Pêle-mêle off the top my head:
In my daily reads, I stumbled across a Wordpress plugin called Tagaroo. It reminded me of Zemanta. I haven’t tried it out. But I guess the interesting part is that it is being sponsored/developed by media giant Thomson Reuters as part of the Calais project.
As usual I’ve been taking lots of snapshots. Faves of the week include:
Oh and yeah, I know what this year’s Christmas card will look like:
I tried out some night photography which was a lot of fun. Found out that I’ll need a good, lightweight tripod to pursue this more seriously.
The Swiss consumer magazine K-Tipp published the results of a chocolate degustazione.
I downloaded hours of video podcasts on CSS.
African bloggers in Amsterdam:
Picnic 08 (an annual tech. conference held in northern Europe) had a special Africa track called “Surprising Africa“. There’s a short video featuring the speakers here (via tweet).
I am learning a lot from the African blogs I am reading…
App+frica recently wrote about useful web applications for bloggers in developing countries.
In his list he mentions Zemanta:
Zemanta, which just scored a new round of funding from Union Square Ventures, is a huge time saving tool. It’s a browser-side plug-in that scans the context of your blog posts (even as you’re writing it) and offers up a ton of time saving shortcuts like related links, photos, wikipedia articles, blogposts and suggested tags. With the click of a few buttons it can help you format your post in a way that normally takes hours! For instance, if you’re writing an article about Google, Zemanta will find recent articles about Google from other blogs, photos, logos and more.
It works with all the major blog platforms including Wordpress, Livetype, Blogger, Drupal and more. When I had an abundance of time (and internet) I would usually just do all those things myself but Zemanta speeds up that process significantly.
Zemanta analyzes your text and then searches the web to suggest related articles, photos, tags. For some texts, the results still need tweaking. But this is a cool tool and a sign of what’s coming.
Thanks App+frica for sharing. I hadn’t heard of it before. And I live in a so-called developed country.
just read about the African Cookbook Project.
You can submit your favourite African recipe at:
questions (at) betumi.com.
Off the top of my head and based on the recipes I’ve published here at Chiperoni.org, I would say banana bread.
I’m sending an email to Blantyre to ask my mom…
Interesting link via Mlle. A. :
Design for the Other 90%
I tried to capture today’s awesomely red fireball of a sunset in Basel. My cameraphone snapshot doesn’t quite do it justice. But heh, that’s one moment in time captured and stored and uploaded and tagged and online.
Stumbled across this blog entry:
We googled you!
And it definitely raises an important discussion point… what will recruiting employers do with all the data they find on a job applicant.
Easier.com has published some interesting travel tips on Malawi. For example, spending vacation on a tea estate in Thyolo:
More visitors to southern Malawi are discovering the delights of staying in one of the colonial ‘managers’ bungalows on the Satemwa Tea Estate with its views of Mount Mulanje in one direction and the Lower Shire Valley in the other. Now, the UK national newspaper, The Independent has ranked Satemwa among the world’s top five ‘tea hotels’. And there’s more good news. Satemwa is now a certified Fair Trade producer – the only one in Southern Africa.
It’s possible for guests to sample a selection of black, green and white (yes, white) teas as they look across the neat tea gardens and try to identify the birds from the hundreds of species that are resident or passing through the area. You prefer coffee? No problem, coffee is also grown here.
The Satemwa Tea Estate is a wonderful place to stay if exploring in the Thyolo and Mount Mulanje area. They have a new and very informative website: Satemwa.com
A family favorite is Lujeri Tea Estate at the foot of Mount Mulanje.
Which reminds me that I wanted to write a blog entry on Club Makokola. I’ve uploaded a short film I took on the beach, but for some reason the Flash movie only shows 4 secs. The corresponding Quicktime movie is fine. I tried re-exporting with a shareware tool I found, but it’s too lossy.
Any tips on open source video editing tools are greatly appreciated…
Regarding audio, I found that Audacity is useful.
Here’s a cross-reference to Mike McKay’s blog post on TED and Africa:
Hacktivate » TED gives Africans free laptops
When I started blogging back in Jan 2003, one of my high flying and lofty ideas was to help cross the digital divide and point to content about Malawi. A goal I haven’t really managed to keep. But from time to time I’ve pointed to various Malawi sites. It’s great to see that the number of fellow Malawi bloggers is increasing.
There’s:
- Victor Kaonga, currently based in Sweden, raising an interesting question “Is Malawi really poor?”. Victor is also writing about Malawi at Global Voices Online.
- Cryton blogging from the UK about his studies and work and how life in GB compares to Malawi. I like the way he interweaves his texts with Chichewa comments. He’s got an interesting theory regarding soap operas. In my opinion the number of drinking holes is equally high in Malawi.
- And Soyapi visited Yahoo! HQ
- There’s another interesting blog collecting information about Africa’s connectivity.
Alex Antener presents a talk on his Malawi projects:
Freie Software - Eine Chance für Afrika, (in German)
Very interesting, and lots of screens with GNU Linux.
[update] The official recording of the talk is available online.
My Google alert for news on Malawi has never had so many US and European articles as in the past months. All because of Madonna. Topics such as the last General Elections or bad harvests - which have a much bigger impact - were only covered by the usual outlets (BBC World, CNN). I remember searching Malawi forums for news on the election results.
A friend asked how Malawians see Madonna’s recent adoption of a Malawian baby boy. I haven’t heard much. Cos I’m here in Basel. But here’s a summary of Malawi bloggers that referred to the celebrity news:
I guess, there’s more out there. And more to come when Madonna goes back. I hope, she’s not in it for the PR only. In my humble opinion being adopted by a rich celebrity doesn’t really mean you’ll have a better life.
But even for Malawi, you can say that blogging technology has made it simpler to read personal thoughts and reports on news items.
Feel free to leave a comment.
BTW, this blog post was again inspired by fresh air.
newly started:
Malawi Wildlife
A nurse midwife writes about her work experience in Lilongwe - sad and heart-wrenching with glimpses of hope.
I found a Quicktime movie about her work, but I can’t view it on my Windoze machine, even though I have the required Quicktime player.
[update] The video now works but it’s on a slowish server.
Network Africa interviewed Malawi blogger Mwai Kasamale.
Found out about this via Kenyan Blog Awards.*
*or sick and tired of all the self-promoting SBAW-related posts…
Been following the news in Africa?
Take the BlogAfrica Quiz:
AfricaQuiz
via Mike McKay
