Tech Talk

Ecommerce: When The Lights Go Out

Silumesii — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:31:41 -0600

There is a story that Zambians like to tell.

Some time in the late 80s Zambia's Secretary General, Mr Grey Zulu, was paying the Queen of England a routine ceremonial visit. During dinner, the lights suddenly went out. Mr. Zulu, who was no stranger to darkness emitted a boisterous cry, "Also, here, you have ZESCO!"

ZESCO is the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation

Amusing as it may be, the joke cuts to the heart of serious matter. All over the continent countries are struggling with unstable power supply. In the last week, South Africa has had to close down many of its major mining operations due to load-shedding. In this climate, leveraging digital technology is a very real challenge. Can we innovate around this or are we content to staying in the dark?

South Africa is where web entrepreneurship has shown the most promise on the continent. They have a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) office and have given us Ubuntu Linux and even Verisign. We have Mark Shuttleworth to thank for the last two, but the fact is that South Africa's stable power supply made it possible to create and deliver web applications that thrived during the dotcom boom. Now though, even South Africa is showing signs of succumbing to the same malaise that is stunting economic growth across the rest of Africa. Can we expect world-class innovation and service in this climate, or does the unstable supply of electricity mean that intermittent service is acceptable? The way we answer this question will have a long-term effect on how our digital services fare on the world stage.

An Example From The Industry

On Friday, January 18th the 37signals servers went down. I use their project management solution to collaborate with clients and on that particular morning, I could not login to my projects or any other of their services meeting only blank pages. Checking the site twenty minutes later, I was presented with a status report on what had happened at their operations headquarters and what they were doing to rectify the situation.

This intrigued me, to say the least. Which African website informs or even apologises for unavailability of service? In this particular instance, 37signals was not at fault for the disruption but the management handled the situation by taking responsbility for what had happened. They even offered to accept client requests for compensation on a case-by-case basis.

I frequently get blank pages and errors when visiting news websites from my country (Zambia). No explanations. No apologies. The 37signals incident revealed to me that I have low expectations of what an African website can provide. No more!

Embracing Constraints

The fact that the power goes out every so often is a part of our reality. It is a constraint. If we learn to embrace that, we allow ourselves the opportunity to innovate and grow solutions that benefit us.

Intelligent Redirection

Communication played a key role in my account with 37signals. Even though the site was down, the team had a contingency plan that kept their clients informed. It is embarrassing that most of our newspaper sites communicate their status so poorly given that communication is their business. The idea behind intelligent redirection is that the user is, at the very least, directed to a status page. At best, the client could be directed to a fully functional alternate server outside of the power-outage zone.

Source Code Control

Source code control allows a team of contributors to share in the development process and gracefully recover from detrimental changes made to a project. The basic idea is intelligent backup and may have been a key influence behind Time Machine on the current version of Apple Mac OS X. Source code control adds communication and documentation to the backup process to keep people up to date of changes to their project. Examples of such systems are Perforce and Subversion.

During a power outage, provided that the source code repository server is still live, changes to the a project, say a website, can still be submitted by contributors who still have access to an internet connection. Contributors whose service has been disrupted can still work on a local copy of their assignments. The source code control system will allow them to conveniently apply their updates once service and connectivity is resumed.

Innovative Service Packages

In order to implement the above two ideas, our internet service providers need to look at the possibility of sharing their business across geographic boundaries. As an example, a Tanzanian site could re-direct to a Ugandan server during load shedding or a Zambian news publisher could host their source code in South Africa. In that way we are providing dependable services and making effective use of the connectivity that the Internet so effortlessly provides.

A Light In The Darkness

Africa will always be the dark continent if we let it stay that way. Now more than ever, we have a generation of technologically astute and design-savvy men and women with the skills to create a new E-economy on the continent. They can make a difference like none before us and we should not let energy shortages hold them back.

If we can finally learn to innovate around the very real constraints that we face, it may just be that the darkness may be the best thing that ever happened to us. It will have taught us how to solve our own problems.

