Skunkworks

New home for the Skunkworks blog

2008-12-04T12:16:00.003+03:00

The Skunkworks blog has moved to its new locally-hosted home, http://blog.my.co.ke/

Please update your bookmarks if you would like to continue following the posts.

skunkworks mombasa

2008-11-21T15:14:00.004+03:00

Imagine holding BarCamp at a beach hotel – a perfect get-away excuse from the hassle and bustle of Nairobi. This may be possible from next year, courtesy of brand new Skunkworks-Mombasa branch.

A group of coast IT professionals, formerly called "tee-em", has decided to adopt Skunkworks "brand" seeking to collaborate and synergize with Nairobi-based Skunkworks-Kenya. "We will be needing a wiki for that, but will look into it, will try get a page setup on http://wiki.my.co.ke from the Nairobi guys," reads a message on their member's mailing list.

Greeting the news, Josiah Mugambi said, "I was wondering how long skunkworks would get less Nairobi centric and this would be a good idea. Then later maybe a Skunkworks Nakuru, Eldoret, Embu, Kisumu... and I can't resist this one: Skunkworks Kogelo."

On use of the "Skunkworks" name, Michuki Mwangi said "You are most welcome to organize and have a Skunkworks-Mombasa in actual sense you can adopt the name since no one has trade mark rights over the name other than Lockheed-Martin."

Their coordinator, Arthur Simiyu, hopes they could BarCamp next. He invites coast-based techies to their meeting scheduled next Saturday at the Kenya Industrial Training College(KITC), opposite the Kenya Revenue Training Institute (customs) along the Mombasa - Malindi Road from 2pm.

And Riyaz Bachani promises them hookup with Mombasa Polytechnic techie community and says that he looks forward to attending their meetings, if scheduled on weekends.

We welcome Skunkworks Mombasa wishing them well in crystallizing and nurturing emerging innovation. While remembering that skunkworks, work under very difficult conditions to produce amazing results.

Alex Gakuru

skunkworks@innovation event recap

2008-10-09T11:19:00.001+03:00

note - new blog is here: blog.my.co.ke

Visit Erik's blog and Alex Gakuru's blog for more coverage of the event.

(Special thanks to Ngaara Nelson (ngaara (at) yahoo.com) for the logo design)

Part 1 of Demos:

John Maina kicked off the presentations with a talk on Education Tourism. He made the argument that Kenya loses so much money as people seek education abroad (even if its in next door Uganda), yet Kenya has arguably the best equipped educational institutions. However Kenya's marketing itself as an educational destination is hardly done. Quite thought provoking. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

John Maina.View full album online

Kenneth Mwangi, a final year student at Strathmore University next made a presentation on Tulipe, an E-Commerce Framework for Payments. He quoted Isaac Newton - 'Standing on the Shoulders' of giants, to refer to how his prototype rides on existing systems that are widely in use, for instance Safaricom's MPESA and the highly successful Equity Bank. The prototype is intended to be operator agnostic and merchant (bank) agnostic which would indeed be a novel achievement, and something that the market has been waiting for. Erik's blog also covers this presentation. Download the entire presentation in PDF format. (Image courtesy of whiteafrican.com)

Fabian Owuor and Andrew Ketoyo of Metrocomia EA then made a presentation on an E-Book based solution that aims to ease the collection and dissemination of information. Some of the problems that they identified as being solvable with this E-Book, include national examinations (keeping in mind the number of subjects people study as well as the popularity of past papers), a staff training handbook and publications - for instance the Kenya Gazette. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Fabian Owuor View full album online

Sam Kitonyi (UON) and Victor Murage (Africa Nazarene University) nexted presented Kikwe, a way to send airtime across Africa. Kikwe allows anyone to send airtime to a loved one online from the comfort of one's desk. It allows sending of airtime to any network and provides an easy to use interface. Some of the challenges that the team has identified include the risk of fraud and the development of partnerships in Africa. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2007 format.

Sam and Victor. View full album online

Ken Kasina started by running a video demo of Wesley Kiriinya's Game, The Adventures of Nyangi. This was a show case of the talent and potential available locally, especially as game development requires a high level of technical skill. During the question and answer session after this demo, Wesley (who was not present) and other game developers were challenged to enhance the quality of their games to bring them up to par with other internationally available games. Ken Kasina also talked about the localization of software, particularly FOSS applications. He has been heavily involved in several localization projects including that of KDE. Being also a highly skilled developer, he's also an active contributor to various FOSS projects. He urged those present to consider contributing to localisation of various software as this would enhance the adoption of information technology countrywide.

Ken Kasina & Erik Hersmann. View full album online

Mugambi Kimathi, CEO of VST Studios made a presentation on Jahazi. Jahazi aims at enabling people who are not familiar with the internet to be able to take advantage of what the internet has to offer from an easy to use interface. Mugambi took those present through the various features of jahazi, which currently is available for Windows based systems. One other key feature of jahazi is its ability to allow any software developer to create applications for any use (e.g. online booking for an airline like KQ, or a stocks watchlist) thus opening up the platform for any individual or user to tap into. The full presentation is available online here.

The Jahazi.com team. View full album online

Charles Gathii, the MD of Microhouse Technologies next talked about his company. Microhouse provide solutions to various enterprises, among them various companies (like the hosts Sarova Panafrica) and educational institutions. Majority of the software development is done locally by local developers. Charles urged students interested in doing database development to learn and master oracle, and get certified as there is a shortage of skilled labour in this area in Kenya.

Charles Gathii. View full album online

Bonn Ndegwa of Unwired Technologies next made a presentation on Time Tabler, a low cost timetabler tat is designed for use by institutions that do not have a large budget for information technology products. Interesting to note was the fact that the company is not based in Nairobi, like majority of IT firms in Kneya, but in Western Kenya. They specialize in developing solutions for rural communities. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Bonn Ndegwa. View full album online

Josh Jingo then made a presentation on and the possibilities locally. Using tools like blender and having the right amount of skill, one could easily come up with high quality animations (as was aptly demonstated). He however noted that one of the greatest challenges facing them was the fact that many media houses, and those seeking to have animations created for television opt to go abroad (for instance to India and South Africa), yet there was sufficient talent and ability locally.

-

We then broke for lunch, which was co-sponsored by Safaricom, Kenya ICT Board and the Ministry of Information and Communications. (KICTB promised lunches for everyone (skunkworks..) who comes to the next such meeting)
-

After lunch, there was a brief lightning round session of 2-3 minute random talks from participants for about 15 minutes.

Alex Gakuru then came up to talk about the main purpose of the event which was to enhance linkages between software developers and solution providers, and those in need of solutions as well as industry leaders. He then welcomed representatives of the sponsors of the event to give brief speeches. The sponsors of the event where the KENIC, Wananchi Group, Strathmore University, Kenya ICT Board and Safaricom. Many thanks go to them for enabling this event to be a success.

Alex Gakuru View full album online

Alex then welcomed Telkom Kenya CEO Dominique Saint-Jean to make some remarks. Mr Dominique was pleasantly surprised by the 'positive energy' he experienced when entering the room, which is a testament to the enthusiasm of those present at the event. He emphasised on the importance of local content saying that it is imperative that more local content be developed. He also promised to listen serious proposals from local developers within a 'reasonable time frame'. Many thanks to Dominique Saint-Jean for sparing time to grace the event.

Mr. Dominique Saint-JeanView full album online

Finally, the PS, Information and Technology, Dr. Bitange Ndemo made his keynote address. He mentioned that he would have loved to be present from the beginning of the forum but was not able to . He said that more opportunities and forums are needed for exchange of ideas and proposed that every two months, a forum similar to this take place. He also mentioned that there is going to be a huge demand for talent in the outsourcing and software development arenas, something in the region of 5000-10000 new people over the next five years. He challenged local developers to come up with a local game - like 'ajua' that is unique to Kenya. Many thanks to the PS for taking time out of his busy schedule to come to the event, and also for the support he has been.

PS Dr Bitange Ndemo View full album online

Part two of demos then commenced:

Ngigi Waithaka of Alliance Technologies got the second part of presentations going. Alliance Technologies specializes enterprise grade solutions for companies, NGO's and educational institutions. Ngigi has also been at the forefront in promoting FOSS based solutions, and Alliance Technologies also conducts the deployment of open source systems such as ERPs. Ultima Gratis, a grant management system was show cased. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Ngigi Waithaka. View full album online

Laban Mwangi, Penguin Labs - An Electronic Top-Up system using a terminal running an embedded version of Linux and capable of connecting to multiple operators by simply switching sim cards, and features a web browser among other things. The aim of this demonstration was to show an easy way of performing airtime distribution. It also show cased a practical application of Linux in an embedded device. Remote top up of airtime is also possible with this device. Download the entire presentation in PDF format.

Laban (centre). View full album online

Steve Mutinda next made a presentation on Mobile Social Networking and a Mobile Finance application. Steve is a talented mobile applications developer and has come up with a framework that allows various applications to be installed on a supported mobile device and range from social networking, chat, news and mobile finance. What he has come up with for the mobile phone is very much similar to what Mugambi has done with Jahazi. He also demostrated his Mobile Finance application which easily plugged in to the framework. Steve is also a member of the ushahidi dev team. Download the Social Networking presentation and the Mobile Finance presentation, both in PDF format.

Steve. View full album online

Mbugua Njihia, CEO Symbiotic Media Consortium next demonstrated some of their products; tumasms, zunguka, kelelemobile among others. Symbiotic aims to converge mobile and the web, and provide services and applications that any ordinary person can use. Some of these include sync services for mobile phone contacts and notes, bulk sms, mobile phone ring tones, and later on, possibly video on demand services. Download his presention here in PDF format.

Timothy Mbugua. View full album online

Evans Ikua representing the LPA Kenya and LANet Consulting made the final presentation. He gave a brief history of the LPA kenya, as well as some of the activities they are involved in. Currently LPA Kenya has been instrumental in constructively engaging the Government, specifically regarding the procurement of software so as to ensure that there is a level playing ground, and thus allow local software development houses, especially those utilizing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to be able to pitch for Government contracts. Government is the largest employer, and offers the largest number of contracts, therefore it is important for the Public Procument process to be as transparent as possible. Download his entire presentation in OpenOffice ODP format.

Evans View full album online

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Finally, Paul Kukubo the CEO of the Kenya ICT Board had some final words for developers. He promised that, as an ICT Board initiative he intends in 6-8 months that a CEO s - Skunkworks partnership forum take place. This would go a long way in bridging the gap between developers/solution providers and industry leaders. He also mentioned that a fund to support local content development is being setup. He challenged skunkworks to come up with a Directory/Portal of developers, solutioneers etc on skunkworks for easy access by CEO s, and those seeking solutions. He mentioned some challenges from his experience for ICT startups:

No framework to govern Venture Capital

Cultural divide - where no chance is given to young people (developers etc)

Paul Kukubo View full album online

skunkworks@innovation - 4th October

2008-10-02T19:21:00.003+03:00

Alex Gakuru has been very busy co-ordinating this event scheduled for 4th October @ the Sarova Panafric Hotel.

