Soyapi Mumba's Blog

Meet local Developers at DemoCamp on 15 June

2012-06-07T14:28:00.003+02:00

I was at a queue the other day, waiting for petrol to come as I had heard from the rumors, when I met a friend I had not talked to since college. After the usual 'Hey long time!', 'How have you been?', I told him that I work with a team of software developers at Baobab Health. 'Do you write your own software here?', he asked. 'Yes we do!' I confirmed.

This is a question a lot of people ask here in Malawi. Do we have software houses in Malawi?
Are we going to see innovative software created by our own geniuses? Well, if you too have been asking yourself these questions, there will be an evening specially organised for you. Not only will you get to meet the developers, but you will also get to see the cool applications they have been coding because the Lilongwe's Google Developers Group is bringing together Malawi's finest developers to showcase their creations at the U.S. Information Services (USIS) in City Centre, Lilongwe on Friday, 15th June from 6PM to 8PM.

While we have software tools and platforms developed by engineers in Silicon Valley to address world problems and opportunities, no one else but our very own developers will build on these tools to create solutions specific to our setting here in Malawi.

By the way, there was no petrol at the filling station that day. If there is anyone working on a tool to address this, perhaps with an integration with Google Maps, they will definitely be at DemoCamp the night after Freedom Day! Will you? If you are, please register for the event at http://lilongwe.gtugs.org/democamp and enter the title of your presentation if you have something to share.

Update 1: Added link for registration.
Update 2: Removed reference to "next week".

Barcamp Malawi 17 - 18 July 2010

2010-07-08T09:17:00.005+02:00

The geeks in Malawi have been reading about Barcamps being held all over the world around their favourite topics.

But finally, time has come for Malawian geeks to get together and discuss the technologies they love right here in Lilongwe, the same way Africa has finally hosted the World Cup!

From 17th to 18th July this year, The Sunbird Capital Hotel will be the venue for Malawi's first Barcamp Malawi, thanks to Google and several other sponsors in Malawi. Speakers will include enginneers from Google and leading technology organisations and startups in Malawian.

If you're interested in cutting edge technologies from Malawi and all over the world and will be available in Lilongwe during these two days, please register now at http://www.barcampmalawi.org before it is full booked. The event will be free but the number of participants is limited due to capacity, so hurry up and spread the word!

See you at Barcamp Malawi!

Happy 'American' Pi Day (3.14)!

2009-03-14T21:55:00.007+02:00

Let me break my blogging break to wish all those who start with month when writing their dates, a wonderful Pi Day as March 14 or rather 3 14 represent the first three digits of the mathematical constant Π (pronounced Pi).

The British and the rest of us, however, will have our Pi day on 22nd July (22/7) which is apparently a Pi Approximation Day since 22/7 is not the precise value of Pi

So, if you're celebrating your Π day today, have precise fun. Looking forward to approximate celebration of Π celebration in July! :)

Africa Cup of Nations 2008 website hacked

2008-01-30T17:42:00.000+02:00

Some angry 'Moroccan' has hacked the Africa Cup of Nations website after Morocco got beaten by Ghana, the hosts, 2-0 on Monday 28th January 2008.
The website, www.ghanacan2008.com and below is the screenshot in case they've fixed it now

Update: Fixed the url. Thanks Jeff. The website has been restored now. I've also changed the tooltip text on the photo from "ghanacan2008.com hacked by soyapi, on Flickr" to "ghanacan2008.com hacked. Photo by soyapi, on Flickr" :)
With that loss, Morocco is now out of the competition.

Exercise your Brain with XNumber Puzzle

2008-01-21T17:11:00.000+02:00

We all know how physical exercises are good for your body. That is equally true with your brain. Regular brain exercises make your brain healthier.

That's why newspapers usually include puzzles to help your brain as you relax during a short break at work or after work. I remember playing the cross-number puzzle which features regularly in The Daily Times of Malawi, when I was young. To win the puzzle game, you fill empty boxes with with one digit numbers (1-9) such that vertical, horizontal and diagonal numbers in the inner 4x4 boxes add up to the sums in the bottom and right-most cells - similar to a cross-word puzzle.

