Google: Don't be evil...
Found this in my "to be published" folder.
Can't but still publish it.
Via MParent77772
Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Farmers in Africa and mobile phones - Part II
Remember I wrote in an earlier post about my surprise to see how mobile phone technology had proliferated in Africa since my last visit?
That was in Kenya, a country which always stood on the forefront of connectivity. I was curious to see the difference during my trip to West Africa, back in November.
Well, I can tell you, while travelling through the remote areas of Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana, my observations are the same as in Kenya. Actually, my conviction of how mobile phones have changed the lives of farmers in Africa, is even stronger now.
I talked to many farmers, as part of the interviews I did on the way they adapted to changes in the climate. Curiously enough, mobile phones played a significant role in that.
To really understand it, one has to comprehend the difference between living in a remote village in Africa, and living in Europe or North America. Up to recently, even the simplest of tasks was complex, because people could not get in touch with each other.
In Africa, if my neighbour Charles left for the market, 10 km further, there was no way to get in touch with him. I could not ask to buy a bag of fertilizer, or to check on the prices of maize, or to see if a supplier had sorghum seeds in stock. Short of actually going there, I would not know. I would never know, as Charles might not have looked for the information or goods while he as at the market.
Information did not flow. And information is power, certainly in rural Africa.
Helene, in Burkina explained how she called around to colleague farmers in different areas to check on the market prices for vegetables. Andrew in Ghana uses his mobile phone to get in regular contact with his extension worker. During the planting season, Petri uses his GSM to trace the contractor who has a tractor. And during a visit to a studio from a farmer's radio in North Burkina, I saw how different farmers from all over the region called into a live programme, with advise on a particular problem a farmer had with pests in his tomatoes. Using their mobile phones.
Naapi, in Lawra, on the border of Ghana and Burkina, explained how matters as simple as "talking to the guy next door", were complex. "In the past, it often happened I saw a colleague, on his field further down the hill, but I could not contact him. Unless if I walked to his field, I could not even ask him if he had a axe I could lend. So in the past, I would walked to him, often in vain, as what I needed, he did not have. Hours and efforts wasted. Now, I just pick up the phone and call him."
Wherever I stopped on the 2,000 miles we drove in West Africa, there were scratch cards available, and different networks covering the areas, no matter how remote they were. People used mobile phones, even if it meant they had to go to the next village to charge the phone, as many had no electricity in their house.
True, in West Africa, the use of mobile phones for farmer support "call centres", was not as developed as in Kenya. And the system to pay, or transfer funds, through mobile phones (like the M-Pesa system from Kenya's Safaricom), was just starting up, there is no doubt that mobile phone connectivity is key to rural development.
And it has just started. Read the full post...
Slave to technology
I keep most of my applications and software on my laptop and iPad/iPhone up to date, but this starts to become a full time job.
I don't have many applications that I don't need, or don't use. Some I can not do without. For instance I need iTunes as it is the only "easy" way to get music on my iPhone/iPad. And I need Safari to test browser compatibility on different blogs I am working on. So am bound to Apple. But that means I am bound to upgrade the software regularly.
Then I get notices of (make the calculation 43 + 4 + 34 +93 = 174 Mbyte ?!?!) of Apple upgrades? That does not even include the latest iPhone OS upgrade. People, people where is this going to lead us?
I have nightmares of how depended we will become on IT suppliers, and how much overhead this will cause for us. Will we start to be a slave to technology?
Nightmares... How far are we off from this (fictional) scenario:
I overslept this morning.My iPhone had a bug, and the alarm clock did not go off (nonfiction Jan 1 2011 scenario). I can't afford that excuse twice or my boss will fire me. It's like "the dog ate my homework" excuse. So I decided, as I was brushing my teeth, to upgrade my iPhone's operating system. But, as I was avoiding to get toothpaste on the screen, I found out that it is not that simple. Need to do that via iTunes.
But that needs the latest iTunes version. Which is 93 Mbyte (non fiction). Decided to do that. Takes an hour to download (non fiction). Then download the new OS. Another hour (non fiction). Then need to upgrade the iPhone, another half an hour (non fiction).