What to expect on Saturday? Below is what we've come up with.

Synopsis:
-Two separate rooms 1 for demos, other just lunch room
-Event starts at 8 am and runs till 4 pm
-Demonstrations room open to the public throughout the day
-A tables shall be allocated to every solution presenter/demo
-Skunkers luncheon at a different room between 12:00-2:00pm

Here's some more detail from what he'd posted on the mailing list:

It was not easy to find it! Neither was it easy to convince them, but
they finally bought into the idea.

After our sustained "support local software development!" screams,
they now say "ok." Lending us their ears and eyes, they want to see
the "wonderful software skunkworks have been screaming about??? They
have their cheque books ready and balk contract forms prepared to
sign-up your software purchase deals if impressed. Who are they, top
notch local industry executives.

Accompanied by senior government officials with state corporations
execs all supportive of homegrown software innovations. All ready to
work on removing every hiccup in your way of making it big time on
software development. It's what we've all been shrieking about and now
we have a chance of a life time.

Calling for "Innovative IT solutions"

Categories (thus far):
1.Corporate solutions
2.Mobile applications
3.Content applications
4.Document Management System – DMS (FOSS based?)
5.Communications (*Asterix* etc..)
6.Public Service Apps
7.Games ( Wesley et. al..)
8.Others...

Who qualifies?
- All local software developers.
- All previous Barcamp presentations automatically ( how many? categories
- (Non-discrimination!) FOSS and proprietary platforms developers with
work-of-their-hands
- Priority will be given with those with applications to demonstrate

When:
Luncheon proposed for Saturday 27 September, 2008, city hotel venue TBC.

Toying around with branding; "skunkworks@innovation," "Homegrown
Software Fete", chip-in?

Format:
They want to meet famous skunks -buy them a lunch or dinner- which was
ok, but considering that we should overwhelm them with our abundant
innovation, I have (singly) decided there will be 20 tables for
demonstrations. Total spaces are limited (but if I receive
overwhelming "innovative IT Solutions" demonstrations
applications...That would be a wonderful problem for me to solve:)

Participation:
@josiah,@mich, @riyaz, @kiania et. al. compile past software presentations
@newbies send your participation request to me outlining your software
specs... will consult and revert. Process will be open and transparent
on first-come-first assured basis. (And of course "entrance fee" is
free - all expenses paid:)

Therefore, beg or borrow those laptops (just don't steal:) and make
sure your fine-tuned software is running smoothly, ok? Come and show
off your coding brains and seal sales deals live! What else you could
you ask for?

We're 4 years behind Brazil and have to catch up and really fast....
<http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_39/b3901019.htm>

Let's go them tigers.....

Digesting Barcamp Nairobi 2008 - June 21 2008

2008-06-23T12:50:00.004+03:00

The People:

We had all sorts of people :

bloggers
all sorts of programmers: web, mobile, etc
people in the telecoms industry
Govt represented by the ICT Board
photographers
students (even high school)
the plain curious

Courtesy of Ushahidi, we had about 120 Barcamp branded T-shirts available (based on those who'd signed up to get one) so apologies to those who didn't get one.

However, roughly 228 people showed up!

Great - lots of ladies came :)

Sessions and Topics:

We had 3 concurrent 30 minute sessions conducted in three rooms (Ushahidi Room, ICT Board room, and the Google Room) throughout the day. At the beginning of the sessions, in typical barcamp style, campers were asked to come forward and write down what they wanted to talk about, then the topics and agenda selected based on what people wanted to listen to. A bit like acclamation (politically) but not as noisy.

A rough listing of the resulting topics:

Room: Ushahidi

Buglabs session
Web apps with Jahazi
Wordpress optimization tips
GPS/Google Maps: S60 as a platform... and a bug
Developing for the iPhone
Internet/Network Security
Renewable Energy Kiosks & Impact on Rural IT

Room: ICT Board

Google Maps Session
CMS - Zope/Plone
Blogging Tricks
Open-e Data Storage
Application Development Procedures to code for Government
zunguka.com (web|mobile|you)
Bandwidth Management and Optimization

Room: Google Room

Where are the developers?
Software Localisation
Ubuntu and LTSP
Blogging for cash
Google Maps and Mobile applications
Linux as a development platform for engineers
Kiania's informal session :)

We also had a 'lightning session' lasting about 55 minutes where anyone with something say was welcome to for a 5 minute period. Here's the list.

Michuki - IETF & KIXP
Erik - Ushahidi recruiting
Kahenya - Creative Commons
Alex Gakuru - F/OSS organisations listing, ICT government study
Mike K - kenblogs
Stella - Fahamu - ICTs & Human Rights
Paul Kukubo - The Kenya ICT Board & Vision, goals.
Edward - Moi Uni
Limo - Data and records
Gee - Web design tips
KenyanPoet - Publishing
Gichingiri - sokoletu
James - Computers for Schools/e-waste management
Mike - Archiving, Record keeping
Anne - Law, defamation & blogging

Thanks:

Our main sponsors: Google, Ushahidi, Kenya ICT Board
Strategic Lee, Deep Space hosting
Wananchi for the free wifi
Openworld and KENET for projectors
Yahoo, O'Reilly, Wordpress for the giveaways
Bug Labs for letting us borrow one of their new BUGbundles
Brian Muita & Gichingiri for the snazzy poster
Eric (Magutu) for running around :)
Erik (Hash) for the great blogging
Mich for MC'ing
Everyone who helped organize, setup and clean up afterwards
Everyone who came :)

Some photos
Also check out Hash's blog

Barcamp Nairobi 2008 - Poster

2008-06-16T10:12:00.001+03:00

Tuesday Meeting 10th June 2008: Commercializing Technology with Hafeez Bana

2008-06-11T11:00:00.002+03:00

This past Tuesday Hafeez Bana gave talk on commercializing technology.

He started off with a brief overview of what he's been doing in the innovation programme at Deloitte in Australia. Over there they have something not much unlike Google where the employees are encouraged to work on their own projects during their free time and the company helps to commercialize them. He gave an example of a card verification system which uses numerical codes entered on a card with a small screen to authenticate transactions. In the talk he gave us a nice overview of some of the hurdles in the development process and its eventual implementation.

The main topic of his talk however was th J- Mango platform for mobile applications. It uses a simple scripting language to send mobile apps over the air to subscribers. The underlying framework is AOL and TCL server and makes use of Erlang and Java languages. It runs on Apache with a load balancing front end. He showed us a neat video of how to download an app from a QR code diagram using a camera phone- really cool!

After that we went into Q&A, lots of questions about technical details of J-mango and possible applications. One question that stood out and isn't new is how to protect your intellectual property especially in Kenya. Hafeez noted that unfortunately in Kenya people are not as eager to help you with your idea as in Europe or Australia. It's more likely that it'll be stolen here, something we definitely need to work on here.

Something else that came up on commercialization is how to split the gains with an investor for maximum benefit to the developer. Though it may look like a rip- off it may actually be more advantageous to give a big investor a larger stake as they could give you more mileage.

On the subject of mobile apps it was note that the operator have to be more open minded about revenue sharing with app developers. Hafeez noted that after a while ARPU from traditional services tends to flatline especially after a price war like the one we're having so the telcos have to diversify. A big battle lies ahead right there!

An interesting note was made of how women have goon insight in business example given women in Bangladesh and how they worked with Grameen bank. So to the ladies out their your contribution is important and you are encouraged to attend the meetings. It's worth noting that there was a good turn out this time- 3!

Al in all it was an informative chat especially for the entrepreneurs and we thank Hafeez for making the time to come.

-

Barcamp Nairobi - Saturday June 21 2008

2008-06-09T14:33:00.002+03:00

Saturday June 21st 2008
Jacaranda Hotel
9am - 5pm
More details + Sign up here ( free barcamp T-Shirt! )

More coverage here.

Be There!

Meeting 27th May 2008: Ericsson Mobility

2008-05-28T20:58:00.003+03:00

This past Tuesday Ericsson graciously invited us to a sesssion at the Jacaranda Hotel.

The meeting started with a brief overview of who Ericsson are and what they do given by Gilbert Arum. We learnt that they've been in business since 1878 and have spanned 3 centuries. He also went on to explain the way the mobile world is moving beyond voice to a new range of services. Also had a look at the way mobile telephony has improved the quality of our lives.

Next up was Matthews Mwewa who gave an overview of the Global Sytem for Mobile Communication (GSM). Lots of abbreviations were thrown about. After that Roy Kimathi and Kigunda Mbogo gave us a presentation on trends and success stories.

Kigunda Mbogo gave us a look at location based services and possible applications for instance

Family Finder- locate family members like you grandma or check if your kids are in school. this one proved to be controversial however giving your location said to be optional.
Anonymous Bulk Location Data (ABLD) which finds application in infrastructure displaying real time traffic data using location of mobile phones. Can be used as a planning and optimization tool for local authorities. Uses de-identified GSM users to get the data.

Matthews came back to give a case study from South Africa called Dynamic Discounting Solution(DDS) which is used to allocate discounts to users during off peak times to improve network usage. This changes calling patterns by offering subscriber discounts. Also of note is the 3 innovation centres that Ericsson have set up in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg. They will work together with developers to provide solutions. Naturally there were questions of who would benefit from the arrangement and we were told it's like a partnership and he also said that lawyers can work on the details of that.

Also in attendance was the ICT board Chairman Paul Kukubo .
He said that they are out to provide a bridge between the risk of setting up ICT businesses and the players in the market. He highlighted the role of venture capitalists and business incubators in this process. He also noted that intellectual property has to be protected too. We encouraged to take chances and see what ideas we can come with. Maybe you can be sitting on the next big thing. an interesting example of using idle mobile airtime was given. Also heard something about giving grants to developers some time in the future.

The meeting was then wrapped up and we had some refreshments. We all got an interesting look into Ericsson and the kind of stuff they are doing in the world of mobility. Thanks go out to them fo the great session.

Tuesday Meeting - 27th May 2008

2008-05-27T09:04:00.001+03:00

From the mailing list:

Next skunkworks meeting will be hosted by Ericsson to discuss the next
generation of mobile applications. Ericsson occupies a unique position
being a vendor and enjoys excellent relationships with operators in
Africa, Middle East and Asia.

There exists an opportunity where you can get insight into how to
deploy apps and what operators are looking for.

Location: Landmark Hotel

Time: 18:00 - 19:30

Speakers: Gilbert Arum (Director - Multimedia), Roy Kimathi and Kigunda Mbogo

See you all there.

Rgds
David Kiania

MEETING - Mzizi (Open Source Content)

2008-04-22T09:06:00.000+03:00

Our next lecture will be by John Wesonga of Multiple Choices Investments (Anyone remember peupe.net?)