Every time I saw a copy of the paper, I would write down the puzzle on a piece of paper solve to it later. I spent my childhood days in Chikwawa, south of Blantyre, and I would look forward to reading The Daily Times and solving a new puzzle whenever my father returned from a trip to Blantyre.

But when I started using computers, I slowly found myself without pencils or pens and started shifting my reading medium from printed papers to electronic files. That also meant playing less and less of my favourite puzzle game. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who used to solve this or similar puzzle games but no longer do so these days. Maybe you've started playing Freecell or other computer games and puzzles.

When I was learning computer programming back in 1998, one thing I really wanted develop was a program to help me play and solve that puzzle game. The program would also be intelligent enough to solve a puzzle for me. I remember starting to code it in dBase IV :) but got distracted and went on to code other things during my free time.

If you're one of those who enjoy solving puzzles that involve numbers, I have some good news for you. You can now play that cross number puzzle game, this time online. I have finally developed a web application that will let you play a game or solve one from The Daily Times, or another source, for you at http://soyapi.com/puzzle

New button gives you another Puzzle to Solve.
Create lets you upload a new game from the Daily Times or any other source.
Solve will give give a solution for the puzzle either created or generated using New
You can use keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the cells or click on the white cells to enter the numbers.

But that's not all.

What happens when you see a Puzzle in The Daily Times and want XNumber Puzzle to solve it for you but you're not on a computer with internet access? What if you want a new game to solve on paper but can't find a copy of The Daily Times around? Well, you can go to http://soyapi.com/puzzle/m via your GPRS enabled mobile phone. Since most mobile phones don't support JavaScript, you'll have to play it on paper.

And if you care about the technical details, it's not written in dBase IV. Times have changed since '98. I used Ruby on Rails and little bit of good old C.

After almost 10 years, I've finally canceled the Cross Number Puzzle Player and Solver on my To Program list. Now get your daily brain exercise. Prescription: 2 puzzles, 3 times a day!

SearchWith extension version 0.4 is out!

2007-12-07T17:31:00.000+02:00

One reason I haven't blogged in the last 2 months is because of my other personal software projects. As Dare Obasanjo once put it on his blog description, "Writing Code Will Always Be More Important Than Writing About Code".

I'm therefore pleased to announce that SearchWith version 0.4 has been released and is available at Mozilla Addons SearchWith site: (addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2194).

SearchWith is search extension for Firefox, Thunderbird and Flock. It allows you group search engines by service (content type) and search from the context (right-click) menu.

Apart from big fixes, this version includes improvements to the Addressbar option especially in Thunderbird. Addressbar option now integrates well with Google's Feeling lucky feature.

Another enhancement in this version is that when you search with all engines for a particular service, SearchWith will automatically remember to pre-select all engines under that service, by default.

To select all engines or change this back, use the Advanced Search dialog which pops up when you hold down the SHIFT key while selecting a search service on the context menu or when you right-click without selecting any text.

Thanks to all those who sent comments, suggestions and bugs.

What You See is What You Touch (WYSWYT) on iPhone

2007-09-17T18:21:00.000+02:00

I recently had the privilege of holding and playing with Apple's iPhone. Wow, What an experience it was! It was wonderful to play with the device's on-screen keyboard, iTunes' Cover Flow, shifting photo slides, turning the little animal 90 degrees and the like.

What I realised after playing with the iPhone is that there is new paradigm of User Interfaces from What You See is What You Get (WYSWYG) to What You See is What You Touch (WYSWYT).

Since Graphical User Interfaces came up with Windows Icons Mouse and Pointers (WIMP), it has been fun moving a mouse beside a keyboard and watching something move accordingly on the screen. Although it becomes a simple and wonderful user experience dragging and dropping stuff this way, it requires a lot of getting used to initially. Novice users have to learn some principles of the mouse e.g. it doesn't work if you lift the mouse in the air.

To be honest, we can all agree that this is not a perfect user experience because in the real world, if you want to open a door, you don't move around and click some weirdly named device on one side while watching its effects on another. You push or pull the door open. If you want to poke or slap someone, you poke or slap them. As simple as that!

At Baobab Health, we have seen how touchscreen systems are so intuitive to users. No one needs a class to learn how to touch a button on the screen; not even in developing countries.

