of day, more money

E.g Google Maps - more info for people allover the world

7. Plan for today's & 2moro's business

plan for today & 2moro with an eye towards 2moro making products that are expandable.

8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind

make users enjoy using your products. Visual candy without distracting people away from what they are doing eg Google+ adding users

9. Be worthy of people's trust

once you lose people's trust, you cannot get it back. Handling people's privacy is very important.

make sure you computers are uptodate with antivirus software

10. Add a human touch

let people know who is behind the product. Add some playfulness, joy & delightful & interacting with your users.

Eg. in the spam folder "Hooray there is no spam here"

Google Webmaster Tools for Business, Luisella Mazza

Search Quality team

Overview

1. discover your visitors interest

2. site popularity on the web

3. targeting right audience

4. daignostics

1. What are people looking for? And how frequently?

so you can tune your content to what people want

Tools to find out:

Google autocomplete tool (while searching in Google searchbar)
Google Trends, - best time to launch product
Google Insights for search - what are the variations in time
Google webmaster tools - free, accurate, direct point, much more accurate than data on other sites.

2. How to tell your site is popular on the web?

is the site offering what visitors are looking for? who is talking about your website? how do they refer to it?

Sign up with webmaster tools & discover top search queries

Google Webmaster central blog

3. Targeting the right audience

where are your users? if your website targets a specific region: Use Geotargeting in webmaster tools

Google Places - add info such as if you accept cash, phone number,

4. Diagnostics and resources

Do we know about your pages? Is your site indexed?

Sign up for webmaster tools
Submit sitemap

Can we access your site?

Identify & fix crawl errors

Webmaster tools: Labs > Site Performance
Identify slow pages on your site to improve their load speed
Akamai research: ecommerce acceptable speed < 2sec

Google is trying to make all websites load at less than half a second,

Visit pagespeed labs if you do not want to sign up for Google webmaster tools to test speed of your website: - analyzes performance of pages; gives specific advise to make pages load faster

Youtube for business

2 billion views everyday!

As an artist - produce video content & have an audience immediately

Youtube.com

Empowers talent faster
Much larger audience
Beatles took 3yrs to break into US market, Susan Bowles took 3 weeks using viral online youtube
Cost of production in decreasing, the hunt for Gollum - sequel for Lord of rings on youtube

In Nigeria - NollywoodLove

2nd largest movie industry in the world after bollywood
Has taken world by storm
Uploaded over 1000 movies
Earns more than 1million dollars from his business on youtube

techcrunch "welcome to the chaos, Excitement and Danger of Nollywood"

more than just cats & dogs

Youtube rentals, music concerts, etc in the US

Youtube partner program - not yet launched in Uganda but soon

-control the rights of the content produced

-youtube for research purposes

Links to the Google presentations will be added here below as they become available. If you attended the event, what did you learn? Leave your comment below.

Do not forget to Like us on facebook or follow us on twitter: @ruralict4d

Flickr stream to some of the photos of the entire G-Uganda business day at Sheraton

Enjoy Uganda's own Richard Kaweesa performing after the lunch break

Windows Trojan.Dropper Virus Eats Mobile Internet Bundles - 5ways how to Get Rid of it

2011-06-15T12:48:00.000+03:00

Orange Internet Everywhere connection box

There is a not-so-easy to detect virus on windows XP that quickly uses your internet connection. It is not easy to detect because very few major antivirus programs are able to scan and uproot it from your system.

How to tell if your computer is infected with this type of virus?
The only way is if you are using the mobile Internet bundles using huawei modems, such MTN broadband, Orange Internet everywhere, Airtel Internet everywhere. You need to know how much Megabytes you use in a month.

How I found out
In february, my girlfriend was still using a windows xp computer while i had ubuntu 9.10 laptop. We were using the mtn ball broadband Internet huawei modem. 500MB was enough data for a month to use at home considering we both had access to the Internet at our workplaces.

She contracted the dropper virus and we had the 500mb bundle wiped out in 3 days. I thought maybe she had done some updates or downloaded a heavy movie. Anyway, we renewed again. 500mb was again wiped out in 3days. We suspected a virus (we updated avira & scanned entire system) but we also thought that the service provider was giving us less. We switched off any wifi connections.

Considering that we needed to use the Internet, we paid up again for another 500mb. This one ran out again in 3days with only the windows computer using it. We opted for another provider, this time, we bought a 1gb Orange Internet everywhere bundle.

The Orange Internet Everywhere software connection box after being connected used up 5MB in 3minutes without having any browser open. No, i don't think it was an antivirus update either!

The Trojan.Dropper malware attack
From the Symantec website:

A Trojan.Dropper is a type of Trojan whose purpose is to deliver an enclosed payload onto a destination host computer. A dropper is a means to an end rather than the end itself. In other words, the dropper is usually used at the start or in the early stages of a malware attack.

Once a dropper is executed, its own code is simply to load itself into memory and then extract the malware payload and write it to the file system. It may perform any installation procedures and execute the newly dropped malware. The dropper usually ceases to execute at this point as its primary function has been accomplished.

Droppers are used by malware creators to disguise their malware. They create confusion amongst users by making them look like legitimate applications or well known and trusted files.

These dropper viruses are becoming very common among windows users. They will use up much of your mobile Internet bundles without your notice leaving you to constantly pay for more megabytes of data you never use. In this day of hard economic times, this can be a headache you can very well spare yourself.

Since using a Trojan.Dropper form of attack on computers running Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows Vista, Windows NT, Windows 2000; Symantec has issued a Latest Rapid Release version June 13, 2011 revision 039

5 ways to Get rid of Trojan.Dropper

1. Get freely available ubuntu software - Ubuntu is the most locally used free operating system in Uganda. There is a great ready-to-help community, free locally available downloads of the latest ubuntu releases at the Uganda linux users group (LUG). Remember to join the mailinglist and ask all your newbie questions there.

After you install ubuntu, your Internet everywhere modem should be able to work well without giving you any headache.

2. Download Symantec Trojan.Dropper June 2011 release - Download the Symantec Trojan.Dropper latest release and follow their instructions. The trojan.dropper is not at all detected by several other antiviruses however updated they may be.

3. Backup. Format Disk and Re-install Windows - Backup your files and reinstall your windows XP, 2000, vista etc. Before re-installing your system remember to format your disk. This way, everything being installed on the computer harddisk is new.

4. Stop renewing Mobile Internet bundle - Use Internet cafe - Use Internet cafe computers to access the Internet. Otherwise, loosing your hard-earned money every 3 days buying Mobile Internet bundles that would otherwise last you a month does not make sense.

5. Use ubuntu live-CD - If you don't have power to reinstall the computer you use, you could download a ubuntu image and burn it on CD. You would then walk around with Ubuntu live-cd and use it before you plugged in your modem. Ubuntu 10.04 onwards should work fine without having to install usb-modeswitch file.

An Easy way to make Windows XP/Vista/7 Bootable USB Drive

2011-04-27T17:04:00.000+03:00

Forget the PE builder and having to scrape the web for Windows server 2003 files. Making a windows XP, windows Vista or Windows 7 bootable USB drive should not be difficult anymore.

Here are all tools you need:

-USB drive, preferably 2GB+
-WinToFlash software (6.8mb) free for download
-Windows CD or .iso Image
-Daemon tools lite, (10.7mb), download here
-A pc running windows xp
- winrar / winzip

Steps on how to make a windows bootable usb pen drive

1. Download and install the software
Download a free copy of the WinToflash and extract it to a folder on the desktop. If you do have a windows CD and a working CDrom drive, then you don't need Daemon tools. Otherwise, daemon tools acts as a virtual CDrom drive to read your windows iso image, incase you have no access to a working CD/DVD drive.

2. Install your software
Daemon tools takes a little while to install & setup the virtual drives.

WinToflash is a portable app that does not need to be installed. After you have downloaded it, extract it to a folder on your desktop using Winzip and run it by clicking on the program icon WinToFlash.exe.

Click on WinToFlash.exe to start program. No need of installing

3. WinToflash welcome page. Click on Advanced mode tab to select activity and continue.

Click on Advanced Mode to select activity.

4. There are so many other tasks you could accomplish with WinToflash app. Select transfer windows XP/2003 setup to USB drive and click on Run.

Be sure to select "transfer windows XP/2003 setup to USB drive"

5. Launch Daemon tools (red icon in system tray), mount the Windows XP image stored in a folder somewhere on your computer and note its drive letter.

run Daemon tools lite to mount windows .iso image

6. Make sure the drive letters indicated in WinToflash correspond to where the Windows XP image is mounted and to the formatted usb drive as well. You can view the drive letter of both the mounted usb drive and windows image from "my computer"

Make sure drive letter of windows image & usb drive are correct

7. Go on and click run. The process does not take so long.

8. When done, remember to edit the bios settings of the computer where you are going to install windows XP. "Boot from usb drive" should be selected as 1st boot device.

Select this option to continue installing windows XP.

Open .key files - Convert .key to ppt or pdf for free

2011-04-27T14:17:00.000+03:00

I downloaded a presentation which is distributed .key format which needs a Mac machine to open or read it. Just to share, there is a great free online website, zamzar.com, that uploads your file and converts it to either pdf or powerpoint format, .ppt. This file can then be read using openoffice.

Observations

The upload of the file from my laptop is faster than that than the download over a wireless link.
Attach 1 file at a time for conversion. Attaching multiple files will slow conversion process.

zamzar.com - convert .key file to pdf or ppt

Email Scams Migrate to Mobile Phone call Scams

2011-04-15T16:30:00.003+03:00

Personal experience

This morning while walking to pick a taxi to work, I received a phone call from a smooth talking fellow. The person on the other end of the line greets me and introduces himself as Mukasa. He goes ahead and asks about how my former colleagues in tanzania are doing.

I respond cheerfully responding that they are all doing well and also that I had left tanzania to work in Kampala. He mentions names of my tanzanian colleagues. This made me think that I had probably met him during the couple of years I had spent in tanzania.

After we have had a bit of chatter about the good times in tanzania and what am doing in Kampala, he goes ahead and calls my mind to attention. Here is how starts:

Mukasa (scammer): John, very nice to hear you are doing so well. Anyway, am also working in hoima. Have you ever been to hoima?

Me: no but i hear its very rich in oil and that there is a lot of land grabbing going on there.

Mukasa (scammer): Ooh, you ought to know your country. Anyway, am based in Hoima and am working with Tullow oil. Now, there is a deal I would like to share with you so that we can both share the huge commissions associated with it.

Me: Ooh, that is great. Tell me about the deal. (in my mind expecting a big website deal)

Mukasa (scammer): Am sorry it is a bit out of your scope of work. But here at Tullow oil, our equipment has broken down for a month now. Our boss, Mr. Brown, wanted to fly to Europe so he could purchase 7 pieces of equipment but I took the initiative to alert him that the same equipment is available here in Kampala. John, this whole deal has about $35,000 worth of commissions!

Me: Oooh my God! That's alot of money! (tagging along but in my mind already labeling it as a scam attempt)

Mukasa: $35,000 is not alot of money John. Now here is what I would like you to do. I would like you to talk to dealer in Kampala so that you can broker the deal. I want you to get a pen and paper so you can write down the details am going to give you.

Me: Man, am walking right now on the street without anywhere to sit to write anything, maybe we can talk later and i can write down the details of the deal.

Mukasa: John, the deal is serious. I want you to go meet Mr. brown when he comes to the airport....

Ooh my mind was already straying away from this conversation that had already taken alot over 10 minutes.

5 Reasons why I figured this to be a scam
1. Person mentioning large sums of US dollar currency. This is the same as the emails we all constantly delete about a huge business deal where someone wants to transfer $1million in your bank. Click here to read my earlier post on scammers.

2. Tullow oil scams in Uganda are becoming a popular catch. They include jobs to work on an oil rig in Hoima, a mzungu would has died in an accident leaving alot of money at place of accident.. etc

3. Person pretending to know me. At first, it did not occur to me, but after my mind classifying conversation as a scam attempt, I realised that it was me volunteering information about my friends and the other person actually only listening!

4. Forget about getting lots of money for free. If you don't tune your mind to turn off when a person mentions getting a lot of money (or millions of money) for free but just participating in a deal, you will always end up as food for scammers.

