Tyranny of the Plurality

Another NYT article!

2009-10-06T01:03:00.002+03:00

This one mentions and quotes Appfrica founder and CEO Jon Gosier, as well as Grameen AppLab's Eric Cantor.

The piece discusses Grameen's banana disease monitoring and their other information services, although it does not directly mention Question Box.

Read it here

Question Box featured in the NY Times!

2009-09-28T09:49:00.001+03:00

Read it here!

A very brief update

2009-09-24T23:42:00.002+03:00

I'm back in the US, and on my way back to the Bay Area as we speak (sitting in Phoenix waiting for a flight at the moment).

I've got several posts in the wings, some of them already written, just awaiting a bit of editing and finalizing to post, and I do apologize for the delay. However, you can expect a short post about the riots, mainly consisting of links that give more information than I possibly could, and my own very trivial involvement in the 'citizen media' that was the main source of real-time news, at least for many of us.

I'll also have some sort of post summing up my summer and work and whatnot experience. Again, it's in draft, not really done yet.

But besides the riots, which I think all of you who read this heard about from me otherwise, nothing of particular note happened in my last few weeks (hence the dearth of blog posts).

Anyway, just want to say that there's more to come, and I'm going to keep this blog up other than for just this trip, I just have neither had much to say nor much time in which to say it as the summer's wound down.

Not sure what it is about the new office...

2009-09-09T18:06:00.002+03:00

...but people randomly walk in. Constantly. For no reason at all. We're not really sure what used to be there (I've heard a tailor shop, possibly), or what people are even doing wandering around on the 3rd floor of the building. There are a few other businesses -- an Internet cafe, a couple of restaurants, a massage place, etc, although none seem to get much traffic. And the Internet cafe has a sign, right at the top of the stairs, that you can't miss, that says where it is (which is NOT where our office is).

We changed the layout of the desks to make it more convincingly office-like and totally unmistakable for an internet cafe. It's otherwise empty. There's really not much it could possibly be. Yet people are constantly sticking their heads in the door or walking all the way (sometimes weirdly far) in.

We definitely need a sign.

Anyway, this afternoon was the best one, though. About five of us were standing around talking before we left, and, as you might expect, we had clustered by the door as groups on their way out frequently do. One of the developers, Jerry, was actually standing in the doorway, with a backpack on. Needless to say, he took up the majority of the doorway and certainly didn't leave enough space to walk easily by. And then some random guy comes up to the door, squeezes past Jerry, and looks around. WHY?!

There's no easy way in, you have to brush by someone. Whatever the place is, it's clearly about to close, since everybody in it is standing right by the door talking (and blocking it!). When would it ever occur to you to do that?! And he didn't say anything, no asking what the place was or anything. He just looked around, presumably catching the silence that descended over the group and five sets of eyes with looks that screamed "what the hell are you doing here?" and then turned around, squeezed back past Jerry and left.

It was really hilariously weird. And it wasn't just me -- an English friend of mine who's been here six years and all of the Ugandan developers (both present for that incident and just in general) find it weird and annoying, and found this specific instance especially bizarre and hilarious.

People who walk by our (usually open) windows along the building's outside corridor also frequently look in, and don't tend to make any particular effort to look away when any of us look up and make eye contact or anything, either. It's a bit odd. I really don't know what's so fascinating about what we're doing.

LINK: Appfrica and Question Box featured in NYT Freakonomics blog!

2009-09-09T14:40:00.001+03:00

Great writeup on Appfrica (Jon Gosier's East African tech startup/incubator, Question Box's local technology parter) and Question Box, along with two other interesting African entrepreneurs.

Hit the post title for the read link or click here.

Hectic week, behind on email

2009-09-05T18:26:00.001+03:00

Just a quick update for all of the people I owe emails to but haven't gotten around to -- this week (especially the last couple of days) has been veeeery busy.

This was the last week of the Question Box pilot for one (well, with Monday as a grace period), and there's been some confusion surrounding that for a variety of reasons, including a lot of key players being out of the country and hard to reach at the same time.

Also, Appfrica's in the process of moving to a new office -- incidentally located in the same building I just moved to. So that's involved a certain amount of going back and forth, packing things, moving things, etc.

And finally, a friend of mine here just got married yesterday, as I mentioned, but wasn't going -- it was to be a very small, private affair, which it was. At any rate, on Thursday (!) they asked me to photograph it. In a lucky coincidence, Jon had recently (mere days before) bought a rather nice Olympus DSLR from a guy we knew who had been traveling through. I borrowed it and the results were actually quite good. Much more convenient than my film one, as far as distributing the pictures and everything. Also, the total unavailability of ISO 800+ film in this country would have made film quite challenging without a flash. Anyway, it was nice to be involved, and I think the pictures turned out very well; they haven't seen all of them yet, but I'll have a CD waiting for them upon their return.

Anyway, it's all been very exhausting, and today I've done very little (except walk the perhaps ten minutes each way to get a baguette and some camembert for myself and my flatmate -- well worth the exertion, I assure you), and haven't even been on my computer until now.

Tomorrow I'll get more done, and get through my email backlog.

One last thing: Go Bears! Beat the Terps! The first Cal game of the season is tonight, at 5am my time. Ugh. Don't think I'll be watching it. But I'm still excited for it, and for everybody getting ready for their first shows of the season, and especially those about to do their first show at all in Cal Band. It had better be on Youtube now now! [to use the Ugandan expression that means actually soon; a single now means more of 'in the foreseeable future' than 'in a short and measurable length of time,' as in: "I am on my way, I'm coming now," meaning in an hour, versus "I'm coming now now," meaning in perhaps fifteen minutes.]

Nice outing to Ssissa

2009-08-30T23:06:00.001+03:00

Today I got to go on a bit of an adventure with my new flatmate and two of my other friends here (one of whom's flats is also nice -- if not quite as exciting as this one -- and has a very inexpensive vacancy that'd probably be my first choice were I making a longer return).

Anyone, the other (from whom I'm subletting now, actually) is getting a quiet civil marriage at the end of this week (!), and is planning their party which will be in a month or so (alas, after I've returned to the States), and wanted to check out this potential venue for it. Her fiancé is still out of the country (until Tuesday, I think?) for work, so he couldn't come, which is too bad. He's Ugandan and does refugee law work, and she was doing research work and coordinating local research being done for US academics (but currently looking for a job, I believe). Needless to say, they're both really, really smart.

The place is a little ways (maybe 20km) outside of Kampala on the road to Entebbe, so not all that far, but all told the trip took about an hour there. It's this sort of lodge place (with a shooting range, of all things) up on a hill facing the lake -- a really, very beautiful place.

You wouldn't know you're so close to the city -- it, and the road to it, felt nearly as remote as the farms I visited in Mbale for work. There's very little in the way of visible construction between it and the lake, too. The vistas are absolutely stunning, and the whole place was just really nice and just being there for a couple of hours was a wonderful contrast to the noise and intensity of the city.

I've got some great pictures from it that I'll post up next time I'm on a connection that's sufficient for that sort of thing. I'll add a link.

Anyway, I think they're going to have it there, she really liked it a lot, and so did all of the rest of us who came, and it sounded pretty shockingly inexpensive. There are also a few cabins around it so I think some of the better friends will stay there a day or so.

At any rate, it's nothing all that exciting to report, but it was a very nice outing; fun and quite relaxing. Definitely a nice change.

And I'm very jealous I won't be able to make it to their reception thing there.

New Apartment

2009-08-29T19:10:00.000+03:00

I've just "shifted" (as they say here) into a new apartment.

I'd written another post about the trouble I had with my other landlord over it, but didn't have a chance to post it. As is I'll just summarize that (especially as it's now been resolved). Anyway, back to the place itself.

It's in Nakawa, which is where I walk about half an hour now to get a taxi to work, so it'll cut my commute in half or more. And that I still have the steep walk up the hill at the end means I'll still get some exercise, if perhaps not enough. But now I'm close enough that I could walk the whole way, or some of it and get a taxi part way, for the exercise, too, in less time.

It's also rather nice and quite spacious. It's a bit more space than I really know what to do with -- my room in it's quite big. It also has a living room and more of a real kitchen than my tiny place before had.

Now, my old place was quite nice -- it was cozy and relatively nicely furnished (so is this) and in a nice compound with a courtyard and lawn and such. But it was quite far from my work (and most other things). This is at the top of a large building with a variety of businesses (including a good grocery store) below.

So living here for my last few weeks will definitely save me time, likely encourage me to eat better, and is a nice change. Also, the old place was in a relatively deserted (in terms of the streets) and visibly rich area, which made me a little wary at times (especially when the power was out -- the roads could be quite dark). Speaking of the power, it also failed more there than I get the sense is quite standard.

All in all, this is a nice change. The white noise of the road is nice for a change. Also, I gather that (likely because of being on the 5th floor) mosquitos don't really make it up here. Even with a net and burning a mosquito coil on my porch my place got kind of a lot of mosquitos. And mentioning my porch reminds me, this place has a big balcony off of the living room as well as a smaller one for each bedroom. They've got very good views. I'll post pictures of the place and the views shortly.

Another thing that I like better about this is that it's with someone else, which I actually miss. Now, granted she's German and works all the time, so I probably won't see all that much of her, but she's nice and I know her and she seems like a good roommate, and just living around people is nice. Living alone's nice when you're near people (like last summer at my, Carter, and Jon's apartment, right near TH, or even in summer TH [Tellefsen Hall, the Cal Band house]), but when you're far away from people you know it's not as good; getting home from work knowing it was my last human contact wasn't always pleasant. So this will be a nice change.

And then, finally, is Rolex. Rolex is the cat who lives at the apartment. It's been almost exactly four years since I've lived with a cat (since I left for school) and even then, in the lengthy reconstruction following a fire in our house, the cats had been at the house while we'd been living in an apartment. So I haven't lived properly with cats for a long time (except visits home). I'm pretty excited (although granted it is also only like three and a half weeks).

Briefly, regarding my old landlord, he demanded I pay more for moving out with short notice. Now it was short notice -- about a week. BUT, based on what all of my Ugandan friends have said, that's completely normal here. If you pay for two months (which I did), you're free to leave at the end of it (without saying anything at all ahead of time). So, while I felt a bit badly about it, I also feel like he was taking advantage of my not knowing that's standard practice here. And there was, of course, never any lease or any sort of written or verbal agreement about that (or anything else, for that matter).

In any event, I was able to talk him down to 50,000/= from the original and totally unreasonable 100,000/= he asked for, and felt it was a partial victory. As it is I'm still saving money by moving. This morning his wife tried to ask for more money for cleaning it, too -- for one, the amount they charge for cleaning is unreasonably high, and second, I had already paid them more than the cost of cleaning extra for nothing. And she made the mistake of letting slip they'd already found somebody for it, which was how her husband justified charging me, for the delay before they found somebody. I told her the extra money I'd already paid that I didn't owe more than covered the cleaning costs, and she actually accepted that (rather unexpectedly).

Anyway, it was frustrating, and not particularly reasonable, but worked out OK -- it neither required a particularly serious or difficult confrontation nor ultimately really cost me anything I wouldn't have paid otherwise.

And now I'm quite happily composing this from my new and very comfortable living room, and I think I might head downstairs for some fresh vegetables in a few minutes.

Uganda's total ban on used computers

2009-08-24T15:52:00.004+03:00

Yes, you've read that correctly. The Ugandan government has completely banned all imports of used computers into the country.

This is ostensibly to curb the accumulation of e-waste, which is admittedly a major problem in many parts of the world, and the government does not want to become a dumping ground for discarded electronics. This is a valid point, and there are certainly many accounts of electronics being brought to developing nations to be sold second-hand, and then discovered to be nonfunctional and dumped.

The dumping and accumulation of e-waste can have disastrous environmental and health consequences, given the high concentrations of toxic (and often valuable) chemicals, encouraging the very poor to (e.g.) burn electronic components to extract valuable metals at the expense of extremely toxic emissions into the air, soil, water, and themselves.

This is a known and serious problem, and one it is reasonable for a state to wish to avoid.

BUT...

New computers are also very, very expensive. Used ones are perfectly capable for basic administrative and internet use, and they are much cheaper. Furthermore, if a well-maintained used computer can last as long (or even nearly as long) as a similar new one, then at the ends of their respective lives, the contribution to e-waste will be essentially identical.