Only to see that half of my apps then also needed to upgrade. Decided to upgrade the apps on on my iPhone. But when I came home in the evening, saw that also requires I download them in iTunes. Which also upgraded the apps on my iPad, and installed iPhone apps on my iPad (all nonfiction).
As I was getting into the car, I found out my Bluetooth did not work anymore, so could not pick up my calls while driving. Found a patch for that. Installed the patch, but then found that the patch conflicted with an earlier patch I needed to direct my Internet 3G home to the right page. So now I have Bluetooth, but no Internet. Installed a patch upon the patch.
To find that that crashed my iPhone. Which crashed my iTunes. Which crashed my computer. Found the patch for the patch actually contained a virus. Upgraded my computer virus programme, but it did not detect the virus. Installed another antivirus programme, which crashed the first one. Decided to reinstall my computer's operating system.
Etc...
So tell me.. how far are we away from this fictional nightmare scenario? Not far I think...
Read the full post...
Who needs Wikileaks when you have Google?
Do this query on Google, and you will see things that you are not supposed to see.
The comprehensive state of the world - Part 2
It seems I tuned out of the world, and the world news, for the past six weeks. So, it is high time to check what happened in this cruel world while I had my eyes off the ball.
Pakistan seems badly hit by floods, and so is India. The Niger hunger crisis is still peaking.
Seems the "GOSPEL" (Gulf Oil SPilling wELl) is plugged, hopefully ending the worst oil polution event ever. Or was that honour given to Sadam's burning of Kuwaiti oil wells? ("Yeah, but that was far away from home")...
Google plugged a spill of its own by aborting their much hyped about Google Wave product. Sometimes I have to trust myself when my first impression is "TUUT": "Totally Unusable and Unnecessary Tool". Then again, sometimes a mega company has so much market weight that it can push through an unusable product, like Apple does with its iTunes. Beh.
Talking about Apple. Apple had a "SHIT" ("Signal Hiccup on iPhone Technology"): Their new iPhone 4 seems to be good at everything, except phoning, with everyone but Steve Jobs complaining about a significant lower GSM signal sensitivity than the iPhone 3. Which was already the worst I have ever seen. - Up to the level I had to buy a US$30 Nokia phone to make a mobile phone call from my apartment, as the iPhone sees no signal.
Apple then made a complete fool of itself by taking a "DUMP" ("Deny, Underestimate, Mumble and Patch-it-up-with-chewing-gum-and-ductape") approach:
First they denied the problem, then showed their totally ignorant users how to hold the iPhone (Do NOT use the deadgrip. I repeat, do NOT use the deadgrip), then claiming ALL smartphones have similar reception problems (which went down really well with Nokia, Blackberry and Droid affiliates), followed by a media campaign showing how well their antenna testing facilities are working, and giving all iPhone 4 users a free rubber. I kid you not.
In the end they hushed everyone and released the iPhone operating system version IOS 4.0.1, a patch of iPhone operating system to "adjust the way the signal level" was calculated. I kid you not.
It is a 40 Mbyte upgrade (as any iPhone upgrade), which you download, then upload to your iPhone, (after a full backup of course), hoping the thing does not crash in the process and turns your iPhone into expensive paperweight.
All for probably one additional line of code in the whole 40 Mbyte and 3 hours upgrade procedure:
new_signal_bars = old_signal_bars + 2
Seriously, Mr Jobs: if in my apartment, I can make a perfect phone call with my $30 Nokia, and my $600 iPhone indicates "No Service", then this "SPIT" ("Simple Patch, Inadequate Technology") won't help.
All of that bad news at the time where iPhone and iPad devices seem more security prone than one thought.
Yepyep, all insignificant news on the day the world remembers one of its most shameful deeds in which one nation killed 200,000 civilians in a single event, now 64 years ago. And everyone said "Yep, that was needed."
Guess the term "crime against humanity" is used solely dependent on which side you stand. And with that, I refer to Hiroshima, and not to the Apple iPhone problem.
