Showcasing Ghana 2008 with ICT (2)

So, you are keen to show Ghana off to the world—especially after that resounding trounce by the Black Stars, of Morocco. Even if we are a week away from the finals of the 26th edition of CAN 2008, it is still never too late to do one’s bit for Mother Ghana.

Camera Never Lies
Your average digital camera of between 4-5 mega-pixels can take a close-up picture of even your television set. Maybe you were not at the stadium, but you would like to be original? Grab your camera, focus it on the TV set, and capture (replays of) the image of the symmetrical Essien-Muntari delivery for posterity.

You can toe the line, if you are armed with your camera phone—but do bear in mind that unless you are holding a NOKIA N95, which already comes equipped with 5 megapixels (MP) your average camera phone will range from VGA--(640X480) to 2.0MP—enabled film quality. However, it will be a little less for wear—for the quality is never going to be tantamount to a dedicated digital camera.

After you have captured that picture, you might want to consider creating a video capture. Your average digital camera (be it SAMSUNG, CANON, KODAK or less well-known brands) will be equipped with video, but your mobile phone is a different kettle of fish altogether. Whether the capacity is unlimited or not, its ability to record clips depends – yet again -- on the capacity of your SD card. I found out very recently that the ever-popular MOTOROLA RAZR V3 flip-phone does not accommodate this type of card, going to confirm the suspicion that the aesthetics of a phone in no way determines its quality.

Once you’ve taken a video clip, you have to upload the picture somewhere. You can chose to store it on your computer or your laptop (if you have one). What you could also do is upload it onto the Internet. Question is where to?

Gee, this mail is good!
First of all, Google’s PICASA is a great place to start. By going to picasaweb.google.com/m/ on your phone, you will be asked to input your email and password. It’s preferable that you have a google mail, or GMAIL, account. Gmail, to be frank, is all the rage these days. For the fact that you can check any of your emails (yahoo is the only one that remains problematic being checked in gmail) through the service, and have unlimited and ever-expanding space (right now, it’s 63.4 GB and counting!) makes it a boon to both the luddites and tech-savvy people who might be both awed and impressed by the extent of this technology.

For instance, I have the priviledge of being able to check my work email through GMAIL—and respond to those mails accordingly. Excuses of not having received emails are (regrettably!) a thing of the past—as most people are cottoning onto how the service works. That my boss has now asked for assistance on the setting up of GMAIL has personally reminded me my bag of excuses around emails never being received have comprehensively bitten the dust!

In all seriousness, with your gmail account, you can access picasa on the web, and begin your uploading of those beautiful pictures of re-plays by our national team.

Secondly, FLICKR.com—a photo-sharing site—is also another great place to go. By clicking on http://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile/ , you can read up more about how to upload from your mobile phone. It might interest you to know that the top 5 camera phones uploading on that mobile site are: NOKIA N95; Apple I-Phone; Nokia N73; Sony Ericsson K800i and W810i. Incidentally, this is not a Google product--prepare to have your YAHOO email accounts ready for use on this site!

In order to avoid wasting more chances than striker Asamoah-Gyan in the Namibia-Ghana game last week, it might be a good idea to consider creating an online site where your thoughts can be recorded in reverse chronological order—or a blog.

Ready to Hit the Blogosphere?
For the past five years, blogs have also been the latest wrinkle, with one statistic claiming that in early 2007, bloggers would hit the 100 million point. You can imagine that if most Westerners are experimenting with blogs, then a fraction of that number will be by non-Western once, including African ones. This should not discourage you in setting up your own blog. A five-minute process, you can set up one on TYPEPAD.com; WORDPRESS.com and BLOGGER.com. The latter is one of the more popular platforms, and, you can probably guess, owned by Google.

Given that periods likes these turn the average citizen into an armchair strategist and well-experienced coach, why not take the opportunity to showcase some of your analysis and technical skills by writing and maintaining a blog—today!

Connecting Which People?
Nokia says that it’s done a survey, in which more than 50% of respondents in India, Pakistan and nearly 30% in Vietnam have indicated that they share, or would share, their mobile phone with family or friends. I don’t see Africa there, yet Nokia is keen to sell these to so-called emerging markets. Maybe Nigeria might get a look-in. Even so, no-one asked me whether I felt that would infringe my privacy. Whether it’s a cooked survey of the middle class within these countries or not, it can be argued that Nokia is living up to its slogan of connecting people by launching two new mobile phones—the Nokia 2600 and Nokia 1209.

Both phones are designed to be shared by five people, and both handsets would come with multiple phone books (one per person) and a cost-tracker, which would enable one see how much they have spent on calls.

The article from which I found this information claims this is an indication of “how in tune Nokia is with emerging markets.” I am not so convinced. What I do believe, though, is that there might be some value about phone-sharing, in the sense that an increasing number of families are buying mobile phones for the entire family—and not just the household. It’s probably about economics and convenience. The practicalities inherent in phone sharing may be challenging – ensuring that everyone gets to use the phone, for example – but, undoubtedly, we are led to believe that this is the way.