That's the problem with this ban–it's total. It prevents all importers of used computers from doing business. This includes responsible organizations that take very good care to make sure their machines are working, immediately useful, and long-lived. Some go as far as to provide open source software, training, and guaranteed responsible recycling at end-of-life as part of the (low) cost of the machines.

This hardly sounds like the type of dumping the government is trying to prevent, and it needs to realize that a comprehensive ban like this can't help but hurt the country's small but growing IT sector.

In addition to charitable organizations, I can't believe that all of the computer shops on Bombo road, with their shiny, million-shilling laptops and desktops, aren't also engaging in a thriving trade in used machines. And I've never been to an internet cafe that looks like its machines were bought new here.

Therefore, since this is a (little-read) personal blog, is unaffiliated with any organization, and reflects no one's views but my own, I will say what (understandably) no one closer to this can or should, if they happened to feel that way as well: this policy is absurd and will hurt ICT in Uganda.

So, don't deport me, though, ok...?

See stories about the issue from the Monitor here (via AllAfrica), I-Network here, and the Industry Standard (reprinted from Computerworld Kenya) here.

Kampala digerati meetup

2009-08-23T21:39:00.000+03:00

This weekend there was something of a meetup of the Kampala "digerati" (digerati |dijəˈrätē| plural noun: people with expertise or professional involvement in information technology. Origin 1990s: blend of digital and literati.) at the monthly Kampala Linux User Group (LUG) meetup. This included many passionate Linux and Open Source users and its organizers, who, as I understand it run a couple of web-hosting companies. Very cool, interesting people, with a lot to say (very little of it complementary...) about the state of ISPs in Uganda, the UCC's (Uganda Communications Commission) running of the country's Internet Exchange (IX), which is evidently located in their building's basement/parking garage, on the level where the vehicles are washed. It's dusty, humid, and ill-maintained–not all that unlike a lot of things here, but a pretty crucial part of the country's communications infrastructure.
Additionally, we were told that much of the country's fibre infrastructure is laid approximately 20cm below the surface, as opposed to the recommend 1m.

So that was all quite informative, and we had a wonderful and wide-ranging conversation about these local issues to broader issues of Internet governance.

But the real stars of the show, the people I was most excited to meet, were Erik Hersman and TMS Ruge. Erik was born in Kenya but is now based in the US, and writes the tech-oriented blog WhiteAfrican and founded and writes/edits for AfriGadget. Both are excellent and are must-reads for anyone interested in technological innovation (and not exclusively information technology) in Africa.

He's also very involved in the FLAP bag project, which is a durable messenger-style bag produced by San Francisco-based Timbuk2 with a solar panel integrated into the flap. This isn't a totally new idea, but one designed for the rigors of the developing world is.

TMS Ruge ("Teddy") is one of the co-founders of Project Diaspora, an attempt to channel the success and relative wealth of the African diaspora into meaningful development in Africa. He's also a brilliant photographer and journalist, and seems like a really nice guy. The other co-founder, Tracy Pell, was there too, and has been traveling with Teddy. I hadn't really known of her before, except from the Project Diaspora blog (which I don't read as regularly as many) but she's also very interesting and it was great to meet her as well. Her non-development day job didn't sound very generous with time off, and she was very excited to be able to come to Africa (it was her first time here).

All in all it was a great experience to get to brush elbows with some people who are very respected and influential in this space, and who are experimenting with some really neat stuff.

In other news, I'm sorry it's been so long since I've had much to say here, but it's been busy. Mainly I've been concerned with developing a training manual for other people training future Question Box operators. A number of friends of mine's birthdays were this and last weekend, and one of my best friends here is just leaving for the States, and a few others are preparing to. It's all added up to be a hectic couple of weeks.

Typography update

2009-08-16T16:38:00.003+03:00

Unsurprisingly (it is Google, after all) the Blogger platform on which this blog is hosted is smarter than I am, and looking back at previous posts I see that it's been correcting my stupid double-space-after-periods habit all along.

And I bet those of you (you know who you are) who said it looks better with two didn't even notice, since this is written in a kerned font, and the period already creates the larger white space your eyes are looking for. I certainly didn't. (Note also that I'm almost certain this is the standard in print publishing, as well, and has been for a long time).

But yeah, now I really don't have a reason to stop it (and can even justify it to an extent since I often draft these posts in monospaced text), and will therefore worry even less about it since it gets fixed on its own thanks to Google's magic before it reaches the interwebs. Admittedly, when I'm writing documents for public consumption, which I'm typically not, I suppose I should make more a point to do that find-and-replace as part of my final proofing, though.

Interesting sight walking home Friday afternoon...

2009-08-16T15:43:00.003+03:00

I really wish I could've taken a picture of this, but 1) don't want to tempt fate when armed people are involved, and 2) everyone walks so much slower than I do here that dropping back enough to do it inconspicuously would've been really hard.

But anyway, walking down the street in front of me, having gotten off of a big truck, was a group of maybe five or seven guards. They weren't police, must've been a private security company (Ugandan rent-a-cops, I guess), probably guards for rich houses/compounds going on for the night shift, and got dropped in a group to walk to their respective places.

Anyway, so just kind of idly looking at one, noticing their guns and so forth, and then I see one of them is holding hands with another. Better yet, he's just holding onto the other one's pinky. It was cute, I dare say (though I certainly wouldn't have dared say so to them). And then shortly thereafter those two and one on their right were all three holding hands in a row. The one on the right had an AK-47 slung on his other shoulder.

I really wish I could've taken a picture of it and then captioned it something about how the US military could learn a thing or two...

Although, of course, in truth it was just a casual friendly thing. I haven't noticed it often but I have seen it before. And it's important to note that Uganda is, I gather, a country that is by and large extremely homophobic. For instance, I've heard talk of a law that would ban any and all discussion of homosexuality. Not exactly the first step toward anything better. Anyway, I can't say I really know a great deal about the state of the issue here, except that it's really quite bad, and I don't have a great deal of exposure to local news, so most of what I know is from the Ugandans who hang out at La Fontaine.

The point of the story was just the amusing anecdote about the three big tough armed guys in military garb walking along all holding hands. Alas, I don't have a picture to prove it, though.

Single versus double spaces after periods

2009-08-14T11:51:00.001+03:00

I’ll admit it, I learned to type wrong. I put two spaces after periods when I’m not consciously thinking about it (which is most of the time) which is pretty much incorrect in modern times, as I understand it. It’s a relic of monospace typewriter fonts, which require it for visibility. It’s also good practice in the digital world when using monospace fonts. But outside of a terminal, most people never really do use monospace fonts (like Courier, for example). With kerned fonts it’s considered unnecessary and incorrect, I’m told, and is especially un-OK on the Web.

Well, I’ve put two spaces after every single sentence (except at the ends of paragraphs, of course) on this blog so far, and I apologize. But while for short posts like this I have the willpower to stop myself, I’m pretty sure for long posts it’s going to be the same story. I will, however, begin to do what I should do with other documents (although I don’t typically), which is to correct my bad habit with software, and do a quick find-and-replace.

I’ll try, and we’ll see how it goes. If all else fails, I can always switch the stylesheet to use a monospace font…nobody doesn’t like Courier New, right?

[Edit: rather ironically, given that this is a post on typography, I submitted it by email which totally destroyed the formatting, so I had to go back through and redo all of the spacing and line breaks.]

This absolutely made my day

2009-08-10T23:57:00.002+03:00

And should, I think, make the next few weeks a lot more fun, too. Plus, I've been asked to play at a wedding a few days after my return to the US, so brushing up and learning some music is an absolute necessity. And will be a lot of fun.

I've missed playing trumpet, sort of without realizing it until suddenly I had a reason to think to pick it up and play. I guess from now on I've just got to travel with one (that and constantly have something to be preparing for). I learned my lesson this time, and rented this, and it's not ideal, but it works. And has a very nice (if a little small - but not too bad) Schilke mouthpiece.

I "crafted" a practice mute out of a soda bottle, toilet paper, and a rubber glove (as the cork) to permit freer practicing in my small apartment attached to the landlord's house. Its tuning leaves a great deal to be desired (but so does the horn's own tuning) but its back pressure is adjustable via holes in the bottom of the bottle and with them pretty closed off its pressure and volume are pretty comparable to the (substantially more expensive) Silent Brass mute. Not that the Silent Brass isn't preferable, but it isn't here with me, and this is.

Mbale Visit

2009-08-10T13:45:00.002+03:00

Note: an extended power outage this weekend delayed my posting this even further than my delays in writing it did

There's so much I could describe from my visit to Mbale I'm not quite sure where to begin. First of all, driving along the main roads was not all that different than say, the road in from Entebbe. And passing through and stopping in towns like Jinja and Mbale itself also wasn't that different. They have much the same character and feel (so far as I could tell) as Kampala, if somewhat smaller, slower, and less crowded. But the people you saw on the street, the cars and bodas and mutatus, all looked and feld tabout the same to me. Of course, I'm not terrifically in tune with Ugandan life, either, so I'm sure there are many subtleties of this that I'm missing (things like language, accent, and so forth). Everything was a bit cheaper than in the city, of course, and the bigger downtowns were like the small trading centers in what some people call suburbs (I'd just call them not the city center, as to me Kampala feels like a relatively small city) like Ntinda or Kitintale in Kampala. But not fundamentally different.

Before I discuss the really interesting parts, let me say that (very generously) Grameen generously paid for all of our (Barbara's and my) accommodations and food, which was excellent. Now, they hadn't told us one way or the other ahead of time (which I took to mean I'd better be prepared) but Barbara had taken that to suggest they'd be paying. I don't know, since they never tell me anything about these, I didn't really expect to hear anything ahead of time either way.

Speaking of them never telling me anything, they pushed up the call time (that really is the first phrase that springs to mind -- that's the Cal Band in me talking) by half an hour and didn't tell me, so I met Barbara at the main road (early) having gone out to get a rolex but planning on going home (which is quite close to the MTN PubliCom office) to get my stuff, and then had to rush back home and practically run the (short but uphill) way to the MTN office to get there only about five minutes late. Barbara had gone ahead and told them I was on my way, so I wasn't going to get left behind, but I didn't want to hold up the show. I really should have known better though -- don't get me wrong, these guys are great, but for all its organized, Western-NGO-ness, Grameen sure has developing-country-time down. This level of hurry-up-and-wait puts Cal Band to shame. I rushed to get there at 10:35, and we ended up leaving their office at like 1:00. And we were chronically behind time the whole trip.

Anyway, they put us up in a rather nice, very Western hotel in the town of Mbale, which was comfortable. I really didn't know what to expect as far as accommodation (as, again, nobody tells me any details about these things) but it's clear Grameen's got some funds budgeted for this stuff. Nothing the least bit rural about it, but it was comfortable. The power was out a lot though, but I was able to charge my computer fully for the day I needed it for hours (for the focus groups) and between its battery and the external battery I have for my iPhone (necessary as my data connection and digital camera) I was able to keep everything charged enough. I also took my film SLR and took a lot of pictures on it. I've gotten them developed, but they may not make it to Flickr quite as soon because I'll have to scan them. They came out alright, but the color is a bit washed out and it's a bit grainy; I blame the (unknown) age of the film (given to me by a coworker in the States, and probably kind of old). I also got a roll of color-process black and white film developed, though, and it has some absolutely beautiful pictures. I'm quite pleased with that one.

Back to the trip, the first day we just drove there. I think something had been tentatively scheduled for that afternoon, but thanks to Grameen's flagrant disregard for punctuality, that definitely didn't happen. We got there in the early evening, ate dinner and discussed our discussion points, and then turned in. The next day we had all of the focus groups. The drive out to where the first CKW, named Agnes, lives, was my first real exposure to completely rural life.

The roads weren't so good once we left the main road. Most of the small country roads were dirt or gravel, and while far from smooth, were functional. There was an abundance of tropical greenery all around, sometimes taller and more forest-y, other times opening up into bigger meadows. The plots (or "gardens" as they're often called) of small farms were scattered among this, somethimes quite densely, other times only occasionally. I suspect some I did not even recognize as such, especially bananas. Some, like maize, were more distinct from the surrounding flora, and stuck out more.