5. No one discusses big money business over the phone.

Places where scammer may have picked my phone number & details include:

facebook profile - so many people who you have as friends
mailing lists - where I participate in topical discussions
skype, msn, yahoo, gtalk
websites where we sign up for free softwares

This was no random call, the scammer had made some homework about me before calling. So be on your guard. Do not rush to put your hard-earned savings into a deal you not had time to think about or seek professional advice if profitable or not.

Most Affordable Website Prices at EasySites Uganda

2011-04-14T16:09:00.011+03:00

Beautiful EasySites websites

Are you a budding entrepreneur running a company or non-profit organisation drumming up support for your cause in Uganda, then you need a website! Trying to run a business without a website is like trying to run a business without a telephone. These days, having a website is crucial.

At EasySites they make beautiful websites fast and quick to meet your organisational needs.

For only UGX. 400,000/= you receive a beautiful complete website for your business to increase sales or awareness about your NGO's cause.

EasySites basic website package benefits:

- A Domain name, e.g. www.yourcompany.com (.com, .net, .biz, .org, .info)
- 5 email addresses (yourname@yourcompany.com)
- 1year website hosting
- 5 page website
- beautiful complete website
- Fast local access to your website
- Registration of your website with Google & other search engines.
- Contact us page with feedback form

Claim this offer as fast as you can. It is not going to keep running for long.

Sign up with them and find more info at their facebook page here.

EasySites.UG also runs a website training class whose benefits include:

Run your own business in web design
Promote your own business (with Mountbatten's support)
Operate from any Internet cafe, office or home with internet access
Design high quality websites with online EasySites Builder
Provide excellent customer care to your own customers
Benefit from Mountbatten's large client network & marketing
Keep all the profit you make

Click here to sign up for the EasySites website training class. If you have any inquries, you may want to visit EasySites Uganda website: www.easysites.ug Or send an email to: kibuukaj@easysites.ug

UTL Kwiktok Internet is Cheapest in Uganda

2011-04-07T18:43:00.000+03:00

I found this out by accident i must say. I have an Orange Internet everywhere 3g modem but today I got cut off. My 1gb connection was out with 19 days to go. After a while, I remembered that I have been getting a messages from UTL where i can get 100mb of data. I scrolled through my messages and relocated the message again, it reads:

Enjoy free surfing with 100MB of data, 20 free SMS and 10 minutes of talk with Kwiktok from utl for only ugx. 250/=. To activate, simply dial *250# now.

Thats what i wanted to see! I had ugx. 1,000/= subscribed by *250# until I had 20,4800,000 bytes of data to use. Now I wanted to use them on my computer and not the mobile phone itself.

Here is the process of using UTL mobile internet data package on my Eeepc running ubuntu 10.10:

You need:
- A web capable mobile phone
- mobile phone data cable (to connect your phone to computer)
- to subscribe to utl's kwiktok for only ugx. 250/=
- Internet settings for your mobile phone. Provided free by utl customer care number 222

1. Call UTL customer care
Am using a Nokia 6230i mobile phone. I needed the Internet settings. You need to tell the customer care person your mobile phone model, for instance, Nokia 6230i. The settings are sent you free of charge. There is a page on the uganda linux user group with Uganda's Teleco APN settings info.

2. Connect mobile phone to computer using the mobile phone cable. Ubuntu will install and notify you that there is a new mobile connection detected. Set up the new connection with these:

country: Uganda
Provider: UTL
Data plan: Mobile Internet (APN: utweb)

3. Select to connect to the UTL connection to use up your kwiktok data.
Why Kwiktok UTL data plan is cheapest?

MTN and Orange both charge ugx. 25,000/= for a 500MB but with the UTL Kwiktok data plan, you would be paying only ugx. 1,250/=! Of course the speeds on the 3g network is much better than the ones on the kwiktok plan as you can judge for yourself.

Ubuntu 10.10 USB Creator error - vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image

2011-04-06T10:00:00.001+03:00

I recently installed ubuntu 10.10 netbook remix on my Eeepc 1000H and it sure looks and works beautifully. Having another computer on which I wanted to install ubuntu 10.04, I used the usb startup disk creator on the Eeepc running ubuntu 10.10 to make a ubuntu 10.04 bootable usb flash drive. When i plug the now ubuntu 10.04 bootable usb into another machine to begin installing, I get this error:


SYSLINUX 4.01 debian-20100714 EDD Copyright (C) 1994-2010 H. Peter Anvin et al
Unknown keyword in configuration file: gfxboot
vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image
boot:
vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image

Here is how i got around it:

Press the TAB key at the boot: prompt

I got presented all the available options as:

boot:
live live-install check memtest hd mainmenu help

I now went ahead to type live-install at the boot prompt & press the Enter key.
boot: live-install

To try out using the Live-cd, just type:

boot: live

I was glad to get this working. I did not have access to any other machine running a different version of ubuntu with which i could make a bootable usb drive.

Enjoy!

Cannot receive Paypal Payments East Africa? Try these 5 Free alternatives

2011-03-25T12:01:00.001+03:00

In East Africa, receiving money via paypal is not possible except Kenya which has finally joined South Africa on paypal's list of countries where sending and receiving money is possible. Because of paypal's bias, several local NGOs, companies and individuals cannot receive donations or payments for services or products via paypal's network, which is the most trusted way to pay and receive money online.

There are lots of alternatives that several people do not know about which are also trusted and some cases cheaper than paypal. They are presented below with no particular order.

1. Moneybookers.com
Opening an account with them is free. Local companies or NGOs can use the basic way to receive payments online using their moneybookers email account. They have a merchant gateway pay you immediately via credit/debit card, bank transfer, and wallet. You can also earn money by referring other people to their network.

Here is a demo on how to get paid from their website:

Step 1: A customer wants to pay for a product/service at DEMO-SHOP.COM. The merchant informs the customer on the Website about the option to send the required amount via Moneybookers to the merchant's registered email address BILLING@DEMO-SHOP.COM.
Step 2: The customer effectuates the payment via the Moneybookers Webiste. DEMO-SHOP.COM receives an instant payment notification via email.
Step 3: DEMO-SHOP.COM can now manually process the order of the customer.

2. Plimus.com
Setting up an account with them is free. Plimus supports receiving payments from so many payment methods among which is paypal, moneybookers, credit cards, money orders etc. Be sure to check out their payment options page and use their payment calculator before you sign up. Earn money with them by joining their affiliates program.

3. 2checkout.com
With 2Checkout account, you can even accept Paypal payments. They also used to charge $49 sign up fee. For receiving donations, you simply cannot give your email and accept any payment. It is difficult for you to accept varying amounts of money from various clients or donors. Often people ask for your paypal email so that they send you any amount they want to send to support your cause or project.

4. Use friend in Kenya Or open an account with Kenyan bank
Considering that Kenya is our neighbour and the only 2nd Paypal authorized country where sending and receiving paypal payments is possible, easiest way to use a friend's account in Kenya. Better still is to open up an account in a Kenyan bank that can provide paypal services. Kenyan banks available in Kampala include: KCB, Equity bank

5. USA2Me.com

"Use your U.S. mailing address to receive items anywhere in the world"

You pay about $23 for a physical address in the US that can be used to apply for an International debit or credit card from usa2me partners. With this International debit card, you would be able to receive paypal payments. You would also be able to use it locally with the growing number of local banks accepting visa, mastercard.

Send Free SMS from Gmail to Mobile Phones in East Africa

2011-03-18T18:01:00.001+03:00

I often get asked by friends on the best website to use to send free SMS to Uganda, Kenya or Tanzania. Google Mail (GMail) has now made this possible.

Steps on how you can send free SMS to people in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.

1. Get a Gmail Address - Sign up for a free Google email address here.

Gmail Send SMS to phone

2. After you have signed into your Gmail email address, you should now see the Send SMS box just above the chat box, as in photo on the left.

Gmail Send SMS to phone

**If you do see the Send SMS box, just skip a few steps below. Otherwise, go through them so you can help your friends enjoy this cool feature.

If you do not see the Send SMS feature in your Gmail address, do the following:

Gmail Settings

3. Sign in to your Gmail address. Look at the top left corner of your open email address and click on settings.

4. On the Settings page, locate and click on the Labs tab.

Gmail Labs tab

Enable SMS Gmail Labs

5. On the Labs page, search for SMS and click on the circles next to Enable to activate each of those items, as shown in the photo below.

Remember to click on Save Changes at the bottom of the Gmail Labs page.

After you have done that, you should now be able to see the Send SMS box above the chat box just below the links to your inbox.

Otherwise, type in the number of person you would like to send an SMS & press ENTER key.

Gmail SMS contact details box

6. You will get a small pop dialog box in the middle of your screen.

Fill in the name of the owner of the mobile number you sending SMS to. Select their country from the country list (extremely useful feature to send SMS to friends allover East Africa).

Remember to click on Save when you done.

Gmail SMS to phone chat-box

7. A small chat box will appear at the bottom corner of your GMail page. Go ahead and type away your SMS (keep it to 160 characters like a normal SMS).

****Challenges of the Gmail SMS to mobile phone:
- As sender, please include your full name. The SMS don't display sender's name, only their email address.
- If you send the SMS in the local language (luganda, kiswahili...), the reply instructions on the mobile are still displayed in english. You may consider writing to the receiver in the same local language how to reply to your SMS.
- The number listed as the sender's name on MTN Uganda is 0902801159, which is most likely a non Ugandan network number, replying or calling it could cost more than local telecom rates.
- There is no delivery report system in Gmail that an SMS has been delivered to the phone you sent it to.

Supported East African carriers
Tanzania (+255): Vodacom
Uganda (+256): Orange (0790), MTN (0772, 0782), Uganda Telecom (0712)
Kenya (+254): Airtel, orange, Safaricom

Tips about the Gmail SMS to mobile phone:
1. Each Gmail user has 50 free SMS. Every time you send an SMS your SMS quote decreases by 1.

Every time you receive an SMS message in Chat (for example when a phone user replies to one of your messages) your quota increases by five, up to a maximum of 50.

2. To buy more GMail SMS, send an SMS to your mobile phone and reply to it several times. Each time you reply to your SMS using your mobile phone, your GMail SMS count goes up by 5 SMS.

3. To block SMS from Gmail user, just reply to the message with the word 'BLOCK'. If you change your mind about the user and would like to receive Gmail SMS from same user, reply with the phrase 'UNBLOCK' to the phone number from which the message was sent.
Get more help from Google Support

Use this free service sensibly. Please do not spam your friends with wedding meetings SMS, death of your mother SMS or that you have no money.

Animation Contest - Use animations to explain your ideas

2011-03-18T08:29:00.000+03:00

There is an ICT4D comic contest running at the great knowledge sharing platform which am sure you would want to participate in.

All you have to do is to write a script a man and a woman (or boy and girl) walk onto the scene. He walks bent forward (as if he is burdened by something).
She says: "What's the matter?"
He says (scratching his head): "[xxxxx]"
She says: "[yyyyy]"
He jumps up and down.
They walk away

Here is the link to the comic contest. The recent entries should be a cue enough for you to be as creative as you can be.

I went a step further and created a free account at the GoAnimate website. Their help in getting you come up with your first animation is great - you do not need to be an animation designer to do this. Here is my animation out of their training.

Am going to use create animations like this in future using their platform to explain my ideas.

GoAnimate.com: John ICT cartoon by kjohnah

Huawei e1752 on eeepc running ubuntu 9.10 netbook remix

2011-03-13T06:54:00.009+03:00

At the beginning of this week, we got a new Orange internet everywhere modem from Orange Uganda. The company has slashed modem prices from UGX 110,000/= down to UGX 99,000/=. You are also given a choice between the huawei ball modem with 2GB valid for 4months or the the new huawei e1752 with 1GB. (both modems are same price, ugx. 99,000 though Orange website is yet to reflect the change in prices)

The huawei e1752 does not work out of the box easily with linux. The post in the ubuntu forums, especially a post by birkopf, did the trick.

Here are the steps on how i got the huawei e1752 modem working on the eeepc running ubuntu 9.10 netbook remix:

1. Install usb-modeswitch (Navigate to System > Synaptic Package Manager. Search for usb-modeswitch & mark it for installation). You can also download the usb-modeswitch .deb file here.

