Allow people to create a DVD of TED Talks using freedom toasters

Something i have wanted to do for a while was distribute TED talks and Video tutorials on DVD to people who do not have access to the internet or who cannot afford the bandwith costs to download them. I can truly say that i am where i am today in part due to the power of the net and the knowledge I have gained from the countless hours i have spent on it, it is a shame that other people cannot afford to access these resources.

Having completely forgotten about the Freedom toaster project from the shuttleworth foundation, reading Nur's post at techleader on the freedom toaster you realise it would be the perfect vehcile to distribute these DVD's. After a short email to Jason Hudson from the project, i will be compiling a list of the best talks to be included in the freedom toaster and would like the recommendations to be a community effort, What are your favourite Ted Talks? Those that were thought provoking, made a difference in your life or changed your perception for the better. Post the links to the talks in the comments, pop me a mail with your list at idhorat-at-gmail.com or send it via twitter to ismaild.

+

View blog reactions

Has muti made a fundamental mistake in community management?

So muti in the last few days has been in flames. It all started when someone posted a link on muti to a screenshot from Coda of apparent spam from blueworld. Imod stirred the pot asking a few questions on his blog in response. Both the submissions to muti hit around 35 votes very quickly, but were then removed. (Following the link comes back with a 404)

Let me be clear, i am a fan of muti and find it extremely useful, i access it so many times a day i actually created a desktop application for it and the guys from blueworld seem to be doing a lot of cool things as well. Though i am going to ask the questions that need to be asked. Has muti made a fundamental mistake when it comes to community management?

Granted that the noise being made may be a bit loud regarding the spam, though just recently the blogging community made a similar noise against deal-a-day email spam which hit muti as well. Charl is a respected member of the SA blogging community and they did come out with a response and the issue should have died there.

However both the submissions were then subsequently pulled from muti, one at the request of Chris. The other i have no idea why? Coda then asked the question on why was the second post pulled? I find myself asking the same thing. Why?

Once muti starts making decisions on censoring content of what people submit it's heading down a slippery slope. The thing is you can never please everyone. Google themselves refuse to censor search results. Even on Youtube, only content that is clearly hate speech is removed. So where does this leave muti?

I think the guys at muti need to decide if they want to cater for a small group of people, all of whom have the same opinions and that way censoring of content that differs from the general group consensus is fine. However if muti wants to cater for a larger community, censoring and pulling submissions should only be done in extreme circumstances of Hate Speech. Also note, with previous submissions of hate speech the vote count was merely cleared, the spam posts however were completely deleted including comments and the discussions around it.

We need to realize that since muti currently caters for large number of people, there are going to be differing view points and you really do not want to play the adjudicator, judge or take sides. Muti has clearly done this, and as the facilitator of the blogging community at large i believe this is a fundamental mistake.

As an example this raises questions like:

• Someone posts something that is factually incorrect and paints me in a bad light, could i request the post be removed?
• Or maybe this post could be pulled at the request of Yasser since it was clearly critical?
  

As you can see, the questions this action raises could go on and on, and you would never get to the end of it. This is a problem faced by many companies, Google, Facebook, Twitter. Even telecoms companies like Vodacom and Cell C where people complain falsely of harrasment via sms. Unless the community is extremely small it becomes increasingly difficult to be the judge, therefore the best response is to set clear guidelines on what is not accepted(i.e hate speech) and can be removed, anything that does not meet the criteria of unacceptable stays.

muti needs to 'grow up' and realise it does not just cater for a small group of people any longer with the same opinions, and with that nobody, no matter who they are (including shareholders) should be able to influence the content that gets removed. Let's just hope this is something that will not be repeated again and we can take away a lesson from this.

Update: Mandy De Waal has a post regarding this as well

View blog reactions

Business opportunity for SEO

Doing a search earlier i came across something interesting. If you search for "CellC Ussd Recharge" the top most link is MTN which is actually a direct competitor of Cell C. Jeremiah Owang say's Google is actually your coporate homepage. Considering that, do you really want to drive people doing searches for your brand to competitors?

This would make a good pitch for SEO business.

View blog reactions

The Iphone 3G Effect

I wrote a post about a month ago on the getting an unlocked 3G Iphone, it seems a ton of people are searching just for that "3G Iphone without a contract" and "Importing 3g iphone", it would be a good idea to follow the advice in this post at imod. Have a look at the graph from amatomu below. The 3g Iphone post totally dawrfs the rest, most of the traffic coming from google.

View blog reactions

Why is shaunokes.com banned in the UAE?

So, I innocently followed the top most link on muti hot and i get thrown this:

"The page you are trying to access may contain content that is not consistent with the moral, social and cultural values of the UAE" Does the site contain pr0n? Hate speech? Hacking? What? If you know respond in the comments!