Agnes' house was small, but not tiny. We did not see the whole house, either, and were just in what I'd assume was the living room, as there was a couch and a bench and some chairs (likely not its typical arrangement but set up for the meeting). It was lit by a single unshaded lightbulb hanging from a rafter, in addition to the natural light from the windows. The ceiling was not enclosed but appeared to be the underside of the roof. The floor was smooth concrete. The other house we visited, Patrick's, seemed a good bit larger. Its construction was similar, and its floor, too, was concrete, but rather than standing alone it had a wall which enclosed a small courtyard and seemed to possess an attached outbuilding that looked like it may have housed other people (perhaps farm or domestic workers?). He was clearly relatively well-off based upon this house and the fact, as we were told, that he has another house as well. It was electrified, as well, at his own (relatively high) expense, as I will address below.

The focus groups themselves were informative, much like the ones in Kampala a few weeks ago. Again, we discussed the CKWs' preferences among the different AppLab services (Google SMS, AppLab's own CKW-oriented SMS tools, Question Box) as well as trying (relatively unsuccessfully) to ascertain how many households CKWs are capable of reaching. All in all it was interesting, though likely not interesting enough to anyone outside of the associated projects to bear repeating in detail here.

Sitting around outside with the male CKWs at one of the houses while the women had a women-only gender-oriented focus group was also fascinating. I don't tend to find myself in a casual setting with rural Ugandans very often, so getting to just chat informally with them about things ranging from CKW/Question Box related stuff to the lack of rain this season and the high costs of electrification in the country. Interestingly, both houses we visited did have electricity. The second one, whom I spoke to about this, said that the power company requires the individual to pay for the pole, the meter, and the wire to the house. Yet once the pole is in place, any other nearby house can be wired for only the cost of the meter and line. Presumably nearby households may at times pool their money to buy the pole? He didn't say. In any event, all of those remain property of the power company, as well, of course. If my memory serves, he said that the pole cost around $300, which sounds like an easily-borne one-time cost to us from the US -- but relative to the incomes of rural farmers in Uganda that is very, very high and a major investment.

The next day, before we headed back to Kampala, we visited the Busano Subcounty Headquarters, a building where the area's important meetings are held. We were pleased to see a great deal of agriculture information posted up on the walls inside by the local CKW. When we arrived people were beginning to gather for a meeting there (I did not catch what for), so we had a chance to interact with some of the non-CKW community members. This was, for me, the most interesting and the most unlike what I had already done or seen.

None had heard of Question Box specifically, but we told them about it and provided them with flyers on it, which now advertise a direct line that farmers may call themselves, rather than going through their CKW. It remains to be seen how heavily this is used, as it does require the caller to pay for the airtime.

Nevertheless, we got several questions from the people there and the area's CKW, Joseph, featured in the video seen below, called into Question Box for them. One had a question about her cow. Another had a question about TB Question Box could not answer, but 6001, the Google SMS search for agriculture and health topics (there is also a general search, much like Google SMS in the US, as well as the intriguing craigslist-via-sms called Google Trader). Another asked us more trivia-type questions: who is the richest person in the world? Who founded the Catholic Church?

There is no doubt they enjoyed the service, and hopefully will at least continue to utilize it through Joseph. I am not sure, though, how valuable they saw it with regard to their livelihoods -- that remains to be seen. Still, as it is free for them through their CKW, hopefully they will continue to use it and benefit from it. That's the important thing. Of course, while Grameen's CKW program is set to expand substantially over the next few years, we do also want Question Box to be sufficiently valuable and accessible that individuals consider it worth their while to call directly.

I think I have a somewhat deeper understanding of who we are trying to reach, their circumstances, and what they want to know than before; this trip was eye-opening on a number of levels, as well as quite inspiring. Seeing not just the person on the other side of the phone -- the CKW -- in action, but to see the people asking the CKW questions, and hopefully being helped by their answers, whether about a concern on their farm or just satisfying their curiosity, was very deeply rewarding. It makes the fairly abstract work from an office in the city feel much more connected to the reality of the people we're trying to help.

Question Box: "Who is the richest person in the whole world?"

2009-08-05T13:32:00.002+03:00

Joseph, a CKW from Mbale, demonstrates Question Box, asking a question supplied by one of the farmers at the Busano subcounty meeting house (Mbale district) where we met and observed them.

(Digital) photos from Mbale on Flickr; film, not yet

2009-08-04T15:10:00.002+03:00

My post about the trip is about half-written, I'm still polishing it up, but it should be up later tonight. In the mean time, here are all of the pictures from the trip I took on my iPhone. Now, there are probably 40 or so on film (and I've gotten it developed), but they will be a pain to scan, so I'll only do a few of the better ones, when I get a chance. They are a bit grainier than they should be, and the color isn't excellent, which makes me think the film is rather old. This is unfortunate, since I've got another three or four rolls of it, but am not sure how I feel about using them except maybe for effect.

I might see if I can get more here (I'm sure I can, and maybe even cheaper than in the States). If it's available and affordable, I think I'll spring for 800, since 400 is a bit inconvenient indoors and I didn't bring my flash, nor do I really know how to use it; as it's an older camera its synchronization isn't very fast, so you need to use slow shutter speeds (no faster than 60, and slower than 60 sort of defeats the purpose) and do a lot of manual correction in the aperture to get an acceptable exposure, and I've never learned the technique. Also, it's rather bulky.

Anyway, I also got the roll of color-process (C41) black and white film developed that had been in the camera for (I think) a couple of years or so. It has some very, very nice pictures on it, some of which I may scan and put on Flickr at some point. Of course, since it uses color chemicals it doesn't have the extreme sharpness of real black and white film, but (especially compared to the deteriorated color film) it looks quite sharp, although the color (or lack thereof) isn't totally consistent. Some have a cooler, subtly bluish cast, whereas others tend toward sepia. This may be a printing issue, though, I'm not sure. In any case, I'm happy with the results.

Finally a few more pictures on Flickr

2009-07-27T16:16:00.004+03:00

Not that many, but a few of interest, including the SEACOM event (more pictures from film eventually), traffic on Jinja road, my neighborhood (sort of), and most importantly, the best product branding I've ever seen: Baby Matches. See it all here

Well, I did have candles all along.

2009-07-27T15:39:00.004+03:00

I found a couple of little candles under my kitchen sink way at the back yesterday. Still no hot sauce, though.

Incidentally, I've been eating a lot of cabbage lately (typically sort of stir-frying it with this lemon olive oil from the British Air flight, sometimes also with onions or whatever) and quite enjoying it, which I didn't completely expect, I'd never eaten it much before, but we have it at lunch at work sometimes and it's also quite inexpensive. (Non sequitur, I know, I'm just writing what comes to mind as new). I've also been eating rice, pasta, green beans (known here as French beans), the vegetable curry that comes in a can here (quite good, actually, over rice or pasta), beans, that sort of thing. Good, but all things that could benefit from the potent Ugandan chili sauce I've been meaning (but forgetting) to acquire, despite its relative uselessness as a light source.

I still haven't tidied up my notes regarding SEACOM. I'll have to tonight or tomorrow before I go to Mbale, though. Speaking of that, it turns out that the oddly located MTN PubliCom office that I recently discovered lurking basically just up the next road from mine is where we're leaving from on Wednesday, which is exceedingly convenient. Originally we were going to leave at 7:30 (which made the proximity particularly excellent); since then our time's moved to 11:00, which really is even better. But they've still got time to reschedule it to November or something so I won't hold my breath it'll happen at all until I'm actually there. But hey, if they cancel on me at least I won't have gone far out of my way. I really don't know what their deal is as far as scheduling this, though; it's pretty silly. And they're Grameen and MTN, for crying out loud - both big, powerful foreign institutions that ought to have it together.

Field visit change, SEACOM, power out

2009-07-25T10:27:00.002+03:00

[NOTE: I wrote this last night but couldn't get it posted, my tethering wasn't working quite right. Now I have working Internet and, independently, electricity again, which had still been off when I came home last night.]

I have a ton to say about the SEACOM launch, which I was able to attend, thanks to Josh's invitation as a journalist (I went as his assistant), although we decided there's probably about a seventh of a journalist between the two of us. Still, he conducted his interview, I recorded it, typed up notes, and took pictures, so, you know, it wasn't too far from journalism. The event itself wasn't terrifically exciting, although the Minister of ICT was in attendance, but what it marks really, really is, and using what was almost certainly the fastest internet connection in the country and knowing just how those blazing fast little packets were getting there -- that was a powerful thing. And this really should mark the beginning of a new era in internet access for this region.

Anyway, I'll write all that up tomorrow or Sunday to distract myself from the budget proposal stuff I actually need to be working on. A Dutch organization who should probably remain nameless for the moment is very interested in Question Box, however, and wants a proposal soon. We're happy to oblige, especially given the high five-figure sum that's been thrown around here and there. (And it's not in shillings).

In other news, Grameen has rescheduled the field visits completely. Now it looks as though I will go to Mbale on Wednesday and return on Friday. There is also a visit to Bushenyi on the books for later in August, and now maybe Jon will be able to attend, as it isn't immediately after his return from the UK. At any rate, I will keep you posted, and hopefully before too long I'll have exciting stories and cool pictures from a trip upcountry.

In the mean time, I got a nifty Knowledge Worker shirt at work today, MTN's trademark yellow with a phone saying "Ask Me!". I actually like it a lot and will definitely wear it back in the States (though it's a bit big, might need to be altered a little). They also gave me a polo shirt (only one I own, and maybe ever have, I'm not un-proud to say) which is also pretty cool, all things considered. It has MTN's logo on the chest in the traditional spot, and then has Grameen's and Google Uganda's logos on the sleeves. Not a bad trio, I'd say. It'll probably be handy to have, and is certainly a kind of cool token of my involvement with all three (such as it is).

Finally, my power's been out both this morning and now. I'm going to go out to dinner soon and hopefully meet up with some friends. Certainly can't cook here. Also, I find it rather amusing (and fitting in a way - didn't Negroponte say something about them being the only lights in villages?) I'm using Appfrica's OLPC that I've had to play around with (along with my MacBook, but I'm actually using it) as a light source in my apartment. It's particularly handy for the bathroom, I must say. Between the computers, my phone's flashlight (they don't call it ka-torche for nothing!) and a flashlight I brought it's fine, but I really should get a candle or two, don't know why I never thought of that (or hot sauce! - not as a light source, I just keep forgetting to get any, and my bland cooking would benefit from it) any of the times I've been at a grocery store.

Well, I'm hungry, so I'm going to hit the road. Now the question is whether to get what I often get at La Fontaine (a pretty good but kind of small veggie burger) or hit up someplace new and random, like "Taste Budz" near my apartment. I suspect their chips would be much more satisfyingly greasy, but I don't know what else I could get there. I'm always happy to just get, e.g., rice and beans, which tend to be excellent, cheap, and plentiful, but that was pretty much lunch at the office (plus chapati). Hm, decisions, decisions. Well, if the outcome's exciting, maybe it'll make its way into the next post.

[UPDATE: got the La Fontaine veggie burger. Good choice.]

SEACOM goes live tomorrow!

2009-07-22T11:55:00.002+03:00

Tomorrow, at long last, the SEACOM undersea cable, linking London, Marseille, and Mumbai to South Africa, with landings along the East African coast (Djibouti, Mombasa, Dar Es Salaam,Toliara, and Maputo), is finally going online. The cable landed in Mombasa about a month ago, but the actual activation of the system was delayed due to increased Somali pirate activity.

But it sounds as though everything is in place -- the land fibre backhauls to Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, and so forth are in place, and it sounds as though the ISPs have begun to buy into it. For the moment, I understand that it is limited to a capacity of approximately 80Gbps (articles here and here), which is no trivial amount of bandwidth, by African standards, but is a far cry from the 1.28Tbps the cable will ultimately be able to carry.

Still, this is very exciting. Hopefully I'll have more to report tomorrow or Friday on the matter, as my friend and Appfrica fellow Josh Goldstein (see his excellent blog "In an African Minute" -- I'd highly recommend it for those interested in these issues, as well as life in Kampala) has secured an invitation to the event as a member of the press and will be granted an exclusive interview with one of the SEACOM officials present (I think the President or CEO, but I'm not positive).

This should be very interesting, although I'm not sure how soon we will see any meaningful bandwidth increases. Price drops, I fear, are further-off still. I would not be surprised if speeds begin to improve at least a bit while I'm still here, though; I wouldn't say the same for price. Still, in the long term, this is huge for both, and the carrying capacity of the cable itself should allow room for substantial Internet growth in the region as providers see the demand is there and respond accordingly.

In case I haven't said it enough yet, it's really exciting to be here for this rather momentous event in the (short) history of African Internet. I'll keep you posted as it unfolds further.