2. Right-click on network manager icon and click on "Edit connections". Select "Mobile Broadband" tab, if you this install guide doesn't pop up on your computer. Go through the steps as demonstrated here on the Orange website.
You don't need to add DNS server numbers manually.
3. Open the terminal & issue this command.
$ sudo nano /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf $ {enter your password}

4. When the file opens, add this info to the file:

########################################################
# Huawei E1752
#
# Contributor:

DefaultVendor= 0x12d1
DefaultProduct= 0x1446

TargetVendor= 0x12d1
TargetProdct= 0x1001

MessageEndpoint= 0x01

MessageContent= "55534243000000000000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000"

Press Ctrl+X to quit. Press "Y" and "Enter" to save your work.

5. In terminal:

$ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/usb_modeswitch.rules $ {enter your admin password}

Add the following code to the last part of the file. Ctrl+X to exit. Press "y" to agree to the changes & press "Enter" key.

Code:

ATTRS{idVendor}==”12d1″, ATTRS{idProduct}==”1446″, RUN+=”/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch”

Use this command in the terminal whenever you plug your modem onto your eeepc.

$ sudo usb_modeswitch
$ {enter your root password}

You should notice your network manager icon connecting to the Internet.

Goodluck।

Ubuntu 10.04 users: Use the Orange uganda linux instructions to setup a connection with the e1752 modem. It works fine.

Uganda Telecom Pursues users to buy its Kasana Phone

2010-08-23T23:06:00.004+03:00

Competition in Uganda's telecom market is getting to a high like never before. Uganda enjoys an ever increasing number of telecom players, most notable is: MTN, Uganda telecom, Zain, Warid, Orange, Smile Telecom, i-telecom, Foris telecom. Each of these is trying to out-do the other in offer better phones and call rates.

For 2 weeks running, I have had a message sent to my Uganda telecom phone with this message:

Dear Customer, Buy one Kasana solar powered phone at UGX. 60,000/= and get one free! Hurry and get yours now while stocks last, at UT (Uganda Telecom) shops countrywide.

It is interesting that this phone which was retailing at UGX 81,000/=, as the Uganda telecom website notes, is now at only UGX. 30,000/=!
Another message that is often sent every now and then on this network is:

Dear customer, you can now enjoy more days on the Endobo promo. Simply text ENDOBONo of days to 200. For example text ENDOBO 7 to 200 to get 7 days on Endobo

The Endobo profile allows a subscriber to load UGX 1,000 and call for free the whole day any other Uganda telecom subscriber numbers including landlines.

Uganda National Voters Register available Online

2010-08-23T22:05:00.007+03:00

Computers and the Internet are certainly changing the way we do things. For the very first time, the electoral commission is displaying the national voter's register online!! Citizens now have the ability to browse the entire register at their convenience.

The national voter's register can be accessed via the electoral commission website here: http://www.ec.or.ug or http://41.210.167.106/nvr/, considering that the website is facing a name resolution problem.

Challenges with the register

Users cannot search the register for their names, unless they know the name of the district, constituency, sub county, parish and polling station.
Website or register has no web 2.0 features. Users cannot share the resource with their friends or easily give feedback to improve this resource.
Since the register is uploaded online to allow citizens a chance to check the correctness of their names and particulars, no where is it mentioned on whom to contact when discrepancies in the register are discovered by the users.

Besides, these issues, it is worth noting that this is a great step in the right direction. With this kind of trend, elections rigging will greatly be reduced when the results of each candidate are uploaded into the system at each particular polling station. Hopefully, the 2011 election will not incidences of altered election results.

Ooh blogging days

2009-12-17T19:57:00.005+03:00

My blogging days seem to be back now. Finally and for good! You want to know why? Here below I present to you seven (7) reasons why am back to blogging full time.

Reasons for blogging

7. Time is now to lead Ugandans to blogging: Following the recent riots in Uganda attributed to the government's refusal to allow the Kabaka of Buganda to freely travel in his kingdom, many people (not necessarily Baganda) took to the streets to vent their anger towards bad government policies. Several radio stations were also closed down by the government.

6. Social networking websites.. for instance facebook and twitter: Facebook is the lastest way to keep in touch with former school buddies, friends and colleagues. Each of these upload info on what they are doing and where they are. Therefore, a great resource for free topics to blog.

5. Citizen journalism: A platform where citizens report the news as it happens in their communities. An example is Uganda's current news page. On some websites, reporters are paid a commission on the news that they report. This could be an income earner for the so many youth whose otherwise have no hope of getting a decent job.

4. Making money online: Blogging is a rich platform for paying whoever does it well. Picking a niche a writer is passionate about is what is required to start reaping big monies from blogging.

3. Internet Cafe business: Offering an Internet access service in my community is a huge benefit where local users help me clear my monthly Internet bill plus turning a profit while doing it. The opportunity of spending more time online is another opportunity to blog.

2. Exploding ICT: With the advent of Internet carrying fibre optic cables, information communication technologies are just about to explode. More people are going to get online for social networking, find out about market prices, scholarships, donors, jobs... There is no better time to join the online fraternity than now.

1. Fast, cheap Internet access speeds: Internet access speeds have greatly increased since the first optical fibre cable, seacom, launched in Kampala. The speeds offered by one of the providers are really great. My connection connects at 3.6Mbps and for an entire week i have used it, very few or totally un-noticeable outages! It is bound to get much better in the year 2010!

So see you around here more often my friends for only the best... 'coz am back!

High Speed Internet Finally Switched On in Kampala

2009-07-25T09:24:00.006+03:00

High data rate internet access has finally come to Kampala. Seacom, which has laid the 17,000 km optical fibre on the ocean bed linking east and southern Africa via Europe and India has concluded its work this week. High speed internet has now been delivered at the different points of presence.

The 1,28 Terabytes per second (Tb/s) link with the capability to maintain two million phone calls simultaneously is expected to reduce the cost of Internet connection by more than 80 per cent much lower than satellite connection currently used in the country.

The market price of one megabyte per second of broadband has been averaging $2500-$5,000 (about sh5m - sh10m) in East Africa. SEACOM’s initial offer to Internet service providers (ISPs) will be at $400 (Shs800, 000). It is expected that the ISPs will then provide it to the end users at least 75 per cent less.

Uganda, like its east african neighbours, has not fully enjoyed and exploited the benefits of the Internet. Much of this has been hampered by the low penetration of electricity throughout the country, fewer computers available and the low computer literacy levels. Hopefully with the advent of high speed Internet, the government will feel the urge to educate the population on the potential of this great infrastructure towards development.

KIFAD telecentre Introduce use of ICTs in its community

2009-05-30T20:51:00.001+03:00

Kiyita Family Alliance for Development (KIFAD), a community based non-profit organization in Nansana Town Council, Wakiso District Uganda operates an offline-driven telecentre with a focus on families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Noting a deficit of information and poverty among families in the Wakiso area, a few families came together to work to rid their community of these evils, thus the formation of KIFAD telecentre.

The telecentre is equipped with four computers with CDroms, a photocopier, digital camera and lots of paper content including books, brochures, posters, pamphlets. The telecentre is run by the programme manager who oversees all the activities undertaken and a group of volunteers who are always on hand to research for information beneficial to the families under the telecentre program.

How KIFAD telecentre Operates

The telecentre takes on an intermediary role in connecting HIV/AIDS support organizations with the people in the Wakiso community. These include;

AIDS Information Centre, specializing in HIV/AIDS counseling and testing, a service now available to the community every month free of charge.
Infectious Diseases institute, working with discordant couples care and HIV/AIDS counseling and testing.
Naphofanu, an umbrella group for people living with HIV/AIDS. These are offering training to mostly women to setup and run income generating activities, demystifying HIV/AIDS and promoting positive living.
Uganda redcross society. KIFAD telecentre being a member of this society in involved in practices like blood donation exercises to save lives. Red Cross has also offered to train members in providing first-aid treatment.
Mildmay, family Hope – are some of the organizations that are providing free HIV/AIDS care and treatment but albeit unknown to many HIV/AIDS patients.
Support to children of families affected with HIV/AIDS with education funding agencies.

Successes

KIFAD has given hope to so many people in the Wakiso community. From humble beginnings of a couple of families to a sizeable number of over 200 working together for development.
More people are getting are becoming aware of the dangers of HIV/AIDS and are more willing to undergo HIV/AIDS counseling and testing.
Several children and women run families have been equipped with business skills. There are some already producing very good products, which include; fruit jam, flour, operating a retail shop
More children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS are now attending school
Stigmatization has greatly reduced. HIV/AIDS carriers can now open come out to talk about their experiences.

Future

To use information communication technologies (ICTs) including mobile phones, computers, portable devices (PDAs) in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Using the freely available web 2.0 resources (blogs, wikis, social media) to tell story of living positively with HIV/AIDS online.
Have couples freely undergoing HIV/AIDS counseling and testing sessions together. At the moment, most men shun these sessions leaving them to only the women and children

For further reading,

An idea in offing on how to use ICTs in fighting HIV/AIDS

A donor's experience supporting one of KIFAD's HIV/AIDS projects

A volunteer's experience working with KIFAD

Submitted as an entry to the telecentre.org Blog Contest.

Know Your e-Customer

2009-01-17T05:36:00.002+03:00

If you plan on setting up a business online, you have to learn the tricks of attracting and keeping your web visitors. Nobody done it much better recently, than Barack Obama.

How Obama Won Using Digital and Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: election obama)

Sengerema Wifi photos

2008-11-22T10:39:00.004+03:00

Main node installed at the Sengerema telecentre. We setup a mesh network of ten clients using biquads/cantennas, linksys wrt54gl router and one omni.

This is the complete assembly with a biquad to re-inforce the link to one of the highest peers.

John Kibuuka working on getting one of the biquads squares to scale. Having to make sure that the squares had 90 deg angles.

For a more pictures on flickr:

Sebastian's ablum

John's album

Bernadette's youtube album

Sengerema WiFi Network Technical team Oct '08

2008-11-22T08:33:00.004+03:00

Down to a relaxing meal during the workshop. From the guy in checked shirt: Njili, Itwana Ernest, Dickson Kalembo, Sebastian, john (shaved head), Mark Farahani (in white)

Sengerema Wireless Community network up & Clicking!

2008-11-01T05:43:00.006+03:00

Community WiFi projects always get me excited, great anticipation on getting my hands as dirty as they can get normally ensues when I encounter one. This year, there has been great planning to get the Sengerema WiFi Community project up with an initial phase covering 10 priority clients, among which is; a centre for people with disabilities (deaf, lame, blind); government district offices, a teacher's resource centre, business centre, a private individual and vocational school.

Sengerema District is one of eight districts in the Mwanza Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the north and east by Lake Victoria, to the south by the Geita District and to the southeast by the Misungwi District.

The week-long knowledge sharing technical workshop, more like a IT camp - though not at all related to camping but with all the hacking & geeky IT lessons in plenty - with a tight schedule running from 0830 in the morning till close to midnight every day.

The IICD sponsored event brought together different telecentre technical managers from all over tanzania plus Sebastian Buettrich from Copenhagen, John Kibuuka from Uganda and IICD representatives; Bernadette Huizinga and Miep Lenoir.

BLOG Action Day '08: Down with Poverty

2008-10-15T10:56:00.010+03:00

Its Blog Action Day - that day where bloggers the world over, unite with a particular goal and this year, its 1-voice to fight the global epidermic: POVERTY!

Being a country greatly affected and devastated by poverty, the least I can offer all the suffering people including myself is a blog article about this phenomenon. To demystify poverty, from wikipedia;

Poverty is deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn, to obtain better employment to escape poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens.

Maybe there is stuff you currently take for granted, especially as that described in the poverty definition.

Just to give you a clue to what community am living in... here a couple of pictures

Living in one of the communities in wakiso district, very close to Kampala city but yet very far from all the development and economic growth usually mentioned by the government.

Several families managed by a single parent, usually mother, live in dire poverty with little or nothing to live on daily.

Forget the "less-than-a-dollar-a-day"; this is much far less. The be real, a dollar would take her on for several days.
====

The living conditions could be better, even for these people. This is a grandmother taking care of her grand-daughter(s) after the son or daughter died from contracting the deadly HIV virus.

The grandmother, at such un-productive age with little, though in most cases, no savings at all, she is left with very young grand-children and all the responsibilities associated with their upbringing. From paying their food, school fees, health-care, clothing etc.
=====
I know you can help to get so many people out of poverty, in so many ways.

So very few children are able to attain basic education as these because they cannot have access to food, clean water, shelter or they are sick. Some children do have to hit the streets everyday just to raise an income not to study but because they have to help with the income back home.
================

With the years to come, when these children will be taking on the cause of fighting this great evil, maybe then, it will be not as widespread and rampant as now. But its in our time that we can begin the journey to eliminate this global disease.