I'm therefore excited to see Apple bringing this user experience to the masses with their iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Of course there have been others who developed Touchscreen systems way before Apple. But Apple's design genius and hype production behind their touch devices have opened doors to more simple intuitive and exciting user experiences. Just hope Facebook's touchscreen slap feature won't be as painful.

Where is the Sourceforge for Web 2.0 Apps?

2007-07-19T18:43:00.000+02:00

Tim O'Reilly has written a post suggesting a source code version control web service for Google Gears applications.

While reading the post, I was reminded of my what I've been asking myself lately when I started porting one of my open source projects from the Desktop platform to the Web.

You see, for desktop apps, SourceForge provides open source projects with download services so that users can download and then install your application. But web applications don't need downloading, rather, support for various server-side scripting languages, server side database access, monitoring tools and bandwidth. The requirements are different.

For the non-commercials users, the "Sourceforge for Web2.0" can run mandatory ads on every application and impose bandwidth restrictions. You can then allow developers to run their own ads and provide them with monitoring tools so they see for themselves when it's time to go "pro". That should be workable, right?

So far, I haven't heard of any service like this. It looks like Amazon is the only well-known company doing something similar with their web services division where they are providing storage and CPU services. But as far as I know, that's only paid for services that don't include hosting various types of databases and scripting languages, or does it?

'cause that would be super cool!

WhiteAfrican covers African Web2.0 startups

2007-07-05T21:33:00.000+02:00

WhiteAfrican has been playing African TechCrunch recently covering creative Africans working on cool startups right here in Africa.

Some of the interesting innovators covered that I really liked include:

Adventures of Nyangi
A 3D Adventure game created by a Kenyan game developer who also created the engine that powers the game. (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=675)

Peupe
A made-in-africa blogging platform by Kenyan-based Multiple Choices (still in beta)
via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=658

iblog.co.za
Another blogging platform targeting South Africa (via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=404) I hope you'll find it :)

bwanji.com
A Zambian social networking site

Akopo
A blogging, chat and games platform by Nino

Afrikeo
An AJAXy homepage creation tool

(via http://whiteafrican.com/?p=673)

In Malawi, the windmill kid William Kamkwamba is still making headlines even at Digg and BoingBoing. Malawi's The Nation Newspaper of 2nd July 2007 also carried a feature article titled Behold, the scientist from Malawi.

The same paper carried a programme by ESCOM, Malawi's electricity company, detailing scheduled power outages running the whole week in various areas. Some outages were scheduled from 05:00 to 13:30 and others from 17:45 to 21:00.

Innovators like William have huge opportunities in Africa!

Malawian teenage Windmill maker dominates TED Talks

2007-06-22T20:23:00.000+02:00

At TEDGlobal 2007, participants were privileged to listen to great speakers give their well prepared talks in Arusha, Tanzania. And indeed, you'll agree with me when the videos get uploaded on web that they were great talks.

The sessions included both 18 minute talks and short 3 minute presentations by a diverse group of speakers including business leaders, artists, activists, engineers, inventors and musicians.

Among these was a 3 minute Question and Answer session where the curator Chris Anderson asked William Kamkwamba questions regarding the Windmill he created for his home in Kasungu, Malawi at the age of 14. Through the Questions with photos on the slides, William told his story which made people shed tears and later, give him a big applause and a standing ovation.

In the sessions that followed, William's story became the most cited talk among the talks at this conference. Speakers like Ory Okolloh of Kenyan Pundit, journalist Dele Olojede and Noah A. Samara of WorldSpace referred to William Kamkwamba's tale of invention in their sessions.

The picture above shows Ory Okolloh who included the photo of William's QnA session with Chris Anderson from the previous day in her slides.

Look out for the TED Talk videos from TEDGlobal 2007 when they're uploaded on TED's website.

Meeting William Kamkwamba

2007-06-22T19:56:00.001+02:00

When I was preparing to attend TEDGlobal 2007 I was prepared to meet great people with great stories behind them. This is so because everyone I talked to who knew about TED conferences told me it was a very amazing conference and I was very lucky to attend it.

This was confirmed at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe, Malawi just after boarding the plane to Arusha, Tanzania via Nairobi. Sitting next to me was the only other Malawian to attend TEDGlobal 2007, William Kamkwamba. This is the now 19 year old who created a windmill to generate electricity for his family after dropping out of school due to failure to pay school fees when he was 14. He is a quiet and humble young man but very detailed when explaining his projects. His story was first published in Malawi's Daily Times article titled "School drop out with a streak of genius" and later spread on the web through blogs.

