Blackberry’s BB10

http://blackberry.com

The company-formerly-known-as-Research-In-Motion is hoping to cash in on their few remaining corporate friends and maybe even entice some of those who abandoned ship over the years to come back aboard. A new user interface, a developer-friendly app-development process and enterprise-class security infrastructure still scattered around the world offer promises of a refreshed mobile experience. Heck, I even went ahead and bought some stock, even though I have no intention of buying a device, but hoping to see a bit of a resurgence. Long story short, given their former pedigree in mobile, it wouldn’t surprise me if BB10 overtakes Windows Phone 8 by middle of next year, though I don’t see it unseating one of the top two any time soon (if ever).

Jolla’s Sailfish

http://jolla.com/

A crew made up of frustrated ex-Nokia development and product guys, Jolla (pronounced yoh-la) is a company that believes Nokia struck gold with their N9′s Swipe-based MeeGo experience. They forked MeeGo’s code in 2011, and started courting hardware manufacturers. Industry trends suggest they’re onto something, at least in terms of interface experiences: BB10 features heavy swipe-based interactions, and both Apple and Android developer guidelines heavily encourage swipe-based interfaces. However, without the brand recognition, their mantra of being a truly open, alternative ecosystem may fall upon deaf ears. Except, possibly in China, which is their first target market.

Mozilla’s Firefox OS

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefoxos/

Everyone’s first second browser is going mobile… OS. Think of Firefox OS’s strategy as a combination of Google’s Chrome OS and Android. Like Chrome OS, Mozilla is using their tried and tested Firefox browser code to build a complete operating system focused around HTML/CSS/Javascript technologies. Like Android, their operating system is targeted towards mobile phones and other mobile devices, not traditional laptop or desktop computers. Like Jolla, they are currently courting hardware partners and also targeting emerging mobile markets in Africa and Asia. Their also more than willing to identify the low to mid cost hardware as their primary device targets.

Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone

Canonical is a company that cannot seem to make money. The primary curator and development effort behind the popular alternative desktop OS, Ubuntu, has decided to go mobile. Following the now-popular strategy of merging desktop and mobile operating systems, Canonical is claiming that Ubuntu Touch (for phone and tablet) is not so much a new operating system, but simply a new way of experiencing the current desktop OS, via their Unity project. Though a target market is not part of their core message (they’ve got iOS and Android in their sights), Ubuntu has more mind share in places such as India and China than in the Western markets. No matter how they sell, if Canonical cannot manage to make a buck with this effort, I don’t see it remaining a corporation for much longer.

KDE’s Plasma Active

http://plasma-active.org/

Not really targeting any mass-market, Plasma Active is instead the effort of the KDE community to port their much-loved desktop environment to mobile devices. Though the group claims smartphone compatibility, I’m not convinced Plasma Active could actually dial a phone number. Having engaged with their Netbook variant in the past, I can personally attest to KDE’s flexibility and nice OS features such as Nepomuk, but from a mobile OS standpoint, I don’t expect to be seeing this on phones anytime soon, not even in China.

Linux Foundation’s Tizen

https://www.tizen.org/

Tizen is no tease, and is in fact the effort of the increasingly-present Linux Foundation. This other phoenix born out of the ashes of the failed MeeGo experiment (along with Sailfish), Tizen is staying true to the core goals of MeeGo: to provide a new mobile OS intended from day one to accommodate all “mobile” form factors including smartphones, netbooks, tablets, TVs and in-vehicle entertainment system. Their strategy is similar to that of Canonical’s Ubuntu Unity project minus the doubletalk, but also minus the marketing; I couldn’t tell your their target market even if I wanted to.

These are just some of the up and coming mobile OSes. It will be interesting to see if companies such as Microsoft and Blackberry are able to regain lost ground, or if any of the new brands are able to break into the Western market at all. When Apple broke the existing smartphone mold in 2007, Android was able to capitalize on the upset and build brand identity while Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s Blackberry and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile all became obsolete. Companies with strong other-industry brand image, such as Mozilla and Canonical, will have a hard time breaking into the established market.