My daily struggles with technology
Anyway I thought it would just be better to put my Belgian SIM into my iPhone when I arrive in Belgium. Swap SIMs rather than phones. Then I don't have to drag two phones with me. Seems simple enough. From time to time, I use my mobile phone to send a picture. Or to check Twitter. So, I thought "Great, works fine with the iPhone"...
Then I discovered that I don't have access to the Belgian Internet data services, so I enabled Internet access for the SIM. I tested it, it worked fine. Went to sleep. At 6 AM I got an automated SMS from my GSM provider, stating I just used Internet for 6 hours, while I was sleeping. And while the iPhone was connected to my wireless anyway...
I called them, and they could not help me any further. But to suggest to upgrade my subscription to a 2 Gbyte/month package. Paying a monthly fee even when I am only for two months per year in Belgium did not seem reasonable to me.
Did not find a setting to switched off the data access on the iPhone. Only thing I could do, is to enter fake APN (network parameters), so it could not access the Internet.
It intrigued me. Which iPhone application was using the Internet? Maybe there is an application to control the use of Internet on the iPhone. I Googled it but only found parental control applications.
Ah, there was one Enterprise Control application by Apple. Downloaded. Tried to installed. Beh. I needed an update to "Netframe 3.5 SP1". Downloaded that. Took 45 minutes to install. Reboot. Re-ran the Enterprise Control. Installed well. Started it. Gave me cryptic errors indicating I needed something else, and a key to launch it.
Gave up. De-installed the Enterprise Control thingie.
Googled for more Internet access controls. Found some solution: iPhone IOS 4 lets me switch off the . For which I needed the new iTunes version, which came with the new Safari version. 130 Mbytes. Took 45 minutes to download/install (I have a BIG Internet pipe here, but that did not help).
Started iTunes. Which needs to backup my iPhone first. Another 30 minutes. Then it needs to resync my iPhone with my computer. Another 30 minutes.
The only thing I want, is to email an occasional picture from my iPhone while I am on the road.... Is that too much to ask? Our lives are dominated by technology. Our lives become buggy, just like the technology is.
I got up at 6:30 am. It is now 11 am. The sun is shining outside. I'm going out. Foert. Off to the shower.
BYE!!!
...
...
...
Although... the mouse on Tine's laptop does not work anymore and Lana's laptop crashed. And Hannah needs a new computer too.
Living in Italy - Part 16: Free WiFi access. Almost.
Since a while, there is free WiFi access in many public parks in and around Rome. All WiFi hotspots are neatly indicated with signs:
Encouraging effort to bridge the digital divide, if any left in Italy. Maybe there are also other divides to be addressed... When accessing the WiFi spot from a mobile phone, you are neatly prompted with a login screen:
Hmmm. Username and password, hey? Boh.. as it says (in Italian): registration is for free, so let's give it a try:
Holy Mo! That is a quite a chunk of data.. You need to give your name, address, mobile phone number, and of course endorse the terms and conditions which are neatly outlined (in Italian):
At that point, I gave up trying to register via my mobile phone.
Once back at home, I registered from my computer. Well, almost, as after filling in the form, you are prompted to confirm your registration by calling a toll-free number. You have to call it from the cellphone you registered. And you have five minutes.
So going outside, waiting for the mobile coverage to come up, I dialed the number. Which was engaged. Which was engaged again. Which was engaged once more. Which was engaged again. Which kept on being engaged.
Of course the five minutes deadline came sooner than expected, and I had to register again.
At that point I gave up. Maybe free WiFi access is not something for me.
Read more in the Living in Italy series
Ikea starts a new publicity campaign
They call it a "Captcha", a short for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" (I bet even the nerds amongst you did not know that one, did ya?).
Captcha's are used in places where users can leave "fast input", like in blog comments. To avoid automated SPAM-comments, you have to type in the letters/numbers before the blog accepts your comment.
Normally, the letters/numbers are random, but I just came across a blog where the input was "Ikea"... I wonder if it was a coincidence, or if Ikea would have been innovative enough to think of this as a new publicity outlet.