No trip to Mbale this week

2009-07-22T11:51:00.000+03:00

It seems that I won't have anything to say about going to Mbale because that's off. I don't know why; I didn't speak directly with anyone from Grameen about it.

As such, I'll be going to Bushenyi next week instead (unless that gets called off as well, but it shouldn't).

Hands on with an OLPC, trip to Mbale this week

2009-07-20T10:45:00.002+03:00

Wow, I didn't notice it'd been almost ten days since I posted last. How embarrassing!

On the whole I don't feel like there's that much to say: I've been doing more of the same, working on drafting a variety of documents for Question Box and trying to figure out (first) how to do things like cut back on the number of calls we're escalating to our expert and how to make more certain we aren't asking them the same question more than once and so forth. Part of this means finding out just how much this is happening, which I fear will mean some (more) painstaking combing-over of the records.

So far (still) I've been doing my record-processing in Excel; even with my last project, which was a bit of a logic puzzle of figuring out what combinations of a few yes/no questions meant each of a few different outcomes, it was easiest for me to do it in Excel because I know it and its formula language (or whatever you'd call it) functionally. It'd be much more exciting to do it in (for instance) Python, which I am starting to teach myself, as time allows. But for the moment I just don't feel confident or like it's worth the time to try to do something like that in it.

Speaking of Python, rather interestingly, I've borrowed Appfrica's OLPC XO-1, the One Laptop Per Child computer that was donated to us (around when I came up with that older laptop for them). At the moment it doesn't get much use, so I decided to get better acquainted with it. It's certainly cute, and the hardware is pretty impressive. It feels durable and rugged, and it looks cool (especially for kids). I must confess, however, that for a full-size person, the keyboard is dreadful. And it's not just the small size -- I've used small netbooks before, and none have been so hard to use. The keycaps themselves are really small and have a lot of space between them -- imagine Apple's more recent keyboards, but with the keys 1/4 the size and the keyboard area shrunk to 3/4 of full size. Then cover them with a rubber membrane to totally eliminate the click and resistance of a normal keyboard, and you have an idea of this machine's keyboard. I can't imagine it being very good even for a little kid who can touch-type (although admittedly most, especially in the developing world, likely cannot). Anyway, I can definitely type faster with two thumbs on the iPhone's landscape keyboard than with two hands on the XO. It's that bad.

The screen on the other hand, is really, really cool. Instead of each pixel of the color screen having three segments, one for each color, this one works (in color mode) by using one pixel for each color. But then when you turn the backlight all the way down, it switches to monochrome, at three times the resolution, and is visible with front-lighting. It doesn't go all black like a normal computer LCD with the backlight off. Instead, it takes on more of the look of a digital clock display, with that sort of tan background. It's not as readable (or power-efficient) as an e-ink display (such as that on Amazon's Kindle or similar devices) but is nevertheless much more useable outside and consumes much less power when in this mode than any other standard LCD. It's quite impressive.

The software has some pretty neat stuff. The music sequencing software is simple and pretty intuitive and can do pretty cool stuff almost on its own without needing the user to be a musician or recording engineer. Likewise the Python IDE is easy to use and comes with helpful examples (I think I'll use it to learn Python, although on my Mac, with a real keyboard, using the OLPC's operating system in a virtual machine. The keyboard really is that bad). The software called E-Toys which lets you make and script things and let them play out in an automated sandbox is really interesting, too. It includes lots of interesting things, ranging from a simple car programmed to drive around the screen and change directions when it hits something, to simulations of dye diffusing in water or a disease spreading through a population.

So there is a lot of intriguing and potentially educational stuff on there, but it's hard to use (for someone accustomed to Windows, standard Linux, or Mac -- admittedly all operating systems based on the Western "desktop metaphor") and moreover, feels unfinished and rough. This is really my big problem with OLPC in general -- they've said repeatedly that it's "an education project, not a laptop project," yet all they really make happen fully is the laptop, leaving the educational software and curriculum to the open source community and the respective countries. Of course, that's not something you can necessarily standardize to work everywhere, that's true. But I still take issue with these claims on the project's part.

At any rate, my purpose here isn't to write a thorough analysis or criticism of OLPC. They've certainly gotten a lot done -- they invented the XO from scratch, have gotten many thousands of them to kids (and to tinkerers and developers), and have called a lot of attention to the ideas around technology's roles in education and development. And I don't think netbooks would exist as a major genre of computers today without the work OLPC did to show manufacturers they could make a useable, ultraportable, and very low-cost laptop. But there are major problems with the organization and project as well. My purpose here, though, was to give my initial impressions of the device and its software after spending a couple of days with it, and I am impressed in a lot of respects with it, particularly the hardware (keyboard excepted) and the cost. The software leaves a bit to be desired -- and I might get us a developer key for it so as to be able to experiment with other, more standard Linux distributions. I suspect using it with more familiar software will make it feel a lot more useable.

And I know, by my standards this is a fairly short post [EDIT: well, not really. And short by my standards doesn't mean much]. I can write more about the OLPC if there's interest, though of course that's not something I feel like I can say all that much about. (Not that that's stopped me so far about anything else, though).

In other news, I'll be heading East to Mbale on Wednesday, and staying there through most of Thursday, on a trip with Grameen's AppLab to one of the areas their Community Knowledge Workers are operating. While I've met them before (although I notice I never finished/posted what I'd written about our meeting and focus groups), I'm very excited to get to see them doing what they do in the field, and hopefully actually meet with the people they talk to -- the farmers themselves who are the source of the questions the CKWs ask us, and who are the intended beneficiaries of the service. It should be fascinating to see their farming and living conditions in person, as well as the crops and issues they're always asking about. And I think talking to them firsthand will help us get a better idea of just how they see the service, what it's worth to them, and so forth, which are all important questions as we start to figure out how Question Box could be scaled up and how it could be made financially sustainable.

I'll have much more to say about the trip and should have lots of pictures (although some may be confined to film -- haven't used my film camera much yet, but should) after I get back.

Google's Chrome OS, "cloud computing," and Africa

2009-07-10T10:38:00.002+03:00

This whole "Google OS" thing is pretty weird. It's odd that they'd announce it so far in advance, with (seemingly) nothing at all to show for it -- no details, so screenshots, nothing. It's like they're announcing that they're going to start working on it...before too long.

Their approach to applications sounds distressingly similar to Apple's initial approach to the iPhone -- all webapps. Still, as has been pointed out in a variety of places by a number of people (PC World's Nick Mediati, Daring Fireball's John Gruber) just because it's web code doesn't mean it's just a webpage. The Palm Pre's whole OS runs (essentially) web code, but this includes applications hosted locally, and they have access to the device's hardware features in a way that true webapps running in a browser traditionally don't/can't. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

However, the fact that so much will likely be stored "in the cloud" is discomforting to some, and not without good reason.

But I have another concern with this, as someone currently based in Africa, where the connectivity is very, very poor. At a college campus in the US, sure, I had pretty ubiquitous connectivity. Anywhere it would occur to me to take out my laptop and use it, I had access to some sort of wifi or another. And that's likely true of a large number of people in the developed world. Most of the places they'll unpack their laptop -- at home, at work -- they've got easy wifi connectivity.

Sticking still to developed countries, though, what about on a train? A bus? The subway? These are even more significant when we consider netbooks, which seem to be the platform of choice for this new operating system. Perhaps Google expects integrated WAN in every netbook by the time they release their OS (and maybe they're right). However, I for one am too cheap to pay for a connection like that for a computer, especially when I already am for my phone. Granted tethering said smartphone is a possibility, but until US providers get their acts together and officially permit tethering, that's not realistic either (except for those of us, er, ahem, those people willing to stretch the TOS a little and tether anyway).

All of these connectivity concerns, especially relevant for ultraportable laptops, are magnified substantially when we consider the rest of the world. Of course, I freely admit that technology companies do not, for the most part, design high-profile products like this with the developing world in mind. But why not? Google clearly sees demand for search products in the developing world, as evidenced by the rollout of SMS search in Uganda last week. The demand for smartphones and laptops is there, too, albeit much less than in a Western country.

Yet in the few larger stores I have seen selling computers, the only machines they are selling are fairly large and fairly dated regular laptops, selling for more than they're worth. High prices aren't a surprise, but a netbook -- even sold for a bit more than it should really be worth* is still cheaper and not much different in specifications.

At any rate, the point I'm trying to make is that Google is acknowledging the demand for knowledge and connectivity (and therefore a market for the service they're in the business of providing) in places like sub-Saharan Africa. And I think they'd stand to benefit from pushing that further, with inexpensive, simple computers and an easy-to-use, brand new OS. They could carve out a huge new market for their OS by challenging Microsoft somewhere Windows is not as entrenched as in the developed world because no operating system is. But in my mind, that can't happen with an operating system that's only fully functional when it's connected to the Internet, because for the moment that's simply neither possible nor affordable here in Africa.

Maybe by the time this OS actually launches TEAMS, SEACOM, and some of the other planned undersea cables will actually exist and be lit, and East Africa will be swimming in bandwidth (compared to the present, at least). And given how much we know about the Chrome OS, it could very well be that long. But while I'm sure it will be a while, I doubt connectivity here will be much better by the time it ships. I just hope it's sufficiently web-independent to be useful to all of us who either don't want, can't afford, or simply don't have access to truly ubiquitous Internet, because I think a lightweight operating system for netbooks that both isn't Windows and is more accessible than today's Linux distros (see for instance the high return rates of Linux netbooks), is a good thing. And I think, except for the heavy reliance on connectivity I fear it will have, such an operating system combined with inexpensive computers could be a great thing someplace like this.

------
*Note that I'm not suggesting it's the least bit OK to gouge 3rd-world markets for products and services they want/need just because they aren't widely available or anything like that. This is related, I think, to the arguments around the mobile/SMS pricing here -- it's useful enough that people will pay it, even if it's unreasonably high, and still arguably benefit from it (as they might from say, overpriced netbooks), but that doesn't make it good. Steve Song has a good article on it here.

Link: PC World article on Question Box!

2009-07-08T20:24:00.003+03:00

This is pretty exciting, a PC World article. With the launch of Jon's new Question Box website and his upcoming TED talk (!!!), Question Box is getting more and more exposure. It was also mentioned on Ethan Zuckerman's blog.

Quick update, sorry it's been so long

2009-07-06T10:55:00.004+03:00

I've really got a lot to talk about, I just haven't finished getting it all on (proverbial) paper just yet, I've been very busy.

Quick summary:

--Earlier last week there was the big Grameen CKW/Question Box event. I've written up a bit about it, haven't quite finished it yet. Met the CKWs (Community Knowledge Workers) as well as some of the AppLab team, had focus groups about the AQB (AppLab Question Box, sorry, I went to Berkeley, I love me my TLAs [ahem, three letter acronyms]) service, as well as the newly public Google SMS services (the CKWs have been testing/using them for a while), and it was nice to hear that neither the CKWs nor Grameen sounds like they view the SMS tools as a replacement for our service. There's a writeup about it at the new Question Box blog (to which I'll also contribute), located here, as well as pictures from it that Jon took. Some pictures I took either are or soon will be on Flickr.

--My next set of projects at work involve the software: studying how it differs from the original spec that was agreed upon for it, figuring out if anything ought to or needs to be changed as part of that, etc, as well as describing it in great detail for an intellectual property agreement between Appfrica (who created the software and houses the project; Jon's company) and Open Mind (the parent nonprofit of Question Box; Rose's organization) about the software. I'm also working to improve some major recordkeeping issues (such as one that made it look as though, based on the data to which I had access, our answer rate was about 60% -- in reality this reflected those that could be answered without escalation to an expert, and the real rate is more like 95%). And uh, in case I'm saying more about any of this than I'm supposed to (I don't think so, but still), don't go publishing any of this without asking me first, OK?

--I'm moved into my new place. It's very nice! There are pictures on Flickr.

