Using a CD-R as a portable drive

I discovered that the students here in Mozambique are using CD-R disks as a type of Flash drive. They can record new files onto the disk and carry it with them. The price difference between a blank CD and a Flash drive is much cheaper. I think a blank CD must sell for maybe $2 while a Flash drive can be anywhere from $50 to $100. A CD-R is an excellent option for students and others who have limited access to a computer (at school or at the office) but want to keep their files safe.

The best investment in my opinion is a mobile phone with a USB adaptor. That can serve as portable storage, a phone, and a camera, and a…

I’ll admit I’m unclear on the distinction between CD-R and CD-RW. My understanding is that a CD-RW can be completely erased while a CD-R can only have more information added to it until it is full. Am I close?

Bits, hertz, bandwidth and mobile audio recording

I find this subject boring but important. So there you have it.

Here are some good links to information on choosing the right sampling rate for audio recordings:

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Sample_Rates

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/Multimedia/node150.html

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-good-bitrate-guideline-for-mp3-files.htm

If you’re trying to get those blasted AMR files off your phone and into Audacity, this site can help: http://media-convert.com/

After playing around with various recording levels on my Zoom H2 and Nokia 5300, I can’t see any advantage of saving mp3s at a bit rate higher than 96. I saved a recording at 16, 32, 96 and 128 bits in mp3 format and the 32 bit was acceptable while the 96 was terrific. I could detect no difference between 96 and 128. I think for voice recordings 96 should be a good standard while you can compress audio to 32 for situations where it will be played through FM radio or on inferior sound equipment (read “most of the world”).

Here are the stats on a 32-second recording I made:

Bit rate	Size	Quality	Application
16	66K	Poor, grainy	Mobile download
32	140K	Slightly grainy	FM Radio
96	419K	Rich sound	mp3
128	558K	Equal to 96	CD

Here are three of the four recordings for your listening pleasure.

The poem is On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup by William Oldys

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup 16.mp3

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup 32.mp3

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup 96.mp3

Take note that this is for a 32-second recording. A song or a five-minute podcast would be that much larger. I don’t think any of these rates would be small enough to tempt someone to download a file on their mobile. At least here in Africa there are many cheaper ways of getting mp3s through Bluetooth sharing and pirated CDs full of mp3s. In the developed world no one is going to want to download the New Testament on to their phone for example when they can get it faster and cheaper on their computer.

Portable apps

While the number of people in Mozambique who own a computer is very small there are huge numbers of people with their own Flash drive. Also called “USB drives” or “Memory sticks” these are an incredibly handy way for people with limited resources to get their toe in the door of the technological world. Increasingly I see Mozambicans trading data via Flash drives. The downside is that they tend to be full of viruses. I seldom allow anyone to stick their Flash drive in my computer but if I do my virus software’s alarms starting sounding.

What I have found exciting is the possibility of a person with a Flash drive being able to keep all his or her data in one place. Not only that, there are some exciting ways for a person to have all the applications they need including web browser, email program and word processor resident on their Flash drive.

I’ve been playing around a lot with TiddlyWiki (start at http://tiddlyspot.com/ to check it out) as a way of facilitating content creation while offline. It’s developed especially to run inside a web browser (FireFox or Chrome work fine, Internet Explorer is iffy). I’ll talk about TiddlyWiki more in the future but right now I want to mention http://portableapps.com/ This is an entire operating system essentially that runs on your Flash drive with a bundle of applications. The potential for this is huge since it makes it easy for someone with only a Flash drive to have all their apps and associated files together in one place. So, if you go into the Internet cafe, you can just plug in your Flash drive, launch Thunderbird and send and receive all your email at once rather than signing on to Yahoo! or Gmail and then losing access to your messages when you sign off.

Now if only I had a fast enough connection to download this and try it out. I’ll have to wait for someone to hand carry me a copy on a Flash drive when they visit in a couple of weeks.

If you try out portableapps let me know what you think of it.

TiddlyWiki

The potential of this for distance education and access to information for students with limited access to the Internet is immense.

http://tiddlyspot.com/

There’s a version that works with mobiles here: http://itw.bidix.info/ but it doesn’t work offline.