Mizizi - Open Source Content
Tuesday 29th April 2008
6pm - 8pm
Open World Limited - Training Room - 2nd Floor Kenindia House - Loita Street

Please confirm if you plan to come for the meeting within this week as there is limited seating space

Regards,
--
Josiah Mugambi

Standards Processes

2008-04-08T13:04:00.000+03:00

Last week during the Skunkworks Tuesday meeting at OPENWORLD we had a discussion around Technical Committees (TC) that are formed at KEBS to discuss various IT standards.

Special reference was made to the OOXML TC that was involved in the OOXML standard process in Kenya. What was clear from the discussion is that it is important to have more participation within these TCs from across the board. Some key advantages from this is that:

Kenya can begin to grow a IT standards professionals base, this is very critical
More objective review of various proposed standards from a local perspective which will limit unbalanced interference from big international vendors and interest
Kenya can define local standards (of course conforming to international standards where possible) for various things such a PCs, various software and hardware, etc. We stand a chance to thrive in international markets in terms of competitiveness and market penetration is we can base our products and services on verified and recognized standards. How can ensure that our local system builders/computer assemblers package standard PCs for example that meet government and corporate procurement standards..etc
Great opportunity for students/universities to link up with industry through active student engagement in the TCs with support from their professors; i must mention that there is always a sitting allowance of KES. 1,000 which is quite attractive if i were a student. But most importantly, one has the opportunity to gain indepth knowledge of various technology specifications. It is worth noting that students from other emerging parts of the world such as Western Europe, East Asia and Latin America are actively engaged in standard processes and are instrumental in these processes.
This will open up participation of Kenyan professionals to other standard creations processes such as IETF which hosts RFC development processes. Our own Michuki Mwangi has been part of this before and it would be great to have more guys joining RFC working groups.

There are still more proposed standardsTCs that one can participate in at KEBS or even initiate TCs for at KEBS, a list of these is here: http://www.iso.org/iso/standards_development/technical_committees/list_of_iso_technical_committees/iso_technical_committee.htm?commid=45020

Further reference can be made to :

Mwatha Zacheus
Kenya Bureau of Standards
KEBS Centre, Kapiti Road, off Mombasa Road, Behind Bellevue Cinema
P.O. Box 54974 — 00200 Nairobi, Kenya
ISDN: +254 (0)20 6948270
Tel: +254 (0)20 605490, 6948000, (0)722 202137
Fax:+254 (0)20 609660, 604031
Personal cellphone: +254 (0)722 368998

--
Muthoni

Next Meeting - 1 Apr 2008 - Document Standards

2008-03-28T14:08:00.002+03:00

Date: Tuesday, 1st April 2008, 6pm

Venue: OPENWORLD LTD, 2nd Floor, Kenindia House, Loita Street, Nairobi

Topic: Document Standards

Facilitated by: Dorcas Muthoni

Also, we shall have a short presentation by Market for Change

(Still waiting for more people willing to do presentations/lectures)

TODAY - Facebook Developer Garage

2008-03-27T09:12:00.002+03:00

This is a reminder that the Facebook Developer Garage is set to take place this Thursday (27th of March 2008)

Time: 1pm - 7 pm
Venue: School of Computing and Informatics - UoN - Chiromo Campus.

Come and share ideas with the students and learn more about the Facebook Platform.

PS: There will be lots of food and the guest speaker is PS Bitange Ndemo.

1-3pm : speeches & presentations
3-4pm : reception
4-7pm : gadgets

Skunkworks session @ Elite Computers - Sarit Centre

2008-03-19T15:21:00.003+03:00

People got treated to a potent combination of Macbook Air, iPhone and Meat Pies :).

Rahim - the APR Store Manager, gave an overview of the various Apple products available locally, Mac Mini, MacBook Air (so slim that it can fit inside an A4 envelope), iMac, and of course the various iPODs which most people present didn't seem too interested in.

We then watched the Apple March 6 event, with the launching of the iPhone SDK and Corporate feature set. At the end of the 1 hr+ video (watched via an Apple TV wirelessly streaming video from Rahim's MacBook Pro), nearly everyone presented decided that they 'need' to have an iPhone and pretty soon.

Elite Apple Store - Tuesday 18 Mar 2008

2008-03-17T12:26:00.000+03:00

For skunkworks this week, we're headed on a "Trip to the Apple Store".

We're visiting Elite's Apple Store at Sarit Center where they'll showcase
their products - Macs, iPods, OS X, including the spiffy new MacBook AIR.
Come and drool.

Also a MacWorld presentation where you can see His Steveness.

Pls RSVP to me if you're coming.

We might have drinks/snacks.

Tuesday, 18 Mar 2008
6pm
Elite Apple Store
Sarit Center.

Kengeles Tuesdays - 11 Mar 2008

2008-03-11T12:49:00.001+03:00

Come chillout today with Skunkworks at Kengeles on Koinange Street. 6pm.

Googling- Meeting 4th March 2008

2008-03-07T15:27:00.000+03:00

This past Tuesday Google Kenya were gracious enough to invite the skunkworks to their office for a presentation and Q&A. Place was pretty packed, free food perhaps?

Came in late myself thanks to Nai traffic but I got to get the gist of what they are up to particularly concerning google apps, maps and infrastructure. Bankelele has a very good summary of the goings on.

A small talk was also given by George Arabu on a project called dream cities initiative with emphasis on a proposed beautification of Kipande Road area. Looked pretty cool.

Afterward there was a discussion. One of the major things dicussed was about rating network operators' quality and how to maximize use of available local bandwidth- a recurring theme.

Good to get the ball rolling this year in style!

Skunkworks Meetings 2008

2008-03-04T08:53:00.001+03:00

Google has offered to host our first Tuesday session
4 March 2008
5pm

They will be updating techies on where they've reached with their
Kenyan/African strategy, what the local office is up to, and talk
about Gadgets, Maps, etc. Come get involved !

And they will feed us.

Pls RSVP to ck@google.com

Location
Google Kenya
7th Floor, Purshottam Place
Westlands Road
+254 20 360 1000 Switch Board (Regus)

Next Meeting

2008-01-14T22:00:00.000+03:00

We are still figuring when to hold the first skunkworks meeting of the year. For the first meeting, we'll probably want to do some brainstorming on how we want to proceed this year, what we would like to talk about, events to hold, projects to hack, and milestones to aim for.

More updates on the meeting date soon (hopefully :) ).

Skunkworks in the news

2007-11-30T08:53:00.000+03:00

So ... Ken Kasina's cyber-cafe application got featured in the news.
(his group is working on migrating cyber-cafes to open-source solutions)

Business Daily

ZDNet

Linux Magazine (Google English Translation)

BarCamp ... WOW

2007-11-24T17:45:00.000+03:00

This was incredible ... my head is reeling from all the energy/passion.
I think we've got the hang of how to organize these :)

Thanks a ton to Brian Muita for putting it all together at Strath, Kiania (His MC-ness), speakers, and all participants.
Thanks to KDN for lunch sponsorship !

Will mostly put links up as coverage comes ... Daudi has some podcast feeds we'll also link to soon.

Wilfred has a real-time blog of the session
http://wmworia.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/barcampkenya-live/

Erik just put up a summary as well
http://whiteafrican.com/?p=806

UPDATE: Photos posted by Daudi, mostly taken by Wesley
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mentalacrobatics/sets/72157603287527256/

BarCamp Kenya 2.0 - Conversations

2007-11-22T23:04:00.000+03:00

Over the last few months, we've had discussions with various techies, entrepreneurs,
and just kawa guys about why Kenya is still lagging in terms of ICT innovation and
entrepreneurship.

This BarCamp, we'd just like to have a CONVERSATION with all of you.

Moderated by Dr Kamau Gachigi, we would like you all to come and help us brainstorm
through issues, and hopefully find the causes & solution to start fostering ICT innovation.

Some of the questions we have been asking ourselves:
- why don't we have a culture of innovation
- what is wrong with the education system
- why don't we have enough ICT entrepreneurs eg software & web-app companies (our own facebook ?)
- why are we lagging behind in e-commerce ... why don't we have a payment gateway yet

Date: 24 November 2007
Venue: Strathmore University, Room 34
Time: 9.30am to 2.00pm
Moderator: Dr Kamau Gachigi

More information (& Sign Up) is on the wiki
http://wiki.my.co.ke/index.php/BarCamp

Also - In the spirit of BarCamp and innovation - also check out Hash's new graphic collage of Africa web 2.0 startups
http://whiteafrican.com/?p=805

Introduction to Web Development using Catalyst

2007-11-07T21:41:00.001+03:00

From Jason:

We talked about Catalyst[1], an MVC framework primarily used for web
development.

We demonstrated that catalyst uses helper scripts to generate stubs
like Ruby On Rails. We showed that it was simple to populate generated
skeleton files with code even with little Perl experience. Like Ruby
on Rails it is easy to get an app running and see the results
instantly thanks to the development server Catalyst ships with.

We also saw how Catalyst makes use of CPAN[2] to avoid reinventing the
wheel. This means that you also have the power to switch your models
and views as you wish using existing CPAN modules. This demonstrates
the flexibility of the framework.

At the end of the session, it was hoped that Catalyst would give
developers one more reason to use Perl.

Resources:
www.catalystframework.org
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst-Manual/lib/Catalyst/Manual/Tutorial.pod
www.perl.com

[1] - www.catalystframework.org
[2] - www.cpan.org (Central repository for Perl Modules)

--
Next Session is next week

Ubuntu GutsyGibbon Release Party

2007-10-30T08:06:00.000+03:00

Dear all,
The Ubuntu KenyanTeam will be having a release party for the latest Ubuntu release which is version7.10.
The venue of this party will also be at the Surf N Bites restaurant, view park towers
this Saturday Nov 3rd beginning at 4 pm. You are all welcomed.

Cheers,
Ronald.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KenyanTeam/GutsyReleaseParty

DEMO - OLPC, HTC Touch, iPhone - TODAY

2007-10-30T08:03:00.000+03:00

Come and check out the OLPC - One Laptop Per Child we got our hands on.
$100 laptop running Linux. Very rugged. Play with the Sugar UI. Neat stuff.
http://www.laptop.org

We'll also hopefully have the iPhone which we missed last week.

Wananchi Online
1st Floor, Loita House
6pm, 30 October 2007

IPHONE DEMO - Steers - TODAY

2007-10-23T13:24:00.000+03:00

For the meeting today, we have an iPhone loaned by Imran (Kenfones Ltd) to be demo'ed.

Come by to check it out ..

Meeting at Steers on Muindi-Mbingu Street

5.30pm

IPHONE

update: We will also demo an HTC Touch

MEETING - The Future - 9 Oct 2007

2007-10-08T09:29:00.000+03:00

Hey guys ...

This Tuesday, we'd like to have a special session of skunkworks - to discuss where guys see us going in future.
So I'd like to encourage everyone to come for this ... if necessary, we'll move to a bigger location.