Maybe the next generation Captcha's will help us discover the real values in life. How about these future Captcha's?
BTW, the Ikea thing reminds me of a picture I've had for years, but never found the opportunity to publish. Think it is hilarious. Can't remember where I got it from.
Blogging: source crowded knowledge management
You know what I like about blogging? You can leave a trace for others. It is really like "crowdsourced knowledge management". You can write something, and others can find what you write about, simply by googling the topic.
Meaning: once you blog about something, it remains there, in the public domain, for years to come. For others to find... Crowdsourcing: information fed by the masses. Or call it "Power to the People" if you like.
I will take two examples. Two things that made my life miserable in the past months.
- I have a X60 Lenovo computer which kept on shutting down due to overheating.
A problem because for the past months, I worked in an environment where the ambient temperature would easily get over 25 dgrs C. My laptop would barely startup, then detect it got too hot, and subsequently shut down. Annoying to say the least. I searched the web, but did not find a solution. - Since I installed Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, I had a weird problem: every 30 minutes or so, my harddisk would get full, even though I had 3 Gbyte of free space when I started up my computer. I googled like nuts, the ICT helpdesk too, but it was only when I googled in different languages, that I found a trace of someone with the same problem, who posted it in an Italian discussion forum. And it gave me the solution. If it was not for that obscure post in an obscure discussion forum, I would never have found the solution. And my life would still have been miserable
Your laptop shuts down because of heating problems? Two solutions!
- Use SpeedFan:
Speedfan is a free utility that monitors the temperature of core elements in your computer and forces your computer fan to remain on, all the time. - Open your laptop (disassemble it) and spray all inner parts with pressurized air:
Speedfan by itself, did not do the trick for me. Every year or so, especially when working in dusty environments, dirt particles would settle on my motherboard and on my fan fins. The only thing that helps is disassembling the laptop (taking the cover off the harddisk, keyboard and motherboard) and spraying off the dirt with a can of pressurized air.
PS: disassembling a laptop is not for the faint of heart. Ask your computer shop to do it for you. But the trouble is worth it: spraying off the dirt is the only thing that solves my laptop's heating problem.
The problem with AdAxxx.tmp files filling up your harddisk
I diagnosed the problem of my harddisk filling up, with the free cleanup utility called CCleaner. CCleaner not only cleans up all temporary files, but also cleans up your system registry of orphaned traces of de-installed programs.
CCleaner showed I had thousands of files in my /Temp directory, all labeled AdAxxxx.tmp (where xxxx was a sequential number).
The problem was simple: a conflict between Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and AdAware, a free utility to protect against malware hidden in websites.
Installing AdAware automatically also enabled an add-in in Outlook to scan for malware.
My earth shattering problem for AdA.tmp files filling up my harddisk was solved by disabling the AdAware add-in:
Go to : Tools > Trust Center > Add-ins and disable the AdAware plug in.
Voila, those were the two contributions to humanity I had today. Google: go and do your thing now!
If you come across this post, through Google, and it solves one of those two problems you had, leave a comment. It will be nice to see I was right about crowdsourcing and blogging. ;-)
Update:
You might think I am kidding, but I assure you, I am not. Here is the proof: One hour after I published this blogpost, guess what appeared on the top of the Google search list for "adaxxx.tmp problem":
Picture courtesy Starts with a Bang Read the full post...
Being happy in a negative way.
- I am happy that in the end, Microsoft Outlook did not disappear from my laptop. It just disappeared from the taskbar and the START menu.
- I am actually extatic that my outlook data file with all my mails was not "Beyond Repair", as Outlook stated. Does not matter that Outlook keeps on crashing on the data file, I can just start it up again. And again. And again.
- I am grateful that Citrix was not corrupted, so it did not really matter that the helpdesk failed to have me re-install the Citrix-thingie. I am happy the thing decided to repair itself, by itself, for itself. The most suspicious of all "solutions".
- I am pleasantly surprised that despite all suspicions, my laptop did not have any viruses, even though the stand-alone virus scan blocked my computer for 2 hours.