What I like about William is that he didn't join the multitude of people just blaming government or policy makers for his lack of education. Neither did he point fingers at statutory corporations for the lack of electricity in his home. He didn't just sit down and blame his parents for all this either!

He looked around and used what he could find - poles, broken pipes, old shoes, copper wires and his father's old bicycle - to build a windmill for his home.

His story inspires me a lot and so does it to a lot of the people who have heard his story including the participants of TEDGlobal 2007.

After news of his story was reported in the media and over the internet, a lot of people have come up to support William. He is now back in school and there are efforts from some members of the TED community to sponsor him his next project: A bigger windmill to pump water from a nearby dam to irrigate crops for his family.

Creative actions speak louder than words, indeed!

Back from TEDGlobal 2007

2007-06-12T19:16:00.000+02:00

I'm back from TED Global 2007 conference. The conference was great, I liked the mix of people from Technology, Entertainment and Design professions that were present.

There were people form diverse professions and origins with one thing in common, the passion for Africa's prosperity.

Before going to TED Global, I kept hearing voices blaming governments for not doing this and that plus several other reasons why African countries cannot prosper unless some one from outside Africa does something.

At TED however, everyone I met was determined to solve Africa's problems without waiting for governments or donors. So I've come back energised and connected to the right community that will hopefully keep me motivated.

I'll be uploading photos I took in Arusha and blogging what happened at TED Global 2007 so you don't miss out completely. And from the software developer in me, expect some cool releases soon.

Going to TEDGlobal 2007

2007-06-02T12:05:00.000+02:00

Earlier this year, I was one of the 100 lucky people from Africa to be awarded a fellowship to attend the TED Global 2007 Conference to be held in Arusha, Tanzania. The fellowships are sponsored by Google, AMD and GE.

TEDGlobal Conference is a sister conference to TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Conference that is held in different countries every other year. This year's conference, titled "Africa: The Next Chapter", is the second one after one that was held in Oxford, England in 2005.

So I'll heading to Tanzania this Sunday for this conference. While there, I'll be privileged to talk about how we at Baobab Health Partnership are tackling various problems in the delivery of health care in Malawi with carefully engineered technology solutions.

Looking forward to meeting and sharing with innovators from Africa and beyond!

Google, Yahoo!, Live integrating various content in search

2007-05-17T18:02:00.001+02:00

Google has revamped it's search interface, a major upgrade after a long time according some analysts.

Major changes include:

Universal Search: where one search will include snippets of news, videos, photos, maps, etc depending on where that search returns a good amount of results
Navigational links have been moved to top left. This allows those links to always be available even when viewing results
Google Video Search now includes videos from other sources apart from Google Video and YouTube

Google announced these new features at Seachology day on May 16th that was held at the headquarters.

A few days before Google's announcement, Yahoo! announced the integration of Flickr pictures of famous landmarks in its search results. Yahoo! alpha is another test interface by Yahoo that searches various types of content.

Not willing to be left behind, Microsoft Live is using another site called Imagine Live Search to test new search ideas. Imagine Live Search includes results from Image and Local Search. This is similar to Google's searchmash and Yahoo's AlltheWeb

I've become so much interested in the integration of various content available on the web with search since I started developing SearchWith, a search tool for Firefox and Mozilla-based applications. Follow the discussion on Techmeme.

Googlable Names

2007-05-09T20:33:00.000+02:00

The Wall Street Journal recommends giving out baby names that do not return too many results in Google Search.

I also use Google when coming up with a name for a software project to make sure it does not return anything else; so that it's Googlable in other words! ConfiGuru is an example.

Being African, low internet penetration gives us an advantage that our names are not very common on the web. That's probably true with other non-English languages out there, but I can't speak for them.

In my case Google even suggests my name when you misspell it. Google is so sweet, isn't it?

Huh! I wanted to coin the word Googlability. Just googled it and found out it has a whole Wikipedia entry for itself!

Google sponsors 2 students from Africa

2007-04-26T17:01:00.001+02:00

We might be approaching Winter in most parts of Africa, but nevertheless, Google has organised a Summer of Code program, where they sponsor students to work on open source projects. Each student receives a stipend of 4500 USD in total.