There will be Bluetooth
The new Nokia 2600 comes with a VGA camera (640X480), MP3 Player and FM radio, and will retail for €65.00, or around GHC80.00. The Nokia 1209, conversely, will go for €35.00. Just so that the phone-sharing makes sense, Nokia will most definitely be including nothing less than…Bluetooth.

It is interesting to note that despite the growing dominance of Bluetooth technology, there appears not to be any infra-red—unlike even some of the latest NOKIAs. Can we say that this means it’s dying a certain death?

Showcasing Ghana 2008 with ICT (I)

I had thought that given that it has been exactly a week since Sulley Muntari saved Ghana from disgrace at the 90th minute in the Ghana-Guinea game, normalcy would set in. Then I remembered that as Leonardo di Caprio’s character as a mercenary in Blood Diamonds said to an inquisitive American journalist investigating those diamonds, TIA-- or “This is Africa”.

More specifically, “This is Ghana”, where there are variations of normalcy as far as soccer is involved, but even more so, when football comes home. It is clear that on the ICT front, given the enthusiasm surrounding CAN2008 and the matches, there will continue to be more text messaging than ever.

Last Friday when I was leaving the office for home, I overheard a colleague exclaim to another that “I’ll call you when [Ghana] wins”, adding shortly after that “as for that, I can spare my credits!” Undoubtedly, the camaraderie created by the soccer fiesta is a magnificent reminder of how you most definitely do not need NOKIA to connect people via ICT (tools)!

Whilst we are making a lot of noise about showcasing Ghana, might we turn to some of existing sites out there helping to do just that.

Everywhere You Go
It’s true—it’s everywhere you go; they’ve even got a yellow un-flyable plane at the Tetteh-Quarshie interchange – but they are there. They also happen to be headline sponsors of Ghana’s national team--the Black Stars. Not all is necessarily bad on the MTN front, however. On your mobile phone—through GPRS—you can visit the company’s website mtnfootball.com/mobile. There, you can see summary of results of the latest game, including the score line, and a commentary of how the game went as it was being played.

The London-based Guardian website’s football page on football.guardian.co.uk is also a place to check. I don’t know which news site started the ball-by-ball commentary first, but I re-call that in the 2006 World Cup, those monitoring the Ghanaian games for the Guardian site brought a whole different feel to their game. Coverage of The Cup of African Nations is no exception—for the website, considered one of the most popular online newspapers around, is sure to thrill. You can also get in on your mobile by going to football.guardian.co.uk/pda.

Last June, I opted to leave the oft-inanity of Ghanaian radio to listen more to the BBC World Service. I knew I was right in doing so—as are many BBC listeners, who know they are getting unparalleled quality news and commentary when they listen to news or sport. Just to highlight: a colleague, disappointed by the lack of running commentary for GTV’s coverage of the Ghana-Guinea game last Sunday, decided he’d stick with the station and listen to the commentary from no other than the BBC World Service’s station on 101.3FM.

All that said, accessing CAN2008 score lines and reading up about the tournament on your mobile may prove to be a bit more challenging for your mobile. This is because whereas you can access BBC’s African football website on an easy-to-remember URL like bbc.co.uk/africanfootball, on your mobile, it’s no walk in the park; it’s more like a run through badly-cut grass: news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_sport/football/internationals/! Once you get there, simply click on “Africa Cup of Nations 2008”, and get access to the best of BBC Sport.

Finally, Ghana almost passes the online test with the official Ghanacan2008.com website. Small trick, however, is that you need to access that site via this URL: ghanacan2008.com/fixtures.php. The site is not designed specifically to accommodate mobile phones, hence the need to add the “PHP” extension, which is optimal for computer-based (HTML) web browsers. If you’re looking for news, pictures, and more, you are sure to find it here. Small caveat on the pictures is that the output will be optimized if your phone has a 640X480 or VGA screen, or higher.

Government is Coming Home!
Forget the fact that the ever-popular social networking tool that is FACEBOOK is all the rage these days. Be afraid; be very afraid -- for government is coming closer to home than you might ever want it to. Over-the-moon by the opportunities inherent in the so-called Web 2.0 world that we live in now, where social networking is globalised, and where everyone can connect together in some sort of digital exuberance, Western governments are leaving behind e-government, and replacing it with Web 2.0.

The managing director and COO of Government Insights that came out with a report about this trend says: “Gov 2.0 will replace e-gov as governments seek to gain additional value from citizen interaction and business transactions.” Inevitably, the cue here is the interactivity enshrined in the Web 2.0, which governments are keen to exploit. I specifically use “exploit”, because there’s a double-edged sword inherent within this trend. To me as a private individual, it’s screaming “where’s my privacy!.” I can expect, however, that those seeking to implement it are thinking that it will foster “greater participation and dialogue with citizens.”

What I can personally tell you about the experience with Facebook is that the more Web 2.0 applications are added to the system, the more it has put me off visiting—never mind using Facebook! Being bombarded by “Funwalls” and messages sent to “all friends” and being asked to send imaginary drinks to friends no longer becomes a boon to the pretenders of tech-“savviness”! I can very well imagine government departments adding so many applications to their websites to “enhance dialogue with citizens” they end up eating their own tail, and realizing that Web 2.0 just might be the future—but not for governments.