When we started out with the group, there was all sorts of thoughts we had
- we needed a forum for techies to interact
- we needed techies to start DOING things - developing and innovating new ideas eg for local content, user support etc.
- we needed to create a shift of culture - develop a passion of being a techie.
- many other confused ideas :)

In the past few months, we now have over 400 guys on the list (perfect for safaricom marketing)
So we've got an active forum ... people are talking .... now it's time to DO SOMETHING.

The agenda for the meeting will be
- what do YOU want to gain out of skunkworks
- how should we organize the group - setup committees etc
- what sort of things do you see skunkworks doing to fulfill its agenda
- how can skunkworks CHANGE THE WORLD - by this, we mean how can "skunkers" develop new ideas for local content for example ... how can we create a thriving culture of software locally like Silicon Valley and so on.
- Ideas for a software development competition - cash prize being FUNDING to actually develop your business idea.

Regarding local content - a bunch of us have been debating this a lot on the skype chatroom - here are some links:

http://blog.josiahmugambi.com/2007/10/large-cappedunlimited-internet-access.html

http://whiteafrican.com/?p=760

http://whiteafrican.com/?p=774

Meeting 2nd October 2007

2007-10-03T07:55:00.000+03:00

During this meeting the true identity of Fyodor was revealed, so those who missed can keep guessing.

He started out by giving us a brief summary of his skills and interest in the IT field then went on to discuss several vulnerabilities commonly found in our networks.

The first major point that emerged is that many networks are predictable- How many of us take the time to change the default passwords and configurations? also discussed footprinting and exploration used by intruders to gather info about systems.

The first technique dicussed was banner grabbing using nmap to fin open ports and the version of the server running- the first step in finding your way in. A solution given was to change the default greeting e.g " go away we are patched"

The next technique dicussed was SQL injection and how it can be used to gain access to databases on Oracle or MySQL. Soultions given were 'idioit proofing' to make sure that overflows can not occur, making sure database has a password, validating input, no default account.

He later went on to discuss exploration tools such as nmap- to find out status of ports, nmblookup- to display shares on remote machines using SMB, rpcinfo and how to use telnet to find out users profiles on mail servers.

Lots of info, a series on security could be set up soon and Fyodor said he will avail material some time soon.

MEETING - IT Security - 2 October 2007

2007-10-01T13:34:00.000+03:00

Fyodor will be talking kesho about IT Security - and what's been discussed loads on the list.

"I want to skip the whole "who is a hacker" issues and delve right into how
its carried out and offer any sys0ps an insight on how to combat
very basic hacks. It will be from a blackhat perspective and be
prepared for astounding revelations from independent analysis i
carry out of top corporate companies in the country."

Venue: Wananchi Online, 1st Floor, Loita Hse
Date: Tuesday, 2 October, 6pm

Ngigi Waithaka on OSS for Business

2007-10-01T13:23:00.000+03:00

Enterprise Final Frontier
Ngigi Waithaka - Alliance Technologies - www.at.co.ke
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is it that open source solutions dont sell on the enterprise level?

What Enterprises consider when they are considering a solution:

Stability – Platform / CompanyExisting Infrastructure
How does the solution work with the existing resources / systems?
Implementation Skills
Most of the people who know the solution are techies – no people from other professions can actually implement the system.
Breath of solution
Rather than have many different solution – we want one solution that has everything - Windows
Integration / upgrade path
Most firms still use Win2K for servers. Why use Fedora which will be changed every six months?

None of these factors are about the technology. They are all about the solution – how good is it. In alot of these.. the marketing sucks or otherwise the lacking in the open source solution.

The Enterprise is not a price sensitive market – Cost is not really an issue. It is just one of the factors – often the last factor.

For the govt.. the price does not matter.. if a guy has been given 50m for an ERP and there is one that nears that amount – even if an open source solution is 2m, its a hard sell.

Kiania says we should provide a cost for licencing with the solution. If the commercial version is 3m, give a quote for 2.5m not 200k. Its hard to sell something that is free to someone who is ready to buy.

Market the solutions not as Linux based solutions but as solutions. Dont market the solution as a Linux CRM – but rather as a CRM. It will sell better.

Regards,
Tito

MEETING - OSS Apps for Business - 25 sept 2007

2007-09-24T13:28:00.000+03:00

Ngigi Waithaka, CTO of Alliance Technologies will give a "teaser" presentation kesho on
using & selling open-source apps for mainstream businesses.

Ngigi has played with nd sold solutions to businesses including ERP apps, financials,
Linux solutions, and done quite a bit of software hacking. He's now too "old" he claims :)

Come to see what potential solutions you can sell out of your open-source briefcase.
Bring your CFO to get him sold on open-source.

Tuesday, 25 September 2007
6pm
Wananchi Online, 1st Floor, Loita Hse

http://www.at.co.ke

Meeting - PloneGOV - 28 Aug 2007

2007-08-27T07:46:00.000+03:00

Nicholas Bossut will be speaking about http://www.plonegov.org

Wananchi Online, 1st Floor Loita Hse

6pm, 28 Aug 2007

We will probably do dinner after for those wanting more discussions

-----
from Ashok:

Hello All:

One of the main creators of PloneGOV project (http://www.plonegov.org) [1] is
visiting nairobi during this week, and is interested in meeting organizations, interested
parties, open source folks.... :

Moreover, I'm truly interested to explore opportunities for PloneGov
project. PloneGov could be a way for african municipalities to fight
the digital divide in saving money. Open source websites as City of
Seneffe website (www.seneffe.be) could be easily copy-paste and help
national administrations in charge of local governments to develop a
presence of public authorities on Internet. Different applications
are independant and interconnectable. In facts, we deployed tools
that aren't useful in Africa but municipalities can choose 'à la
carte' what they need.

Interested parties may drop me an email offline ....

thanks

Ashok

[1] PloneGOV :
""55 European, African, North and South American Public organizations participate
in the PloneGov project. In doing so, they aim to gain independence from large
IT services providers by developing, essentially by themselves and in a
cooperative manner, applications and websites for their own use as well as for
their citizens'.

PloneGov is open and aims to reach more organizations. Initiated by small towns
in close collaboration with the Plone / Zope Communities, the project reaches now
cities, regions and 10 parliaments. This collaboration effort already spans over 3
continents and 15 countries.""

ODF and Office Open XML: More

2007-08-17T15:21:00.000+03:00

There has been lots of heated debate (see archive) on the Skunkworks mailing list on the current ratification of EMCA's OOXML document format as an ISO standard. Kenya voted YES.
My opinion aside, here's a summary of sites providing more information on arguments both for and against the site. Please feel free to add any more links.

FOR OOXML
Emmanuel's Blog
The real politik of ODF standardisation
Brian Jones' Blog

AGAINST OOXML
Mark Shuttleworth's Blog
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html (Really more of pro ODF)
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/02/microsoft_whini.html
http://www.noooxml.org/

Claims to be neutral about OOXML
http://blogs.forrester.com/information_management/2007/08/can-anyone-be-o.html (Has additional links)

More info on Office Open XML
Office Open XML final draft

More info on ODF
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications

More on ISO Standardization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization

Meeting on Tuesday 21st August

2007-08-17T08:35:00.000+03:00

Wesley Kiriinya, of Gwimgrafx Studios Limited who are behind Kenya's first video game will be making a presentation on The Structure/Components Of Video Games And Their Interaction.

Venue remains Wananchi Online Training Room on 1st Floor Loita House from 6pm.

Asterisk for Nokia Contact Centers

2007-08-08T10:22:00.000+03:00

Kiania is talking about how he met a requirement for Nokia where they wanted a local support line in kenya.

Nokia outsources their support calls to a malaysian company. So they needed to forward the calls from kenya to the centers there.

Got a 0900 number from IMS. Linked this to an asterisk box and uses iax instead of sip to dial malaysia for the support center thro IP.

Iax used for better NAT traversal. Speex is the codec used. Free codec which only consumes 8k. Very efficient on bw and efficiency.

Covering the actual setup of the asterisk box - real life demo of asterisk setup.

Billing records ported to a mysql db for mediation purposes.

According to kiania, safcom gets 2m calls a day and are only able to handle 20k of these. And most are handset related issues hence the requirement for such a service from nokia.
This system handles 60 concurrent sessions and they are looking to optimize the scale. That number of concurrent calls gives you about 100k calls per day.

Trying to get tkl to interconnect directly via ip now among other issues to scale up.

__________
sent from my Wananchi Mobile

Meeting Today - Nokia + Asterisk

2007-08-07T08:03:00.000+03:00

Kiania is "launching" a contact center setup he's done for Nokia using Asterisk.

6pm, Wananchi Online Training Room - doesn't look like a training room anymore :)
Loita Hse, 1st Floor
7 aug 2007

"free wifi" :)

Tuesday 31st July Meeting

2007-07-31T08:47:00.000+03:00

John Wesonga of Multiple Choices, peupe.net will be giving a talk.

Will be at 6pm at the Wananchi Online Training Room on 1st Floor

Skunkworks on Business Daily Africa today

2007-07-25T09:16:00.000+03:00

We got famous :)

Bob Bell of Business Daily did a pretty incredible article on Skunkworks published today.
Kiania's "apple" laptop gets some visibility in the photo :)

http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2110&Itemid=5822

Thanks to Bob, and everyone else who's played important parts in building the movement.

Oh - BarCamp Reloaded coming up in August - stay tuned for details. We'll focus on Software Development.

Zimbra talk (in progress)

2007-07-24T19:37:00.000+03:00

I came late for the meeting.

Among the attractive features of Zimbra

Push Mail functionality
Collaboration

Zimlets - Interface with google maps - enter a US (hopefully a Kenyan one :) ) and go to the location
- open application for voip dialing
SugarCRM

Spam training
Administration console:

Can split up tasks e.g

MTA
Mail Box Servers
Proxies

Server Statistics: overall and drilled down per server.

Can cluster servers with professional version

Monitor MTA queues (typically postfix)

Also command line utilites (70-80) if you prefer

Network edition - backups available - full backups and incremental backups

In terms of data storage:
LDAP - user data
Metadata for email - MySQL

Connectors for Outlook and ActiveSync

How does it compare
Exchange -$20 a month / user ?
ZImbra - $28 a year / user

Meeting on 24th July

2007-07-22T12:12:00.000+03:00

For the next meeting, Zimbra - 'the schweetest thing that happened to your email'

Wananchi Online training room
Loita Hse, 1st Floor,
6pm
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
by Riyaz

Kengeles - 17 jul 2007

2007-07-16T13:50:00.000+03:00

Tuesday meeting will be held at Kengeles on Koinange Street - 6pm

IDEA

2007-07-16T07:48:00.000+03:00

captired by Timothy Kariithi from last week's meeting.