View blog reactions

Create a desktop app for muti.co.za

I have been using a desktop app based on fluid and the iphone twitter client hahlo to access twitter. Fluid is a SSB (site specific browser) that converts a site to a native mac application, that you can add to the doc/menu bar, it even allows for dock badges(Those little numbers that show new messages). This is slightly different from Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight in that it uses nothing 'new' other then current open internet technologies. I created one for muti as well, it may be of use to others out there so here are the instructions.

* Note these instructions are for mac, for windows replace fluid with mozilla's prism, the same script should work on prism / firefox as well.

1. Download and install fluid - Instructions and details at the Fluid website

2. Run fluid, and fill in the details like the screenshot below:
URL: http://www.muti.co.za/new
Name: muti
Location: Applications

3. You can either choose to use the default website fav icon or a custom icon. I created a custom icon so it fits well in with the rest of the icons in the menubar. Feel free to use it
Rightclick and save as:

4. Click "Create", fluid will work for a bit, then click "launch now"

5. A new window will popup with the title muti, click on muti in the menu bar and then preferences and select advanced:

muti > Preferences > Advanced

6. Under "Allow browsing to URL's matching this pattern" change www.muti.co.za/new to *muti.co.za*

7. Optional:
muti > Preferences > Appearance : you can change the window opacity
muti > Prefrences > General : Tick open in the background this opens all links clicked on muti in the background in your default browser.

8. Close the prefrences panel

9. In the muti window, logon with your username and password

10. With muti application still open, click the script icon: and select browse userscripts.org

11. In the new window that pops up, enter in "muti" in the search box and hit enter, click on the first option. This will take you to a page with a description of the script, feel free to look at the source code. The script can be found at: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/29838

12. Click "Install Script" , this will display the source code with an alert, Click Install

13. On the menubar click the script icon: again, and confirm that muti is listed there with a tick next to it

14. Close down the userscripts.org window

15. Select muti > Convert to menuextra SSB

16. All done, now you have a desktop app for muti that looks good in the small window of fluid and it should look like this:

Notes:
* Elements on the right side navigation bar on muti seems to be used for a lot of things like voting and logging in, since this was removed logging in will not work. Voting will still work since i catered for that in the java script. If for some reason you need to login again, deactivate the script, logon and reactivate it again.
* Windows users can use the same script, just replace fluid with mozilla prism (not tested)
* If you prefer the default page to be hot on step 2, just enter http://www.muti.co.za instead
* To refresh, right click and select reload
* Feel free to modify/customize the JS code
* Possible future features:
-Dock badge with the number of new submissions. Though this is not currently possible since there is no way to differentiate new items since the last refresh.
- Auto Refresh

View blog reactions

Access Denied in the UAE, Dubai

Somethings seriously wrong with internet access in the UAE, majority of the sites that i click through throw up the following error.

Publish Post

"Access Denied (license_expired)

A license has expired on the Proxy, and your request is not permitted: "The SGOS license has expired"

A new license must be obtained."

It seems that someone forgot to pay the licensing fee's for the proxy thats being used to control access to the internet. Some sites are working fine though, for example Google, Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook, Plurk, muti, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch.

Sites that i have tried that do not seem to be working, Twitter, ping.fm, The Economist, Wikipedia, IOL, Wired and several other blogs that i access.

View blog reactions

Did Apple purposely allow Iphone's to flood other markets (Like in the middle east?)

After my post yesterday, regarding how to import Iphone's at the retail price. There has been a discussion on the comments and twitter around the post.




Riy & Justin say you are not allowed to order from the US store with a non US credit card, this surprised me since for me and several other people it works. As long as you have a US based address. This got me thinking though since Riy said he tried to order the IPhone online but could not due to him not having a US credit card.

Could it be possible that they blocked non us credit cards initially? And once they knew the 3G Iphone was going to be launched soon they allowed international credit cards?

That would explain, the fact for the last 6 months of 2007 you could not get your hands on an IPhone here in Dubai, but since January the market has been practically flooded. Almost every mobile store had large amounts of Iphone stock.

Did Apple make the change, allowing non US credit cards to purchase stock online knowing that this would lead to tons of phones being imported into markets that did not have the phone officially? Put in another way, did they purposely turn a blind eye to this, so they could 'Dump' the soon to be obsolete stock to meet sales targets?

It would be interesting to know if anyone else tried to buy the phone online with a non us credit card sometime last year and was unsuccessful, post back on the comments or on twitter with the approximate date that you tried.

View blog reactions

Get the 3G Iphone without a 2 year contract, Cheaply

So, you waited up, sat at your computer and eagerly awaited the news on the 3G IPhone. You have drunk the cool aid:

You cant wait to get your hands on your iPrecious....