So the question is: What are you doing to eliminate poverty in your home, town, country and the entire world?

If we are united against this evil, we sure will eliminate it one day. This day may not be 2015, maybe much later or less: it all comes down to you. Join the cause now and bring to the elimination of poverty within the limits of our time.

If you would want to support a local charity in my country...

Kiyita Family Alliance For Development (KIFAD)
P.O. Box 33995
Kampala, Uganda
East Africa
T: +256 772 586147

E: kifad_project@yahoo.com

Together, lets make poverty history!

Computer infected with a virus?

2008-08-30T19:31:00.007+03:00

Caught A Virus?

If you've let your guard down--or even if you haven't--it can be hard to tell if your PC is infected. Here's what to do if you suspect the worst.

Heard this one before? You must run antivirus software and keep it up to date or else your PC will get infected, you'll lose all your data, and you'll incur the wrath of every e-mail buddy you unknowingly infect because of your carelessness.

You know they're right. Yet for one reason or another, you're not running antivirus software, or you are but it's not up to date. Maybe you turned off your virus scanner because it conflicted with another program. Maybe you got tired of upgrading after you bought Norton Antivirus 2001, 2002, and 2003. Or maybe your annual subscription of virus definitions recently expired, and you've put off renewing.

It happens. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But chances are, either you're infected right now, as we speak, or you will be very soon.

For a few days in late January, the Netsky.p worm was infecting about 2,500 PCs a day. Meanwhile the MySQL bot infected approximately 100 systems a minute (albeit not necessarily desktop PCs). As David Perry, global director of education for security software provider Trend Micro, puts it, "an unprotected [Windows] computer will become owned by a bot within 14 minutes."

Today's viruses, worms, and so-called bots--which turn your PC into a zombie that does the hacker's bidding (such as mass-mailing spam)--aren't going to announce their presence. Real viruses aren't like the ones in Hollywood movies that melt down whole networks in seconds and destroy alien spacecraft. They operate in the background, quietly altering data, stealing private operations, or using your PC for their own illegal ends. This makes them hard to spot if you're not well protected.

Is Your PC "Owned?"

I should start by saying that not every system oddity is due to a virus, worm, or bot. Is your system slowing down? Is your hard drive filling up rapidly? Are programs crashing without warning? These symptoms are more likely caused by Windows, or badly written legitimate programs, rather than malware. After all, people who write malware want to hide their program's presence. People who write commercial software put icons all over your desktop. Who's going to work harder to go unnoticed?

Other indicators that may, in fact, indicate that there's nothing that you need to worry about, include:

* An automated e-mail telling you that you're sending out infected mail. E-mail viruses and worms typically come from faked addresses.
* A frantic note from a friend saying they've been infected, and therefore so have you. This is likely a hoax. It's especially suspicious if the note tells you the virus can't be detected but you can get rid of it by deleting one simple file. Don't be fooled--and don't delete that file.

I'm not saying that you should ignore such warnings. Copy the subject line or a snippet from the body of the e-mail and plug it into your favorite search engine to see if other people have received the same note. A security site may have already pegged it as a hoax.

Sniffing Out an Infection

There are signs that indicate that your PC is actually infected. A lot of network activity coming from your system (when you're not actually using Internet) can be a good indicator that something is amiss. A good software firewall, such as ZoneAlarm, will ask your permission before letting anything leave your PC, and will give you enough information to help you judge if the outgoing data is legitimate. By the way, the firewall that comes with Windows, even the improved version in XP Service Pack 2, lacks this capability.

To put a network status light in your system tray, follow these steps: In Windows XP, choose Start, Control Panel, Network Connections, right-click the network connection you want to monitor, choose Properties, check "Show icon in notification area when connected," and click OK.

If you're interested in being a PC detective, you can sniff around further for malware. By hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Windows, you'll bring up the Task Manager, which will show you the various processes your system is running. Most, if not all, are legit, but if you see a file name that looks suspicious, type it into a search engine and find out what it is.

Want another place to look? In Windows XP, click Start, Run, type "services.msc" in the box, and press Enter. You'll see detailed descriptions of the services Windows is running. Something look weird? Check with your search engine.

Finally, you can do more detective work by selecting Start, Run, and typing "msconfig" in the box. With this tool you not only see the services running, but also the programs that your system is launching at startup. Again, check for anything weird.

If any of these tools won't run--or if your security software won't run--that in itself is a good sign your computer is infected. Some viruses intentionally disable such programs as a way to protect themselves.

What to Do Next

Once you're fairly sure your system is infected, don't panic. There are steps you can take to assess the damage, depending on your current level of protection.

* If you don't have any antivirus software on your system (shame on you), or if the software has stopped working, stay online and go for a free scan at one of several Web sites. There's McAfee FreeScan, Symantec Security Check, and Trend Micro's HouseCall. If one doesn't find anything, try two. In fact, running a free online virus scan is a good way to double-check the work of your own local antivirus program. When you're done, buy or download a real antivirus program.
* If you have antivirus software, but it isn't active, get offline, unplug wires-- whatever it takes to stop your computer from communicating via the Internet. Then, promptly perform a scan with the installed software.
* If nothing seems to be working, do more research on the Web. There are several online virus libraries where you can find out about known viruses. These sites often provide instructions for removing viruses--if manual removal is possible--or a free removal tool if it isn't. Check out GriSOFT's Virus Encyclopedia, Eset's Virus Descriptions, McAffee's Virus Glossary, Symantec's Virus Encyclopedia, or Trend Micro's Virus Encyclopedia.

A Microgram of Prevention

Assuming your system is now clean, you need to make sure it stays that way. Preventing a breach of your computer's security is far more effective than cleaning up the mess afterwards. Start with a good security program, such Trend Micro's PC-Cillin, which you can buy for $50.

Don't want to shell out any money? You can cobble together security through free downloads, such as AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, ZoneAlarm (a personal firewall), and Ad-Aware SE (an antispyware tool).

Just make sure you keep all security software up to date. The bad guys constantly try out new ways to fool security programs. Any security tool without regular, easy (if not automatic) updates isn't worth your money or your time.

Speaking of updating, the same goes for Windows. Use Windows Update (it's right there on your Start Menu) to make sure you're getting all of the high priority updates. If you run Windows XP, make sure to get the Service Pack 2 update. To find out if you already have it, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. Under the General tab, under System, it should say "Service Pack 2."

Here are a few more pointers for a virus-free life:

* Be careful with e-mail. Set your e-mail software security settings to high. Don't open messages with generic-sounding subjects that don't apply specifically to you from people you don't know. Don't open an attachment unless you're expecting it.

* If you have broadband Internet access, such as DSL or cable, get a router, even if you only have one PC. A router adds an extra layer of protection because your PC is not connecting directly with the Internet.

* Check your Internet ports. These doorways between your computer and the Internet can be open, in which case your PC is very vulnerable; closed, but still somewhat vulnerable; or stealthed (or hidden), which is safest. Visit Gibson Research's Web site and run the free ShieldsUP test to see your ports' status. If some ports show up as closed--or worse yet, open--check your router's documentation to find out how to hide them.

Ganda Firefox finally comes to life!

2008-08-30T07:08:00.007+03:00

Makerere University, in collaboration with Rhodes University, Firefox Mozilla and
Translate.org team have translated Mozilla Firefox into Luganda. According to Wikipedia, "Luganda is a major language of Uganda, spoken by over three million people mainly in the Buganda region, which includes the Ugandan capital Kampala."

To join the growing number of Ugandans already using Ganda firefox, follow the steps below;

1. Check that your firefox is 3.0.1. If not upgrade from the mozilla site or if you are within Uganda, download from local servers here.

2. Navigate to the Open source software translation project page with a heading "kickstarting Firefox in Luganda" Read the short article and click on download to get the provisional language pack.

3. A window entitled Software Installation will be activated. An xpi file will appear within the window. Just click on INSTALL NOW.

4. You have now installed the Luganda add-on, but you will not be able to see the changes unless you install the language switcher. The language switcher will enable you to change between languages. Click here to download the Locale Switcher 2.1.

5. Re-start Firefox for all these changes to be seen.

6. Go to Tools > Languages > Ganda to start using your new Luganda version of Mozilla.

7. Incase you want to switch back to English, go to Tools > Languages > English

Now, welcome to Ganda firefox!

Don't forget to leave your impressions about this and any like these in the comments below ;)

Nigerian Email scams on the rise!

2008-07-28T17:45:00.012+03:00

Nigerian email scams seem to be on the rise in East Africa lately. In a space of two weeks, two friends of mine have had their addresses either hacked or have been lured to reveal their email address login information to Nigerian fraudsters. These scams are so rampant with hotmail and yahoo mail users

Once a user's email address hacked, the fraudsters completely lock out the user in the process claiming the user's personal information. They then send out a uniform email to all the user's contacts. The email scam so familiar is;

I hope this message finds you in best of health. I had traveled to Nigeria for official purposes, Unfortunately for me all my money was stolen at the hotel where I lodged, I am so confused right now, I don't know what to do or where to go,I didn't bring my phone here, I have access to only emails, Please can you send me $3500 today so I can return home, As soon as I get home I would refund it immediately.Write me so I can let you know how to send it. Keep this to your self only please!!. Thanks

I wait to hear from you soon

Regard's
{victim's first name}

Great tips to follow to avoid Nigerian email scams

Do not click on any flashing signs in your inbox or on websites: Normally, these red flashy bars have words like "you have won a lottery of $50,000" or "Click to claim your prize" or "you are our 99,999th subscriber, click to claim $1,000,000" or "Your country is eligible! Click to Live and Work in the US"
These promises are not true: The purpose of the scam is to get money out of your bank account, not to put money into it.
Never provide your email address username and password plus the bank details. They will withdraw all the money from your bank account as well as sending fake emails asking for a lot of money from all your colleagues and friends.
Do not believe photographs of the “treasure” or about "dead rich parents" who left behind huge sums of money in a bank account somewhere in Nigeria or West Africa.
Do not agree to travel anywhere to meet these people. They may invite you to conferences promising to host you in luxurious hotels. Instead, they sometimes try to lure victims to meet them in Africa or other countries. Victims have been robbed of everything and even murdered.
Be aware that these scams are well-known. They used to be called “Nigerian letters” because they came by mail, but now these messages also come by phone, fax, or email.

Bottomline: Be very CAREFUL with anybody or email promising you a lot of FREE MONEY!

Read about the story here

Google Africa blog launched!

2008-07-05T12:07:00.003+03:00

Google, the popular search engine, has launched the Official Google Africa Blog to discuss news, stories and thoughts in sub Saharan Africa. The 3 day-old blog, has a Google Africa discussion forum with topics on products, Internet and activities in Africa. To be able to participate in the forum, you have to pick a nickname, write something about who you are and why you are interested in the forum and finally get approved by the owner/administrator.

The blog is written in two languages: english and french. In future it would be a great idea to include Swahili which is spoken by over 70 million people in East Africa.

Gadget Competition
For the first time, the Google Gadget competition is open to East African University students. The competition launched in February 2008 and closes on the 14th July 2008. Gadgets are, small, simple applications that run on web pages. There are gadgets for easy email access, to-do lists, football results, and other fun uses. Read more about this competition on the official google gadgets page.

Prizes
Five students will receive a US$350 stipend and the winner of the Best Overall Gadget will receive a US$600 stipend.

You got only 10 days left and hurry and submit your gadgets here

World's best presentation contest 2008

2008-06-26T18:41:00.012+03:00

You think you got the best presentation skills?! Well, a contest organized by Slideshare has just opened, running from the 25th June to July 31st, enough time to have all your entries in by then. You are free to convince the world about anything, could be your dream, NGOs, the suffering in your community - a sure way to get that word out on finally getting the publicity you so much desired for your community or project.

Enter different presentations at most 10 times to increase chances of clinching the master prize, here. Remember to register, if you do not have an account, and files must not be more than 50 MB, read more of the contest rules, at bottom of this page. Nothing to do with illegal or pornographic material is allowed for submission. East African nationals are free to participate as they not part of the banned countries list. Sudan is the only African nation banned from participation, according to the rules.

Taking time to look at the winning presentations of 2007, is motivating as it would give you a clue to what odds you have to beat to win. I have enjoyed shift happens - voted among the winning presentations last year.