Recently, Google accepted 900 from 6,200 students applications who applied for this year's Google Summer of Code program. I got confirmation from a representative from Google's Open Source Team that of the 900 successful students, 2 are from Africa: one from South Africa, another from Nigeria.

Tectonic has already written about Charl van Niekerk, the successful student from South Africa and I have since started following his Twitterings. He a must be enjoying some tech celebrity status already.

But we are yet hear from Nigeria at least as far as the web is concerned. If there's a post already announcing that s/he has been accepted somewhere on the web (apart from the participant list) then I probably need a Winter of Googling 2007. There's a one page list over at http://www.third-bit.com/soc2007.html, for your information.

But what do you think about this number of accepted students from Africa? Is it representative of the number of capable Computer Science or Engineering students in Africa? I believe there are a lot more potential Dare Obasanjos out there who deserve to get on this program but weren't aware of this opportunity. So how do we help them get on the program next year?

Congrats to the 2 successful students! I hope this number grows exponentially in the following years.

African Countries slipping down in Tech Rankings

2007-04-19T17:44:00.000+02:00

The World Economic Forum recently published the Network Readiness Index which ranks the impact of ICT on the competitiveness of various countries world wide.

Relatively, African countries are not doing well. Only Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia have moved up by 7, 2,1 and 1 steps respectively. Madagascar maintains its position 102 and the rest (except the new entrants) have slipped from the previous ranking.

Uganda has slipped 21 steps to position 100, while Egypt, Cameroon and Mozambique have gone down 14 steps each.

My country, Malawi, is a new entrant in this year's ranking at position 111 out of 122 countries ranked, beating neighbouring Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe among others.

In Africa, we are at position 17 out the 26 African countries ranked with Tunisia, South Africa and Botswana taking the first 3 positions respectively (1,2,3) in Africa and globally 35, 47, 67 respectively.

It's unfortunate that Rwanda was not included on the list. Rwanda has been getting a lot praise in Africa for investing a lot in ICT. It is aiming to be the technology hub in Africa and is one of the first countries to sign deals with leading Internet companies while other African countries are still looking up to tech companies that no longer matter.

You can get the 2006-2007 Network Readiness Index at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gitr/rankings2007.pdf

Below is a filtered list that shows only countries in Africa:

Update on the Rails and Ruby Presentation

2007-04-05T19:42:00.001+02:00

Although the Ruby and Ruby on Rails Presentation was scheduled on Sunday April 1st, it was no Fools' Day joke. Mike gave the talk using the screencasts from Ruby on Rails website: Creating a weblog in 15 minutes (by the creator of Ruby on Rails himself) and Putting Flickr on Rails.

He also gave away electronic books, videos and links to online resources and IRC channels, and few days later gave a summary of the event to ICT Association of Malawi's mailing list.

It was great to have 8 guys from Lilongwe show up on a Sunday afternoon and discuss programming languages and trends. A lot of thanks Margaret Ngwira of Kamuzu College of Nursing for allowing us to use (or is it under-utilise) the Library computer room. There was an LCD projector and lots of space and computers ready to be used. We want to have such talks once a month so expect another one in May.

Like I said, the second screencast was Putting Flickr on Rails, so I've Put the photos of the Rails event on Flickr.

Ruby on Rails Presentation in Lilongwe, Malawi

2007-03-30T19:45:00.001+02:00

There will be a presentation plus discussion on Ruby and Ruby on Rails this Sunday 1st April, 2007 at Kamuzu College of Nursing, Lilongwe Campus from 2 PM.

Mike McKay, a colleague of mine at Baobab Health Partnership, has volunteered to make the presentation after some members of ICT Association of Malawi mailing list showed interest in this programming language and its web framework.

In September last year, Oliver Gadabu, another another developer at Baobab, gave a talk on Ruby on Rails in Blantyre on Software Freedom Day organised by LinuxChix Malawi. That was probably the first public discussion of Ruby and Ruby on Rails in Malawi.

At a Medical Informatics Association of Malawi (MIAM) meeting in Lilongwe on 29th March 2007, Oliver made a presentation on Baobab's ART system which is developed using Ruby on Rails. Mike McKay followed with a brief demonstration of the system.