Which is why it’s not so crazy to be targeting emerging markets in Africa and Asia. For example, Mozilla has not set Android or iOS in my sights. Both require powerful hardware, and have little intention of catering to the masses globally. Instead, Mozilla intends to build a suitable, modern replacement for outgoing Symbian/S60/S40 phones and feature-phone OSes still in the market. This makes their solution enticing to both consumers as well as hardware OEM such as LG and HTC who might rather profit on hardware in low-cost markets like like Africa and Asia and not want to worry about software.

No matter the outcome, the net result of this competition will only be positive. With so many competing projects working on solving the same problem (efficient mobile experiences), we’ll develop the talent necessary to drive the mobile industry for years to come and insure innovative thinkers also have the skills and resources necessary to make the future of mobile possible.

I’ve taken it upon myself, therefore, to do something with it. I’ll teach myself Enyo, and I’ll implement a project idea I’ve had floating around. The ultimate goal: to turn my touchpad into my own personal must-have device, for at least one function. We’ll see how this goes…

• Singapore gets to work at about 8:30 – 9:30, just in time to be catching emails from Sydney requesting meetings asap, to get them in right before their lunch
• Bangkok has one last request and query, right before Singapore’s lunchtime
• East Coast USA is very willing to schedule an important call, at around 9pm Singapore time
• Vancouver has about an hour of solid troubleshooting in their evenings before running out the door, which sets a good tone for the working day in Singapore
• Mumbai is rip-roarin’ ready to go, just as Singapore slips into a post-lunch food coma
• London finishes up their morning meetings and starts submitting queries just as Singapore heads out the door
• …and finally, nobody sleeps in Malaysia, as those emails come in ’round the clock!

I apologize if this wasn’t the breathtaking and insightful first-post-back people were hoping for, but I felt like blogging. To ease your pain, here’s a lovely picture of one of the most difficult client site’s I’ve visited yet:

Directly before Singapore, I was living in a semi-rural area outside of the city of Mombasa in Kenya.  There, my life was almost no elevator or escalators, and only a few automated doors.  It certainly wasn’t the Caves of Steal-esque life I lead here in Singapore. Before that, my life in the States was not necessarily the most urbanized, and though of course I encountered elevators and escalators on a regular basis, I would not quite place them in the same level as to which they are now everyday facets of my routine.

It’s gotten to the point where as I go about my day, I anticipate my interaction with them. In order to survive without stress or worry, you must treat these mechanical beasts like they are humans, fickle, selfish, but ultimately willing to help you out, if only to a mild level of inconvenience reciprocated.

Approaching and escalator, you know it’s a bottleneck in the general flow of humanity around you. A quick assessment of your surroundings reveals a group of young people both pecking away at their smartphones AND chatting nonsensically with each other. They’ll approach the escalator as if it were a game, laughing as they plan which on which step to embark. If you’re in a rush, possibly quickening your pace to circumvent this crowd might be in your best interest. Of course, the delay caused by this group is no worse than a delay potentially caused when a building switches directions of the escalators the next day and the businessman is harshly extracted from his routine by his necessity to go up, while in fact each steps seems to yield him only back at the start.

With elevators, you must just assume a wait. You must build a relationship with an elevator over time, especially if it’s in your daily route.  What time periods will produce the heaviest traffic; which floors seem to get preference for the lift car; which cars allow you to override their current instructions if you push the correct sequence of buttons, all of these are characteristics of the elevator a person must appreciate.

Finally, automated doors. Some might be labeled “push” or “pull” but you know better. A mere ruse, most likely instigated by the CCTV culture, ensuring endless hours of entertainment for the screen-watchers. Some automated doors, such as those of the MRT (subway) give warning when they are closing. Why? Because these doors take no prisoners and care not if your arm is stuck between them. Learning how to time your leap into the train on the cadence of the chime is a skill worthy of it’s own post. Thankfully elevator doors are much more forgiving and willing to re-open upon detecting a small child’s head lodged in the between. However, there is still gradation amongst different lifts in how begrudgingly they will re-open; some far more willing, others make your squirm a bit first.