There are cool awards up for grabs, among which are;

best presentation, 1st award
Apple MacBook Air worth $1799
13-inch, 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory, 80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard drive
- this is your prize, dubbed the world's thinnest notebook on the Mac site

2nd prize:
Amazon Kindle worth $359
Display: 6" diagonal E-Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 4-level gray scale, Size in inches: 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7"

Micheal Lewis, best selling author of Moneyball, talking about the amazon kindle "...think of a book you'd like to read and in 30 seconds its on your screen. Its magic" read more here

Third Prize :
iPod Nano 8 GB worth $199
Could be great for listening to mp3 language lessons, music, storing all those files you want to move around with (a flash disk)

Now, lets see those prizes coming to East Africa guys, especially, UG.

Oooh the web!

2008-06-05T20:12:00.004+03:00

Its one of those days, where I spend several hours infront of a computer screen browsing around on the net. Today, is no different, with Internet cafe staff mentioning that am on course of breaking the record of sitting at the computer longest, at least in their cafe ;)

My browsing has taken me through checking and replying to my mails, reading the local dailies (Monitor and Newvision), reading a monthly scholarship newsletter, conducting a Google search on how earn-money-online, to mention but a few. Imagine doing this from morning till evening for a period of about 10 hours, only occasionally leaving to visit the restroom for a 5mins break. How many pages opened and closed, liked and disliked, detest because of their content and others you would to keep as references. At the end of it all, I can cannot recall them all, not even remember the message in the the first email I read.

The thought took back to the time I signed up for my email address, opening my first email (spam) and so thrilled some stranger is asking me to buy medicines in a US pharmacy promising that they will boost my muscles! Sweet memories, aren't they, if we were all to recall the first time we felt we were getting to communicate with the whole world. The only websites I knew then were yahoo for email and could find no further use for paying extra airtime to use the Internet.

The story is different now, with all the time so far spent today on the net, i still feel like I have just started browsing. My friends are just logging to chat on yahoo and msn messenger downloaded on this computer , the scholarships search-list is not exhausted yet (over 100 listings), I have not written a blog entry yet, so many news stories to read on google and bbc...especially the technology sections.

And now with my butt and legs almost giving way to fatigue, I cannot help it but start moaning ...ooooooh the web!!

;)

WiFi discussion...

2008-04-04T19:36:00.006+03:00

An interesting discussion is emerging and making it a blog post is taking it from running behind the scenes to marvel at the different opinions that each of us may have. A background on where all this is coming from…

A comment left behind by a fellow blogger, Mario Behling, about the "WiFi teacher on Fon site" blog post runs thus,

Bringing Internet access to remote communities and making it inexpensive, accessible and easy to maintain is great. However to my mind I prefer really free wireless freifunk networks in contrast to data collecting companies like fon. I prefer not to be dependent on one company. My dream are wireless networks that act as a public space controlled by the public not by companies - just like a public street in contrast to a shopping mall. It is a question of liberty. Hope we can work together and achieve this goal together. The constant work of the freifunk community all over the world is a fantastic start for doing just that...

Personally, I got an issue with people or companies who claim that their networks are "free" "open" yet in the real sense of the word are instead caching your data, selling your details to third party companies, spamming you and worse still take no responsibility to ensure proper use of their network. Thus leading to very slow connections, virus infections – making the whole idea seem a nuisance!

Free networks are really a great idea but without somebody taking responsibility of how and what the network should be used for, may lead to network failure after a very short period of time! A case in point is when the network gets connectivity problems - who works/responds to these? Who pays for it? Who kicks off users who are out to make other people's lives hell or anti-development people? There are lots of these in the rural communities too. Students as well, are always out experimenting with viruses, new technology, and if your network is built with inexpensive equipment which you wouldn't want to overload with lots of processing-power guzzling programs, then you need someone to occasionally evaluate network performance over a given period. But still, am really pro-free networks since this is the only way to bridge the ever increasing digital divide!

Below is what Peter Kremer wrote explaining his position on being a fan of FON, though it is a direct response to Mario, I will make it available to all of us

I admire the work of Freifunk a lot, and would rather make a mesh network than the Fon thing I am doing now. But the wide open country I live in is not a suitable space for a mesh network. Further more I cope with a lack of young tweakers en hackers to do their share in the work. So for that I stick to the one village I live in. This network I keep alive for 4 years now. The work I do for Fon gives me the possibility to talk to people and influence the way they think about offering WiFi to their guest. Usually we add a free system as well. Sorry to disappoint you Mario, but sometimes you have to go for second best to chance the world a bit.

Well, now you have the whole discussion just as it has been behind the scenes. My question is, what do you think? Leave your comment behind and probably it could be another blog post.

:-) enjoy!

Wi-Fi teacher on Fon site!

2008-03-27T16:39:00.010+03:00

While on a study tour to Netherlands, I was taken in as an apprentice by Peter Kremer and his family with an objective of learning the insides of how his 9.1km WiFi link supplying Internet in the little town of baard, friesland works! From the insides of the old church building occupying the centre of baard, with squeaky stairs, he diligently climbs as he delivers his first lesson - a WiFi enthusiast must never be afraid of height! From the moment I met him while at a Wifi summer camp in Leiden; passion, enthusiasm and determination to spread the reach of the Internet via WiFi was much of what was reflected in whatever he did especially looking at the Wifi competitions at the camp. It’s definitely that passion and drive now taking him around to neighbouring towns and restaurants with the sole aim of making the Internet easily accessible and available for guests and tourists. His enthusiasm has got him voted for the best fonero of the month! It’s all posted here on the fon website

Now in his own words...

Top Fonero of the Month

Peter Kremer is a FONhero in our FON Support Community and is working to install FON Spots in the 29 villages that make up the Littenseradiel municipality in Friesland, the Netherlands.

“My goal is to install at least one FON Spot in every one of the 29 villages and in all of their recreational facilities. I believe a FON Spot is the perfect way to begin offering wireless internet connection to these areas. FON Spots are inexpensive, require low maintenance, and are user friendly. We also have an increase in tourism in the area, and I want to make it easy for our guests to get online this summer. Installing the first 10 FON Spots went a bit slowly, but now people are getting familiar with the system and we’re moving quite fast. Campsites, cafés, restaurants, hotels, gas stations, community centers and village harbours -- they are all on my list, and half of the work is already done.”

-- Peter Kremer

Congratulations Peter and keep up the good work!

:-) John

eLearning Africa 2007, May 28th - 30th

2007-05-30T18:05:00.002+03:00

With more than 1200 registered participants from over 82 different countries spanning 5 continents (with over 70% from Africa), 40 exhibitors and sponsors, 12 countries and 308 speakers and chairpersons from 55 countries, eLearning Africa 2007 has established itself as the conference on ICT for Development, Training and Education with the largest international audience worldwide, providing insight into what is going on in the ICT supported education and training sector in Africa.

The 2nd consecutive annual event which took place from May 28 - 30, 2007 at Safari Park hotel Nairobi – Kenya, offered an extensive programme, with 308 speakers from 55 countries taking part in plenary, presentation and demonstration sessions, as well as panel discussions within 57 themed sessions and 17 pre-conference workshops and seminars.

The main focus of the conference was on ICT for development, training and education, which is a core component of the development plans of most African governments. ICTs are being integrated into many national educational systems in order to reach the Millennium Goal of "Education for All".

Education was given a special emphasis in the programme, which included a wide range of topics, such as eLearning in medical education and the fight against HIV and AIDS, mobile learning, open source and open content, as well as eLearning in schools, higher education institutions and in the public sector.

The speakers include representatives from major development organizations such as UNESCO, UNEVOC, the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) and the World Bank, as well as national and governmental institutions, mainly from Africa but also from Europe, Asia and North America.

eLearning Africa is an annual conference organized by ICWE GmbH and Hoffmann & Reif.

john, using the "One laptop per child", OLPC computer inside the conference exhibition hall. I wonder why they do not call it "one laptop per person" and go ahead and manufacture several for everyone in Africa. This would quickly bridge the digital divide, or what do you think?!

Lacking

- Having most of the big IT firms attending and exhibiting at the conference, we could still not broadcast the 3-day workshop on the Internet! We had all the big bandwidth satellite dishes on display but none could even broadcast event programs, videos, etc either on a LAN, Internet or TV!

- With all the networking, new friendships, ideas generated at the conference, no platform is in place to continue the sharing or discussions unless on a private initiative. A mailing list, discussion board, forum, blog etc could have been setup yet web 2.0 was a major topic as well on this international conference!

terrible travel to e-learning africa International conference, 27th May 2007

2007-05-30T17:57:00.001+03:00

Moving long distances in and around east africa has always excited me, but having done it for quite a long while, the interest & enthusiasm is fast fading away. Being in correspondence with the organizers of the 2nd International conference on e-learning hosted in Nairobi, a bus trip to Nairobi was another journey to look forward to at the end this May.

Early sunday morning 27th May, 0600hrs, the journey to the Akamba bus stand was in top gear and promptly at, 0700hrs, the bus was rolling through Kampala streets. With good speed, we went through the car jam on jinja street and the terrible bumps along the way towards eastern Uganda. Just before Bugiri town, the bumps are just too worse to ignore, making it worse was the driver, who was driving as if he was competing in a grand prix!
Getting to Busia border at about 1100hrs, we cleared out just fine and we were soon back on our way to Kisumu, the next big town, inside Kenya. All through the journey, am taking time to kick out the boredom, reading a local paper, The Monitor, and enjoying once again both the sugar & tea plantations that dominate this particular route. Getting to Kisumu was pretty fine, enjoyed nyama choma, rested, until we got back on the road after about 30 minutes.

The rosy parts of the journey come to a gloomy end when the bus starts to move without moving!! ;) The bus comes to a complete halt in the middle of nowhere several kilometres and hours from the next big town, Nakuru. The driver comes out with a sheepish smile mentioning that the fuel has just got finished out of the fuel tank.. A round of questions on when we shall next be on the road, where are we? Why was this worked on before? Refunds? I loved their response to anything like refunds; services once sold are not returnable! A fellow passenger so frustrated, devoted time to decode AKAMBA; All Kenyans Anticipate More Breakdown Anguish!!

Regardless of the persistent re-assurances from the both the driver and his co-driver, some frequently travelers on this bus knew the right thing to do already; find alternative transport!
After about over 2 hours of patiently waiting for the bus problems to get solved, which were never solved anyway, a big number of the remain passengers too, found alternative transport.
Time check; 1830, getting a matatu (taxi) to Nakuru town is no easy task as most of the ones passing-by are all full to capacity. One later came by and carried 8 of us to Nakuru amidst strong rains and storm. It finally came to my notice that Kenyans, probably, drive much faster than the Ugandans do, do not ask me about their road accident rates!

Getting to Nakuru at about 2130, we found the mololine couches still fishing for passengers to Nairobi, on board we got as well. From the stage, the driver took us to the police station, where we thoroughly checked for explosives, firearms, stuff that could hurt others. We got to Nairobi about 3 hours later, well past midnight. I could not get picked up then and the most familiar place where the matatu driver could drop us was the akamba bus stage. Looking around for budget lodges nearby, we all got to rest our super tired bodies to atleast have sanity the next morning. Worse still, at this hour of the night, none of us could find something edible!

Lessons learn't: travel with a reliable bus service and always carry drinking water, something edible with you when you travel long distances.

;)

Dont hang on...

2007-05-25T15:17:00.001+03:00

Ever been in a tight spot? Pretty sure everybody has, at least, whatever each of us considers to be a tight spot!

Another question; ever been pretty happy at work and your environment but what you are doing does not earn you enough to care for your bills (housing, party, parents, etc)? Maybe not everybody has experienced that but I have.

And what do you do in such a situation? Well, you would probably, inform your boss that you are broke and he should fill your pocket with some coins. What if he doesnt? Well, you leave him the way he is and get on to find another job that can satisfy you. That quite sums up everything that has happened to me at my workplace this year.

Am happy to have setup the networks that i have, trained communities, learnt different local languages, partied and mixed with as many community people and organisations as i possibly could. But all in all, it never takes away the ever nagging feeling that you dont have enough money to pay your bills, at least, not by yourself - you depend on someone else on doing it for you - like you are hand-capped! God made us strangely, each of us loves the nice feeling of doing a job and at the end of the day getting paid for it, at least, the agreed amount. It becomes complicated when you have to tell somebody every now and then about what you want to do, as though, you not old enough to make personal decisions!