The Potential of Twitter in Africa

2007-03-24T14:28:00.000+02:00

Although blogging has become so popular that the word has made it into the Oxford Dictionary, only a few privileged Africans have a blog. This is related to fact that computer access is very limited and of the few computers available, even fewer have Internet connectivity.

So people have resorted to using the radio for mass communication. There are popular programs on a nation-wide radio stations that let listeners announce illness and death of family members to their friends and relatives. Unfortunately, there are more and more friends and relatives that have migrated from their native countries to developed where they can't listen to these announcements.

So the launching of Twitter provides a good alternative considering that the use of mobile phones is much higher than that of computers. In Malawi for example, there are about 50,000 Internet users against about 700,000 mobile phone users out of a population of about 12 million. Twitter allows users to post a small update via SMS, instant messaging client and the web. Anyone who chooses to follow you will get that update on the Twitter home page, or their mobile phone of they choose to. Unlike most mobile phone web services, you can update via SMS from anywhere in the world and from virtually any handset.

Although Twitter was designed to let users announce what they're doing at the time of posting, we have already seen other uses coming up. The train system in San Fransisco (BART) uses Twitter to announce changes in schedules; conference participants use it to post notes of the sessions at the conference and there are updates from news companies like BBC via Twitter.

I have always wanted a way to document quotes from TV programs, movies, songs, podcasts etc. Lines from content that is not yet indexed by search engines at the moment, at least outside their labs. Twitter seems to be the way to do that instantly while watching or listening.

So how can Twitter be used in Africa?

Realising that a lot of people in the developing world have migrated from their home villages to cities both within and outside their countries and continents, they still need to some updates about the goings-on in their home towns.

Here is what I can think of now:

General announcements to friends and relatives all over the world like illness, death, weddings, engagements, academic and professional achievements, births and maybe even Kitchen Top-ups :)
Scores, fixtures and general updates on of soccer games live from the stadium or after the game. Everyone is crazy about soccer, right?
General news and gossip including crazy odd news (e.g. "Nkhani za m'maboma" in Malawi)
Political Campaigns and news. Politics can be fun, you know.
Scripture reading and notes from a religious service. This can be our adaption of SXSW twitters where conference participants updated their friends on what was happening ;) I don't know if they'll even allow you to look at the phone during the service, though.

You'll probably think of more and better examples.

Go to Twitter and see how others are using it or to TwitterVision for an interesting visual presentation. I'm testing some of these ideas at twitter.com/soyapi live from Lilongwe, Malawi.

Happy Twitting, Tweeting, Twittering or Tweetering! Whatever you want to call it. They probably don't have lawyers yet.

How to contact Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS)

2007-03-24T12:25:00.001+02:00

UPDATE: Zodiak Broadcasting Station now has a website: http://www.zodiakmalawi.com

I have received a couple of requests for contact details of Malawi's Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) after publishing a post about ZBS in 2005. I have also noticed that none of the online business directories include Zodiak's details at the time of writing.

So, if you want to get in touch with Zodiak, here are the details:

Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS)
Area 47, Lilongwe, Malawi
Tel: +265 1 762 557

I hope that helps and I don't mind if you let them know how you got the details ;)

Update: removed wrong mobile phone numbers

meebo usage graph in Malawi

2007-03-20T17:25:00.000+02:00

via hello malawi!

Categorising Search Engines by Content Type with SearchWith

2007-03-19T09:56:00.000+02:00

While most people search the web in general, there are times when one needs to dig deeper in one particular area. It can be news, photos, videos or looking up the definition of a word.

This is not news at all and all major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Live/MSN and Ask, provide links to search a particular type of content. But since these are commercial companies, with competition to fight, they only link to their own search services even when other engines provide a better service in some of those areas.

This is an opportunity for an independent search tool that focuses on providing one interface to the best search services in a particular area by default and letting power users customise it with their favourite engines and adding other content types.

That's where SearchWith comes in. SearchWith extension for Firefox, Thunderbird and Flock is a search extension that I wrote that enables users to search different types of content on the web (and your computer for Google Desktop users).

SearchWith allows users to categorise engines per content type (e.g. YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo Video under Videos), add/remove engines and content types (called Services in SearchWith) and choose which engine is used by default -- all this without bloating the context (right-click) menu.