It’s also a nice way for people to play with learning WikiMarkup without being online.

Two low-tech ways to keep track of all your online discussions

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs…how to keep track of all that information?

I find myself bouncing from one site to the next trying to keep up with comments on my various blogs, Twitter and Facebook. I originally tried iGoogle with Google Reader and Gmail at the top but where I’m at the connection is too slow to make this viable.

Solution 1: Gmail in HTML mode + Bloglines in mobile mode

Gmail can be viewed in HTML mode which is quite fast so I was able to funnel all my information from Twitter and Facebook into that. And then I used the mobile version of Bloglines to keep track of comments on my key online blog projects.

Now with just two clicks of the mouse I can get a quick overview of activity on a dozen online discussions. I timed it at about 30 seconds check both sites.

Solution 2: Pure Email

An even simpler solution would be to feed all the blog feeds for comments into Gmail as well. Then I’d only need one click. Hmmmm, I might just try that. There’s a small difficulty in that I use different email contacts on some of those blogs but that might be easy to remedy.

Note this doesn’t have to be Gmail. But I find Gmail to be the quickest for viewing on a mobile phone and I also try to avoid using my corporate or personal email addresses for these kinds of notifications so Gmail is a good option for a single address to funnel everything into.

One good thing about using email notifications is that they tend to be instantaneous where RSS feeds (especially through Bloglines) can have a lag. If I’m checking now I want to know everything up to this very second.

P.S. Facebook is a pig on a slow connection. The m.facebook.com version is much faster but lacks a lot of functionality. Email notifications is a good way around ever having to visit that place.

Mashups of geotagged Flickr photos with Google Maps

Gravy, this was a pain in the neck. But in the end there is a simple solution.

Why would you want to do this:

1. You are a geek.
2. You have too much time on your hands.
3. You have a compulsive need to figure things out.
4. You want to tie photos to a map.

I’ll admit that #1 and #3 were my strongest motivators here. #2 figures in a little as well. But I have really wanted #4 so that I can show photos of projects in different parts of the country in a visual way.

Two problems:

• Flickr uses Yahoo Maps. (Not so nice)
• Google Maps only uses Panoramio (Also not so nice.)

I wanted the killer apps for photos and maps to communicate with each other. I won’t even tell you how many options I tried. I want something that will work ten years from now. I don’t want an extra online service to juggle.

In the end the solution was very simple:

1. Geotag photos in Flickr. It’s actually pretty painless once you play with it a little. Drag your photos on to the map and you can do it in large batches.
2. Look at the bottom of your photostream page or at the bottom of a tag page for GeoFeed.
3. Copy that link and then head on over to Google Maps. http://maps.google.com/maps
4. Paste the link from Flickr into the Search Maps box and click it.

Anything that has a geotag will appear on the map with links back to the Flickr pages. There is a slight snafu in that it displays every link twice. (Read here for more info)

You can see some examples here:

1. My photos tagged Tete.

2. All my geotagged photos

This is a pretty easy way to create an interactive map without having to do any work in Google Maps. Almost all your editing is done in Flickr.

Outstanding issues:

• I’d still like a way to do geotagging on the photos that are on my computer but I haven’t found an easy way to add EXIF information without GPS coordinates.
• The Yahoo Maps are very limited for Mozambique so I sometimes have to use Google Maps to find a coordinate and then enter that coordinate in the Yahoo Map on Flickr.

Disclaimer: If this sounds like gibberish feel free to ask questions.

It’s the year 2109. Whatever happened to your data?

If you’re like me you’ve got photos, text, videos, and email spread all over the Internet. I’ve grown increasingly concerned about this situation. What if Flickr flickers? Or Google gurgles? What if WordPress gets squeezed? And another part of this problem is that it is increasingly difficult to manage all these online accounts. I have a password-protected document on my computer with pages of usernames and passwords. A final issue in my mind is that of privacy. When you sign over your photos, text and more to companies online you are handing over a lot of your privacy and fair use rights.