--The commute is taking some getting used to, I haven't fine-tuned it yet. Last week it was hard, so I kept stopping halfway at Good African Coffee to get some work done there. Their internet is also better than the office's, so both times I went Jon ended up going there, too. They know and love Jon there, and so I'm well-liked by association, and will be a regular soon...they're coffee's very good, and pretty inexpensive. A small African coffee (brewed coffee with steamed milk), which is easily two cups worth (it comes in a little kettle) is 4000 shillings, or less than two dollars. Not bad compared to coffee shops in the Bay Area. Speaking of coffee, over the weekend I got myself a French press so I could make myself coffee. It seemed pretty expensive (like $20!) but I figured I'll always use one, I like them a lot, and I'll certainly get a lot of use out of it here and home/wherever, so I was willing to pay it, since they're not all that easy to find here. Then I got it home and it's cracked, and I probably won't get a chance to return it until at least Tuesday, if not later. I really hope they don't accuse me of cracking it, but I think I've got to try, though I don't think the chances of exchanging it are all that great, given what I've heard. And it will work as is, and only leaks very little very slowly, but it's the principle, especially given how much it cost. Plus I want it to last, and the glass is always as risk from the temperature extremes. Don't need it starting out weakened. Sigh. Also it seems to be impossible (here) to buy just the glass part for if/when it breaks like you'd hope you could.

Anyway, today I walked about half way to work and took a taxi (mutatu) the other half. It took a long time (about an hour) but only cost 500 (about a quarter) and now I know a way that avoids the icky busy street until almost where it's easy to get a mutatu. It was really nice, too, when I got to the bottom of the hill, Benon, the special driver I know best, was heading up to the hill to pick somebody else up, and offered me a lift. (That's the only reason I was as on time as I was; otherwise it would've been another ten minutes probably -- it's not far, but it is steep!).

I know another route for the first half of the commute that could be better, as it could involve two mutatus, so quicker and less walking (still at least 10 minutes on either end though, one each uphill and downhill each way -- I'd still get plenty of exercise) but so far I haven't had much luck actually getting a mutatu for the first stretch, they're all full by the time they get there, so I just end up walking further along a stretch of big road that's not great for walking because it's really busy and the sidewalk path wanders away from it through markets, dilapidated houses, and so forth, and isn't very efficient (as well as at times a little uncomfortable). So what I did today worked better, it's just a bit time-consuming.

--The 4th of July weekend was fun. Friday I met up with some people (via Naashom, who I got my place from, but herself couldn't make it, as she was stuck in traffic into Kampala from Jinja) about whom I'd heard but never met, another group of this same circle of muzungu development workers. I ended up going to their 4th of July barbeque rather than the official ARA (American Recreation Association?) one which sounded fun-ish but cost money and I didn't really know who'd be going. So I went with the known known and went to the smaller barbeque, which I'm pleased to say involved excellent veggie kebabs and (!) veggie burgers and sausages from the pseudo-Morningstar farms brand they sell at ShopRite (which are quite good, and even come in green boxes! Very exciting).

--I think that's all for now. Oh yeah, Jon and Sarah's other roommate, whose room I stayed in while I was here, just got back and I met him. I'd heard a lot about him, so that was exciting. He's just finish(ed/ing) an MBA at Oxford (!). I think I'll join him and Jon and co. for dinner tonight.

--I'll write more as I have it and have the time and energy to write it up. But in short, everything's great, work is going well, I'm settling into my new place and new (long) commute, getting familiar with the city and transportation in it, and getting to know a good group of people to hang out with. Also, I'm eating well, if fairly simply, and now I've got a safer plug adapter for the electric range and nothing's caught fire yet.

--Once again, if you're interested in Question Box, have a look at the blog! It's just starting out, but should become a good source of updates on it and how it fits into Grameen's rural ICTD program.

Saturday, trip downtown on my own

2009-06-29T22:06:00.001+03:00

Since I've been promising this for a while, I suppose I'd better actually write it. I fear I built up Saturday too much, and it won't really be nearly as interesting as it sounded like it would be. Oh well.

So, I started out by going to see the apartment, my only other prospect besides the nice but very far house in Nakasero. This one isn't super close (definitely not walking distance) but more manageable, and doesn't put as much traffic as humanly possible between itself and work, like the place in Nakasero did. Anyway, the people with the big house there decided not to renew their lease, so it became a non-option.

Anyway, I got there via special (as I've said, what we'd consider a cab) with Benon, one of the drivers I know from Jon and Sarah who stages near the bottom of their hill. He's really nice, and is actually who drove me in from Entebbe, also. I took a special on my own to see the other house, too, but it's still a bit new. Anyway, he remembers me, and knows Jon and Sarah well, so he knows their house and such.

So, I didn't have very good directions to the place, and the landlord was pretty hard to understand over the phone. He and Benon ended up talking and working out the directions, though even so, Benon was a bit unsure of where he was going. But eventually we found it, and the landlord was a polite older guy with a Rolex (I noticed this the next day, when I was handing him 1.4 million shillings...). The apartment itself turns out to be currently occupied by a woman involved in this same sort of work whose name I recognized from the housing email list (although I think her name came up because of a bigger place in the same compound, from when there was somebody else coming to work with Jon around the same time as me). Anyway, she was really nice, and had done some work with Question Box, though had to stop because of her other work. She knows a lot about it, and we're going to meet at some point while she's still here; she's got some documents that could be helpful, and advice on (e.g.) getting jobs here, and (e.g.) writing oneself into funding proposals and grants and such (that is -- if Question Box got more funding, some of that would be to pay me to keep working for them).

Anyway, so the conversation with her was very beneficial, in addition to seeing the place. It's a little studio, attached to the landlord's house, I think. It's got its own entrance, own bathroom, etc. The kitchen (such as it is) is pretty limited -- it's basically a little sink and counter, with a freestanding electric burner thingy, small fridge, and electric kettle...so, no oven, but that's alright. Most of the staple foods I make (uh, rice, pasta, different pasta, beans) and vegetables I'll make are stove-requiring. And yeah, lunch is provided on the weekdays at work (so in that respect I'm getting paid, by the way). But yeah, I was introduced to the place at 800,000 shillings/mo, which seemed alright ($380/mo), especially compared to the Bay Area. After I looked at it and told the guy I'd let him know as soon as possible (he wanted to know soon), I went about the rest of my day (see below). Later I got a text from Benon saying the landlord called him (I guess because they understood each other better? Didn't still have my number? I don't know) saying that he'd misspoken and the apartment was 700,000 -- about $330. Maybe he took my not having called him yet as indecision, I don't know. I told him I'd take it, though, and went the next day to pay him. I paid him two months rent on Sunday, which was why I was carrying 1.4 million shillings, which was a little uncomfortable (and the only time I'll probably ever hold more than a million of any currency...).

Getting to work won't be too bad...I'll have to walk (maybe)/special/boda (to be avoided) to the main road, and from there I can get a mutatu (also called a taxi; a bigger van that follows a route) to the bottom of the hill where Jon and Sarah's house and the office are. Should be pretty inexpensive, maybe a couple thousand shillings ($1) total each way, or so. Also, Jon talked to Rose, and it sounds like the budget should permit about 300,000 ($150) total for me for transit, which should pretty much cover my commute.

So anyway, after I got back from the place in the early afternoon, I decided to go downtown for the adventure, and also to get a new phone for my voice number, as discussed a couple of posts ago. This started with a walk down the hill to the bigger road, which was really my first time just walking around on my own. I felt a little uncomfortable, a little out of place, but it was alright. I got on a mutatu there headed downtown, which cost 700/= (about $0.35!) to go all the way there. It was crowded (about 7 or 10 people in it?) and somebody had a big bag of potatoes (Irish, as they call them), but not uncomfortable. I'll post a picture of one sometime, they're distinctive, these flat-fronted Toyota vans, painted white with blue checkers.

Anyway, the downtown area is really crowded. It transitions pretty quickly from the big state buildings and Western-style hotels to the dense, market-y area that comes a little later. People and traffic were both pretty thick all over, including in the roads. There were a ton of little shops and street vendors. I tried a bunch selling phones, and gradually got better at it...at the start they were asking like 100,000 for a pretty simple, plain phone. I got one place down to 55,000, but tried some others; having that one was helpful at the others. Anyway, the guy had definitely suggested the phone was unlocked, and it turned out not to be (carrier-locked to Zain/Celtel -- and I already had an MTN line, and kind of had to use them since they're Grameen's partner; theyr'e also what everybody has so it's cheaper). He told me about an unlocking joint, and it sounded cheap enough I was willing to do that -- but (according to them -- and they seemed to know what they were talking about and have the tools to do unlocking) that model couldn't be unlocked by them. So then I went back to the place I bought it, where the guy was going to let me go up to the slightly higher end unlocked version of the same thing that sold for 80,000+, but he'd do 75. I got him down to 70,000 (which he had to ask his boss about!), so I felt like all in all I'd done reasonably well for myself, haggling-wise. It was, after all, a brand new unlocked handset for like $35 -- not bad at all. Simple, yes. But well made (and with a built in flashlight!). It uses the non-US GSM bands (it's dual-band) but, oh well, the times it's most useful to me will be outside of the US where I don't want to carry my iPhone and/or use a separate line for data.

I also withdrew some of the cash I needed to pay my rent downtown, and some more at the Barclay's bank near the house/office. That reminds me, one thing I've noticed here -- not just downtown, but everywhere -- I've probably seen the most and most visible and biggest firearms here I ever have before, and that's including Alturas. Now, these aren't people just casually carrying them, of course, but there are armed guards all over the place -- it's weird, especially given how little crime I hear there is (or maybe that's why?). A lot of banks, fancy houses, stuff like that have guys outside with old-looking rifles, sometimes, or sometimes fairly modern-looking assault-type rifles like AKs, or sometimes big pistol-grip pump shotguns...it's a little intimidating, but seems very casual. I guess it's not too different from cops or security guards with pistols in the States, just more conspicuous (and accurate and powerful).

Anyway, the day was pretty exciting, though I don't think I've conveyed it all that well. I got a mutatu back to the main road near home and walked back, as well. The upholstery was leopard print, I couldn't help but notice.

Well, I've been typing all day, so that's going to have to do it for now. Hopefully next time I'm someplace interesting like that I'll have the nerve to a few pictures for you (I didn't really this time, I felt a little weird about it -- and likely will continue to, but I can probably manage one here and there).

Google SMS launched in Uganda!

2009-06-29T21:00:00.003+03:00

Today's announcment (see AppLab page, Google Africa blog post, writeup at WhiteAfrican) came as quite a surprise -- we knew there'd be something, but this is pretty big. They've been increasing their presence in Uganda, and hired Appfrica to do some local (Luganda, I assume) translation earlier this year.

So anyway, today they announced Google SMS service to Uganda -- itself no small feat -- as well as SMS information services for agriculture and health topics (in much the same vein as Question Box, but by text). Finally, they also announced "Google Trader," an SMS-based system designed to facilitate commerce, helping people get price information and connecting potential buyers and sellers (UPDATE: explanation from Google here)

All of this is a collaboration between Google, Grameen's AppLab, responsible for testing high-tech ideas (including Question Box), and MTN, Grameen's telco partner in Uganda (and elsewhere, I believe) since the Village Phone.

All this attention from Google seems like it can't be a bad thing...of all of the private companies to work with (particularly with resources like they have), Google is certainly pretty benign -- they make their money off of people getting access to information, after all.

Now, does this mean Google and/or Grameen will be hiring in Uganda...?

[The unusual brevity is because this post was drafted on my phone]

LINK: What is Question Box? by Jon Gosier

2009-06-29T13:51:00.001+03:00

This is an excellent overview of the premise and potential of the Question Box project, (for which I'm currently working) written by its CTO, Jon Gosier of Appfrica labs, on the Appfrica blog which covers work being done at Appfrica as well as other technology and social entrepreneurship issues in the region.

Tethering again, and MacBook sleep/wake crash

2009-06-28T16:46:00.000+03:00

For me, at least, the creation of the USB ethernet interface OS X sees the USB-tethered iPhone has brought on the crash-on-second-sleep-after-boot bug that's been noted in 10.5.7. I've solved it by removing the interface (and creating an unused new one). Don't know why this works, but it does, and I'm satisfied. I don't have restore CDs (or a backup...) here, so I didn't want to have to reinstall, and getting hardware work done would be much much worse. (I think I may pick up an external for Time Machine here; I'm told they're quite reasonable, and my phone-buying experience introduced me to the haggling that's possible here).

Anyway, now I've resolved to stick to Bluetooth tethering. It takes more phone power, yes -- but it also doesn't suck power out of the computer like USB (or like the USB modem the iPhone's replacing) and the computer's battery is, in many cases, the more precious resource, especially since I have an external battery to juice up the phone in a pinch.