Manu Raghavan
Georgia Institute of Technology
Masters Student Electrical and Computer Science

The speaker presented a talk on Initiative for Development and Education in Africa (IDEA).
The main aim of IDEA is to
Target the social economic conditions in Africa
To come up with something tangible (a tangible result)
There are three projects running
A collaborative teaching project.
Essay competition
Afric@tech

Collaborative teaching Project
The objective of this project is to come up with curriculum and joint instructors with African Universities (in Kenya Kenyatta University KU)
In KU they have a course and two projects
Digital Media

Text to speech interface
This project will enable the illiterate to use their mobile phones.
The application is being developed in python.
Apart from text to speech there is also development of locally relevant icon to enable illiterate user ability to use the phone

Open Source Course Management System
Currently KU is using an Course management system called Black Board that cost a lot in term of licenses. IDEA is
helping so KU students to configure an open source equivalent system which they will modify and put relevant material on and also modify the Graphical user Interface (GUI) to reduce migration time and training cost. The motivation for the students is that they can later sell the finished product to KU at a fraction of the cost.

The Githurai commodity Exchange
The objective of this project is to make farmers aware of the cost of there produce thus reducing increasing their profits.
This will be done using information transmitted through an SMS gateway that will provide the suppliers of the info with credit loaded to their phones and those requesting for use of the information will get it at premium cost say +5/= above the cost of the SMS thus making it a self sustainable project.

Essay Competition
An essay writing competition targeting undergraduates and graduates to write on Pan African perspectives on development and technology.
This competition will open mid August to end of December.
The objective of this competition will be
voice out opinions of African Youth.
Identify new action driven approaches.
Create a forum on African Development.

Afric@Tech
This usually facilitates African leaders to speak Georgia Institute Of Technology
Previous Speakers are president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,

Nathan Eagle - talk on 3rd July 07

2007-07-05T16:04:00.000+03:00

Speaker – Nathan Eagle

email - i forgot :)

Nathan is a research assistant at MIT Labs, currently in Kenya where he works with KEMRI in Kilifi and with University students in UoN (why UoN only?) to develop mobile applications.

He gave a talk on his Phd research whose aim was to use data obtained from people's mobile phones to demonstrate social patterns and predict their social behaviours. Basically, social studies based on mobile phone data. I hope i am right on that one.

He developed this cool application that runs in the background of a mobile phone collecting all sorts of statistics.. e.g, calls made, messages received, which cell towers the mobile phone is, e.t.c. The data was sent monthly via GPRS to a server. He actually got kicked out by AT&T coz of the large amount of data he was transferring coz they saw it as a Denial of Service attack.

He also had stations throughout the campus with devices that continually scanned and recorded all bluetooth devices around the station.

Next step - analysis of the data, and he actually showed that patterns were repeated every 24 and every 168 hours. He could do all kinds of cool things with the data...even predict who is a friend to a subject.. with relatively good accuracy. He used some mathematical models that were quite frankly, scaring. Some very complicated and huge formulas.

The discussion then turned to why don't the mobile phone companies provide the data to the subscribers? Kina safcom and celtel actually have all this data. Suggestions were made as to how the data can be useful in real life, e.g. for observation of traffic patterns, or even auto-diaries. Mobile phone applications were also discussed, with the question of whether to use J2ME or Python for the applications arising. I didnt even know that python can be used for mobile applications.

He also has data about all calls made in UK for Aug. 2005. He is trying to make sense of it by making some advanced mathematical models... Good Luck!

Nathan - can you share the presentation online?

Lionbridge Internet Assessors Program

2007-07-05T11:09:00.000+03:00

This is a part-time gig that I highly recommend to any of you (in Nairobi) who consider yourselves web-savvy and have a high-speed internet connection at home.

See full description here.

Tuesday 3rd July Meeting

2007-07-03T09:18:00.000+03:00

Dr. Nathan Eagle will be giving a talk on the research he did at MIT at today's meeting.

26th June DSL presentation by Kip

2007-06-26T18:55:00.000+03:00

I came a bit late so I missed out on some of the tuff
Started off at 6.10 p.m by giving the technical background, defining DSL- Digital Subscriber line, explaining the underlying techcnolofies-lots of Acronyms like OFDM(Orthogonal Frequency division Multiplexing), QAM(Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), ISDN( Integrated Services Digital Network etc, and other stuff which require an Electrical Engineering degree to understand.He also gave an excuse for Telkom Kenya's exhorbitant rates- too much uptake and limited uplink bandwidth, yeah, yeah.

After that there was a Q&A session. discussed alternatives to DSL like CDMA2000 EV-DO(coming soon to a phone near you), Power line networks, iBurst, GPRS/EDGE. Once again this question came up- "When shall we have reasonable internet access for home users?" It was suggested for Ksh1000 per month but that was on the cheap side.

UoN Tech Day

2007-06-25T00:06:00.000+03:00

So - this is probably like my first real blogged article - as in I sound like a journalist ;)

The UoN Tech Day is an Annual event - a day where computer science students showcase the final-year projects they've been building. A very cool concept that other universities need to adopt.
It's really weird ... whenever I go to these student project showcases, I come away very impressed at what I see ... yet it's hard to notice the same results in the real world :) I've always mused where these students go ...
The thing that struck me about the projects on Saturday was the completeness of most of the products. They were really thought through, and some are even marketable immediately.
Didn't get to see all of them (below is only a small section of what was on display). And sadly didn't carry a camera :( Looking for pictures ...

1. mobile maps for nairobi
Jessica has built an app for querying maps of nairobi from a mobile phone. The maps sit on a server, and she built a grid of points on that. The mobile app has a menu where you can select points of interest in Nbi eg Hilton, street names etc. The app is capable of zooming into the map and displaying the location (including a picture), and also giving directions from point A to B. Works over GPRS.
Very neat - Google are you listening ?
Real world - can probably link to live GIS data from someone like Geomaps or Ramani.

2. facial recognition
Billy uses a webcam to get video input of his facial features, and can then control his computer by moving his head around :) The application can control stuff like Windows (selecting menus etc), and is very cool when it comes to playing games (you can look around in Quake, Doom by turning your head). We must get him to present this at one of our sessions.

3. mobile blogging
Judith built a j2me app that allows bloggers to create posts via GPRS on their mobile phones. She built this on her own blogging platform. Wants to take it further - lots of options - eg SMS-based posts, linking to a platform like WordPress, and she's very keen on adding support for blogging images/photos etc.

4. interfacing car remote with a computer
Peter and Charity linked up the wireless remote of a toy car to their computer (managing to only blow one transistor in the process). The computer app can then control the car. They built in a recording function such that the car could be driven by the remote, and the whole sequence/motion could then be replayed by the computer alone. Self-driven cars.
This seems to be a popular project with all universities - got Titus very excited. I think they need to take it to the next level - robotic competitions, or things like the DARPA challenge - that would be so cool if we built that.

Very fun day - trip to the toy store :)
Eric Magutu - a lot of these guys need to join skunkworks .....

Next Meeting - 26th June 2007

2007-06-24T23:53:00.000+03:00

Kip will be talking about ADSL, Broadband stuff in general.

As usual - Wananchi Online training room - 1st floor, Loita Hse. 6pm.
Tuesday, 26th June.

We hope to have Wesonga from Peupe to come in the very near future and guys from the recent UoN Tech Day exhibition

We're also still looking for a lead to roll with the "Linux for beginners" series.

Annual Tech day at UoN

2007-06-22T09:51:00.000+03:00

UoN School of Computing will holding their annual Tech day this Saturday (22nd June). There'll be interesting project presentations by students and talks by people from industry.

Venue: UoN Chiromo campus, Millenium Hall

Time: 0900hrs.

Meeting: 12th June

2007-06-14T21:49:00.000+03:00

Jean-Antoine BORD did a presentation of pajamanation.com.

If you have some skills and feel you'd like to make some money on the side, or for guys in campus, while living cheaply in campus :), sign up and have a look.

It has a simple enough interface to look for 'micro' jobs (typically lasting for less than one week). Lots of job categories, with the more active ones being IT related - web design, logo design, IT consultancy.

www.pajamanation.com is also going regional, and will be looking for people to spearhead that effort.

Apart from working from home in pajamas, he talked about setting up an ISP observatory - to act as a sort of watchdog and ensure quality provision of internet services is done locally.

Quote of the Week:

May the FOSS be with you. (Gituma found it somewhere online :) )

ipv6 meeting recap

2007-06-06T18:01:00.000+03:00

*** Presentations available at http://www.kenic.or.ke/v6

From: Michuki Mwangi
Subject: [Skunkworks] IPv6 URLs
Date: June 6, 2007 10:32:10 AM GMT+03:00

Further to my presentation yesterday evening on IPv6 the following links
will shed more light on some of the issues discussed.

* Comparison of IPv7 proposals

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/maillists/archives/ripe-org-closed/1993/msg00010.html

* Geoff Houston's site (see second presentation on IPv4 Exhaustion
prediction) presentation done at Ripe 54, 9th May 2007

http://www.potaroo.net/presentations/index.html

* Randy Bush's presentation on NAT

https://rip.psg.com/~randy/040226.apnic-nats.pdf

* Reason for removal of IPv6 checksum header

http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6DatagramMainHeaderFormat-3.htm

Regards,

--
Michuki Mwangi
KENIC

Next Meeting

2007-06-04T14:48:00.000+03:00

Next meeting is tomorrow (Tuesday 5th June)
Topic is Migrating to IPv6 and will be presented by Michuki Mwangi KENIC and Patrick Muiruri of Wananchi Online, now that Vincent will not be able to do so.
Meeting starts at 6pm at the Wananchi Online Training Room - 1st Floor Loita House.

June 1: Techie and Blogger Meetup

2007-05-31T11:43:00.000+03:00

From the skunkworks mailing list:

we're having a MEETUP on Friday, 1st June at a place called ALPENOF -
it's right next to the entrance of Prestige Plaza on Ngong Rd.

everyone's welcome - we've confirmed a number of techies & popular
bloggers attending ... so pop in to meet new faces, and hang out with
friends. we'll start at 5pm and go on till late.

penguins welcome.

LPA Presentation - Meeting 29th May

2007-05-30T09:40:00.000+03:00

I came late for this one, so someone else (Gituma?) will be adding on to this.

Evans Ikua, a major proponent of the Linux Professionals Association of Kenya, and a FOSS advocate made a presentation on what the LPA is about. LPA membership is currently 500 KES only (student rates - though we all qualify). To register visit the website - and register, then contact them by email. Evans mentioned that he would probably need some volunteers to help with maintaining the site, taking part in the LPA running so feel free to contact him. He's on the skunkworks list too.

A very active discussion ensued, with several questions being raised, key among them being:

Why would I want to Learn Linux - (the answer to this from most people was - so that I can get a job)

From a user point of view, most people even within the meeting, hardly used any Linux flavour for desktop use.

Why would an Organisation want to use FOSS?

From a organisational point of view, a way forward was to change tack and start advocating for solutions based on FOSS. Most businesses just wanted stuff that 'worked'. They are not interested in the flavour of linux running under it, or whether it is using Postfix or Sendmail as the MTA.