This kind of behaviour makes you think of another job with hope that it will come with financial independence with no questions on how you want to spend what you earn but only as long as you get the boss' work done! I should say this is a had decision to make, considering, you are leaving behind something that you have seen grow from almost nothing to an east african model, being so attached to colleagues & the local people, the network already set up with other community organizations allover east africa etc. But be as it may, when you finally throw in the towel, you realize that you got some independence and freedom - from everyday tasks - and your mind begins to work a little more too; especially, on where you have to earn your next crust of bread!

Well, spending time learning more about community development in Tanzania, has made me relate more with the rural poor enough preparation to rhythm well with my own career. Am out to set up as many community networks as i can; its always handy to know how to handle and network with the rural folk. The approach towards a rural person should be different from the way you would handle one from an urban area. In the urban area, we take so many things for granted, sometimes, we think they are obvious to everyone around us! At least, i have the skills necessary in handling such a situation.

enough of my thoughts...

Meditating...

2007-05-14T10:57:00.001+03:00

Now, I know i have been out of action for quite a while now and trust me, this is unlike me at all. I have been taking time to "chew" on whatever I have been doing the past months. Its also been a nice time to take a break from it all with friends here and there.

But well, its been so productive and life changing... Yaah, am now considering on spending more time setting up wireless networks in Uganda. Well, after receiving a some stats from a friend regarding access to ICTs in the whole world, I asked myself on whether the stats were right, on which i decided to try moving around in Uganda and find out for myself. Uganda, is among the last country in east africa with least access to ICTs, see for yourself here.

From the stats, Uganda, is far behind both Kenya and Tanzania. And on moving around to other districts away from Kampala, am forced to wholly agree that its absolutely true. There is barely any ICT infrastructure to talk about in these areas.

From the above perspective, am deciding to devote my time more on creating ICT awareness wherever I may in Uganda. Right now, am having positive progress in one of the districts in Uganda, Kasese. Last week, I was invited to the district meetings where, i was given the opportunity to talk to the district officials on the benefits of networking, especially, having their individual district offices share information on whatever projects they could be working on instead of having to physically move with flash sticks from one office to another!

Well, i will keep you posted on this. It feels nice to be back to active blogging...

Till next time.

ciao!

pics of another interesting wifi connection...

2007-03-14T01:03:00.001+03:00

This is the tanzania electricity supply company, tanesco, office in Kayanga. Notice the surrounding tall trees and the small office building below.

The parabola antenna up in the tree majestically looking towards the Internet station. We cleared a few branches to have "signal breathing space" for the antenna! ;)

The linksys wap11 getting a dressing in a 5-litre jerrycan, easily available water proof box! We later heavily covered it with tape, to keep out as much rain water, fog & bugs as possible.

Coming down the huge eucalyptus tree, after climbing 50 metres above ground. I never intended to do this but its always a wise idea if you ever want the connection to come through. Other people imagine that they are seeing where you want the antenna to point, but in reality, they are just imagining it!! Another way to prove, "if you want anything done right, better do it yourself" ;)

This is the view from the top of the eucalyptus tree infront of the tanesco office. Notice the so many surrounding masts. In the foreground, is the celtel mast; middle, national telephone company - ttcl mast; and in the background, tigo mast. Celtel & tigo are mobile phone companies offering gsm. The tigo mast is close to where our small mast with antenna is.

More pics? Visit here
Enjoy,

The 3rd node & home town now bathed in wifi!!

2007-03-14T00:07:00.001+03:00

This node has been amazing! Its something i never really had on my mind at all on doing. The next step was to setup an omni antenna and have whoever wants to access internet via a wireless network card drop in for the signal now and then. Just as I had just finished doing this, a friend and manager of the local electricity supply company, pops up at our office ready to sign up for Internet at his office, 2km away by road.

This would not be a problem at all, but his office is in a valley, total out of line of sight. But upon survey of his site, we realized he got quite a number of tall trees that could hold our antenna as we run down the cables to his office. But still, I was skeptical that we could get a good line of sight considering so many other tall trees around and infront of his office.

Having the long range multi client bridge powering the omni antenna at our base, I could confortably pick up its signal upon climbing nearby tree, about 50 meters off the ground. Well, this gave me strength to have a go at the connection. Having two linksys WAP11 radios lying around, configured one at take its position in the tree at the client side.

The 1st day, mon 12th, was all in vain, as it could not pick up any of the signals. This quite puzzled me alot and made me dig up more on how to configure the WAP11 plus whether they can interoperate with the senao driving the omni antenna at the Internet side. Reading the wap11 manual completely, solved the problem, as it clearly states, the wap11 cannot operate with any other access point unless its one of its own, that is, another wap11 on the other side! Well, i quickly configured the other wap11 and fixed it on the omni antenna on the internet side and prayed that it is powerful enough to push the signal that far.

And am now happy to report that it did not disappoint. We now have the remote site connected to the Internet and the manager is really happy.

Sharpen your IT skills @ the Wirelhttp://www.blogger.com/ess Community Camps this summer!

2007-03-04T15:37:00.001+03:00

I have had quite a good number of good blog followers in and around africa, according to my blog stats. Some of these are known to me, either from past IT workshops, email, msn and others are strangers.

To the IT guys who do read IT stuff that i post on this blog, allow me to pose a few questions to you;

-Do you want to improve your current IT skills?

-Ever had the interest of sharing and learning IT skills and experience within a limited period of time?

-Want to know, learn and experiment with the latest technology in terms of hacking, Operating systems, etc right from the experts in the game?

-Enjoy IT talk?

-Would you like to join "elite" IT forums with "kool" IT experts who are known to you, help you with everyday IT challenges, share new ideas?

Well, this and more is what you always find at the wireless community camps that are organized in europe. 2006 was great for me because, i do not regret attending the Djurslands International Institute of Rural Wireless Broadband, DIIRWB and wifisoft.org organised community camps. Today, am setting up long distance WiFi networks with skills and plenty of support from friends that i met during those two camps.

Join the mailing lists of wifisoft.org or better still check out their website for more info on how to get involved. Email me if you feel my experience in attending last year's camp could be of valuable help to you.

At these camps, there is always a multitude of people from different parts of the world who are ready to share their experiences on using Information technology, for instance; Germany, UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Georgia, east Africa, etc

Download the diirwb bronchure on their activities and the people to contact, here

Another wifi node up & running, 6km away!

2007-02-24T22:20:00.001+03:00

Mavuno, a development non-profit, 12km away by road from fadeco, base station, has now been connected to the Internet via wireless.

People always mention that making a wifi connection is fun but i have come to discover that its sometimes so stressful most especially when you are only surrounded by very eager people only ready to use the Internet. Others are so skeptical of the whole situation, that the only sentiments you hear are all negative. Being the only one with strong faith that it will finally work make everybody happy in the end, you are forced to spend time winning over allies and thus more time as you go about tuning the connection to your liking. The situation is further made complicated as you have to drive between the two locations, climb the mast, enroll somebody without a with absolutely no idea about wifi networks to read the stats on the laptop or carefully adjust the antennas, etc.

Regardless of all the trouble involved, its the sweet victory of making yet another really long shot wifi connection that brings that winning smile on your face. You quickly forget all the trouble you went through just like a new mother quickly forgets her labour pains :D
Last week was spent this way.

Marko Faber, a volunteer at Mavuno expressed interest in having an Internet connection via wireless, installed at the training centre in Mavuno. After a couple of emails here and there, the equipment was brought in from Germany by a guest visiting their training centre.

Here with Marko on top of the roof at Mavuno, super-tuning the antenna using netstumbler.

Check me out in wifi heaven ;)
Am tuning the antenna at fadeco, to align with the one at mavuno, 6km away, direct line of sight.

Finally another anode now part of the big wifi network in Kayanga :o)

More pictures, here

A fun filled week on using "dead" computers

2007-02-17T12:33:00.001+03:00

Ooh, its taken my quite sometime to update you on how we spent the past week on using "dead" computers. The participants on the very first day, were interested in changing the theme of the workshop, especially on substituting "dead" with "computers without hard disks" The argument was that, the computer was not completely dead - the rest of the other parts are working (or must be) for it to be used as a client anyway! But according to Joseph, "dead" is used as a "catch word", makes the listener think a little more about the subject.

Delegates from Uganda, Tanzania, holland came in to have first hand info on setting up and using dead computers. We missed the company of colleagues who had promised to attend from both Rwanda and Burundi. Among the participants was Ahmed Ndaula of Ugabytes Initiative, based in Kampala - Uganda; Kisembo & Steven from Kasese, Uganda; staff from Kibengwe telecentre, bukoba - tanzania and representing IICD, Bernadette Huizinga.

On the first day of the workshop, Joseph (left) and Ahmed (right) giving a program layout of the week-long workshop. Participants are also introduced to the computer terms such as "thin clients" and why not "big clients"; why use a "dead" computer when you get a "living" one? ;)

The participants are introduced to the physical pieces and bits of the computer. Hands-on training different parts of the computer, troubleshooting, maintenance, etc

The new issue of the telecentre times was also introduced to the participants. The telecentre times is an east african forum where telecentre managers share experiences on challenges and successes on how they are bettering their rural telecentres. The story of the 8km link from our telecentre to a secondary school in our community, has been published in this paper as well.

The participants getting a "feel" of using dead computers. After setting up a server using suse 9.1, floppy images for the particular network cards from rom-o-matic.org website, ltsp files and dhcp, the clients were ready to boot on the server. In total, we had 8 clients fully working on one server by the last day of the workshop.

A closer look at the suse clients after being setup. It was sweet reward for a long week's work. The participants were excited at having to use dead computers and most of them promised to set up a similar project at their telecentres. We all came to a conclusion, that most information telecentres do have computers that only have the hard disk as a faulty component whereas the rest is in perfect working order. These are perfect for acting as clients in a "server-client" relationship.

Having Bernadette launch and officially close our thin-client workshop on saturday, 17th feb, was great after waiting for her to come over for a couple of days. We could not cap it all without having a video & chat conference with Peter Kremer, via skype.

Pictures, always so nice at the end of workshops or meetings, and this was no different. And what best place than to have a nice picture showing exactly where the workshop was held! From (L-R): Steven Katsimbura, Kisembo John Baptist (Kasese, Uganda); Joseph Sekiku (director), and john (author).

We really had a nice time throughout the whole week, making new friends, and working so closely together but it was a time also to share skills on anything you can imagine especially when different people come together. From computers to music, scholarships, networking, etc

enjoy ;)

Announces an ICT workshop on thin clients

2007-02-09T12:58:00.002+03:00

FADECO telecentre announces an Information Communication Technology workshop for telecentre technicians, manager, computer geeks to run from the 12th until 16th feb, 2007 in Karagwe. Everybody is invited, registration is required though!

Objective:
Develop a model for rural tele-centres to deploy low-cost hardware; how to implement a thin-client network using Open source software.

Target:
The course is intended for those running/ managing information resource centres, computer labs and IT technicians.

Modus operandi:
The training will offer a hands-on experience and training on how to make the best use of your networks. The training will run from 8.30 a.m - 6.30 P.M every day for 5 days. It will cover every thing from building a computer, installing software, configuring servers, etc.

Background:
The Linux Terminal Server Project adds thin-client support to Linux servers. This is a flexible, cost effective solution that is empowering schools, businesses, and organizations all over the world to easily install and deploy desktop work-stations. Thin-clients can be used to browse the Web, send e-mail, create documents, and run other desktop applications. Linux thin-clients have proven to be extremely reliable because tampering and viruses are virtually non-existent.

WORKSHOP PLAN:
Day 1: Introduction to Computers and to Open Source Software
Day 2: Technical/ Mechanical aspects of the Computer hardware: Try to put together a Computer
Day 3: Setting up LAN:
1. How to set up and manage Local |Area Networks (LANS)
2. How to set up Thin Client \networks using Dead Computers
3. Basic Computer maintenance and troubleshooting.

Day 4: How to set up a Content Server. This will help all who will be interested to implement the model, to train other people effectively because you will be having content offline and in the event of no internet, you do not get affected.
Day 5: Wireless Networks: This will be an introduction and site visit to our wireless infrastructure and link.

As I already highlighted, the idea is to have these computers work as terminals, we shall need a floppy drive working and a network card available and probably 32MB of ram.

mail me if willing to attend here

Heard about "Project 128"?