As with all parts of your routine, it’s safest to understand all of the idiosyncrasies of these mechanical things over time, but for the most part the mechanics of life here are kind and will gladly ease you into a personal understanding, though you may hear some chuckling along the way.

First things first, let’s just kill the 600lb gorilla in the room: is Google+ going to kill Facebook? Of course not. A friend of mine who works at Facebook, and whom I hold in high regard to look at all matters of life quite objectively, recently commented on a post of mine on Plus (the viral “+1 bitch-slap” animated .gif):

I’m actually interested into all the fanboyism around plus. I really don’t understand the blind hatred to facebook for the sake of hating it. Is it cool? Did FB do something wrong to you? A lot of the concepts and features are extremely similar to social media products already on the market.

To which I responded, simply:

…On the practical side, progress requires antagonism. I am just happy there’s a chance to grow a competitive ecosystem.

That about sums up my attitude. It’s moot to wonder which service will kill the other. Has Ford ever killed GM? Has English ever killed French? Have toads ever evolved to rule the world? You can compare the internal ecosystems of both products to derive the competition, a feature comparison as it were, or you can broaden your scope one level and look at each social ecosystem as a whole unit, a single product (or service as a product), and find that competition is healthy and necessary. Sure, they both allow you to share, they both allow you to follow or friend. Just like most cars have seats and steering wheels and media systems. As social becomes a norm and the culturally expected features are distilled, competition between products must lie elsewhere.

Which brings us to the next point. If Google+ isn’t looking to kill Facebook, what is it looking to do? According to Vincent Wong, Google could be aiming for Microsot. Vincent has taken a refreshing look at the problem outside of the normal, “GOOGLE KILLS FACEBOOK OMG!!!” tone of the first few days, and has tried to rationalize the product against reality. For now, I agree with his estimate that Google may be looking not at Facebook, but at other players, like Microsoft.

If you look at Google’s recent maneuvers, they are trying to move everyone into the magical cloud, for everything. From music to books, blogs and photos; from serious work such as documents and presentations to productivity tools like e-mail, Google very obviously wants you living in the cloud. Then, Facebook proved that interpersonal relationships could acquire a cloud presence as well, and all of a sudden, tele-collaboration changed.

Before social, there were proto-social utilities scattered around the internet. IRC and ICQ and various other three-letter-acronyms allowed for one-to-one and one-to-many collaboration, but without the sense of history or longevity. These were merely conversations, temporary and fleeting. I am sure there are some IRC admins who have dutifully maintained their logs since the dawn of time, but they are the exception, not the norm.

Forums, another proto-social tool, allowed for conversation and history, but were often topic specific. The information was siloed, and to engage in multiple topics would require visiting multiple silos on any given day. Forum surfers, though able to do this, were the exception, not the norm.

Along comes social. Social allowed for both of these forms of collaboration. One-to-one and one-to-many broadcasting, as well as topic-specific conversation, but all wrapped up into one, with a neat dashboard to help you make sense of everything that was going on. Just as search made the Internet functional, Facebook made social information functional. Facebook so far, is arguably the epitome of this model as we understand it.

Back to Google+. Google+ is simply a wrapper. Google knows how to do photos. It can do documents, and blogs. It can do email. And it can do it all in the web, and is even marketing appliances to do just that. Finally, with Google+, it can bring that social layer to everything, but when you think social, don’t think share. Instead, think collaboration. Google+ is looking to make social productive. Sharing is a term without a lot of business credibility. Collaboration on the other hand, has been a software target forever, with huge corporations built just around that. Microsoft runs Exchange and now, it’s new Communicator platform. Before that, we had Lotus. Books have been written about other attempts, especially Chandler. Now it’s Google’s turn.