The best approach would be to create solutions that work, possibly managed solutions that are supported by organisations that develop solutions based on FOSS (there are quite a number currently), and since licensing is not a big cost, offer these solutions competitively. After deployment of such solutions, case studies can be developed and used as proof that FOSS is indeed a viable business software alternative.

More later

Next weeks meeting should be IPv6 migration by Vincent & Co (to be confirmed)

Uni of Nbi dorm LAN

2007-05-20T16:27:00.001+03:00

I've been talking to a few Uni of Nbi guys lately ... and apparently they now have a dorm LAN going. With internet access too - they've tapped into some free ports into the universities' main network, and expanded it using switches - the usual model as the rest.
So far estimates of users is between 50 to 100. Mostly using it for internet applications ... not many local apps apart from LAN Talk for chatting. It needs to grow a lot ... if any of you is reading - skunkworks would love to talk through getting more content/apps hosted on the network.

Their estimates of number of PCs on campus checks out too - 70% of uni students have their own computers.

15th May meeting

2007-05-16T08:03:00.000+03:00

Here's a summary of the happenings at Wananchi on 15th May 2007

Joseph Wamicha Gave a presentation on web video streaming. He showed some of the cool tools used like RED5 and FLV as well as some of the theory on stuf like unicasts, multicasts, TV systems Like NTSC & PAL as well as how to reduce frame size. Hea lso gave us some of the advantages of his tool of choice.

The presentation showed us the nuts and bolts of streaming, so now what can we stream? This led to a discussion on local content a number of sugestions came up.

Educational material i.e lectures and historical clips
Politics- Parliamentary sessions, The Budget etc
Traffic Cameras
Archived footage from KBC

A raging debate ensued about information, or is it misinformation by our media houses and how user generated content can help the situation. We discovered that the content has to be what is relevant to us- the Kenyans, what makes you pick up a phone to make a call and What makes you go ut to buy.

Also got some interesting statistics tha 80 % of the inteenet traffic in Kenya is outbound and only 30% is relevant to us. We also heard a rumour that some time soon a server should be up and running to serve up some hot local content so get creating!

Finally a note was made that female participation was greatly lacking, so all you ladies out there kujeni mjienjoy. Once again we revisted the topic of hangout time and venue, suggstions are welcome.

Meetings Planning Update

2007-05-10T22:47:00.000+03:00

Current Discussion Topics & 'Facilitators'

15th/22nd - Joseph Wamicha - Web Video Streaming - tentative
Michael Kamunge (JKUAT) - Presents his final year project - smart card based (will confirm the exact topic and date) - Mike will confirm when he can do this
John Maina on System Audit - please confirm?
Local (Linux) Distribution on BitTorrent - Riyaz?
IPv6, Migrating from IPv4 to IPv6 - Michuki Mwangi
local content and locally hosted forums - osskenya.org - to confirm
.More
.More

Upcoming ( this is where you add yourself as a presenter, add a topic you'd like talked about)

Web Development - using PHP
Web Development - using Ruby on Rails
Web Development - on a .NET Platform
Linux - Comparison of Linux Distributions
Linux - Is Linux Ready for the Common Mwananchi?
Local Content - Setting up a weekly podcast
Local Content - Blogging Server
Local Content - Locally Hosted Forums
Local Content - Wiki
Local Content - Techie Directory
Communications - WiMax
Communications - WiFi WarDriving
Community - Kenyanized GeekCorps
.More
.More

Past Topics

Asterix (Parts I to III)
BarCampKenya
Laban Mwangi & Robert (www.penguinlabs.co.ke) - on FOSS Systems Software & Application Dev
Java and Jahazi - Mugambi & VST Studios

Jahazi & Java

2007-05-10T09:39:00.000+03:00

Last Tuesday's presentation by Mugambi was on jahazi, a product of VST Studios Limited (I'm told that VST stands for Very Sawa Technology :) ) which is involved in Web and Print Design, 3d Simulation and modelling as well as, well Jahazi.

Jahazi (currently only available on windows) is a Web top/ Internet OS, a framework/engine where diverse Internet Applications can run (some of the applications available include Chat, SMS, Email, Web Browser, RSS Reader - but in the near future you could be able to contribute your own applications via a to-be-released SDK - software development kit)

Mugambi also talked in general about Java (he described it as the best development language in the world :) - i'm sure some have divergent views) - described as suitable for distributed computing, cross platform, easy development among other features. - loads of freebies with Java Software and Tools on the CD that he was giving out. He also talked in brief about J2EE as a standard/architecture on which a good number of vendors have built application servers (think WebLogic Macromedia Jrun) etc - he says that it is best suited for huge conglomerates and not small companies :) - that tells you the scope of jahazi. He also talked about XML as the means of exchanging information between various
components.

Visit jahazi.com and try it out for yourself. I'm really excited about it.

White African has his review here.

VST Studios - jahazi.com

2007-05-07T12:49:00.000+03:00

8 May 2007 (tuesday)

Lecture session at Wananchi Online - Loita Hse 1st Floor (6pm)

Mugambi from VST Studios is going to talk about Jahazi.com (java and J2EE)

He will have FREEBIES - 50 CDs with Jahazi 1.0 plus extra open java dev software eg Eclipse, Jetty server, jdk 1.5.0 update 9

So let's have 50 ppl show to pick up the freebies at least :)

OpenWRT

2007-05-01T13:54:00.000+03:00

I recently got hold of a Linksys WRT54GL

First order of business :) ---> Flashed it and put in OpenWRT

Downloaded the corresponding White Russian image from http://downloads.openwrt.org/whiterussian/newest/default and used the routers web interface to perform a firmware upgrade.

I had performed some previous configurations with the official firmware and the configurations remained intact except from the administration password now with user root.

I installed the NAS package afterwards so as to use WPA

I then came across WebIf - part of the X-WRT extensions - package has a pretty nifty web interface.

I installed WebIf by adding on the package via the web interface

(too easy so far)

The White Russian image comes with SSH server and so many packages available, I don't know when to start

I'm still hacking abit here and there.. But so far so good.

BarCamp Videos

2007-04-26T22:59:00.000+03:00

Finally some of these are available online:

Seven Reasons Microsoft Likes Open Source

2007-04-25T22:14:00.000+03:00

Interesting thoughts here

Linux Distributions Downloads

2007-04-25T21:16:00.000+03:00

Here is a list of Linux Distros that you can download.

Hopefully we can get a semblance of this in Kenya in the near future ?

If you scroll down you should be able to change the selection option from desktop editions to servers etc.

Jacob @ OSSKENYA is working on a download repository - you can follow that here

Meeting 24th April

2007-04-25T10:17:00.000+03:00

Apologies to all who went to Wananchi Online - 1st Floor, and for those who did not get to the venue (near Norfolk University).

The venue of the meeting was changed at the last minute to accommodate a group of students from UON :)

Robert and Laban from www.penguinlabs.co.ke did their presentation on FOSS software, presenting arguments on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS):

Why use SQLServer2000 unless you are focussed on Business Intelligence, Oracle unless you want grid computing. You could use MySQL or PostgreSQL for your projects.

FOSS provides you with freedom. No need to worry about the Business Software Alliance (BSA) knocking at the door of your office or home asking you to pay up for all the unlicensed software you are using.

FOSS is not free (as in cost) - It requires effort to implement.

Some applications:
openmoko.org - a phone running embedded linux with among other features GPS and GPRS.
The phone when released will retail at around $300. Think of all the applications you could have with such a phone. GPS location based software that alerts you that you need to buy your girlfriend a chocolate when you enter Uchumi :) - Look for Laban's previous post.

An SMS application that consists simply of a mobile phone, linux box and abit of code and you could offer a myriad of services. This compared to the cost of setting up a similar Windows based system, where you will need to buy the OS license, Antivirus, software development platform, among other things.

From a business point of view, it is important to provide a solution (using open source software)
It is important to think of providing a FOSS based software solution that solves/meets business needs and processes.

Next Meeting - 24th April

2007-04-21T10:45:00.000+03:00

Laban Mwangi ( www.penguinlabs.co.ke) will be leading a discussion on FOSS Systems Software & Application Development at the next meeting on Tuesday 24th April 2007.

Venue - Wananchi Online - 1st Floor Loita House on Loita Street
Starts at about 6pm

Geek Dinner

2007-04-20T08:51:00.000+03:00

We are meeting today evening for a "Geek Dinner" at Carnivore ... meeting early at 7pm so that the totos can make it home for curfew :) The rest can go on til they're all geeked out.

call 0724-334558 if you get lost.

Forget the IPHONE: Neo1973 is here!

2007-04-19T15:13:00.000+03:00

This is the phone to have. Simply put, this phone puts all else to shame. Yep the Iphone included.

so here we go:
Software stack is open

Mainline Kernel (2.6.20 at the moment)
Gnome Interface
Libs for GSM/GPRS module, GPS module, USB, ALSA, Bluez (PAN?)....

Hardware specs for the Neo1973:

GPS chip
GSM & GPRS
128MB SDRAM (maybe i can run Apache??)
Hammerhead AGPS for GPS... (think location based svcs)
micro-SD card (+2GB support). (2GB for star treks.. Where's my ported mplayer?)
2.8" LCD which doubles as a touchscreen
Bluetooth,vibrate function,USB2 support, Onboard Speaker, Power MGT,....

while being totally open!! What i would love to see is a WLAN chip

Yes, there have been Linux phones before, but this one is doing it right:

tracking mainline kernel;
no binary drivers allowed, period; which implies
complete and deliberate standards adherence (USB spec, interfaces to all components, etc); which means
using existing kernel drivers wherever possible, and when new code has to be written, doing so in a way that is most likely to be accepted by the kernel as a whole

Other awesomeness:

the debug board they came up with is a full JTAG adaptor that’s so with-it that people have started using it to debug other devices;
a build service whereby you can submit code and they will build you an image you can test immediately — no need (at first, anyway) to go through the immense pain that usually goes along with setting up a build & cross compile environment;
a hardware emulator that runs in QEMU, so you can even get on with testing code without having to wait for a build

And, of course, near and dear to my heart:

runs the GNOME stack: that’s GTK running up in that picture there!, and
there are GObject APIs to talk to the device libraries, GLib main loop integration, all the goodies.

Hooray!

Things i would love to hack in

SyncML support (all my contacts backed up)
ical support (google calender, evolution...)
Location based services (Based on GPS output... ex. Passing by Mobil, and u happen to be a pizza fun and it's TUES.... = BOGOF{BuyOneGetOneFree} )
apt support if it's not there
social networking apps (traffic mgt and info in nrb)
Bluez Personal Area Network with laptop/Devcons
ssh port
.....Free your mind

General availability was slated for oct 2007. I hope they are ontrack.

Skunkworks (Edited...)

2007-04-18T20:27:00.000+03:00

It looks to be that after BarCamp on 31st March, things got rather quiet. :)
We did not have a meeting yesterday as we did not have a speaker for the day so apologies for all those who were siked up.