But the launch date is only the 11 July. You have to wait a month more if you are in one of the 21 countries, But what if you want to get your hands on the phone and you happen to live in the countries that are not part of the list or you do not want to sign up for a 2 Year contract? What if you cant wait?

The price of the 8GB is set to $199 with a 2 year contract, so expect the prices of phones without a contract to be much higher. There have been discussions on twitter that the price may be as high as it was for the first IPhone 4000-5000 AED(R8000/R10000) in places like South Africa and UAE. Well i am going to tell you how to get it at the normal retail price without being ripped off (Just between us ok?) .

This blog has moved, read more about Getting an Officially Unlocked 3g Iphone

View blog reactions

Stop Drawing racial lines in the Sand, Take Action

Recently Mandy Dewaal wrote a post entitled "Who's who in the web 2.0 zoo", and she concluded that web 2.0 was a "whiteboys club". Something you would bound to agree with given the people noted in the article. However, Ramon Thomas responded with “Who’s who in the non-white Web 2.0 South African Zoo“.

I asked a similar question on this blog several weeks back, "Where are all the black bloggers and readers?" and noted we needed practical steps. Posts like Mandy's and Ramons are counter productive and actually serve no purpose as they are separating us in groups. Nic pointed this out as well on his blog and Nur Ahmed also looks at the issue on his blog.

Blogging about things like this actually does nothing other then change perceptions and as i pointed out in my previous post the only thing that really matters is ACTION and practical solutions. It boils to down to access to ICT and education. I posted on why access to ICT is a key economic driver as quoted below:

"In a study (PDF) by Harvard economist Robert Jensen he reported that when mobile phones were launched in kerala in 1997, Fisherman used the phones to call local markets while still at sea. This in turned helped raise profits by 8%, lowering consumer prices by 4% and reduced catch wastage from 6.5% to practically nothing."

Instead of asking these silly questions and debating issues that draw racial lines in the sand(which further perpetuates difference and hatred and turns into this), we should be asking:

- How can we use technology, to uplift people in poverty?
- How can we grant people people who don't have access to ICT that access?
- How can we TRAIN people with very little knowledge of technology cheaply and efficiently?
- How can we use technology to stimulate entrepreneurship for people in poverty?

This should not be about race, but about empowerment not based on skin colour but of PEOPLE IN POVERTY, irrespective of race.

Having said that, i recently started a project to actually take action and use the varied skills everyone has to make a change. I posted about it on techleader and created a google group to discuss practical steps. However, no one bothered to join. With only 9 members, i am forced to conclude that no one really cares (except for a few) we are more interested in blowing smoke, debating issues, blogging about making a difference while having dinners, meetups and networking events amongst a selected few, "the technology savvy/early adopter crowd". We can have conferences to spread ideas, but the only thing that will matter is ACTION.

So lets re-frame this, and let me give you a purely selfish reason why you should care.

Our country is facing serious economic issues and social unrest. We have fuel prices being hiked, interest rates going up, massive food shortages and inflation at the highest level in recent times. Do not get me wrong, this is not a doom and gloom post i am just pointing out the facts of the current situation. We may not feel the pinch, but people below the bread line will definitely and this could lead to social unrest.

South Africa has about 47 million people and according to a report by world wide worx only 8% internet penetration as of November 2007. Based on these figures that equates to just over 3.7 Million people. This means, that South Africa has a very small economy of scale for any Internet Company / Blog / Online media company, This means less profits, less people viewing your blog, less people joining your niche social networks, less people clicking on your adsense ads. It also means less tech savvy people, less people who would study internet or IT engineering related fields, which makes it more difficult to source talent for companies.

So look at it this way, if you could increase that penetration you could increases the number of people that are tech savvy, increase the number of people that are educated and trained, you increase people who could have the right skills for jobs, increase people clicking on your ads and you get more profits, and we are also better off as a country with more people out of poverty, more people educated and trained and more people that are economically productive. Now, these may seem like big goals but they are not when you consider the power of technology and drastically reduced costs of publication and co-ordination.

So here's an open challenge to the white boys club, the non white boys club and everyone else, basically all of us:

Rather then point out the elephant in the room which does nothing but acknowledge that it exists.

Ask yourself: what small practical steps can we take, to make a difference?

Ramon, you run Netucation: how about free training for those that can't afford it?
Nic, you seem to write well on your blogs, how about training on how to blog online and run a business from blogging?
Dave Durate, you run a programme at UCT, how about a competition giving someone a sponsored place at the next one? If that is out of the question we could raise money from the tech community or get a sponsor

These are just a few of the ideas, off the top of my head. Small things like this will actually make a difference.

The question really is Do you really care enough to to do something.

View blog reactions