- I am smiling because despite all challenges, I *was* able to connect to the LAN, so I could get some work done
- I went "Woohwoohwooh" because I found an easy way to clean up the 1.3 Gigabyte of temporary files created in the TEMP directory each time I start up my computer. [update: which now seems to be caused by the Macafee antivirus programme.]
- I jumped of joy knowing that despite the fact that Godaddy, my web host, does not admit it was hacked, but "the problems came through Wordpress" (I am running Drupal), I found a way to easily restore my website.
- I still think SAP SUCKS, though. But even that brings an evil smile on my face.
The carbon footprint of a Google Search
IT research firm Gartner estimates Google's data centres contain nearly a million servers, each drawing about 1 kilowatt of electricity. So every hour Google's engine burns through 1 million kilowatt-hours. Google serves up approximately 10 million search results per hour, so one search has the same energy cost as turning on a 100-watt light bulb for an hour. (Full)Discovered via Daily Good Read the full post...
Danish, English, Chinese,... Whatever
See the top line: "This page is in Danish"...
"Google Wave" confuses "Google Translate" Read the full post...
Yahoo does not exist anymore
At least that is what I can tell from the (lack of) support for some of their products. Yahoo Pipes is one of them.
The Yahoo Pipes servers, previously running in a cloud-environment, have all been replaced by a single laptop owned by Johnny, a volunteer, in Santa Monica. When his mum cleans his room, and accidentally hits the power switch of his laptop, Yahoo Pipes goes down. Down until Johnny comes back from kindergarten. He is 5 years old, and mostly uses his laptop to play the "Musti" DVD.
The support for all their products is done by automated bots saying "Issue solved now, can you try it again, and report back if you experience more problems?".
They did consider to outsource the product support to a single call center in Bombay, which also caters for Johnny's Pizza Take-away, Rent-a-Girl Escort services and Gary's Route 66 Tow-away road service. It was too costly.
Yahoo apologizes for any possible inconvenience, but reminds its faithful clientele: "When reaching the bottom, there is only one way. Up!"
Market experts say this phrase has now shown up in several of Yahoo's press releases, which confirms the rumour all Yahoo services will soon be renamed as "Yahoo Up!", to distinguish from their current service level, which is now commonly referred to as "Yahoo Down!". It is said that the key to Yahoo's increased service level will be Sarah, the 6 year old girlfriend from Johnny. She just got her dad's old laptop for Xmas.
More satire on The Road.
Moving into the 21st century with my iPhone
Remember this post, where I described the things I always travel with? My faithful Palm III PDA was one of them.
I celebrated my birthday recently and the guys at work gave me my present last week: an iPhone...!
I could not believe it. I had been looking at an iPhone for ages, glued to the window like a kid in front of a candy story. And finally, I had one.
My team said "We know how attached you are to your Palm III, but you can not really head a technology team using a 1997 piece of 'wannabe PDA'... So we're bringing you into the 21st century"...
It is true, in a way. At work, we have a "museum"glass cupboard displaying all pieces of old technology we used in the past 20 years. From a manual of WordStar (remember that?) to old VHF radios, a keyboard from a 1970's IBM mainframe and... a Palm III. Many people could not believe my faithful Palm III survived all the travel, the dust roads I drove on, all the remote places I've been to, and all the emergency operations I have served in. It stored my agenda with appointments going back to 1997. It held all the business contacts of people I met in the past 12 years, and all the notes I took while on mission. And it still did its job.
So I spent much of last weekend exploring my brand new iPhone 3GS, figuring out how to use it and the applications I wanted.
Here is my rundown of the things I love about it:
- the user interface, the way the different applications are working
- its display (it is color, yay!), the resolution, the touch screen
- the integration of wireless LAN connectivity and all web applications is out of this world
- the speed in which it discovers and registers to wireless LANs.
- the vast amount of applications you can download
- the speed of the applications
- the quality of pictures and video is great. I always cursed the poor quality of both on my old Nokia phone. Just this is a real plus for me, as it will make the iPhone a great tool to take ad hoc snapshots to post on my blog.