We need to have more people actively participating in skunkworks for its objectives to be met - it's community. From the reactions at BarCampKenya - there is lots of stuff that we can learn from each other, and several projects that can be done.

I propose that people sign up for topics that they can / would like to present. We really haven't scratched the surface on what this group can do.

Current Discussion Topics & 'Facilitators'

8th May 2007: Mugambi (VST Studios) - Java and Jahazi
Michael Kamunge (JKUAT) - Presents his final year project - smart card based (will confirm the exact topic and date) - Mike will confirm when he can do this
John Maina on System Audit (please confirm
Local (Linux) Distribution on BitTorrent - Riyaz?
local content and locally hosted forums - osskenya.org - to confirm
Joseph Wamicha - Web Video Streaming
.More
.More

Upcoming ( this is where you add yourself as a presenter, add a topic you'd like talked about)

Web Development - using PHP
Web Development - using Ruby on Rails
Web Development - on a .NET Platform
Linux - Comparison of Linux Distributions
Linux - Is Linux Ready for the Common Mwananchi?
Local Content - Setting up a weekly podcast
Local Content - Blogging Server
Local Content - Locally Hosted Forums
Local Content - Wiki
Local Content - Techie Directory
Communications - WiMax
Communications - WiFi WarDriving
Community - Kenyanized GeekCorps
.More
.More

Past Topics

Asterix (Parts I to III)
BarCampKenya
Laban Mwangi & Robert (www.penguinlabs.co.ke) - on FOSS Systems Software & Application Dev (Next Week - 24th April)

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project

2007-04-11T15:37:00.000+03:00

http://laptopfoundation.org/en/participate/

Kenyan Geekcorps

2007-04-09T20:39:00.000+03:00

WhiteAfrican interviews Ethan Zuckerman on his blog this time.

Ethan is the founder of Geekcorps - inspiration for an idea i've been toying with for some time.

Geekcorps is an NGO that brings together techie volunteers to work on projects like Peacecorps does - but only ICT based. eg setup of a community-based wireless network ... and many more.

Imagine a Kenyan version of Geekcorps ... there's a ton of uni students who spend months, years tarmacking ... how about empowering these guys with a little bit of guidance (maybe funding at some point) - to go do things like setup a cybercafe the way Harry did. They would go out to semi-urban and rural areas to run their own ICT ventures.

There's financial incentive (tough to convince current uni students to do anything without this) - since the guy will be running his own business ... you just have to provide some guidance again on accounting systems & running a business.

The whole thing should be organized, so that it takes care of churn - bet guys don't want to be stuck in shagz forever, and there's always new students graduating ...

Other ideas of projects these guys could undertake ? some software development type stuff ? write up some inventory systems for farmers ?

Also in the interview - Ethan recommends you read The Cathedral and the Bazaar - interesting stuff !

3rd April Meeting

2007-04-04T22:10:00.000+03:00

I wasn't able to attend it, but seems people are already on Easter Holiday :).

I think we need more guys coming forward to organise the meetings, present etc.

Perhaps in the interim, a sort of spill over from discussions that did not end during the BarCamp could work out?

Comments?

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2007-04-04T07:24:00.000+03:00

great news ...

World Bank Approves US$164.5 Million for Connectivity to Make Kenya,
Burundi and Madagascar More Competitive

Press Release - World Bank

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2, 2007 — The World Bank Board of Directors
approved on March 29, an International Development Association (IDA)
financing package of US$164.5 million for Kenya, Burundi and
Madagascar as the first tranche of the US$424 million Regional
Communications Infrastructure Program (RCIP) for high-speed
connectivity in East and Southern Africa.

The region is being held back by the prohibitive costs of
international connectivity. Businesses are unable to compete in the
global economy; university students suffer because they cannot access
the Internet; and Government agencies cannot communicate effectively
with each other and their citizens because they are not connected.

East and Southern Africa is the only region in the world that is not
connected to the global broadband infrastructure and accounts for less
than one percent of the world's international bandwidth capacity. As a
result of this 'missing link', the region relies on satellite
connectivity, with costs amongst the highest in the world.

To continue reading the rest of the article, click here:

http://www.harolddoan.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4151

HOWTO: BarCamp

2007-04-01T20:56:00.000+03:00

The idea of BarCamp came up during discussions with Erik/Hash/WhiteAfrican. There was loads of different guys doing their own things - techies, developers, designers, bloggers, entrepreneurs ... and a forum such as BarCamp was needed to bring them all together.

We decided to keep this one simple ... test the waters. We didn't want to have any complicated budgets etc for it. And we just wanted to see how it would turn out ... pretty amazing for a first time. And boy was it really simple to put together :)

Preparation

Get a venue ... turns out lots of students are psyked about this stuff - you can easily get a venue on campus.
Depending on size - get some minimum sponsorship for stationary & water etc ... (we got that from Wananchi)
Line up a projector & five backups (again, depending on size)
Publicize - put the word out there ... and be prepared not to expect your friends, but complete strangers mostly :)
Ways to publicize - we had bloggers, Genius, our own companies, and posters around campus. The blogging forums were pretty effective. Hugest turnout from universities. Viral marketing also works wonders.
Get WiFi
Setup at least 2 hours before setup to finish before start-time.

Lessons Learnt

Backup Projector is a must - Thanks Eric !!! you're a life-saver
Has to be a circle - the lecture format just automatically restricts how much discussion can go on.
Fewer Presentations ... turns out a lot of people barely got through presenting their idea in 10 mins ... and we had to stretch it to allow questions and discussion ... and started running really short on time. One of the ideas is to have smaller BarCamps focussed on specific issues - eg blogging, or content.

And then have a properly organized BarCamp that would be for bringing together all the chaos again in an entire longer weekend session. At a beach possibly :)

The above works out pretty well - the Skunkworks forums are actually mini-BarCamps every week ... and then once every quarter we can put together a massive event. We even got sponsors already ...
Get some kind of online streaming, blogging etc ... and publicize it well before the event. Was running a skype call with Vincent (Kenyamoto) but am sure a lot of ppl were awaiting feedback.
People don't get what "BarCamp" is all about still ... pole for some dude who came for wine-tasting.
Has to be more informal ... more chaotic ... with more breaks. That's why the next one is going to be in Mombasa - save your busfare.
Some more vinywaji for guys.

Thanks

- The volunteers on site - Kiania, Sande, Linda, Edgar
- All the speakers and startups
- Ashok for WiFi
- Kenyamoto for the cameraman - we should hopefully have video out shortly.
- KBW and all individual bloggers for spreading the word - whiteafrican, mental, AfroM (our groupie !), Kenyan Pundit, KikuyuMoja, mashada, bankelele.
- Erik for the BarCamp logo - it caught so much attention !!!
- Genius (Harry) for publicity, and the lovely reception welcome :)
- Wananchi Online - for anything that required a budget - flyers, bottled water, stationary etc. Huge thanks.

Looking Forward

- all our tools are "open-source" - feel free to ask to use the barcamp-nbi GoogleGroups and the BarCamp Wiki is already open. The group contains all participants on Saturday.
- join skunkworks - i think you'll find a lot of our ideas also come up there ... specially the chillout sessions every other week.
- JUST DO IT ... anyone can organize this - so just take up the intiative. Be sure to let us know so we can attend.

from:
Eric, Josiah, Riyaz, Timothy, David, Nick
This was so much fun !!!

Post BarCamp Nairobi Kenya - 31st March

2007-03-31T22:40:00.000+03:00

This is an initial write up of the meeting's proceeding:

Started at around 1.30pm with about 10 people in attendance. :) Typical Sat Afternoon in Nairobi. But this rapidly grew to more than 50 people coming in ... most were probably not Arsenal or Liverpool fans - or valued this more than football :)
We covered a whole range of issues ... read about them below.

Aother post coming up with all our experiences of organizing BarCamp.

Other BarCamp coverage:
http://startupkenya.blogspot.com/2007/04/barcamp-wow.html
http://www.afromusing.com/blog/?p=286
http://69mb.wordpress.com/2007/04/01/barcamp-kenya/
http://whiteafrican.com/?p=476
http://pictureafrica.blogspot.com/2007/04/barcamp-kenya-nairobi-march-31-2007.html
http://bankelele.blogspot.com/2007/04/safaricom-blinks-nairobi-barcamp.html
http://www.mentalacrobatics.com/think/archives/2007/03/barcamp_kenya_in_full_flow.php

The fastest car in the world The Bugatti Veyron by Josiah Mugambi, video here :)

AfricaDotNet by Edgar Okioga

Edgar heads up the .NET user group in Kenya and also lectures part time at the university. He talked about:

The .NET platform, dished out FREEBIES - MSDN community CDs
Getting involved in the .NET user group and other community groups
Individuals taking action - go and volunteer to lecture at the universitites !!

Equal Opportunity Manufacturing
by Kamau Gachigi (Phd) of Uni of Nairobi

This guy is my new hero ! There do exist some amazing people in the academia sector ... just wish we could have more guys like him.
Dr Gachigi is passionate about what he does ... and it's addictive ! I hope we'll do a lot more with him in SkunkWorks ... watch this space ...
He talked about the MIT Fab Labs project - which provides a "lab" or "machine" that helps people fabricate & create ... tools, electronics, aeroplanes even ... much easily. All you need to bring is your own creativity.
He then answered a lot of questions about why there is a big disconnect between academia and the real world. And how the universities are trying to bridge the gap:
Creation of UNES (a fund to finance startup ideas of students)
Presention is here

Software Defined Radio by Nick a JKUAT student (This was really techie oriented)

Talked about GNU Radio among other things and how to utilize various technologies (even GSM) to transmit radio

bungeni.org by Ashok

Talked about collection of information from various sources ranging from hard copies to proprietary software copies and open technologies.
Bungeni.org is one of the end results - check it out!.
Clearly from his presentation, open standards go very far in allowing information to reach as many people as possible.

Long Tail Economics of Abundance by Kiptum (MamaMikes)

Kiptum first talked about MamaMikes - the history, where they started, and some of the interesting experiences they've seen in the e-commerce business with expanding offerings etc.
Then he went on to talk about the long tail

Presentation is here.

Residential Networks with Kiania
(oops i didn't find any DK fotos :) ) but there are some of him preparing his presentation in the photos linked (look out for a guy in ORANGE)

Kiania in his bright orange Asterisk shirt talked about how to take infrastructure development in your own hands and start creating community-based networks in neighbourhoods ...

Create a backbone infrastructure of wifi or fiber or utp hooking up your estate
Expand your estate to the neighborhood - imagine a South C wide community owned network.
Add content ... an asterisk setup, a chat setup for the girl in house 4B :) etc.

Skunkworks and the Halfway Proposition - Riyaz

There is a movement happening in Kenya ... it's evidenced by the drastic jump in traffic when KCSE results were released - local traffic to the servers jumped five-fold. Or on Valentines Day.