Also, not only do you not have to plug in the phone, you don't have to do anything to it -- it can be in a pocket or bag and you can initiate the tether from the computer end. My new apartment's a little studio, and I'm definitely going to use my AirCurve (a passive, acoustic amplifier for the phone's speaker, that permits a cable to be run through it for power) on my nightstand as a clock-radio and charger, and I'm sure I'll be able to tether anywhere in the apartment with it docked there (even the bathroom -- is Jason reading this?).

So yeah, it's annoying that the USB method brought on this major OS X bug (fixed in 10.5.8 I hope?), but in reality Bluetooth is way more convenient. Nothing to mess with on the phone, no need to remember a cable, less drain on the computer's battery, ability to put the phone where it gets best signal, etc.

I'm sorry for blogging so much about my own tech issues/solutions here, but for one, it's on my mind, and for another, I think it's easy on the one hand to forget about how much more difficult the connectivity etc we take for granted in the States is here, and on the other to assume that nobody has iPhones or internet at all in Africa and think these are total non-issues here (and while I'm exaggerating here, you know what I mean).

Oh, and still working on that (actually maybe interesting) post about my day out yesterday.

iPhone tethering...

2009-06-27T21:56:00.001+03:00

...is awesome with 3.0! I just bought an inexpensive (70k/=, about $33) unlocked simple Nokia phone for my voice number, so now my Grameen SIM (for the GPRS modem) can reside in my iPhone. It now has unlimited EDGE data, so I can get email on it (I'm very pleased to turn Push and Fetch back on), and now, thanks to 3.0, as soon as I plug it into my computer it turns tethering on, and does exactly what the GPRS modem did, albeit with better service. It probably takes more power, but at least it also has a battery, and if the computer's battery is low and I don't want to charge the phone from it, it works over Bluetooth, too. This is handy in case I forget to bring the iPhone's cable, too.

Anyway, that solves the problem of data for my phone -- now I don't need to get a second connection, and I can get a lot more good out of Grameen's money. After all, they pay for the whole month of unlimited data (in theory -- I'm sure it's limited in practice, but at the speed it gets, I doubt you could ever approach its limit), so I might as well use it. This way I don't need a second piece of hardware, and I can carry my email, Evernote notes, and so forth around with me all the time, which is helpful. I always carry a paper notebook, as well, now, but still, there are definitely bits of info in my email that I occasionally need at a moment's notice.

This means sometimes carrying two phones, but I can also leave the iPhone at home when I'm going someplace where I'm uncomfortable carrying it or just don't need it, much like when I used to carry a phone and my N800/810 -- except now the second device has a persistent data connection (moreover, one I don't have to pay for).

In any case, I'm pleased with the setup, and the fact the iPhone OS 3.0 supports tethering (instead of using PDAnet or other 3rd party, jailbreak software, that was always pretty cumbersome) makes it really convenient. Of course, MTN isn't an iPhone carrier, so I had to go to a 3rd party site to generate a Profile file for it, but that was painless.

Anyway, I'm pleased with the setup and testing it out now. The little Nokia is nice and feels well-made. It's probably the simplest phone I've owned; it's a bit simpler (and substantially better made...) than my old Samsung flip phone I got the summer before I started at Cal. Now all I have to do is get used to a phone with buttons again...

Once I have some more time and energy (today was very exciting and eventful and I don't quite have the energy to write about it right now -- but it's definitely worth writing about) I'll write up the actually interesting parts of my day instead of the dry techie parts. Apologies for now.

Looking for housing, not a whole lot of consequence to say

2009-06-26T09:18:00.001+03:00

I haven't had a chance to write much lately, I've been really busy.

I ended up staying up until like 3 the other night trying to send a document I finished at about 1 or 1:30. That only too so long because I fell asleep while I was waiting for the (SQL) query to finish on the server and make its way over my abysmal internet connection so I could work on it. It was immensely frustrating trying to send it, Mail.app wouldn't work, gmail wouldn't work...eventually I used the CalMail webmail because it would actually load. [EDIT: that was Wednesday night, now it's Friday morning, and still no working Gmail IMAP. Using web/basic html version)]

The other day I looked at a house in Nakasero. It was really, really nice and there was a room available in it for what would be about $350 all told. So far it's the best definite deal I've found, and I like it a lot, and the people who live there aren't too much older and in similar (development) work, so it'd be great...except it's quite far away. I'm not sure how I'd get to work, but on foot is pretty much not an option. Specials are waaay too expensive to take everyday like that -- I'd be spending like ten bucks a day on them, or something. Bodas (moped taxis, I suppose) are cheap, but, well, pretty totally unappealing because of their safety (or lack thereof). Mutatus -- big vans that are either sort of group taxis or follow predefined routes (I suspect a mixture of both) -- must be pretty inexpensive, and are heavily used by locals. That'd be worth investigating. I do know somebody who owns a motorcycle helmet because she takes bodas...that'd be an improvement, but still not great.

Anyway, I was forwarded on an email about another house with spots open that's closer; couldn't get through last night but hopefully I'll be able to get ahold of them today. UPDATE: No such luck, somebody's three research assistants took all of the openings. Oh well. A couple of Bugolobi flats ones didn't pan out either -- just as well, they're pretty depressing. These huge buildings all together on this hillside but with a little too much empty space between them, deteriorating visibly and with some of the hideous giant stork birds on the roof for effect... Also, the driveway (road?) into it looks like the last time it was patched they accidentally mixed landmines in with the asphalt. Seriously, the pot holes were mind-blowing. Driving on it was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland; I felt really bad for having asked my special (cab) driver to take me there, it had to have been awful for his suspension/frame/everything.

However, Barbara, the office manager and Question Box operators' direct supervisor (she's also who contacts the experts for calls that are escalated to them because we can't) has been looking for a house as well and so had some contacts; she was also appalled at the prices people were telling me (almost certainly reflecting a mzungu [foreigner] tax, so to speak) and found a couple of places that were both pretty close and reasonably affordable; I'll check them out tomorrow, I think, which is good -- the nice, far place people wanted an answer tomorrow (though I don't think as of yet they have any other takers, so I can probably stretch it if need be, but don't want to be rude either). Anyway, Jon thought he might be able to find/scrape together some money to pay for transportation for me, in case I do have to live far. Though, I've seen the budget from Grameen -- it's pretty small, considering the time, people, and equipment involved. And Jon's already given me a place to stay, and provides lunch for everybody at the office (that's substantial: one of my meals each day, 5 days a week), out of his/his company's pocket. Anyway, though, I'll take what I can get; if my housing is only 2-300US/month I imagine if you divide the airfare across the whole time I won't be paying much more than in the Bay Area, although there are other expenses (shots, storage, insurance) that will inevitably drive it higher. But in all, not bad, considering it's also work/living experience in the kind of thing I want to keep doing, and exposure to a lot of people doing just that as their real job. (I also wouldn't rule out the possibility of landing or at least positioning for an actual job here in the future).

A lot of these development types here have Master's degrees; it does seem like it's helpful for getting real jobs in the field. Seems worth considering, at least. Doesn't pay for itself in the same way as a PhD, but it can be quite quick, as well (1 year at LSE, for instance).

Unrelatedly, I've in the past couple of days spoken to a Berkeley iSchool student doing dissertation work here, whose blog I read, and also met a guy who did one of those policy internships at Google (and because of who he worked under may have a shot at a job in the Obama administration, according to Jon), but who also just got accepted there, but isn't going because he's got a (some?) job(s) here. I know he's doing marketing work for Jon/Appfrica, and also doing something for the local Google person/people, who Appfrica did some translation work for recently, as well.

The whole ICTD community is relatively small, it seems, so everybody works for/with everybody else and ends up very well connected as a result.

And I'm not sure my modem's going to work tonight either, so this may have to wait until the morning to post. Hopefully once I settle in better and get a place I'll be able to talk about real issues instead of just what I'm doing, too, though I'll talk about that to the extent it's interesting, too.

Oh, I figured it would be annoying if I inlined too many pictures, so I started using flickr to post up photos I've taken on my phone. The photostream's at http://www.flickr.com/photos/phutterman, for those interested. I'll probably put a few into actual posts as I see fit, as well, but everything I take that I keep on my phone should make its way to the flickr, eventually (as connectivity permits).

First couple of days of work

2009-06-23T18:02:00.000+03:00

I didn't have a chance to blog yesterday about my first day, but I'll include both of my first two days in this post.

Both days I've gone in with Jon at about 9. Everyone else gets there and starts by 10, although they trickle in before then. Everyone who works there is very nice, it's an enjoyable work environment. In all, I've interacted more with the Appfrica developers than with the Question Box operators, I fear, though.

So yesterday I started out upgrading and redistributing the memory between the main (live) server and two other similar machines. One is going to be a development server, and one is to run the eGranary drive, which is a big repository of educational and academic, etc, documents on an external hard drive.

Stupidly, the eGranary only comes with Windows software which is irritating and closed (basically everything here is Linux-based for cost, expandability, openness, and so forth -- all of the reasons it's a better platform for this sort of thing). But it turns out that the contents are easy to access and stored in a standardized fashion (having been pulled from the web in the first place with an open source tool, HTTrack). We're going to try to integrate it into the Question Box software backend using the existing indexing system.

So, upgrading those machines and working with the eGranary were big parts of what I did. It was a pretty slow day for Question Box, but I saw a couple of calls taken. Today has also been slow (the caller liasons, Grameen's so-called Community Knowledge Workers, have been at a training and doing a field survey.

Still, I've been introduced to the software they use, written in-house, which is actually pretty impressive. It integrates searching the approved information sources, beginning with cached previously used answers and then moving on to cached webpages and documents, and eventually the web, if need be. It also includes all of the record-keeping functionality that allows us to keep detailed call records of the sort I've been analyzing.

My task is to figure how to improve what the operators are doing, and as yet I'm not sure. The software's pretty slick, and the operators seem pretty good with it, though there's always room for improvement.

There are a few steps I don't understand, such as logging much of the same information on paper immediately after entering it to the computer. While it isn't harmful when things are slow, I don't understand the purpose and it seems like it would become a major slowdown when volume is higher. So far as I can see (and anyone can tell me) the paper records are never used for anything. I think I will recommend against continuing their use (which has already been mentioned -- that's something Rose [Shuman] and Jon [Gosier] asked me to look at).

Anyway, the other major task I've been working on is an analysis of call log data from the Question Box records. Unfortunately, the behavior of the exporting tools on the server is variable at best; I started with copied and pasted data from the web-based tables into Excel. Since then an Excel-export tool purportedly came back online but still isn't right. Anyway, as of today I've started over on a table pulled from a slightly different query with more complete and useful information, but still missing some handy info (that another set of otherwise less useful queries do include). Also weirdly, the total number of records generated by these different sets of queries don't seem to quite add up, which is distressing.

The data is definitely useful for general trends, regardless of its exactness. We are talking about 1000+ queries for the month of May, so slight imprecision should not affect the overall picture too much. Redoing what I already did is unfortunate, but a lot quicker as now I know the Excel tricks necessary both to strip out some of the data, such as reducing very long answers that bog down Excel to a set of statuses (answered, not answered, referred to expert, etc), as well as generating counts for various categories (and marginal distributions) using Pivot Tables.

It's still not the most enjoyable/interesting/stimulating work, but I feel like I should do it first since it's got to go into a midterm report to Grameen (damn, and I though I was done with midterms...). Also, there's less to observe while Question Box activity is slow like it has been. Still, I know I need to get more actively involved with the operators. Once I get this stuff out of the way and no longer have an excuse not to, I'll have to. That is what I'm here to do, after all. I can wrangle Excel data from anywhere (and could learn a thing or two from Mark at TSW).

Anyway, I've gotten a certain amount done, and a lot of it's going to take time (although identifying software issues to have the developers work on is something to do early, so there's time to develop, debug, and deploy it). This week I still need to try and have a meeting with Barbara (the office supervisor, oversees the operators and handles escalated questions) and the operators themselves to try and better identify problems they see with the system and whatnot. I wanted to see more and better understand what they're doing as is first. Hopefully tomorrow there'll be a bit more activity. And I know I've missed a few calls today working on the data and stuff; I'll try to wrap the report up soon as well.

I'll attach some pictures that I took of my desk (in Jon's office) and if I get a chance to take some, the bigger office area, which is where I'm working now, since there are some seats, and it's more interesting. Plus I can see/hear the operators in action even if I'm not focused on them. The office is high up on a hill, too, and has a really nice view.