- for the first time, I can have all I wanted of a PDA, iPod, compact digital camera/videocam, telephone,.. in one
- I can Twitter, Skype, Email etc... to my heart's content, which for a social media addict like me is a definitive plus
- it seems Bluetooth is not used to connect the iPhone to the computer's iTunes. I need to have the cable (or did I miss something here?). I also seem to have problems to get my computer pick up the Bluetooth connection from my iPhone and vice versa.
- iTunes is heavy on a PC (maybe I should finally by a Mac?), it is slow, takes ages to load, and has a horrible user interface. It seems to only be a beefed up version of a music library, but does not feel intuitive at all.
- I also hated the fact I needed to register my credit card while subscribing to the iTunes store. Even if I did not want to buy anything...
- the battery runs down in less than 24 hours
- I did not find a way to define the resolution for the camera.
- and the worst part, unfortunately, is the "phone" part of the iPhone: its GSM sensitivity is ways below what my Nokia offers. In a GSM-signal poor country like Italy, this means I no longer have coverage where I used to have it. And that includes my apartment. A real bummer.
- it took some tweaking to have the phone work on data-over-GSM. Luckily some hacker-friends gave me a patch where I could define the data-configuration for my GSM carrier, but somehow this should have been more transparent for the user.
Snapped: Microsoft Windows goes Italian
The geek in me: One Terabyte portable harddisk, Evernote and CCleaner
Remember this post where I did a fast forward from my old Apple IIe computer which had a whopping 2x 128 kbyte floppy storage space (and no harddisk of course), to the current technology we have at hand?
Well, this week, I took another leap forward. For ages, I was struggling with my 30 Gbyte harddisk. Download a movie, and 1 Gb is gone. I like to store my pictures in their original resolution, eating 500 kbyte per per picture.
For a while, I used my 60 Gbyte iPod as external harddrive, but I outgrew that quickly.
Now my worries are over. I bought a 1 Terabyte Western Digital Elements external harddrive. One TERABYTE. or one thousand Gigabytes. Or one million Megabytes... I think that will keep me going for a while...
And you know the best part? I paid only about US$75 for it, here in a local shop. I come home, plug in the power supply, connect it to my computer via the USB cable, and I am ready to rock and roll... One Terabyte... Let those movies come to daddy, baby!
Another geeky discovery this week was Evernote. This free desktop and web utility lets you cut and paste anything you find on the web, anything on your screen, anything in a file, into nifty little notes, which you can organise in folders. It stores text, pictures, video and links. You can edit the each note to your heart's content.
The desktop tool synchronizes automatically with your web-based account so you can access your notes from any computer.
It also comes with a browser plug in, allowing you to easily grab anything from the web and store it in a note.
The last tip for the week is CCleaner, a free Windows utility that cleans up all temporary and unused files, and performs a health check on my Windows registry by removing all unused references which programs and utilities leave behind when uninstalling. CCleaner found about 150 unused entries on my computer. Starting up Windows goes a lot faster since I used it.
Voila, from your local resident geek, it is [over and out] Read the full post...
The dream of OLPC and the aid bubble
Fellow aidworker Alanna wrote a provocative post on UNDispatch about the "end of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) dream".
OLPC set out a couple of years ago, designing, manufacturing and distributing a simple laptop (or call it a "Netbook") geared towards kids, specifically in developing countries. Their mission was formulated as:
To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.
From the beginning, the plan was ambitious, innovative,.. and controversial. "Tall trees catch a lot of wind" is surely applicable. The more as it was such an easy target for cheap sarcasm: "How will a laptop feed a hungry child"? You can imagine...
Alanna's post is creating a bit of a sturr in the ICT4D (ICT For Development), and in the development blogosphere as such (Check out the latest posts via a Humanitarian News search). I might disagree with Alanna on the OLPC, I surely appreciate provocative posts to stir up discussions. ;-)
Here are my views:
- Anyone trying to make a difference, and is not afraid to put words into deeds, especially if it is innovative, provocative and controversial, deserves my respect. Especially if it is well thought through. OLPC has my respect.