One way of looking at this positively is that electronic data is ephemeral anyway. Blog posts have a shelf life of a week. Facebook updates stick around for mere hours. Email messages more than a month old are seldom consulted again. So even if we lose all that stuff it’s not that big of a deal.

I’ve been considering consolidating all my data in a central place so that I can have better control over it. I think it would also save me some money. Right now I’m paying for Flickr Pro, WordPress upgrades, domain registrations. Put all those together and it’s maybe only $100 per year. But again remember we’re in the year 2109, have I been paying all those fees and keeping track of all those accounts for the last century? That’s a lot of money and hassle. Far better, I think, to buy server space and a domain and then manage all the content in a single location. Also, I can make a local backup and synchronize the contents locally and in “the cloud.”

The Internet is a tenuous, tipping Tower of Babel made not of cards but electrons representing zeroes and ones. The next 9/11 might not bring down a physical tower but knock out the Internet. A healthy dose of paranoia might be in order.

Here are some links:

• Downloadr: An application for backing up your Flickr photos
• Don’t Worry, Says Facebook, Your Photos are Safe
• How do you archive/back up all your online data, like Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook…

Francis and Johanna at Sol Plaatje

Francis and Johanna at Sol Plaatje, originally uploaded by mozifoto.

During my visit to Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership I had the
great privilege to meet with the Director, Francis Mdlongwa as well as
researcher, Johanna Mavhungu. They then directed me to the Rhodes
University School of Journalism and Media Studies where I was then
directed to the Center for Culture, Communication and Media Studies at
Kwa-Zulu Natal University in Durban. It was a wild goose chase but I met
a lot of great people and in the end I think I found the golden egg!

Understanding Facebook Groups

I’m continuing my study of the hows and whys of Facebook Groups. Since most groups I belong to sit dormant most of the time, it’s not the interaction on the groups that gives them their appeal. Still, there is something going on here. First, I think that the group function allows you to leverage your social network to create “mailing lists” of like-minded individuals. The “message to all members” function is potentially powerful. However, when I get a message from the group I take note of the information but if there’s a call to action I seldom follow through. That apathy is partly a response to information overload, even compassion fatigue.

One thing to realize is that there are micro and macro groups. Some are rallying points for huge numbers of people. But others are more cliquish. The cliques are in my opinion potentially more useful for rallying a tribe to a cause (ala Seth Godin’s Tribes). In fact, speaking of Seth, exclusivity can be a strength rather than a weakness.

This first quote is from an article on cracked.com on “The Six Most Obnoxious (And Unavoidable) Facebook Groups. It’s a rather good little rant although there is an excess of vulgarity. The other post definitely worth reading is from Social Media Guy where a Facebook rep mentions how businesses and organizations should consider using Pages rather than Groups. I’m going to check that out.

When Facebook emerged on the scene in early 2004, it was the plucky young challenger to big bad MySpace. Over time, Facebook has risen to dominance by offering its users a far longer list of ways to annoy their friends to the point of physical violence.

The worst of the annoyance techniques has to be the copious and utterly pointless group invites which come standard with any account. More here and here.

Are You A Lion Or A Sheep?
A Facebook group needs strong leadership and clear direction if you want it to succeed. If you act like a sheep, the herd might follow you for a moment  and then lose interest or move in a different  direction.

Launching a successful Facebook group is a definite art. If you are thinking of starting a new group or already have an existing group, here are a few essential pointers to get you going viral and  effortlessly  attract new members. More…

We’ve discussed the idea of creating Facebook groups and pages promoting discussion about clients and their industries. I don’t know about you, but I’m not very active in most of the Facebook groups I belong to. I have a feeling that is the case for most Facebook users so I want to dig deeper into this particular tactic with a relevant case study to see if we could develop it into an effective approach. More…

Facebook is one of the most powerful social networking services currently available. Its interface and framework allow a person to spread news virally as quick as any social bookmarking service. Facebook Groups, communities of friends with similar interests, are also becoming extremely popular. But, why create a Facebook Group???

The 10 Commandments of Facebook (Some profanity)

 

White African in Liberia

Check out some of HASH’s latest articles on community radio. http://whiteafrican.com Community radio is a fast growing medium in Mozambique.