TechCrunch has a story up about the ins-and-outs of building a web application in three four days with little to no money. These days with open source tools and web-two-point-owe type open APIs and frameworks, it is easy for a dedicated team of developers, designers and PR/marketing people to bring out something that may just be the next hit of the social media world. Guy Kawasaki knows all about this with Truemors and Alltop. The flipside of that coin, however, is that there will be a proliferation of so many social networking/web-two-point-owe type of tools and sites to choose from, it will be hard to distinguish which ones are worth engaging with or signing up for and which ones will just be contributing to social networking fatigue

Already there is a movement in the direction of lifestream aggregators like Friendfeed and planet type services that pull all your scattered web services and networks you belong to into one central space. That is of course the main raison d’etre for this very blog of mine where I can pull everything together under one roof and my own namespace. Of course the process takes time and effort and it becomes yet another modality to manage and nurture and maintain if you wanna establish a credible and/or professional web presence.

Speaking of lifestream and web aggregator services, the South African blogosphere temporarily experienced a little uproar when Justin Hartman, one of the co-founders of Afrigator.com, blogged about a new RSS aggregator service called regator.com that received some press and buzz over at TechCrunch , Mashable and ReadWriteWeb. Justin and the co-founders and many of the SA bloggerati felt there was a possible case of IP infringement since the logo, name and colorscheme is basically identical to the Afrigator.com properties’ own brand assets. A flurry of comments on Justin’s blog was followed by one of the co-founders of Regator.com posting a comment and basically playing very nice and dispelling any fears and suspicions of foul play or malicious intent. It is a play on aggregator, since it is an aggregation RSS service, alligator seemed a natural and fun mascot, alligators are green, and the top level dot com domain name was available, hence regator.com. It all seems to be a major coincidence and case of morphic resonance and Justin has decided to check out the beta version of regator.com just to set his own mind at ease.

Afrigator.com of course is also an example of how a web app can be put together with enough skill, dedication and ingenuity from the right people combined in a good, efficient team. It is a South African made aggregation service where people submit the best blogs from within South Africa and the rest of Africa and the ones with the most buzz around it (algorithm, algorithm) kind of floats to the top a la digg or techmeme. ReadWriteWeb did an excellent round-up and hat tip to local South African web dev skills last November and this very story also featured in yesterdays uproar about the regator copyright infringement case.

Update, July 05, 2008, 07:30 UTC +2: Scott Lockhart, co-founder of regator.com commented on my blog post about the misunderstanding about them infringeing coincidentally using the same mascot, colorscheme and similar sounding domain name as local aggregator service Afrigator.com I appreciate the effort Scott has gone through to do damage control and set minds at ease and convince evceryone involved of their bona fides and that they really were not aware of Afrigator before yesterday. He also pointed me to Justin’s update and that Justin went over and got access to their entire operation to see that intentions were good. Stii, one of the Afrigator.com co-founders, also did a very diplomatic post and put a nice positive twist on the whole saga.

I have found a very good tool in the form of a WordPress plugin called WordBook, what it does is to integrate with your self-hosted wordpress.org blog on your own domain and then also your Facebook profile and mini-feed. This updates all your WordPress blog posts to your Facebook profile mini-feed and those of your friends.

The plugin from the wordpress.org plugin directory is over here.

The original author’s site and the latest developments around this plugin is over here.

There is a nice write-up of what it does over here.

Of course the biggest news in the tech space is the unsolicited ‘hostile’ bid from Microsoft to take over Yahoo to the tune of $44,6 billion dollars. The Media has already blown this into one of the most visible stories in headlines and titles of news updates from all over.

I do not claim to know all there is to know about these things, so I will point you to a collection of very insightful and in-depth posts by people more knowledgeable about it.

I found a good post on the current state of mobile, internet and other infrastructure issues in Africa and the implications for entrepeneurs in the Web 2.0 space.

It comes via a newsletter from Russell Southwood over at www.balancingact-africa.com

African countries’ ICT policy– going from the blah, blah, blah cycle to getting something done

In a week in which the heart of South Africa’s ICT industry – Sandton – suffered continuous load-shedding (rolling power cuts for those of you who speak English), no-one doubts that developing a modern ICT-enabled economy in Africa is a challenge. It is easy in these circumstances to respond cynically by asking: Government? What is it good for? But a small number of African Governments have managed to make a difference through facilitating major projects but the majority are in the slow-track when it comes to getting the big things done. Russell Southwood looks at why some countries talk, whilst others do.

