lingalinga

I am a Mashable junkie for reasons like this post: http://mashable.com/2008/06/29/less-is-more-unlock-the-web/

Therefore, my business model relies on goods that can be infinitely duplicated (MP3s) to draw people to buy goods that can’t (live show)

Stan Schroeder describing how “free” music can pay very well.

Read the goods at Mashable: Joss Stone Thinks That Piracy Is Great

HT: White African

I’m slightly unclear on what these stats are measuring. The title is “Mobile Phone Subscriptions in Africa.” Does that mean phone contracts? Would that also include “pay as you go” users? The numbers for all the countries I’m familiar with seem low. For example, Mozambique is listed as have 1 subscriber per 100 inhabitants. However, from my anecdotal evidence numbers seem much higher. While proctoring an exam on Saturday I asked everyone to turn off their mobiles. Almost every student had a phone on him. Of course, numbers in rural areas and among children would be lower. Still, stats are always hard to interpret.

“In Japan, I noticed pretty quickly that the mobile devices were being used for far more than what we experience here in the states. The development process for applications made for mobile devices is somewhat simplified as some of the necessary software and support is more standardized on mobile phones. One byproduct of this is a greater interest and adoption rate for mobile applications than for web applications. Mobile applications and the surrounding culture is more like the states’ web 2.0 culture when it comes down to usage, investment and ability to monetize.”

Source: Video Roundup: Kristen Nicole Goes to Tokyo, Sees Dual iPhone App

Africa’s situation is probably closer to Japan than the US. At this stage, more advanced handsets are just now appearing and people are experimenting more and more with innovative use of mobiles. The de facto application on African mobiles is SMS. Photo and music sharing seems to becoming more common.

Low tech. High energy, originally uploaded by mozifoto.

Had a blast doing some low tech recordings of Nyungwe Bible with Ilidio. I showed him how to use the Creative MuVo and he went nuts recording himself, his wife, and about 8 other people reading. I mixed some of them with loops and will try to post samples when I get to a place with fast Internet.

The same trick I mentioned a while back for Gmail also works for Yahoo! Mail. If you’re using Yahoo! on a low-bandwidth connection, you can switch to the mobile version and get a much faster experience.

While signed in to Yahoo!, go to http://m.yahoo.com.

This is the mobile version. Bookmark it or drag it on to your toolbar and you’re ready to go. You also don’t have to look at all the ads and junk in the sidebar…

Let me know how this works for you.

A related post: A trick for speeding up Gmail

Dictionary dudes, originally uploaded by mozifoto.

On May 31, I slipped across the border into Malawi and visited Steven Paas who was in Nkhoma. Steven is the editor of the Chichewa-English dictionaries that have recently come out. He and I had a lot of fun talking about electronic distribution and alternative means of sharing dictionaries (Kamusi and Lexique Pro). His English-Chichewa dictionary has more than 15,000 entries in it and the entire dictionary is a single Word file! The two-volume work represents more than a decade of work with students from Zomba Theological College.

It was nice to meet Steven and his wife during their brief visit in Malawi. They are now based in the Netherlands.

The widespread pirating of famous comic strips is instructive for those of us involved in media access. Artists can be restrictive or open and this has a big impact on the perception of their art.

Who hasn’t seen a decal like this?

Image: Bill Watterson’s persecution of his fans has done little to prevent improper usage and has done much to dilute the brand.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but Bill has prevented any merchandising of his work and the result has been that this is the only kind of image we see. Bill Watterson has tried unsuccessfully to protect his images. So the primary visual available is a knock-off image used for automobile decals.

On the other side of the spectrum is Garfield creator, Jim Davis. When he discovered that his strips were being modified and republished he took it as a public relations opportunity. He said something nice about the comics (see below) and let it go at that.

Source: Garfield Minus Garfield - May 30, 2008

Garfield Minus Garfield is just what it says, a comic developed by someone who has erased Garfield and his speech bubbles from Garfield comics. This may just sound like another example of Internet lunacy, but I think it is significant for the way in which Jim Davis reacted. (HT: Mashable)

Another important example is The Far Side and its creator, Gary Larson. Based on a brief survey of the Internet it looks like Gary spends a lot of time and money hunting down copyright infringers and asking them to remove his images. See one of the many examples of Gary Larson serving cease and desist orders on Internet copyright infringers.

When I look at the Google Image results for “Far Side god at his computer” I’m struck (or should I say “smitten”) by the wide range of (mostly poor) quality of the reproduced images. It’s also interesting to note that the first five images are all from Blogspot blogs.

See my own contribution to the discussion: smite-a-potamus.

Mark Hopkins at Mashable has been comparing how musicians like Prince and Radiohead have reacted differently to their fans’ attempts to get creative with their music.

When you get overseas and start looking at development efforts, things get really fuzzy:

• Copyright is an alien concept. Sharing is a culturally reinforced value.
• Many of the publications that NGO’s work with have a tangle of copyright and “not-for-sale” restrictions attached.
• In the case of recordings and folk literature there has been a backlash against exploitation of nationals by NGO’s.

I’m in favor of artists being proactive in sharing their work. It’s far better to be an authoritative source for your own work than just to spend your time chasing down unauthorized duplications and treating fans as criminals. Look at this interesting case on my Lingamish blog. Another blogger complained when I hotlinked to a New Yorker cartoon that he had illegally duplicated on his blog, calling it “very bad mojo.” That’s doubly ironic in my book. But more than that, his jumping on me created far more bad mojo than it prevented. (I’m a Christian so I forgave and forgot, no problem! )

There’s a lot to think about on this topic and no easy options. But the gray area between “All Rights Reserved” and “Public Domain” is where most of us increasingly spend our time and effort.

Today I discovered that the notoriously slow Gmail (when used on a dialup or GPRS) can be zipped up by adding the m. extension to the address. So if you connect to http://m.gmail.com you will get your inbox but in a mobile format that is very stripped down and fast. I am using this in FireFox and it is much better even than the “Basic HTML” format. Once you’ve typed in the address above it will redirect you to the mobile version. Drag the link to your toolbar and you’re ready to go.

For some reason Gmail and Blogger are pathetically slow which is a shame because they have wide use in the developing world. There is no mobile version of Blogger other than the silly function where you can post from your phone.

The Gmail java app is very dodgy and I’ve never succeeded in getting it to work on any of my phones. The Yahoo Go app on the other hand is pretty good.

Bibles and wages, originally uploaded by mozifoto.

This is a pretty impressive collection of Bibles for sale at the bookstore of Hefsiba Bible Institute. Prices range from 100 Mt for the little paperback on the right to 1,200 Mt for the Geneva Study Bible in the back. 100 Mt is about a day’s wages if you’re lucky enough to have a paying job. Out here in the boonies, I seriously doubt that many people are making that amount in a week.

I saw five translations available in Portuguese:
1.. BLH: Bíblia Linguagem de Hoje
2.. NVI: Nova Versão Internacional
3.. Almeida Revista e Corrigida
4.. Almeida Revista e Actualizada
If you want a Chichewa Bible you need to go to the church office and there you can get the old Buku Lopatulika. The new Buku Loyera is nowhere to be found. Last I heard they were sold out in Blantyre.

Sorry about the crummy photo. Camera phones don’t do so well inside a dimly lit room.