2007-02-08T08:22:00.001+03:00

"Project 128" - that is, 150 usb sticks and a blog, http://128.subnet.at/

Subnet, an organization in salzburg - Austria, has given away 150 USB sticks with a capacity of 128mb each. Whoever gets hold of a stick puts something on it they would like to share. A photo, a text, the address of a website, whatever people think the world should see.

Then it is your turn to pass the stick on, to whoever you want. The stick then travels from person to person, taking a piece of information with it each time. The holders of the stick are asked to write on this website and tell how they’ve got the stick, what they found on it, and what they are planning to do with it.

The sticks are numbered from 001 to 150 and am having a brand new naked stick number 109. A friend of mine mailed me the usb disk from salzburg. There another one circulating with a friend of mine in Kampala.

One thing am pretty sure going to put on the stick is definitely about wireless, my blog url inclusive! So be my friend so i can pass it to you...

Jos en Lineke visiting our projects in Karagwe

2007-02-06T08:40:00.001+03:00

After hearing so much about what is happening with FADECO, both Jos en Lineke duindam of dewelstand, set out to find out and see for themselves.
Here both of them are looking at the sand mine at the eden centre in Kyanyamisa. The stones have reached a state of softness that small blows melts them into nice construction sand, a much cheaper alternative if its done right at the construction site!

Also being great enthusiasts of wireless networks and most especially, having supported my efforts towards setting up the wireless network in Kayanga, they definitely wanted to have 1st hand info on how the wireless network at Karagwe secondary school.

Down at the antenna site at karagwe secondary, looking as far as their eyes could go, trying to notice where fadeco base station is. The antenna is mounted on top of the school's computer laboratory. Joseph taking them through the sequence of events on getting it to work.

The headteacher, joseph Kabalimu, talks about the thrill of having Karagwe secondary school connected to the Internet, plus a brief on the performance of the school.

With a satisfied smile on her face, Lineke takes a picture of one of the teachers accessing the Internet.

After spending about 2 days in Karagwe, we all drove out towards entebbe airport, Kampala on their way to Cameroun, expect them back to holland at the beginning of march.

;)

more time with Mark & Arjan

2007-02-03T21:50:00.001+03:00

After spending about 2 days in Karagwe, the following day, 28th jan, we began our journey to bukoba with scheduled destinations being jatropha farmer, Jos en Lineke in Mugana & Bart's campsite in Bukoba.
This is on the way to Mugana.

At the jatropha farm in Bukoba. Notice how keen the jatropha ethusiasts just dont want miss a point in whatever the fieldman shows them!

Mark just about to take a picture of both Jos en Lineke duindam at the entrance to their guest house in Mugana, Bukoba.
Its such a spacious building able to accommodate over 12 people built in a similar way like their guest house in pingjum, holland.

We completely the evening with a beer, a lovely dinner with soup and a lot of dutch flying about with me togather with joseph, trying to recall much of the dutch words that we could master!

;)

Mark & Arjan visiting

2007-02-03T21:48:00.001+03:00

Just before the end of january, 26th to be exact, Mark van den Bosch and Arjan Doeswijk of yes-africa, were on a visit to East Africa. Joseph picked them up from the Akamba bus station, in Kampala - Uganda.

It was nice to share a barbecue with these guys last summer in holland and again meet them here once again. There talk is so much characterised with the energy that they hope is going to take africa out of poverty - energy from jatropha. Jatropha, is a plant commonly so popular with vanilla growers. Vanilla uses it as a support to reach sunlight, since its only a crawling plant.

Just before they arrived, a month back, they had sent it a modified generator that uses both diesel & biofuel (sun flower oil, cooking oil, jatropha oil, etc). So their visit to our centre in Karagwe, was to forge a way forward for the jatropha business & also get the generator set for power generation in the area. The generator is really heavy, weighing about 1,130 kg & capable of producing power of about 30 kilo Watts.

Mark demonstrating on how he would like to see the biofuel generator fitted onto the permanent concrete block. From left to right: Joseph sekiku, Mark, Salmon (site mason) & Arjan.

On the right, Mark & Arjan trying out jatropha in the field, down in a typical jatropha garden with Sekiku at the Eden Centre, Kyanyamisa - karagwe.

The white smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe of the bio-fuel generator. This was just below we blew the pre-heating fuse on it.
It took us plenty of time to get it to start, about 2 days, giving up in the end, pretty much frustrated. The starting motor gear teeth couldnt fully engage with the teeth on the engine and therefore, the engine would not start!

Well, we had a nice time after that, among which was a visit to a vanilla/jatropha farmer in Bukoba, visit to Jos en Lineke guest house in Mugana and finally, having a pretty nice pizza at Bart's campsite at the lake victoria beach, bukoba!

;)

Random new year resolutions...

2007-01-23T08:36:00.001+03:00

I know its kind of late to roll out resolutions, but, its always better late than never at all :-)

- Get a few more people happy with a wireless connection
- a scholarship to learn more wireless networking skills
- make more long range links, probably, over 50km?!
- become a wireless equipment reseller
- & finally enjoy life

:-)

Happy holidays everybody..

2006-12-22T01:37:00.001+03:00

Thank you for your interest in my blog. I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy a happy new year!

Stay tuned!

:-)

the computers are finally here!!

2006-12-22T01:09:00.001+03:00

The computers, hubs, antennas, cables, nuts & bolts and all the computer accessories that were shipped from holland to tanzania are well received. Togather with Joseph we collected our stuff from Hekima secondary school.

the hubs are being unwrapped and getting readied for deployment. They sure will be a huge boast to building good local area networks for secondary schools.

Lucy Zawadi, a computer instructor at FADECO telecentre examing the best hubs to deploy in her computer lab.

John (author), showing a satisfied smile at having the hubs finally & safely their destination. The hard work of picking them up from friends in holland is finally done.

Big thanks to all the guys of wirelessnederland.nl, wifisoft.org, Peter Kremer, Jos & Lineke, Bauke, JPD, marko & mariska, bas lebbing, martin junginger & all wellwishers who sacrificed their time & equipment to contribute towards the success of ICTs in east africa.

asante sana!

Pictures of Dar es salaam

2006-12-21T22:47:00.001+03:00

The wireless satellite dishes linking Satcom networks & their clients to the rest of the world.

Wireless networking in much more utilisation in Dar. This is a mast installed on top of satcom networks building, Dar es salaam.

:-)

Building Voice Infrastructure ebook released!

2006-12-16T14:25:00.001+03:00

IT +46, a swedish company announced on the 4th dec, the release of a new guide to support the spread of low-cost communications in the poorest parts of the world. This free guide to Voice over IP (voip), available in four major languages, is an effort to disseminate the use of telephony over the Internet in developing regions.

The 40-page guide targets both technical and non-technical readers. The first part presents the essentials of telephony over the Internet. For those interested in the more technical details, hands-on guidelines and configuration files are included in the second part. The examples provide essential background to build your own low-cost telephony system.

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the Acacia Initiative of the International Development Research Centre, idrc, of Canada.

Download the guide here, http://www.it46.se/show_entry.php?id=266

telecentre management workshop, 12th - 14th dec

2006-12-15T18:57:00.001+03:00

The International Centre for Science and High Technology, ICS, based in trieste, Italy togather with the United Nations Industrial development, UNIDO, organisation organised a workshop at Hotel Africana, Kampala - Uganda with a theme, telecentre management: a perspective on energy from renewable sources. Participants included: Nicola Drago (ICS/UNIDO consultant), Alexander Varghese (UNIDO east african chief), Prof. V. K. Damodaran (mini-hydro expert), Danner Walter (biomass expert), Ramesh dharmaraj (photovoltaic expert), Ministry of ICTs - Uganda, Uganda Investment authority represatatives, telecentre representatives from Uganda, Kenya and tanzania.

Presentations on renewable energy options available to telecentres included photovoltaic, mini-hydro, palm oil (vegetable oil) and biomass energy. Telecentre managers were asked to identify resources (streams, agricultural residues, coffee husks, organic waste etc) in their communities that could be used to generate electricity to run a fully ICT-based telecentre in the remote communities where they are based. A case study specially discussed in the workshop included a mini-hydro 10kW power project implemented by UNIDO in partnership with Tatedo in Kinko village, lushoto district, Tanga - Tanzania. The project was successfully completed and now supplies a telecentre and another 100 households with 24 hours electricity.

Daner Walter giving his presentation on how to best utilise biomass in electricity production. He mentioned that we have quite a huge number of landfills around but uncontrolled & thus energy cannot be harvested from them.

John Kibuuka (writer), fadeco telecentre, seated next to Felician Ncheye of Sengerema telecentre, tanzania.

Recommendations from the workshop included;
-Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) to help with reduction of taxes, levies etc
-Merge together to buy equipment for instance solar panels, etc
-ICT policy, its revolving, suggestion is to keep in touch, the policy gives the rules,
-Technical presentations: photovoltaic, mini hydro, biomass. There needs to be a plan. Think about energy planning for the telecentre. To optimize energy turn off the lights, devices that are not being used should be switched off!
-With power rationing – business is greatly reduced, no service to the telecentre customers. Hybrid solution could supplement the available grid power when its not available.
-Fluctuation & failure of energy. Backup systems & types should be set up to have consistent power supplied to the telecentre machines
-Technical know-how to the telecentre managers – Recommendation is to equip the telecentre managers confident in the handling of the machines at the centres especially on the maintenance & design of the systems handled
-Garbage can be sorted, graded & used to generate income out of it. This can be used in the biomass digester
-Comparing diesel & palm oil, vegetable oil is that the money stays within the country, farmers are paid for the job and the workers too.

Telecentre managers should identify renewable energy sources in their communities, UNIDO is a willing partner to find appropriate funding for the project. Am glad to have been among the participants & presenters at the workshop.

:-)

ICTfundi workshop, 7th - 8th dec, Dar

2006-12-15T18:56:00.001+03:00

The International Institute for Communication and Development, IICD, organised a workshop bringing togather experts in tanzania with various skills in ICTs for a 2 day workshop in Dar es salaam. The group which agreed to be called ICTfundi (fundi is swahili word which means one who repairs things).

Bernadette Huizinga, IICD officer, in the background. She guides the group on the way towards working togather to bring better ICT services to the region.

Some of the experts very attentive to understand how they can bring their rich experience towards making ICT services easily available. From Left to right, Andrew (NPK technologies), Dogan Gusera (University computing centre), Mark Farahani (kilosa telecentre) and John Kibuuka (fadeco telecentre).

The group has an active dgroups mailing list and continually post messages regarding ICTs on it...

IICD roundtable workshop, 4th dec

2006-12-15T18:54:00.001+03:00

The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), a non-profit that specialises in information and communication technologies (ICTs) organised a roundtable workshop to discuss issues affecting sustainability of telecentres.

This is entire team debating issues at tilapia hotel, mwanza (tanzania). Hirnoy Bamerdas (standing) is giving his presentation on how mwanza is covered by wifi signals. We had representatives from IICD in foreground: Bernadette Huizinga, Richard Fischer & Miep Lenoir. The other participants were: Naomi Masella (Cromabu telecentre - mwanza), Charles Ngatigwa (Mazingira telecentre - shinyanga), Mark Farahani (Kilosa telecentre - kilosa), Joyce Mutta (kibengwe telecentre - Bukoba), A. Karsan (union of tanzania press club - chairman) & John Kibuuka (FADECO telecentre - Karagwe)

Bernadette & Richard taking a moment to let the issues affecting telecentres in the rural areas in tanzania fully sink in.

The entire group taking time off in the evening after a long day.

Some of the conclusions at the workshop was to form a national telecentre network linking all telecentre managers in the country and encourage more telecentre-to-telecentre visits as way of learning from eachother. With the newly formed relationships & friendships, everybody was pledging support towards helping eachother towards providing information to the rural communities wherever we may be based.

More CWRC pics

2006-11-15T12:38:00.001+03:00

Setting about climbing the mast at nakaseke telecentre, one of the areas where we set up a wireless link with a neighbouring teacher training centre. Every eager to get up but Alberto probably was more bold than everybody else :-)

The wireless team just after successfully testing the connection between Nakaseke telecentre with the teacher training centre. From left to right: Juma Okee(Lira telecentre), Peter balaba (nakaseke telecentre manager), John Kibuuka (fadeco telecentre), Frank Kitumba (organiser), volunteer student, Louise Berthilson (facilitator) and a student from Makerere university.

more of these pics, here..

enjoy,

:-)

CWRC in pics...

