Stop Reinventing the Flat Tire with Custom Software Development
News flash: most nonprofits are terrible at software development, open-sourcing is not a sustainability plan, and constantly re-inventing the wheel is a poor way...
Respect Myanmar’s Ethnic Diversity: Use Unicode Fonts Online
Burmese is the dominant language of Myanmar, but its had a long and winding journey in the digital realm, and now there is a tension between two competing systems...
10 Theses on Power and Efficacy of ICT4D Indulgences
I am Karl Brown, Associate Director of applied technology at the Rockefeller Foundation, and at the recent Mobiles! convening, I gave a brief talk where I highlighted...
7 Ways We Can Scale ICT4D Pilotitis
One overarching theme from the recent Mobiles! Conference was the need to get past pilotitis – the too many small projects that never scale, dying the day...
Inveneo’s Network Management Software Now Available as Open Source!
Setting up a network generally means configuring a router, a UPS, maybe a NAS appliance and a few access points… Just a few pieces of equipment to serve hundreds...
Why is the Quality of Kenyan Apps Going Down?
I am Kennedy Kachwanya and I think the quality of the apps being created has gone down. Recently I attended Microsoft Imagine Cup competition and I left the...
Two Reasons Why Software as a Service Is a Bad Business Model
Looking around the tech world and you would think Software as a Service (SaaS) is a godsend. All the cool Google services (search, GMail, Docs) are SaaS and the...
Will the Ubuntu Phone Rock the African Software Development Market?
You’re undoubtedly familiar with Ubuntu. An open source OS powerhouse, some argue that Ubuntu has the potential to take a sizable bite out of the cost of deploying...
Africans Should be Developing for Smartphones, Not USSD or Feature Phones
Recently, TechCrunch made the bold prediction that in five years’ time, most sub-Saharan Africans will have smartphones. At first I thought this just more mobile...
83% of all PC Software in East Africa is Pirated: Does it Matter?
In the global market for personal computers, 2010 was a watershed year. For the first time PC shipments to emerging economies outpaced those mature markets, 174...