Photo by Repoort

Keep Your Hat On: A Look At Website Roles

Silumesii — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:37:04 -0600

There are three main roles that facilitate the delivery of a website: the designer, the content provider and the developer. The three roles are tightly interwoven in to the website production process and it is often the case that each is performed by a single individual. As such there is confusion about what each role encompasses. The tasks in each, however, are quite distinct.

The challenge for a lot of African website publishers is the lack of discussion and awareness of these roles. We have shown aptitude with oral and written media like radio, television, newspapers and books but there is an apparent unfamiliarity that we have with the Internet. We have critically acclaimed and articulate writers, TV and radio personalities but where are our designers and developers? Who do we look to as an example of immaculate African design or ingenious African technical prowess?

Standards Compliant Designs

The Design and the Design Process

Software Development

Joel on Software

Wearing Different Hats

Most visitors to citizenuganda.com will have websites of their own and in publishing their site will play to their most developed role while getting by in the others. This works well in the blogosphere but not so well in industry. We are faced with the very real possibility of the need to be proficient in each.

Perhaps, we need to re-evaluate the formal education we receive that equips us for each role? The Computer Science graduate with all their technical wizardry does not have the background to understand good design or how to be a good writer. A content provider will usually have a background in Journalism, Film, Video or Sound Engineering, none of which teaches programming, databases, online security or the difference between a good and bad user experience. In the same vein the degree-holding Illustrator or User Interface Designer can work magic in Photoshop but is rendered powerless with a single line of Java code or is bored by the prospect of having to actually write.

Inspiration for 2008

Looking forward, the African web-publishing community needs renaissance left and right brain internet architects in a reality that educates us to pick a single hemisphere of our brain to develop. For motivation, I'd like to leave with some sites made that have inspired me to develop my experience in the three roles. I hope they inspire you too.

Web reDesign Awards November 2007

Administrator — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:24:40 -0600

I am a big fan of great design, and I wanted to do something to promote the efforts some Ugandans are making to bring great looking sites to the web. So every month, if I see something great, I will applaud it here. And if I see something horrible, I will call that out too. I wont see everything though, so you are welcome to recommend a site you know and love, or hate.

Best Site: Node Six
Benge and his team took what was already a great looking site and made it better. Going with a black background is always risky, but I think they have pulled it off quite well. The new site is still clean, and more importantly, it says that this company really knows what it is doing on the web. Love this look.

Worst Site: The Monitor
This was easy. For a site that is visited daily by every Ugandan with decent bandwidth, we expected better. Instead the Monitor made a rush of things for CHOGM and came off looking cheap. Biggest problem here is that I am not sure what I should be looking at. And worst of all, content is competing against the ads for the reader's attention—speaking of which, why on earth are you advertising lingere on your frontpage?

Overall, it's not working.

On the brink: The Observer
Unlike the Monitor, the people behind The Observer did themselves a favour and did not rush to redesign ahead of CHOGM. What they have works well, but the design is beginning to look a little out of date. This site is already the established alternative to New Vision and the Monitor. They need a design that says independent and contemporary.

Opening Africa: Adopting Web Standards on the Continent

Silumesii — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:52:51 -0600

The Web Standards debate is a heated one. There are experts around the world who advocate global standards adoption, but for Africa it is not that simple. The "standards" being evangelised are not supported by all browsers. Should we all throw Internet Explorer out and move unanimously to Opera? Can't we all just get along?

Web Standards are a good thing and Africa needs them. If the world were a classroom and the continents its students, Africa would be lucky to get a passing grade on a Web Standards test.

In this regard, I can't help but see similarities in the adoption of Internet standards with our own continental history: several clusters, each with its own language trying to thrive while, for the most part, respecting every other's right of being.

The Key Components

The browser is the key tool in allowing us interface with our data and applications. At the core of browser operations are technologies we have come to know and love: (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The relationship between the triad is called MVC which stands for Model-View-Control. The languages that end in "ML" control document structure, the "model". CSS is used to control how this document structure is displayed, that is the "view". JavaScript (or an equivalent scripting language) takes care of an applications behaviour and is thus the control component.