EDIT: pictures probably to follow in another post, as I think I'm going to leave my computer here at the office to download iPhone OS 3.0 (as there's now a software unlock for it on the 3G, so I can use it with MTN, T-Mobile, etc). The unlock came impressively quickly after the software release, especially given that there wasn't a working unlock for the previous newest (2.2.1) baseband, only the one before that (causing 3G owners some headache). 2G owners have it so easy by comparison...and it sounds like for the moment 3GS owners (anyone?) are high and dry, but in all likelihood, anyone who has one this early in the game must be on AT&T.

If I'd brought my phone cable, I could have put them up now, but I didn't. Sorry! Tomorrow!

End of my first night in Kampala

2009-06-20T15:56:00.001+03:00

(12:05am, 20 June)

So, here I am inside my mosquito-net-fort at Jon and Sarah's house. It's just after midnight local time right now.

Bringing both the flashlight and the little USB-port light were good choices; the light switch is inevitably outside the net, so the flashlight makes getting in etc much easier, and the USB light makes for good and easy to position light for typing without needing batteries or anything.

This afternoon and evening were really nice. I met Jon, of course, and he took me to the office and showed me around and introduced me to the operators and office manager, as well as to the Appfrica developers with whom we share space, and who helped write the software interface the Question Box operators use.

Jon and Sarah also have a really cute puppy ("Zipper") from the local SPCA. She's 11-ish weeks old, pretty small, and impressively mild-mannered for a dog of her age. I'll have to post pictures of her later.

Later in the evening a few of their friends came over, including one of their friends' couchsurfers. It turns out that Jon and Sarah are on CS, and I suppose now I definitely have to join since I am, for all intents and purposes, couchsurfing their place. They said they'd write me a reference on it, too, and they and their friend and their friend's couchsurfer exchanged some stories. We watched a movie, Revolver, from one of their well-stocked (and all completely MPAA-ok...) external hard drives. It was by the same person as Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, etc, but was kind of incomprehensible and not really as good. It seemed to be going for sort of a Fight Club-style twist but left it way too ambiguous.

I think they have Arrested Development on one of their drives, so thankfully my forgetting to bring it with me won't prevent me from seeing it until the fall (not that I'll ever have time to...). I also went briefly to a nearby and pretty elaborate supermarket with Jon to get a few things he needed for the people coming over, but didn't get anything for myself; will sort that out over the weekend. I just had no sense of what I had space to store or prepare or whatever while I'm at their place. He also showed me a couple of places that might have rooms while we were out, and hopefully I'll be able to get one before long. Also, it's commonplace for stores to have bulletin boards where these things are listed.

In all, I don't feel like I accomplished much today but it was definitely a start, and while I didn't see a whole lot of the area besides from the original car, I definitely feel like, well, I'm here, and am starting to get a feeling for the place.

In other news, apparently Grameen issued Question Box a couple (three?) GPRS/EDGE modems, but the operators' computers are at the Appfrica office where there is already a connection (about $1000/mo for a 192kbps connection!), so Jon said I could just use one as my connection for the duration of my stay. I might still get data for my iPhone, as well, but needn't decide right away. It'll work fine as a phone once I get a SIM card for it (tomorrow, I hope), which will help with getting a flat and all that.

OK, I think that's all for now. I'm exhausted, and excited not be in an airport for the first night since Monday and sleeping in a bed for the first time since Saturday.

In Kampala [written earlier today]

2009-06-19T19:47:00.000+03:00

10:30am, 6/19. Kampala, Uganda.
[This is actually a real post, though written a few hours ago. Connectivity issues]

I've just arrived at Jon Gosier (founder of Appfrica.org, Question Box CTO)'s house, although he's not here right now. I'm writing this in his living room, waiting for him to get back from a meeting. Will post it up when I get a chance to go online. All told, it's been 56 hours since I left Berkeley. I'm exhausted, although I slept pretty much on the last flight, so I'm at least functional today (for the moment, at least).

I feel like I've seen so much in the couple of hours since I landed, I really don't know where to begin, and I'm sure I won't be able to get everything down in one pass, so you may have to bear with me if some of the detail doesn't come out until another post or two down the line once the initial shock subsides.

I suppose I'll start with the plane ride, since it happened first. Not a whole lot to report, although it was quite comfortable and we were in fact again served both dinner and breakfast, both of which were quite palatable. Nothing fancy, but as good as plenty of things I'd make on a school day and be pleased with.

I sat next to a young women in the middle of a Master's at the London School of Hygiene. She's from Uganda (Western part originally, has lived in Kampala) and did her undergraduate there. This was to be her first time home since leaving for London for school, and it was clearly very significant to her. She's doing nursing, I think, but also public health/nutrition, and wants to do her thesis on infant nutrition/feeding and HIV, which sounds really interesting. I actually don't know anything about mother-child HIV transmission, and it's something I hadn't thought much on before. It sounds like interesting and very relevant research. She was really interesting, and it was cool to meet someone in her position. She wants to come back and do development work in Uganda or the nearby region when she's done.

The airport at Entebbe was very small, especially compared to the enormity that is Heathrow. It's surrounded by lush and distinctively unfamiliar greenery. The humidity and warmth were immediately evident, although it's not that hot. It's maybe 80 now (10 am). The smells were distinctive and different as well, and difficult to place.

Customs and immigration was quick and pretty painless, especially as I already had a visa. The only people to process were those on our flight, some of whom were residents, some needed visas, etc, so it was very smooth.

Jon had sent a car to pick me up (and paid him ahead of time! I didn't know this, and expected to have to pay him. I also didn't have any idea how much to tip, but as I only had very large Ugandan bills I tipped him a few dollars US, and probably higher than I should have). It was exciting to have somebody with my name on a sign at the airport. Probably the last time I'll see that in a long time...

The drive was pretty intense. The traffic there is pretty ridiculous, pedestrians and boda-bodas (mopeds) all over the place, passing is done whenever opportune, and so forth. Speed limits seem relatively nonexistent and dictated by conditions. This also goes for lanes, merging, etc. I never felt directly endangered, but it was still quite an adventure. I find driving in the US sufficiently stressful -- driving there would drive (heh, sorry) me to madness. Also, I can't yet comment on overall air quality, but the air on the roads was dreadful. The drive was probably roughly equivalent to a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Catalytic converters and other modern emissions control stuff that we're used to -- especially in California, with its relatively stringent laws, are definitely not the norm here. The blue-grey of untreated exhaust hangs heavy over the roads, and the smells of diesel and gasoline exhaust vie for your attention, depending on whether you're closest to a huge scary truck or a boda-boda is darting suicidally down the center divider, practically brushing your elbows.

The sights from the drive, too, were fascinating, and I saw far too much to begin to describe. The drive into Kampala from Entebbe is about 40km, and takes maybe 45 minutes. Some of the drive is countryside, and then it's increasingly urban; the city starts fairly gradually. Right outside the airport at Entebbe (or part of it, I guess, but not right by the commercial terminal), was the UN airfield. There were a number of their big transport planes and a couple of big helicopters parked, all white with UN stenciled on. There was a also a big stack of UN shipping containers, presumably from the delivery of some kind of aid supplies, though I'm not sure what they've provided there. There were also some giant tent-like temporary hangars or something.

A lot of people were out and about, but I suppose it makes sense, it was mid-morning on a weekday. At various intervals along the road there were houses, rows of attached shops, shacks, and so forth. There were a couple of outdoor markets, as well. Many of the buildings look similar, often of some kind of brick construction or at least foundation, with a sort of stucco-textured exterior. For some purposes and in some places there were many roughly nailed-together wooden buildings as well; these also serve as add-ons to more permanent buildings.

I saw a few larger structures under construction; it didn't look all that different than here, but (quite conspicuously) the scaffolding, rather than manufactured, fit together metal parts and whatnot, was much rougher and was mainly wood lashed or somehow held together.

The phenomenon of 'branded' buildings is shockingly commonplace; it seems like every strip of businesses has one painted the bright red of Coca-Cola, yellow of MTN, or purple of Zain. Cell phone marketing was extremely prevalent other than these as well (note that two of those companies, MTN and Zain, are mobile providers). Everywhere along the road you saw billboards as well as business' signs advertising cell service and deals. Warid was a major advertiser, though their buildings and shops seemed less prevalent.

I also saw lots of little MTN booths, selling airtime as well as advertising payphone and charging services. I couldn't say for certain whether they were villagePhone, PayPhone, or other pay phone system-based, but it was pretty excited. I didn't take all that many pictures, because I felt a little funny (especially with the window down) but I did snap one of the first cell tower I saw.

I suppose the heavy branding presence of mobile providers has to do with it being one of relatively few products based upon major brands: in the US, we're bombarded with advertisements for all many of things, but mainly for branded chain businesses in a variety of fields: food, services, cars, electronics, and so forth. Yet here I think it's safe to say that the majority of services are performed by small businesses, and this is likely extends to a lot of the goods and services that are provided by large companies in the US and therefore advertised heavily. The new-ness, hipness, and excitement surrounding phones is much greater here, as well, and may be comparable to the marketing we see (mainly by handset manufacturers) for their high-end smartphone products in the US (Apple, HTC, Palm, etc).

I think I'll get an MTN SIM card soon; it would seem in poor taste to use another provider after all the research I've done on their Village Phone system, and given that they're still Grameen's telecom partner with AppLab projects like Question Box. Anyway, I'm sure their rates are competitive (they have to be) and their coverage should be best. Also, while not terrifically cheap, they've got data service, which I fear I'll need, at least to an extent, though that will depend on the office internet and the availability of internet cafes and such. Still, especially given that I can tether my phone to my computer for data, unless I end up living in a house or something where a bunch of people share a fixed-line internet connection, I definitely won't get a connection for where I live. So it'd be a combination of the cellular and residential internet utilities I've become accustomed to paying for as it is (and, of course, a tiny fraction of the speed of either, but that's another story).

Anyway, this by no means encompasses my experience so far, but it's a start, and I'll have lots more to say once I actually meet Jon and see the office and whatnot, as well. Hopefully I'll get to actually post all these, too; they're starting to pile up.

Suck it, Starbucks

2009-06-19T19:44:00.000+03:00

Or should I shay, shuck it, Shtarbucksh.
< /sean connery >

(7:30pm BST, 6/18)
[More from the airport, not interesting, but I'm posting it because I wrote it]

So, I had this little certificate for any free drink from any Starbucks (US or UK, it said) that I believe my friend Marya gave me for my birthday my first year in school. She got it because they badly screwed something up, I think, but I don't remember the details.

Anyway, I've had it for years, and was saving it for the right moment, and this afternoon, that moment came. Observing how astronomically expensive everything is here, I realized this was my chance to really milk it for all it was worth.

Now, it didn't have a store number on it, which is apparently a problem, but the guy just wrote the one here's number. He was being nice, so I didn't want to get too elaborate (and expensive) with the beverage, but I still got a venti mocha frapuccino, which was here in pounds more or less what I'd expect it to be in US dollars (which is already way too much). It was £3.40, which works out to almost $6! For a drink! A large, unhealthy, and very tasty drink, mind you, but still -- ridiculous. But I got it for free. Heh heh heh.

That is all.

Oh, ok, I lied, one more thing: turns out the outlets I tried in the airport are decoys, or something, because my plug adapter/surge protector worked here. That I tried three separate plugs before with no luck made a good case for it being my equipment, but it really wasn't. Weird.

British Airways, Heathrow, and hands-on with a Nokia N97

2009-06-19T19:43:00.000+03:00

(9am BST, 6/18)
[This post is boring, just what was on my mind at the airport. Lame, I know]

Heathrow is a very nice airport, much more so than I remembered [EDIT: except that all of their power outlets appear to be decoys]. I suspect it's been renovated in the relatively recent past. I also probably haven't been there since 2001 or so. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone through security when funneled to do so from my flight (seems like coming off another flight means you're already secure to me) but I did. They were more strict here than in the US, and I was forced to drink my little bottle of water from the previous flight on the spot, but it was just as well, it was time for me to take my doxycycline anyway.

Speaking of the flight, while I haven't flown across the Atlantic (or anywhere comparably far) since 2003, I believe, my memories of this sort of thing are not their sharpest, but I think this was the most comfortable such flight I've experienced. The plane was nice and new, the crew were nice (very polite -- but also harsh when people were being dumb, but not unreasonably so). Despite a warning to the contrary, I found the food pretty good. Perhaps the fact that I did not have to pay extra for it (ahem, US Airways) and especially that I did not have to pay the exorbitant cost of food in an airport contributed to my enjoyment of it. In any case, it was more than acceptable. There was also a bit of breakfast, which was nice.