Is Google+ going to kill Facebook? No. And as Vincent Wong says in his presentation, with 750 million users, Facebook shouldn’t be worried. Instead, Google+ is going to wrap up all of the pre-exisitng Google services into a nice little package, enabling collaboration on a new scale. It will all work quite nicely once we all get our Andorid-phones and Chromebooks as well!. Microsoft (and even you HP), watch out.

WCE appreciates any level of donation, and is a registered 501 (c) (3).

WCE operates by contacting partners in developing nations who feel there is a need for computers to educated youth.  Through these primary partners, networks of schools in need are coordinated until there is enough demand to satisfy shipping a standard container of computers to that country.  We have particularly strong partners in Tanzania, and I have even met some of them personally when I worked for WCE there on an eCorps trip in September 2010.  Though the computers are not free, this is actually a benefit of a program: anyone who has worked with donated equipment in the developing world will tell you that the sense of ownership over goods is critical for a project’s success.  For this, our partners are happy to pay the token amount for the computers they receive.  If you don’t believe me, let the numbers speak for themselves.

WCE by the Numbers

• 11 years in operation
• Over 700 volunteers (both US and international) have contributed their services
• Over 28,300 computers shipped
• Over 2,675 schools, libraries, orphanages and youth centers benefit from our computers
• 41 nations have received a WCE shipment

I don’t take my development organizations lightly.  Just ask anyone I’ve worked with in development.  WCE, and Timothy, the founder and president, have consistently proven to me and to their partners that WCE is an effective organization that adapts to changing circumstances while still staying true to its mission of providing the youth of the developing world the tools and education they need to succeed.

If all you needed was a little more convincing, might I again draw your attention to the donate button at the top of the post?

It was a hot day, but every day is a hot day in Singapore.  You just suck it up an go about your fun.  We all arrived at Dempsey Hill and the Singapore Cricket Club pitches where the matches would take place. Donning a rainbow of team-colored commemorative jerseys (I was green team), we headed out onto the smaller of the pitches because the SCC had double-booked with the rugby teams and we lost our full-size pitch.

The afternoon started with some warm up practice, introducing the newbies like myself to some of the skills required in Gaelic Football, including hand-passing (like a volleyball bump), soloing (toe-kicking the ball to yourself; like dribbling) and other ball-handling skills.  After the warm-up, it was time to get the tourney going.

The pitches started out fresh and grassy, flashes of bright yellow, pink, orange, blue ,green and red streaking across, but in a short enough time the pitches were reduced to torn-up mud pits.  Gone was the brightness of the jerseys as well, though nobody was complaining about getting a little muddy.  It just made everything more fun!

Our games were not full-on gaelic football matches, due to the smaller team sizes, and smaller pitch size.  We were not supposed to play with our feet, which is normally allowed, nor were we scoring against a net and uprights. Instead we scored by successfully hitting an upright mat with a legal shot.

It was a good time nonetheless.  There were some friendly tackles and I made a goal… except I was out of bounds when I made my shot so it didn’t count.  But man was it a sweet shot! At the end of the day, as we celebrated this successful meeting of Lions and Dragons with Magners and sandwiches, we all marveled at our spectacularly muddy presentation, and parted for the afternoon tired but most certainly having enjoyed ourselves.

Pictures from the matches are up on my Flickr, which you can find a link to at the bottom of the blog.

Acting upon the advice of a random stranger-tourist I met at the zoo (smart decisions made since 1986!), I decided to take a walk, specifically with Singapore Walks, a walking-tour company that focuses on Singapore’s history: its social history, its trade history, its war history.  It’s a very casual affair, and great if you just want to kill a couple hours.  The tour guide, at least in my tour, was knowledgeable and friendly (and I’ve been told all the tour guides are so).

Now onto the hookers.