There are more and more people developing local content. Online startups, information sites etc ... the key is building this up to critical mass.

More local content = less use of satellite resources, and faster loading = a better user experience ... leading to more adoption of online technologies.

Skunkworks is a free open community for techies by kawa techies. We provide a forum for free exchange of ideas, and in the process hope to start developing "projects" which will grow into web applications - making it easy for people to add local content to the web.

Signup and Come for our weekly sessions - we've realized they're actually like mini-BarCamps.

StocksKenya by Ted Muganda

Stockskenya.com was initially developed for private use :) but later realised it's potential and its ability to meet the needs of many retail investors in Kenya
Has a vibrant online community of users.
Will hopefully be hosted locally soon?

University LAN networks - Melvin

The guys over at JKUAT have built their own dorm network after the uni admin was unable to provide them connectivity. Put together with strings literally ... this network has exponentially grown in numbers of subscribers.

Most common apps are multimedia - yay Scofield !

They've setup a prepaid card system where students can go buy a set amount of credit - this minimal charge helps them grow and run the network (and pay for the internet link)

Their model has changed slightly - they now ask halls to setup LANs and then interconnect them together. Network is so big they don't know how many devices they have anymore.

Laws of Kenya, Genius Executive Center and Startups in Kenya - Harry Karanja

Harry doesn't always seem to have his hands in other people's pockets like most lawyers :) This entrepreneur does some really cool stuff !!

Harry's SoftLaw idea creation company started off digitizing all the laws of Kenya. They intially put it all on CD, and later put it up on a prepaid website. Now Laws of Kenya is all free as they explore other ways of monetizing.

He's also started an incubation center - Genius - located at ViewPark towers 15th Floor. The center provides a complete office workstation - with PC, phone, internet, messaging etc services. Helpful & affordable for lots of startups.

Harry blogs at Startups in Kenya - which has some really interesting content ... check it out.

Gituma Nturibi on electronic ticketing

We truly live in a paperless world. Now you have no excuse that u forgot your ticket at home when you get to the airport....

More photos, and video to follow..

Tuesday Meeting (27th March 2007)

2007-03-27T14:15:00.000+03:00

Our weekly meeting for Tuesday will mostly focus on BarCamp planning,
among the usual hangout topics we bring up ...

come with your ideas !

steers as usual ... 6pm. (Muindi Mbingu)

we're also probably going to start having the hangout sessions moved
to weekends at a place like Buffet Park - what say you ?

BarCamp - Saturday - hope to see you all there !!
http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampKenya

Meeting Recap

2007-03-23T09:47:00.000+03:00

The last meeting winded up on Asterisk ... Next topic we're getting to is WiFi

Covered the setup of extensions.conf which is the Asterisk dial-plan ... it contains all the information about call routing of extensions within the Asterisk PBX. Covered the basic syntax of the configs, and went into details about various patterns used to make the config simpler. Also covered patterns on how to setup queueing, voicemail, call-center, IVR, meetme conferencing.

Extension Patterns

Sample Dialplan

Asterisk Variables

Google in Kenya

2007-03-20T08:53:00.000+03:00

First of all, thanks to Josiah for inviting me. My name is Chris Kiagiri from Google HQ in Mountain View, CA and I have been lurking on the mailing list for a short while prior to this post.

Here at Google, we have just announced that we have signed a deal with the Kenya Education Network (KENET) to provide universities in Kenya with Google Apps™ – Google’s set of hosted and customizable communications services. This includes access to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets under their university's domain and, as always, for free.

The University of Nairobi’s ~50,000 students will be the first to be offered Google Apps for Education in Kenya. These services will then be extended to ~150,000 Kenyan students in universities across the country. The rollout will be jointly coordinated by Google and KENET.

You've heard by now that our mission here at Google is to help organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This deal is the first step in doing our part to make sure that people in Kenya have access to the same online services as the rest of the world. You can expect to hear more on this in the near future, including the integration of free PC-to-PC phone calls.

(For more on what makes Google Apps tick, check out this video.)

On a separate note, stay tuned for the customizable skins that we are about to unveil on the google home page tomorrow (or later today, Kenya time). They are really cool and will contain some delightful geek-inspired "Easter eggs," for the more observant ones among you.

Asterisk pt 3

2007-03-18T11:29:00.000+03:00

The final Asterisk session for now ... will deal with configuration of the dialplan (extensions.conf). This shows you how to do call routing, dialling patterns, and covering more fun things like IVR setup for call-centers.

6pm at the Wananchi Online training room (Loita Hse 1st Floor) - 20 March 2007

Next topic we're getting into is "war-driving" for WiFi ... pls give suggestions of topics you'd like covered.
Edgenet folks - what happened to you guys ?

Meeting 5 review

2007-03-16T14:00:00.000+03:00

Last meeting was held at Steers - opp Jeevanjee Gardens on 13th March 2007

As usual, it was a free for all discussion. Main points discussed were:

The best techie enviroment in kenya and what they should stock...

Beers
Ice Cream dispenser ..huh??
Loud Music (what would you prefer?)

Personally i prefer Beers and Techno/Trance o'er earphones... And oh gimme a swimming pool any day!

M-PESA and the ripples it would:

E-Commerce gateway for M-PESA... (maybe a music.co.ke download service) would open up a market of ~5Million potential customers
Easy Transfer of money.. and why choose M-PESA over PostaPay
Fraud
Possible technical implementations

Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs probably have the worst site on the planet. After much lamentation and wailing on the mailing list, a couple of people volunteered to do a 'free as in beer' implementation. Please refer to the list for an update.

Upcoming BarCamp topics list and possible presenters. If you are interested please talk to eric on the list.

Hacking wifi by encoding packets into ICMP instead of HTTP Quoting Riyaz 'i have no idea .... hehe'. Ditto

Meetings

2007-03-12T17:19:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow (13th March 2007) - Meeting #5

Chill Out - Proposed that we meet at Steers (on Muindi Mbingu Street?)

Next Week (20th march 2007) - Meeting #6

Wind up VoIP on Asterisk Session (Part III of III )
Start discussing 'Exploring Wifi' probably
Brief update on BarCamp - 31st March

2nd Hand rack mount servers

2007-03-07T14:31:00.000+03:00

As mentioned in the meeting yesterday - it is possible to get second hand rack mounted servers for about 15k from Computer Planet @ Visions Plaza on Mombasa Road. Specs should be around PIII, 512/1024MB RAM, 40GB, dual ethernet cards, some have dual processors. - should be brand names like IBM.

I suggest that for anyone who wants to get hold of one - get to pass word around so that a group can go there and negotiate for lower prices (e.g. <10k clear="all">
Then hacking on stuff like asterisk etc (and for those guys who'd want to starting thinking of colocation) can start in earnest

:)

VoIP - Asterisk Pt. 2

2007-03-02T14:23:00.001+03:00

Next meeting is on Tuesday, March 6.

Venue: Wananchi Online at 6pm (Loita Hse 1st floor)

We'll be going into the second part of Asterisk - covering the actual setup & configuration of trunks, SIP ports, dial-plan etc.

community networks, broadband ratings

2007-02-28T07:36:00.000+03:00

Last meeting was held at Steers - opp Jeevanjee Gardens on 27 February 2007

Techies lamented at the lack of cheap broadband availability. Current options include (not rated):

- popote - 3500 shs per month but damn slow (dialup)
- GPRS - 3500 shs per month unlimited package from Wananchi
- GPRS packages from safaricom and celtel
- Jamii Telkom offers 128k shared service for about 12k shs. (128k throughput achieved)
- 128k service from ISPs typically at slightly below 20k shs.
- eDSL - new offering from EdgeNet - including their new eTV streaming service. 5k shs or so.
- Net@Home shared internet for 5k shs.
- iBurst at 8k shs (128k throughput achieved)
- Butterfly at about 2500 shs ... but poor coverage areas.

Josiah - post your review ... ;)

The idea of building out estate/community networks was raised ...
Techies in various estates can get a 128k link into the apartment/estate ... cable it themselves cheaply, and share a 128k internet link. The techie living within the estate would provide 24/7 support to users with their computer issues.
Setup costs would be shared amongst 10 users ... so not more than 5k per user. Most likely a lot less. Monthly charges would come to about 2k per user.
Techie would setup a local "server" for mail, caching, voip, file-services and more ... All these local servers could be connected together eg a larger asterisk network.

This idea would work well if organized ...
With a large enough base, ISPs could be convinced to provide a bigger pipe at night - say bursting to 1mb

Also noted that this is the year for consumer broadband - a lot more offerings expected from all providers.

Also discussed was how to approach existing users of legacy PBXes and provide an asterisk solution. Kiania - help ?

Housekeeping
- meeting schedule was preferred fixed on tuesdays. same format
- next meeting will be Tuesday, march 6 ... will be continuing with Asterisk setup/configuration. Wananchi Online training room.
- need more volunteers !! for organizing meetings, lectures, maintaining the blog etc
- BarCamp Nairobi - 31 march at Uni of Nairobi

all things VoIP

2007-02-23T08:49:00.000+03:00

Second lecture session focused on VoIP including an introduction to and applications of Asterisk – the open-source PABX/softswitch software.
Held at Wananchi Online training room on 20 February.

The most "cool" application for asterisk appeared to be calling an askari automatically to "washa the generator" when the power went out. Jinis at work !!!
Some of the real-world kenyan applications are asterisk implemented at Gertrude's - the project will be covered in future sessions.

For the most definitive guide to open-source VoIP.
You can run through the Getting Started section first, or search for a specific topic. The site caters for all users – beginner to expert.

The Asterisk Handbook

An example of a quick way to get a US telephone mapped to an IP softphone (softphones are software that run on your PC and enable you to make VOIP calls)

Other notable sites include:
Asterisk (main site)
Digium (makers of asterisk)
Asterisk Now (easy peasy asterisk)
SER (Sip Express Router)
Skype (500m users)

To get started with asterisk … basically, it is composed of 3 parts:
- configuration of SIP extensions
- configuration of trunk extensions (E1s and international IAX links)
- configuration of the Dial Plan

sip.conf (used to create extensions)
Zapata.conf (used to configure trunks into the PSTN)
iax.conf (used to create international trunks)
extensions.conf (configure the Dial Plan)

The best way to learn as with all open-source apps – download, install & start hacking away … use the list for any questions you may come up with. Use the “search” feature on the voip-info wiki extensively !!!

Meeting #1

2007-02-21T15:52:00.000+03:00

The first Skunkworks meeting was held at Steers Wabera Street on 13th Feb 2007. About 15-20 tech enthusiasts from Nairobi were present.

Was an informal meeting with people getting to know each other.

Planning was for a weekly meeting, alternating between formal discussion forums and informal chill out sessions.

EDIT: We first started out at GPO food court ... where we got chased away for holding an unlicensed "kamkunji" :) Meeting was then moved to Steers.