2006-11-13T13:24:00.001+03:00

The round of participants attentively listening to Alberto (in red) of IT46.se giving a lecture about the wp54g compex access points during the Community wireless resource centre training.

CWRC, from the 6th nov. '06

2006-11-10T09:58:00.001+03:00

Last week, i was attending the community wireless resource centre (CWRC) training with lectures & practical sessions taking place at Makerere university, faculty of both food science & technology.

The training was established within the department of electrical engineering with support from the International development research centre (IDRC) with technical input from swedish-based IT +46, http://www.it46.se/ facilitators: Berthilson Louise & Escudero Pascual Alberto. The training was tailored towards the need to reduce the high costs of connectivity in IDRC-supported telecentres in Uganda, and to also explore optimal connectivity models such as sharing the existing bandwidth with neighbouring institutions (schools, NGOs, religious institutions...) via outdoor wireless networks.

The aim of the CWRC is towards making connectivity more affordable for telecentres by implementing a communication infrastructure that is shared & managed by the community. In otherwords, a "community wireless network", and it is based on the possibility for groups or communities to build self owned & operated networks.

The training involved both theoretical & practical lectures, my favourites being which was: Access point configuration & troubleshooting, radio link calculations, link budgeting & planning, outdoor radio simulation - an introduction to radio mobile...

I should mention the training was good in furthering my experience with wireless networks & setting up another great wireless link at Nakaseke telecentre.

Thank you to everybody especially Ugabytes, Dorothy Okello, Alberto, Louise and the students too for the great cooperation towards the running of the course.

thank you :)

Internet on mobile phone comes to Karagwe!

2006-10-29T13:08:00.002+03:00

Passing Dr. Msalilwa's drug store yesterday evening, i stumbled upon a service i didnt think was available in Karagwe.

We currently can surf the internet on our phone here in Karagwe, if you are on a network like TIGO. Users can surf the Internet via the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) activated on their handsets. Supported handsets are Nokia 6020, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, Motoral & Panasonic. GPRS networks deliver high-speed data services to mobile phones. Users of GPRS can obtain high-speed access to 'WAP' enabled Internet websites.

They are also offering multimedia messaging service (mms), a store & forward messaging service that allows subscribers to exchange multimedia messages with other mobile subscribers. With MMS, you can transmit media types such as text, pictures, audio, video or combinations of the above.

Bandwidth management book free for download!!

2006-10-22T08:03:00.001+03:00

Below is the text as posted by Peter Kremer on telecentre.org blogs,

The BMO Book Sprint Team is pleased to announce the release of the new free book, “How To Accelerate Your Internet: A practical guide to Bandwidth Management and Optimization using Open Source Software”.

The book was released in October 2006 under a Creative Commons license, and was written in an effort to help network architects understand and troubleshoot problems with managing Internet bandwidth, which often result in unnecessarily high operational costs in the developing world. Network connections are very expensive in most parts of the world, and it is often costly and difficult to add additional network capacity. Therefore, effective management and optimization of bandwidth is crucial.

Research and education benefit significantly from Internet resources, yet the majority of institutions take little or no action to manage their bandwidth usage. This waste results in high operating costs, slow network connections, and frustrated network users. The goal of the book is to provide practical information on how to gain the largest possible benefit from your connection to the Internet.

By prioritizing certain kinds of network activity, reducing the impact of spam and viruses, providing local content caching, and performing extensive monitoring and analysis of network usage, Internet consumption can be brought to manageable levels. This makes it possible to provide equitable access for all users, even when the available bandwidth is quite small. But technical solutions only solve part of the problem. In order to prioritize network traffic, an organization needs to have a clear idea of the intended purpose of the network connection, as well as insight into how the connection is being used.

The book addresses this complex topic by covering the three major components of effective bandwidth management: Effective policy, extensive monitoring & analysis, and solid network implementation. In addition, troubleshooting techniques, advanced performance tuning tips and tricks, and real-world case studies are also provided. The Book Sprint began with online correspondence via email, which led to an initial face-to-face meeting of bandwidth management experts from around the world in May 2006. Intense online collaboration followed over the next few months, which then culminated in the production of the 300 page printed book, as well as a PDF and HTML version. The book was sponsored by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (http://inasp.info/), and was produced in association with the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (http://www.ictp.it/), Aidworld (http://www.aidworld.org/), and Hacker Friendly LLC (http://hackerfriendly.com/). By releasing this work under a Creative Commons license, the Book Sprint Team hopes to disseminate it as widely as possible, bringing this information into the hands of people who need it most.

The book can be downloaded for free, or a printed copy may be purchased at the book’s website: http://bwmo.net/download.html

enjoy :)

EA-TLF 5 - 7th oct...

2006-10-10T11:33:00.001+03:00

Last we attended the East Africa Telecentre Leader's Forum (EATLF), which was hosted at Ridar hotel, situated in Seeta - Kampala, from the 5th - 7th oct '06. The workshop brought togather participants from all over East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania); Rwanda & Burundi. We had participants from other areas around the world including Mark Surman, telecentre.org (Canada); Meddie Mayanja, idrc.org (Canada); Muki hansteen, intel.com (US); Libby Linn, microsoft.com (US); Peter Cranstan, (OKN - UK)

The workshop was a great way to talk about the different technologies at our disposal, especially for rural telecentres. Technologies like wireless were mentioned. A case in point was the recently setup 8km wireless link to a secondary school at FADECO, Karagwe district, Tanzania
Many participants expressed ethusiasm at having wireless connections in their communities. For many, it was the first time to hear of accessing internet via a wireless connection.

Among the resolutions, was a general concesus to have a big wireless workshop in either Kampala or kayanga. During the workshop, participants would be educated more on how wireless can cut down on bandwidth costs, earn some income for the telecentre, create more employment, have more rural people access internet etc.

The full report of the workshop will soon be posted on the ugabytes website, http://www.ugabytes.org/

8km wireles link to secondary school launched!

2006-10-04T00:07:00.001+03:00

Afternoon of tuesday 3rd oct '06, found us at the karagwe secondary school. We set about getting computers & everything else ready for an audio/video conference with friends in europe and the US. We planned to have a conference with Martin junginger & Peter Kremer (netherlands), Joseph croskey (US), lilian njogu (kenya) ...

Martin at utretch university, was the first to address the students. He talked about his place of work, utretch university employing about 2,000 people with over 20,000 students. He also talked to the students about the usefulness of using computers and the Internet among which was: email, research, report writing, chatting & free voip calls just like the one we were conducting :) Martin was able to also view the pictures of the students & everybody present using the webcam we had set up.

Peter later signed in and he too gave an inspiration to the students on the use of computers & the internet. He was also able to view the live webcam transmission from the school.

The headteacher promised to have every student get an email address before they completed their stay at the school. He also gave a short demonstration of the popular google search engine, how to get answers to student questions, etc.

In all the students expressed happiness at being able to finally have internet at their school and currently they are to have access to it in the school library and the computer laboratory under supervision of the librarian & computer teacher respectively.

John (with headphones) & Joseph conducting the audio/video conference with Martin & Peter in Holland. Behind are the students & teachers very listening on the replies beamed over on the big speaker.

More pics, http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjohnah/

karibu sana

:-)

8km wireless link working - finally up!!!

2006-10-01T09:16:00.002+03:00

The computer teacher, Kaungya mujuni, at karagwe secondary school taking in the moment of having internet on his computer. He is happy to finally be able to explore the net in the school's computer lab.

The headteacher, joseph kabalimu, could not quite believe that he was accessing his hotmail box from the comfort of his office, he had to adjust his contact lenses for a closer view.

Now recognising his hotmail inbox, he gets down to work on the urgent emails requiring his attention.

Well, having gone through a series of opening different websites, he was happy it was working fine after all. The speed was much better than what most internet cafes have around here in kayanga. Here is that "grateful" handshake from the headteacher - notice the satisfied smile on his face :o)

more pics can be viewed here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjohnah/

enjoy & dont forget to leave comments

:o)

Using netstumbler - very handy networking tool!

2006-10-01T00:20:00.001+03:00

Using netstumbler to find the best location of the wireless with my personally made omni :) A lovely feeling i should seeing using it to collect an abundant signal, 8km away!!

Students below very eager to have the Internet working at their school. Well, i should say they were really supportive especially when you need someone to pass you a screw driver, ladder... but their endless inquisitive questions can also easily take away your much desired concentration!!

raised antennas & mast ... end of day 2

2006-09-30T23:57:00.001+03:00

A view of the antennas from down below. They are pointing down in the valley in the direction of karagwe secondary school, which is 8km away from where they are stationed.

Well, that was the 1st step forward

:)

putting up the antenna - day 2

2006-09-30T23:40:00.001+03:00

With support from everybody around, joseph and i managed to have the antenna standing at the base station, fadeco.

It sure was had work. The antenna overall height is about 40feet high. We have 2 support wireless about 10 feet from the top to stop from continuous swaying during storms.

We fixed the bridges in a water proof box & mounted it on the antenna mast too.

all the pics - find them here...

2006-09-30T23:35:00.001+03:00

Making the final adjustments to the antennas and getting ready to put it up. More pics, click on the link below

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kjohnah/

enjoy,

:0)

2006-09-30T23:19:00.001+03:00

Joseph & john getting the omni on top of the of the antenna mast.

day1 - wireles link pics

2006-09-30T23:03:00.001+03:00

The FADECO technical team mounting the antenna. Joseph (blue shirt), papa (white shirt) and john (background)

getting 8km wireless link to secondary school

2006-09-30T20:03:00.001+03:00

Let me give everybody a sequence of events on setting this wireless network up:

26th sept, tuesday - bought the antenna poles, welding etc. Mounted the omni & the mesh directional antenna onto highest pole. Reconfigured the senao bridges.

27th sept, wed - finished mounting the pole and the antennas.

28th sept, thurs - went down to karagwe secondary school in the morning to try out the signal strength. Amazingly, we were able to open yahoo, google, fadeco.org though at very low speeds.

29th sept, fri - Had to finalise the connection at the school but disturbed by faulty utp, errors & packets dropped on network cards, low internet signal strength at base station. Finally, sort this out a little & make it to the school in the afternoo at 5pm, very tired, depressed, puzzled... name it!! Dont get the connection done & leave a very disappointed student audience :(

30th sept, sat - get to the school early in the morning 10am and try to find best position for antenna. Got it working with a really good acceptable speed at about 2pm. Set up a LAN quickly with 4 working computers. A very satisfied headteacher and students so engaged in sending email too.

Well, thats just about how i have the 8km wireless link working from Kayanga to Kishoju in Karagwe district, kagera tanzania.

I guess i should post some pictures...

:)

upgrading m0n0wall CF to ver 1.22

2006-09-24T18:53:00.001+03:00

Wow! upgrading my monowall IDE compact flash (CF) card from version 1.21 to ver 1.22 took me quite a while to get around. I made sure to back up my original monowall configuration on the CF using the restore/backup feature on my pc, an xml file of about 27kb and then set about upgrading it.

Marten vijn sent me some directed to the monowall mailing list but didnt find much help, http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/?action=show_threads&actionargs[]=200406#%2Farchive%2F64%2F39

The installation instructions didnt really show me on how to upgrade, http://m0n0.ch/wall/installation_generic.php

Well, googling around a few times, i came across a good doc with a screenshot and finally everything seemed to be very easy! I was looking on how to purposely use physdiskwrite in windows to write the image file on the CF. And here is where i found the answer, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wirelesshks2/chapter/hack71.pdf#search=%22using%20physdiskwrite%20windows%22

Following the instructions in the hack and the monowall website, i finally manged to get my CF card upgraded to ver 1.22. And instead of reconfiguring everything again in the new version, I restored the old xml file, backedup earlier, and soon had a kool working system with no problems at all.

:)

Network down in the morning...??!

2006-09-16T09:05:00.002+03:00

Logging in on my pc in the morning, there was no network at all!
Checked the sweex hub and the green light is shinning fine, not noticing its blinking. Reconfiguring the clarkconnect box and trying again, still no ip address for my pc. Well, it came to mind later that probably this blinking port is the problem. Changing my network cable to another port on the same hub does the trick... network available :o)

A rude morning memory jog especially on the weekend..