Prostitution in Singapore started almost as soon as Raffles laid out the groundwork for the city.  From the beginnings of the trade post, it was legalized and regulated, except for a stretch of time from Queen Victoria until the end of WWII when it was forced underground.  Today it is still legalized, and though it is permitted in 5 districts, the Singapore government seems to be moving it all into one district, not renewing the entertainment licenses required to run brothels.

Some fun facts about the history of Singaporean prostitution include:

• Japanese women would prefer to catcall from their third-story windows, in a multitude of languages, to attract sailors to them
• Chinese women would prefer to remain hidden, the men coming to them, so that they might, “unleash the hidden tiger,” (the tour guide’s words, not mine)
• Homosexuality between men is illegal (to this day), but it is not illegal between women (because Queen Victoria though women would never want to do it anyways)
• It is illegal for a woman to be in a brothel (in modern times) without a registration card
• Since Raffles initially allowed it, one of the caveats of the prostitution regulation is that the working women must be the sole collector of their working fees.  Pimps are illegal

Overall, it was a very enjoyable tour, and it certainly scratched my itch for better understanding the place I currently call home.  I look forward to going on more of these tours and diving a bit more into what is a very rich and vibrant history of Singapore, once you look past all the skyscrapers and shopping malls.

The animal exhibits did a fantastic job of hiding the barriers, and in some regards, there weren’t any!  Emu and kangaroo are effectively free-roaming, as are the Orang Utans (did you know that is two words? I learned that at the zoo!).  Though the barriers are well hidden, I still feel like some of the habitats are particularly small, and I much prefer the concept of mixed-species exhibits when it means larger exhibit areas (e.g. the African savannah exhibit where Rhino and Ostrich roam together, etc.).  The zoo is expanding, so hopefully new habitats are designed with this in mind.

The most stunning animal award certainly goes to the White Tigers, and the otters are… otter-ly adorable.  The Elephant show is comical and the monkeys are bountiful.  It was crowded as well, but that’s every place in Singapore. Of course, the aspect I most appreciate is the greenery.  It’s a lush spot where you can get away for a bit and forget the city and its buildings.

Pictures are my Flickr page, and the link to that is at the bottom of the blog.

Yet it was a task that had to be accomplished, because the entire IT curriculum and knowledge base in Kenya was founded upon Microsoft Windows.  Which then brings into light a second challenge of IT in the developing world: convincing users there are other options in the first place.  This is not just a challenge I faced, but one faced by most anyone who brings with them the ideologies of another IT camp attempting to displace the dominant force.  Organizations like Camara and World Computer Exchange make it part of their organizational missions to promote open source software alternatives; not just in applications but also at the operating system level.  The International Computer Drivers License attempts to make its curriculum open source compatible and  finally, organizations like Voices of Africa attempt to take advantage of the benefits of open source as an effective means to accomplish their goals (in this case, enabling disenfranchised Kenyan youth  to share their stories with the world).

There is a battle being waged in the approach towards the IT needs of the developing world.  In all the scenarios of which I have been a part, the argument always boils down to the, “Linux because it’s safe and free,” camp against the, “Microsoft because that’s what everyone uses,” camp.  However, neither of these answers has ever completely fulfilled, or come close to fulfilling, what I consider to be the true needs of the an organization, and I was always left wondering, “what could we be doing better?”

The issue is not an issue of Windows versus Linux, or for the rare occasion, Mac OS. The true issue lies at assessing the needs of the user, and how proponents present IT in a way that makes it seem both maintainable and accessible.  What are the factors that must be taken into consideration when choosing how to administrate, teach, or just use personal computers in the developing world? 

In this series of posts, I will outline what I consider to be the software needs of the developing world and highlight how current solutions both succeed and fail at meeting those needs.  From there, I will propose steps that can and should be taken in order to curb any fallout from the current course of IT in the developing world.  I hope this series sparks some interest and discussion regarding the topic, as I know it’s a continuously ongoing debate amongst those working in ICT for development.

N.B. Of course, for the non-technical readers of my blog, I will continue to update with non-technical posts interspersed with my technical ones, so don’t go running away.