Changing an economy through introducing ICT is akin to trying to set up a whole row of spinning plates. Without infrastructure, you can’t get media, services and applications. Without media, services and applications, you can’t get critical mass. Without critical mass, there’s no-one to e-mail or exchange videos with, so why bother? And that’s before you get on to all the “nice things” that might happen if African governments delivered their services better.

The private sector can do many things but even in Africa it does not do very high risk investment and it does not go where tomorrow’s market is today. For example, despite all the heady promises made at the Connect Africa event in Kigali last year, the new vertically integrated mobile companies are unlikely to lay extensive high-capacity microwave or fibre infrastructure quickly. They will follow the market in metro areas and connect up major cities. They have shareholders’ money to look after and it would be unusual if they did otherwise.

But for Africa’s fast track economies where growth is running ahead of the global average, it is important that they get in place the new global ICT infrastructure to support their changing economies today. Access to fibre really is the fuel of the new global economy: the cutting of the Flag cable to North Africa and Asia illustrates this all too vividly in a negative way.

For five years and more, African Presidents and Ministers have been making speeches about how important ICT is and how they wish to use it to attract new jobs. If words were money, Africa would be rich beyond its wildest imaginings. Some of this “blah,blah,blah” has led to new initiatives but in most countries these have simply fizzled out. But recently in East Africa, Kenya and Uganda took decisions that they would build national infrastructures. Kenya decided that it would initiate its own international fibre connection.

Spurred by the World Cup in 2010, South Africa has more international fibre plans for the West Coast of the continent and has set up Infraco to intervene in the broadband connectivity supply market. To meet its growing connectivity needs, Angola is going to buy a Russian satellite. Nigeria has launched Nigcomsat and set up Galaxy Backbone to address the Government’s own connectivity needs.

None of these initiatives are above criticism and indeed some are questionable but it is interesting to see that some countries are taking steps to do something rather than simply talking about what needs to be done. However, these countries are the exception rather than the rule. They are the fast-track countries that either have oil-revenues and/or have burgeoning economies that are not solely reliant on mineral extraction. However, mineral wealth is quite widely spread across the countries of the continent and there are significant numbers who have it that are not “stepping up to the plate”. The remainder of the countries concerned have a range of relatively easy excuses: lack of money, lack of education, corruption and much else besides. But if Nigeria or Uganda can foster these kinds of changes, why is it that Gabon or Ghana do not?

Making change in the ICT space requires a particular chemical mix that involves both Government and others, along with a magic ingredient that consultants call vision, but might better be called imagination. Those that have taken initiatives have had the courage to imagine that their countries might go from being global victims to becoming attractive places to live and work. Rwanda’s President Kagame rarely sets a room alight with a speech but he has understood that if his small country Rwanda is to find a place in the global economy, it’s going to be necessary to work very hard at providing the conditions in which that might happen. He and his country may or may not be successful and they may or may not have the capacity to succeed but you cannot fault them for trying.

Getting a Government that does something requires getting a number of committed people in place. Firstly, there has to be a President who does not just make the speeches but also provides political backing and resources to get things done. Africa still has highly centralised decision-making processes and without Presidential backing, no-one takes you seriously.

Next there has to be Minister who can take that backing and motivate the sometimes indolent and leaderless civil servants in the appropriate Ministry and get into dialogue with the private sector and others about what needs to be done and how to achieve it. The Minister is nothing without a highly articulate and energetic civil servant who can: “carry the message”, respond quickly to all the interested parties and knows how to manage initiatives successfully.

All set and ready to go? No. Government by itself working “top-down” is one hand clapping in an empty room. There needs to be a vocal, critical but supportive private sector that knows how to make demands and shape projects. Alongside them has to be an equally vocal civil society that speaks up for the non-market requirements like education and health. Everyone at every level needs to understand the difference between having a successful meeting and actually getting something to happen. No more self-congratulatory speeches to other Ministers but time to concentrate on a small number of achievable initiatives and work to deliver them.