The latest version also allows searching multiple sites simultaneously when you use the Advanced Search dialog accessed by SHIFT+clicking on an option under SearchWith menu or right-clicking without selecting text.

Check it out at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2194 or, if you're in Firefox, you can just Install SearchWith

A Visit to Yahoo! HQ

2007-03-14T17:53:00.000+02:00

So after the Non Profit Developers Summit, I managed to get myself at Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale, CA. These are the creators of the most popular website on the Web if you need to be reminded.

This was a Monday afternoon and I took BART and CalTrain from Oakland to Sunnyvale Train station from where my host Rabble took me to Yahoo! HQ. I printed myself a visitor badge and proudly wore it. We passed by Yahoo's Cafeteria where I got a delicious piece of pizza and a cup of Capuccino. The pizza in US is much thicker than that in Malawi and Yahoo!'s pizza isn't an exception, by the way. Then we headed to the building where all the web celebrities at Yahoo! spend their day. OK not all of them but a good number of them.

I met Leonard Lin, who co-founded upcoming.org and now runs Yahoo events like Hack Day. I also met Pasha Sadir who developed Yahoo Travel Planner and created the coolest web application of the moment, Yahoo! Pipes. I also met kevnull and Daniel Raffel (just finished listening to his SXSW 2007 podcast) who also work on Pipes.

After some minutes, I realised I was sitting next to Caterina Fake's desk. Caterina is the co-founder of Flickr. In fact, the book I picked and started browsing through belonged to her. She cheerfully came into the room and you can rightly tell from her blog posts how cheerful she is.

"Actually, you can have that book" she said to me while I held a "Design Like You Give a Damn" book in my hands. "Thanks", I responded and took the opportunity to get an autograph from the web celebrity :) Since I couldn't get a picture at Yahoo, this is the only graphical evidence that I met her, right?

I also wished I took a picture of the room but kevnull already has one on Flickr so I don't have to describe it. It really feels like a good place to work at despite not getting as much publicity as Google does.

Thanks to all Yahoo Engineers aka Technical Yahoos, for making me feel welcome. Thanks for the schwag too. I got something to give my techie friends when I got back in Malawi. And you know what? My coding kung-fu is getting better already!

The Nonprofit Software Development Summit 2007 concludes

2007-02-26T23:43:00.000+02:00

I never thought I would be in the Bay Area, which is within 2 hours from the Silicon Valley, for almost one full week without seeing my number one tourist destinations: the Googleplex and Yahoo offices. Ooh, and if time permits Live.com offices.

But somehow I did and it was worth it. Here's why:

For past week, I have been participating in the 2007 Nonprofit Software Development Summit. If I previously mentioned that I would attend this summit then it was lie because nobody attends conferences organized by Aspiration. Everyone participates!

The Sessions
There were sessions on Agile Development, Usability, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, Apache and Mozilla Foundations, Open APIs, Telephony, Single sign on/Identity and so many others as listed on the Event Schedule Wiki. The problem was that at any given time, these sessions were run in parallel with others. Of course, that's why we managed to cover all these sessions. But the good news is that all the sessions have updated the Wiki with notes of what was discussed. Not only that, but these notes are available to everyone including you.

On my part and with assistance from Jeff Rafter, I facilitated a session on Software Development in an African context where we looked at challenges that are unique to Africa and the developing world and how Baobab Health Partnership is using its appropriately engineered technology to tackle these challenges.

I also demonstrated and gave pointers on creating Addons for Firefox especially Extensions in a skills share session while Jeff shared his XML skills.

The People
The summit attracted about 100 participants from Latin America, Africa, US and Canada. In between sessions, I had a chance of meeting some of these wonderful people including the co-founder of Apache Project and Foundation, Brian Behlendorf and many others.

It was an interesting experience to meet Michal whom I previously met about a year ago in Uganda at AfricaSource II. This time he was quick to show off some eye-candy on his Xgl'd Ubuntu Edgy Laptop. Or is it AIGLX'd?
By the way, I won the award of the longest traveled participant by far ;)

A lot of thanks to Tech Soup and Google for sponsoring the event and to Aspiration for making it happen. Now browse through the wiki and catch-up on the sessions.

Photo by itzpapalotl on Flickr