My ticket to Entebbe does not mention a meal option (going to Heathrow I had a chance to request a vegetarian meal) which makes me suspect there is not equivalent service on it, although it's just as long a flight. Perhaps they don't serve food on flights to colonial destinations. It should at least be comfortable, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't super full and there was a lot of room per person.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with myself for the next many hours. I don't think my flight's until 9 (about 12 hours away) and it's morning now, going into the city actually seems realistic, although I think the inconvenience of security here along with the enormous size of the airport and so forth make it a little too daunting. It would also cost money, though staying in the airport is also not an inexpensive proposition. I'm already getting hungry again, because of course breakfast on the plane couldn't be too close to landing. I've been distressed to see things priced in a way that would look steep if it were US dollars, but it's effectively almost twice that.

For a country that was as poor relative to the US as it was 50 years ago (and for a long time since), the cost of living sure looks very, very high. Of course, airport prices are always high, but I'm referring to the prices I've faced there in the past, as well. I suppose the tremendous strength and value of the pound is a big part of that, though.

Now, I've just got to find some internets to post this (and download iPhone OS 3.0!). I fear neither of those will happen until I get to Uganda, however. That aside, I do have some documents to read, but I'll have to find some electricities if I'm to do that for more than a couple of hours, too.

Speaking of that sort of thing, I briefly got my hands on a Nokia N97 in their store in the airport. It's quite a machine. Great keyboard (bigger than, e.g., a G1, but not quite as spacious as the N810 -- it's smaller relative to the N810 than I had imagined) and a very nice screen and everything. I like the customizable homescreen widgets. I didn't use it that much but the UI seemed quite snappy. I tend to expect any touchscreen phone not running what I think of as one of the main OS's (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile -- to an extent, Palm OS) to be slow and difficult; take for example LG or Samsung's touchscreen pseudo-smart phones. Of course, Symbian is a legitimate smartphone OS, just one you see much in the US (regrettably). I think it's excellent on non-touchscreen phones (N95 and derivatives, E-series), and that some, like the E71, are a strong alternative to BlackBerry devices. I personally like the S60 interface much more than the BlackBerry OS. But a good button-interface UI does not always translate well to a touchscreen (cough, BlackBerry), and honestly I didn't have enough time with the N97 to say, nor have I tried an ExpressMusic (5800?) in the US, either, but I think enough's been written elsewhere about both.

All I constructively have to say about it is that one, the OS was responsive and looks good, and two, the hardware was excellent. It's a good size, feels durable (including the funny tilt slider), and looks sharp. Could it replace an iPhone? Absolutely, though it would take some getting used to. I suspect, though, much like with the Nokia internet tablets (albeit less so), certain (many?) tasks won't have quite the same level of quick ease they do with the iPhone, and will therefore be less useful.

A big part of what makes the iPhone so successful, I think, is how quickly you can do a lot of things. Some of this is fictional, like when apps load a picture of their UI before it's active to make it feel faster. But, whatever, it works, psychologically. Also, the lack of an informational home screen (sigh, I'd still like this -- no harm in putting it on the lock screen!) makes for the quickest access to a variety of tasks. This sort of thing means it only takes a click, slide, and a tap or two to load up NextBus for the stop you're near.

Now, this is arguably a double-edged sword, and one I've thought a certain amount about. It's so easy to things up that it's very easy to forget you don't need to. I, for one, am uncomfortable with too much reliance on it, and consciously resist that to an extent. Even so, the lack of phone and internet here in Heathrow bug me a bit, especially given how long I'll be here.

Anyway, the point I was making about the iPhone is that it's achieved an ease and convenience of use that have made it a huge fraction of mobile web traffic. And think about it: how many people do you know with BlackBerries (or whatever else with comparable data access) who regularly browse the web with them, versus those with iPhones? So the moral of this convoluted story I'm telling is that I'm not sure the N97 has that level of ease of use or UI speed, and may limit its appeal somewhat. At any rate, it's extremely high price tag will also have that effect (although without carrier subsidies, all of the fancy phones we're used to expecting to pay $200 or so would be just as bad).

Giant Spreadsheets

2009-06-17T18:51:00.000+03:00

The spreadsheets of Question Box call logs I've been looking over are sufficient to make my 6-month-old MacBook choke pretty noticeably. I suppose it could benefit from more ram, but even so, I'm a little surprised.

Column with pasted full text of webpages (including wikipedia pages) used for long answers, I'm looking at you. There's nothing else there that could be the culprit.

While I suspect it's the problem, I can't simply get rid of it as it's the only way to tell if questions were answered or not, as some questions that don't appear in the unanswered lists have blanks or "no answer" in that column, so it's necessary to retain. I think I'll have to figure out some way to truncate the contents of those cells or replace them all with a simpler binary answered/unanswered...but I don't really want to do that for 1000+ records by hand. I'm sure there's some way to automate that in Excel, but I'm not sure. Maybe even better would be a set of four (or so) possibilities, also taking into account whether the question was escalated (to an expert) as well as its answered status.

If that proves doable, it would lend itself to consolidating all the records into a single table, which would greatly facilitate the process of generating useful data about it (already greatly facilitated by my exciting discovery of Excel's magic Pivot Table abilities).

At any rate, I think it's time to break out the AppleScript.

And, uh, as far as blog posts go, file this under "self-indulgent descriptions of what I'm working on/thinking about." It doesn't serve much informative purpose, but hey, I've been sitting around an airport for several hours and still have several more to go, and this is a situation where describing what I'm thinking helps me think about it, so for the moment you, dear reader(s) are on the other end of that. Thanks, and my apologies.

En Route to Chicago (though actually posted from O'Hare)

2009-06-17T10:09:00.000+03:00

I'm writing this from the (relative) comfort of my flight to Chicago. My flights so far have gone relatively well, although the first one was delayed and threatened to make me miss this connection -- but fear not, that one, too was behind schedule, so all is well. Now assuming my luggage makes it to Chicago (if not right away, at least within the 17 or so hours I'll be spending there), I should be fine. Getting to BART and the airport was uneventful, and the airport was rather shockingly uncrowded, even for Oakland.

Note to self (and others): US Airways is pretty lame. They've so far succeeded at the most basic things an airline can be expected to do (e.g., flying planes), but have a penchant for charging for anything beyond that, like peanuts or whatever their $5 (!) snack package contained. No free peanuts or anything, just beverages. Also, a single checked bag costs an additional $15 (plus ungodly high fees if you're over 50lbs, I'm sure, though mine wasn't). These may be relatively common practices these days, but as I tend to fly airlines that are often both cheaper and more pleasant (such as Southwest) I haven't experienced them before.

Anyway, I don't fly a ton, but enough that these domestic flights still haven't quite evoked the full sense of what I'm getting myself into. So far it just feels like going across the country, which, for the moment, is what it is. I've got a lengthy layover in Chicago, though, and will start earnestly analyzing a large volume of call log data, which is an important part of my job once I get there and will probably help get me into it.

I am a bit sad to be leaving Berkeley so suddenly, although it's not as though I won't be back, at least for a bit, in the fall. Still, it's probably just as well. Being around for classes starting (and especially the new band season starting) and not being a part of it would probably be worse. This way, I get a break from it to sort myself out and convince myself I don't still go to school there.

On that note, last night I saw one of my roommates from my first year for what will probably be the last time in quite a while, as he's going to Ecuador in the fall semi-indefinitely. Still, earlier in the weekend both of us and our third roommate from that first semester got together, and it brought everything satisfyingly full-circle. I know all of this isn't very relevant, but it's been on my mind, and I figured I'd mention it. I suppose I just have a hard time with transitions like the big out-of-college one. Well, leaving the country for a few months seems like just the ticket, especially when it's so exactly the kind of work I want to do, and rather fortuitously closely related to the academic work I've already done.

I suppose that about wraps up my thoughts about the beginning of my trip for the moment. I'll probably have something to say about the data I'll be analyzing later, and can post some of my actual job description for those who'd like to know in detail what it is I'll actually be doing.

Summer Reading List

2009-06-12T22:53:00.000+03:00

I'm trying to decide what books/documents to bring with me to read (that are pertinent to what I'm doing. I probably should throw in some other casual reading, as well, though I've got no idea what...it's been a while since I've had much time to read for fun).

So far I've got a few, but not that many, lined up. There are a few that had been sitting on my shelf for a while but that I had to turn in at the end of the semester, and I doubt I can check out campus library books now. Well, I can probably check them out, I'll still show up as a student until the fall semester starts -- but I won't be back until after that, and if they should get recalled I would be somewhat SOL (or rather, the recaller would -- but I'd be the one to get fined).

The ones I'm pretty certain of are:
Mastering the Machine Revisited by Ian Smillie. This is a respected (I gather) book on a variety of technologies and technological approaches intended to alleviate poverty (recently updated to address ICT, as well). I've read some of it (assigned in Prof. Burrell's technology and poverty class) but not the whole thing, and have been meaning to for a while.

The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank by David Bornstein. I presume this history of Grameen was written primarily for popular audiences, but I've heard good things about the author, so it should be at least enjoyable, and likely informative, as I don't know a whole lot about its earlier history.

The World Bank in Uganda: Country Brief 2005-6. A pretty standard institutional document. Good for an overview of broader conditions, recent trends in income/poverty, demographics, etc., as well as for a sense of the larger scale development policies and such, which my own narrow study of telecommunications didn't really address in the depth I'd like. I'll be digging around for other similar documents.

Livelihoods and the Mobile Phone in Uganda, by Prof. Jenna Burrell. This document was written by Prof. Burrell for the Grameen Foundation and particularly its Application Lab (the branch focused upon novel uses of ICT, and that the Question Box project falls under). I've had it around for some time after finding it on the AppLab site, quite by chance, but decided to hold off on reading it until after finishing my thesis out of concern that it was too similar and, significantly, that it was based upon some of the exact primary data (her interviews) that were a major part of my thesis. It seemed problematic to read someone else's (and particularly my own advisor's) analysis of the same data I was using. Now, however, I'm very interested to read it (although she herself dismissed it as "consulting work").

There are a number of relevant documents I, in some cases read and used in writing my thesis, and in others than I found but didn't end up using much or at all, that I would like to reread in a more leisurely fashion, as well. Among these in particular are researchictafrica.net's "Towards Evidence-based ICT Policy and Regulation" and "Towards an African e-Index" series of papers.

Obviously, many of these are relatively short papers and documents, and only a few are full books. This may be a problem; hopefully I won't get there having exhausted my whole reading list. Nevertheless, books I don't own are somewhat out of the question, so I may have to stick with my reports and such. Some of them are pretty long and they're all pretty dense, so I imagine I'll be fine. At this point, it's looking as though I'll be spending most of my (LONG) trip there analyzing call logs, and I don't anticipate having much free time there to read until I get settled and figured out. Even then, I don't know. Anyway, it's always better to have too much to read than too little. At any rate, I'll have an internet connection (such as it will be) and, for a while, my CalNet proxy access, so I can always find more, too.

Still, if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be interested to hear them.

First post and introduction

2009-06-01T21:56:00.000+03:00

Why hello there! This is my first post, and will serve as something of an introduction, both for myself and for this blog.

My name's Nat. I just graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Political Economy (strictly Political Economy of Industrial Societies), with a concentration and thesis about ICT and Development (ICTD). I'm very interested in the potential (and limits) of these technologies to improve quality of life in the developing world.

I'm also very interested in technology in general, and as such, this blog will cover a variety of technology-related issues, not just those related the developing world. I'm particularly interested in mobile technologies and phones, both with regard to development and otherwise, so expect to see a certain amount of iPhone and Android related posts. I will likely also blog to an extent about Linux/open source issues, Mac-related topics, and whatever else is on my mind about which I have anything intelligent/worth reading to say.

Also, I will be traveling to Uganda in a couple of weeks to intern with a fascinating ICTD project there, so this blog will also serve as something of a travelogue, as well. I will post separately with more information on the project, what I'll be doing, etc.

And finally, thank you for reading. I'm sorry if it takes a little while for me to iron out the formatting and whatnot, as well as develop my hopelessly archaic academic prose into something internet-readable.

Oh, and the phrase "Tyranny of the Plurality" came from a conversation at work, and just stuck out to me as an interesting phrase. It doesn't, at first glance, have much to do with the content of the blog, but I suppose we'll see.