Google Wave use cases in Africa

With all the Google Wave hype sprouting up all over the web I’ve been left slightly underwhelmed. The reasons are relatively simple; I don’t know enough people using Wave to interact with and I’m not doing business or working on projects with the people I do know on Wave.

With that said though, I can see some potential use cases for Wave in Africa.

Generally there are some fundamental problems with the Internet through Africa. The biggest of the lot involve the digital divide.

Wave in the classroom

Let’s, for a second, imagine that a School A in South Africa partnered with School B in an area that was struggling to find quality educators.

School A provides a computer room with 20 PCs and broadband Internet (potentially sponsored by Telkom/Mweb/etc) and goes to lengths to educate the pupils on web usage and Google Wave. This would be a laborious process, I agree, but let’s just imagine.

What could happen next is almost magical. Students receiving lectures from the teacher at School A could start a Wave, “Mathematics, Grade 12, class 14″. School A’s students and teacher could make notes, upload documents and collaborate on these documents and lecture notes with School B. Thus educators in School A could partially attribute to School B’s education. This is not a foolproof, 100% solid solution to a massive education problem Africa faces, but it is possible.

University collaboration

Along similar lines as the school example above. University lecture and project collaboration could become seamless across African borders. Students and lecturers could share, comment and interact with one another in real-time. No delays, no restrictions (other than the broadband issue) and no bureaucratic processes to concern themselves with while debating with multiple scholars from multiple disciplines across multiple borders. Just simple debate.

Access to previously restricted or hard to reach areas and school of knowledge could be opened up to an immense audience in Africa that his hungry for the chance to interact with other pools of knowledge.

Of course the major challenge with this example is that it hinges on many people committing to a Wave and contributing to it on a consistent basis.

Business Mentoring

Small businesses are the way of the future for South Africa and Africa on a large scale. What many of these small businesses and young entrepreneurs are missing is guidance.

A mentorship Wave that provides valuable readings, insights, guidance and tips could be invaluable to businesses people trying to stake their claim and start up a successful business.

You may argue that many of these business people wont have access to the web, well there are Internet cafes across the country that hundreds of thousands of people use on a daily basis.

More…

Are there any more use cases? Without a doubt. Have we realised the potential of real-time collaboration yet? Probably not. But the future is there for the taking.

Let me know how you might see Google Wave being implemented in Africa.

Machinarium has me hooked, lined and sinking my skull in to my hands at the prospect of having to play a stupid robot at checker (5 in a row) one more time. Dammit. Buy. This. Game.

Wordpress goes mobile but misses the point.

Mashable! today reports that Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes. But “mobile” here refers to iPhones and Android handsets not to the mobile market that we, in Africa, are referring to.

I’m interested to know how many 3rd world (low broadband) countries have Wordpress blogs. What is the number? Is it ten thousand, fifty thousand, more or less?

The reason I ask is because I have a feeling that if Wordpress was to start focusing on lower-end handset models in the mobile market they would open themselves up to a massively neglected market. The market that can’t afford “smartphones”, the market that can’t afford laptops, computers and fixed-line internet.

It’s interesting to think that in 1st world countries the term “mobile” refers to iPhone handsets or “smartphones”. What of the rest of the world? What of the people who don’t have these phones and can’t view the content they are looking for because it costs too much.

Meeting with Marc Smith this month was an eye-opener for many reasons. Firstly he told me that Obama winning a Nobel peace prize was not regarded in very high esteem by Americans. Why? Because if Europeans like their president there must be something wrong him. This seems to echo in the approach of many a large company playing in the online/mobile space.

Why is Wordpress not going after the African market? Why are they not providing those without fixed-line broadband an outlet for their mobile phones to read and write blogs?

To me it feels like a lack of insight and foresight.

Where has all the chocoalte gone????

How quiet is too quiet?

I have recently been chastised at every turn for “falling off the radar” so to speak. By “the radar” most people are referring to that of the social media world; blogs, twitter, the book of face and many others.

But here’s my question, How quiet is too quiet? I don’t feel I’ve dropped of the radar too dramatically. I completely agree that I am blogging less but I think that’s because my paradigms are shifting a bit.

I no longer believe that the web is the best place to throw down your thoughts and hope for some response. I no longer believe that my blogs are the best way for me to spend my time online. I have a job that pushes me to my limits almost every day and fulfills my need to constantly be innovating, creating and developing within a new and uncharted territory. So what do I need blogs for?

Don’t get my wrong, I love my blogs and they are a great outlet for me to do precisely what I am doing right now, a dump of mental thoughts (moughts?) running around my head that help to keep my very few readers up to date with the direction of my thinking and life. That’s it.

SA Rocks serves an entirely different purpose so that’s not really worth discussing in the same context.

Regarding Twitter, the book of face, the space of my, linked in, last fm and any (every) other social network I belong to, I am fast feeling that they are all relatively useless to me. I don’t understand the value of Facebook. Linkedin is a network worth keeping alive, but just barely and the others were great for me when I wanted to keep abreast of the latest tech out there. But right now, I am in a different paradigm that has very little to do with the web and how social it can be right now.

So I think I am being the correct amount of quiet up in here.