In a subjective assessment carried by Balancing Act of the sixteen West African countries on the basis of the above criteria, only two countries (Nigeria and Senegal) met these conditions outlined, although the latter does not really have an active private ICT sector because of the dominance of the incumbent Sonatel. Ghana has the scale of economy to succeed but somehow never really manages to convert all the right words into political will and thereafter into action. The majority of the others have strong individual servants and sometimes Ministers but they lack Presidential and/or private sector and civil society support.

Nearly all of these “slow-track” economies lack the imaginative response to change that says if the country gets ICT support in place, we can start building a very different place to live. They may – like Mali – have a small-scale illustrative project (a Government-sponsored call centre) but this project (or even groups of small projects) are not life-changing enough for the countries concerned. And please do not bleat to me about how these types of countries lack money as there are both private and public sources of financing for those who have the ideas and energy to attract it. Open economies with ideas about their future are at a premium in the global economy.

For private sector ICT companies, whether carriers or vendors, the obstacles in the slow track economies make selling services there a complicated business. For the individual small ISP owner, it means that he or she become not just the commercial head of their company but also unpaid policy advocate in the continuous trench war over a favourable ICT policy.

The big companies like Cisco, Google and Microsoft have understood that they are not simply selling “kit” or software but have to create the “weather” that will allow more open markets to flourish. This week Microsoft and the Centre Africain d’Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which aims to deliver high-quality ICT policy training to government employees in West and Central Africa. CESAG is an institution specialising in the delivery of government-related training and leadership capacity building across
French-speaking Africa.

Microsoft’s Regional Technology Officer Nicol Woodward is tasked with influencing Government across 10 policy areas that include: interoperability; identity, privacy; innovation; IPR; accessibility; spectrum allocation; standards, DRM and formats, and GAP. What’s GAP? It’s Microsoft’s way of looking at Government as decision-maker, influencer and customer. G stands for governance. A for Architecture in the sense of how everyone will get networked and P for procurement.

Like other large vendors, it has both to both set up the debate and try to reap the rewards that come from the dialogue. It would not be a business if it did not want to make sales but it can’t simply say “we’re right and all the other guys are wrong”. Creating a successful economy involves complex but vital debates around issues as diverse as IPR and piracy and how you foster innovation. The answers chosen by policy-makers to these many debates are all linked: get one wrong and it becomes harder to get the others right.

As Woodward told us:”We have got to the point in Nigeria where we are having in-depth discussions about IPR and DRM. It’s the same with Angola. These are blossoming economies and they want to get it right. We want to explain things from our viewpoint but whatever they install, they are well informed in making that decision.”

Obviously explaining these issues cannot be left to the Microsofts of this world alone but given the perilously low levels of understanding in many countries, the discussion has to start somewhere. The issue is then how public these debates are for if they are conducted entirely behind closed doors then they will not be subjected to the full force of all viewpoints.

The difficulty is that for some Open Source advocates that choosing it is so blindingly obvious that they forget it is debate with two sides. The more thoughtful Open Source advocates, like Microsoft, believe this is a debate that they can win on the merits of the arguments. But whichever road you choose, you have to have a growing economy to have the expertise and resources to make it a debate worth having.

So if Africa is to have more open, successful economies that can begin to ride the waves of global expansion and contraction, then it will require multinational (and regional) ICT operators to take more interest in the continent. And for its politicians to understand that words do not feed mouths.

But the best is yet to come…

A South African blogger has taken the time and effort to reproduce, for the edification of everyone who cares to read, the PATHETIC, SHAMEFUL speech made to Parliament by the South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs after a disastrous two weeks where industry and the entire country came to a standstill because of power failures and the subsequent CIRCUS of incompetent, corrupt and arrogant imbeciles running the country into the ground with their IDIOCY!!!

Anyways, we remain positive, it is sooo un PC to be cynical and an afropessimist these days, but to all those who care to investigate and have to live under such obvious IDIOTS, at least be truthful and call an IDIOT an IDIOT, whether they be black or white or Indian or Coloured or Green for that matter, just tell these idiots to put people in place who know how things work, and who know how to keep those things to keep on working so we all can start getting this country out of the SHIT that it is in!