On this episode of Spark:
- Bill Perry’s tale of two laptops
- Nathan Eagle empowers people in the Dominican Republic and Kenya through text messages with txteagle (full interview)
- Ken Njoroge sells ringtones to Kenyans
- Canada’s Digital Wish List: Lynn Sutherland
- Charles Zamaria and Sylvain Grand’Maison on the French-English digital divide in Canada (full interview with Charles Zamaria)
- Nora asks for your thoughts on the future of the phone book
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “Kalimba Loop,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “Our Slanted Voices“ by DoKashiteru
- “A second opinion on love” by colab
- “Le monde” by Nurykabe
Play audio:
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For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
Original photo by whiteafrican
From the sounds of Mr. Parry’s predicament, he may be the unwitting victim of either a spam harvester or spam botnet. I’m curious to know what kind of security software he was using, because security software or lack thereof could be the root of the problem, with the amount of malware that can use computers as “zombies” in such botnets.
Nathan Eagle’s endeavours in the Dominican Republic and Africa underscore Canada’s poor telecom situation.
Canada’s demographics are similar in many respects to African countries: we have diverse populations speaking several different languages. In Africa, this makes entrepreneurs like Nathan Eagle and mobile phone companies allies: Eagle’s service can provide translations that phone companies can use. Why don’t we have something similar happening in Canada? The big telecos (Bell, Telus, Rogers) would just as soon crush any competition than work with it. They are more concerned with preserving their huge profit margins than making Canada a leader in mobile phone technology.
With its launch of the free Android operating system for mobile phones, Google is showing where it thinks the future of the Internet resides, and I agree. We need to get ahead of the curve on this one.
Greetings!
First above all, I must congratulate my fellow podcaster / blogger Sylvain Grandmaison which was part of the Episode 47.
As a Quebec “FrenchFrog” as the ROC call us, myself, I must admit that for the “common” of the people who is, in fact, mostly French in the Province of Quebec, the access to entertainment, podcasts, sites, etc. in our primary language is not that simple at first.
But listen, the Web IS the key… The more French Bloggers / Podcasters will talk about the availability of those technologies, the more French people will get informed.
However, not to criticize my friend Sylvain, don’t get me wrong, but nothwithstanding our first language, we must get used to this. People HAVE to learn English today. 10 years ago, it was only an “option” when companies hired you. Now, even a third language would be even better to have in knowledge. French people have to open themselves to the “Business Language”. Let’s face it, we are 7 million people who could not catch up English with the US and the ROC surrounding us, while France, with 60 million people can? Come on, were better than that
We’re open-minded here, no?
I love this show!
I’ll be listening!
I really like Nathan Eagle’s idea of utilizing the celphone TXT system for distributed mini tasks. In some sense it works like SETI@home but instead of donating your unused CPU cycles, you’re donating/selling unused human brain time (while you’re waiting in line for instance). But I agree with @Ben Babcock that our great big Canadian telcos will only disrupt the development of such brilliant idea.
P.S. I really appreciate and enjoy the works from CBC for opening up their materials to the community via various open platforms such as the podcast channels and blogs. Keep up the good work!
@Jeepu,
I hadn’t thought of SETI@home, but that’s a really good comparison. It also reminded me a bit of the interview we did with Clay Shirky, about people using their ‘cognitive surplus’.
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2008/05/full_interview_clay_shirky_on.html
It does make you wonder what problems we could solve if we coordinated even a little of our efforts.
Not to be harsh, but Bill Perry was socially irresponsible in not updating his computer. I don’t mean the hardware, but rather the software. He was no doubt running Windows 98 due to the age of his original laptop. That particular OS is very susceptible to viruses, malware, and general hacking, especially when not patched and updated.
Some malware/virus harvested his email address book because of his inactions. To be fair, Microsoft and all the mainstream computer manufacturers market their products like they are appliances when they are not. Further they do not tell you about the dangers of putting you computer on the Internet and the steps required to safe-guard against them.
The long and the short of it is, Mr. Perry’s new laptop is not to blame but rather his old one. I hope he regularly updates his new one. Maybe he should have bought a Mac.
Howdie!
I enjoyed the recent edition of spark, however I don’t quite share the shame sentiment. To illustrate that:
As Microsoft failed to correct programming mistakes with new OS’s like Vista (gotta love the latest Apple tv ads where the Vista dude starts selling Chamomille tea against freaked out Vista-Crash-victims), instead just puts another level of programming over the other existing ones, has had an almost monopolistic market share for a decade, it is obvious that this market (what ever condition you may perceive it is in) DID NOT RENDER THE BEST PRODUCT.
I loved the SMS translations in Africa, was disappointed though not to hear anything about the latest LINUX developments, which, especially with latest releases, offer incredible, completely compatible software applications at NO COST. Instead of forcing the consumer into gearing up with ever faster, cost extensive new machines, the newest edition of UBUNTUSTUDIO runs on older pcs just fine.
I hope to hear more about the endless possibilities of this wonderful, free (isn’t it amazing, that this product emerged and is now MORE STABLE than the commercial versions, because of the programming contributers believing, that the tools to education and information SHOULD BE FREE, and putting all this together in a team IN THEIR SPARE TIME?) OS in one of the next spark editions and would like to direct your attention to the following links to research this exiting topic further:
http://www.ubuntu.org (“humanity towards others”)
http://www.ubuntustudio.org (artist edition with video and audio editors and graphic programs)
http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-studio-8.04
http://crashrecovery.org/CrashRecoveryKit/README-BURNING-ISOS-en_US.html
Best regards and peace out
Maren
A note on the French-English digital divide in Canada. Another reason that the internet is not very welcoming to French-speakers is the number of companies (large, international companies) that provide very, very poor French translations of their websites. For example, if you go to Amazon.com from a Canadian ISP, you get a message that asks “Magazinez-vous depius le Canada?” and directs you to Amazon.ca. This is a incredibly bad (probably machine) translation of “Shopping from Canada?”
I’ve twice tried to email Amazon to point out this error, but my emails simply generate automatic customer-service replies. It’s no wonder francophones are less enamoured with the internet if this is the quality of service they receive from the biggest online companies!
Posted about the ‘Canadian Internet Project’ report on my blog and wonder about an apparent discrepancy between what seems to be being said here and the report.
On page 9 of the executive summary available online, it reads:
“Demographically, non-users are more frequent among Anglophones than among Francophones, more numerous in Quebec and Ontario than in other provinces (…)”
Have I misunderstood the interview? Or the report?
I find it the height of irony, after listening to Mr Zamaria’s comments, that his Canadian Internet Project’ website is available only in English, with French documents buried inside. Not to mention the fact that the report is available only in English. Perhaps a translation of the full document and the association’s website is coming?
In Quebec, we are used to delays for this kind of thing …