Each part does its work expertly and seeing them work in concert is a wonderful thing. Examples of this symbiosis can be seen on applications by 37signals.

The Role of the Web Developer

Opening Africa is going to take seriousness on the part of our web developers. It is your responsibility and yours alone to ensure that your websites are standards compliant.

Users can join in by spreading the word and going as far as not visiting sites that do not validate. This is not as drastic a measure as one may think. If I had a cow for every time I went to the Lusaka Stock Exchange website and could not read the stock ticker feed because the markup is invalid, I'd have enough bride price for my grandchildren's weddings.

Now, imagine the actual investment the exchange has lost.

Biodiesel for a Boda-Boda economy

Paschal — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:19:55 -0600

If you are into engines and/or the environment, you might have heard about a guy called Jonathan Goodwin. By experimenting with diesel technology and alternative fuels, Goodwin has figured out a way to cut emissions and double the horse power of practically any SUV. For this little miracle, FastCompany magazine called him the Motorhead Messiah and put him on the cover of their latest issue.

Simple and efficient

Goodwin's designs build on existing technologies, particularly diesel.

Diesel technology is crucial to all of Goodwin's innovations because it offers several advantages over traditional gasoline engines. Pound for pound, diesel offers more power and torque; it's also inherently more efficient, offering up to 40% better mileage and 20% lower emissions in engines of comparable size. What's more, many diesel engines can easily accept a wide range of biodiesel--from the high-quality stuff produced at refineries to the melted chicken grease siphoned off from the local KFC.
CLIVE THOMPSON, in FastCompany magazine, 2007

If that sounds impressive, it is even more so when hydrogen is added to the mix.

The hydrogen, ignited by the diesel combustion, burns extremely clean, producing only water as a by-product. It also displaces up to 50% of the diesel needed to fuel the car, effectively doubling the diesel's mileage and cutting emissions by at least half. Better yet, the water produced from the hydrogen combustion cools down the engine, so the diesel combustion generates fewer particulates--and thus fewer nitrogen-oxide emissions.
CLIVE THOMPSON, in FastCompany magazine, 2007

Goodwin's work is being cited as an example of how innovative thinking can help Americans reduce greenhouse gases without sacrificing their love for oversized vehicles.

That got me thinking about possible applications for this technology in Uganda:

Biodiesel for your generator

Uganda is in the midst of a crippling energy crisis. Hospitals, schools, businesses and households alike have been forced to buy generators that are expensive to run. The Bujagali hydropower dam is about four years away from completion, if it stays on track, and the cost of fuel is not going down.

If Goodwin's innovations can extend beyond the automotive industry, that would be good news. This is not out of the realm of possibility since, according to the FastCompany article, Goodwin's experiments with biodiesel were inspired by the work of Uli Kruger, a German who has spent decades in Australia exploring techniques for blending fuels that normally don't mix.
The fact that scientists in Uganda are already working on ways to generate hydrogen from garbage is an encouraging sign.

Biodiesel for your boda-boda

If you have been to Uganda in the last 5 years then you should be familiar with boda-bodas. There are over 10, 000 of these modified motorcycles by recent estimates. That is a sizable market by any standard. If the boda-boda engines were converted to run on biodiesel, the grease from any takeaway in Kampala would be able to power the engine with enough torque to carry two over any porthole in the city. Sounds like a pipe dream? Read the article.

The takeaways would have some extra income from selling their garbage to biofuel converters; the boda-boda drivers would have a cheaper, cleaner source of fuel.

A question of curiosity, not formal education

I always find it incredibly humbling to read about or meet people who, with little or no education, create something that has global impact. It is a reminder that old-fashioned curiosity trumps any academic credential when it comes to innovative thinking. Goodwin, is one of those curious fellows:

After dropping out of school in the seventh grade, he made a living by buying up totaled cars and making them as good as new. "That," he says, "was my school."
CLIVE THOMPSON, in FastCompany magazine, 2007

Do we have a Goodwin in Kampala?