- Proper education is one of the principal ways to eradicate poverty. There are different means to boost education in the developing world. Rendering technology more affordable and accessible is one.
- ...But it is not the only solution. Cheap laptops can not feed hungry children, that is for sure. But neither can "feeding children teach them how to read". Boosting education in the developing world has many challenges. Starting at the basics:
- How do we get the kids to come to school, if they have to work in the fields helping their parents to grow enough food?
- Once they come to school, how do we keep them in school up to the point their education becomes applicable to their lives?
- How do we train teachers, and keep them into education. How do we avoid poaching of teachers by the commercial world?
- How do we ensure kids have enough nutritional food, are they properly de-wormed (and are healthy enough), so they can capitalize to the max on the efforts brought? (there is a whole series of studies illustrating how proper nutrition boosts a child's capacity to learn)
- How do we make sure there is a proper school infrastructure, proper teaching material, proper latrines?
- How do we make sure the educational programme is institutionalized and self-sustainable (I need to write something on sustainability as this is one of my sore points at the moment).
- Attacking OLPC because they triggered only one part of the solution, is unfair, I think. However triggering debates to ensure OLPC is properly integrated in a wholesome solution, is constructive.
- However, as the cynical aidworker I sometimes am, I have to say that wholesome solutions to complex development goals are virtually non-existent. It is simply not built into the humanitarian system. It is very very very difficult to have different organisations work together for a common goal. Even if it would be as simple as "address the problems of this ONE school in all of its aspects". Leave alone all schools in a country. Beh.. Different organisations have different means and goals. But most of all, they compete. They compete for the same donor-dollar. In the end, why would I, as organisation X, work with organisation Y, if I know that in the end, we will be approaching the same donors for the same money? X and Y are competitors in a competitive world. And that will remain forever (unless at a certain point, there is a more even balance between the world's needs and the world's capacity to give. Dream on!).
- And finally: OLPC is an easy target. I will challenge anyone to bring up examples of aid projects which are the right bang for buck, with wholesome approaches, lasting and self-sustainable projects. There are not many. There is a lot of "make believe", but there are not many good examples. If the aid organisations would be commercial enterprises, the "aid business bubble" would have burst decennia ago. And would have burst every five years.
- Better and stronger oversight of the aid spending, both by the organisations themselves, governments and independent bodies. Make the audits public. Make the impact data public.
- Work out better criteria to measure impact, sustainability and integration in wholesome solutions.
- Ensure outcomes are measured by impact, and not by amount of money spent. (You think I am kidding? I am not! No donor is ever happy if at the end of the project, you return the balance of unspent money. Ever!)
- Entice cooperation between organisations, while recognizing that healthy competition is good.
- Transparency, transparency, transparency, transparency.
Pictures courtesy OLPC, Wulffmorgenthaler.com Read the full post...
Google: the new Microsoft?
I am writing quite a bit for BlogTips, my new blog about "Blogging for Non-Profit", where I share some of my past 30 months of blogging experiences.
I am now working on a post helping non-profit organisations decide what blog software to choose.
When I started The Road over two years ago, I compared Wordpress and Blogger, and found them pretty equal in user interface, functionality, features. I choose for Blogger, because of its flexibility. But that was then...
I re-looked at both when starting BlogTips and was taken by the progress Wordpress made over the past two years. Blogger, on the contrary, just did not evolve. A few features were added, but that's it. Wordpress was overhauled several times, and a ton of new features, plug-ins and themes were added. Wordpress' user interface now stands head and shoulder above Blogger's clumsy stuff.
It made me think... I use Google affiliated software (Blogger, Google Apps, Picasa, Feedburner,...) a lot. They all have one thing in common: no technical support (all support is concentrated in user forums), and little effort is made to have the software evolve. (here is ProBlogger complaining about Feedburner)
It feels like "What you see is what you get", nothing more, nothing less. The only thing they are interested in, is content. Could not care less about their users.
Makes me wonder if Google has become the new Microsoft?
Picture courtesy HubPages Read the full post...
What blogging can do to you
This is sometimes how I feel, dealing with technology...
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Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
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