Youthful innovation at Apps4Africa | eLearning Africa News Portal

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Eric Mutta, Tanzania

?Innovation works well for large companies, but it?s not so easy for a sole trader to gain recognition,? says Eric Mutta, a software designer whose latest app won him recognition in the Apps4Africa Climate Challenge. But it?s through youthful innovation that Africa will find long-term solutions to long-standing problems.

Rural farming communities and those whose livelihoods are directly impacted by the vagaries of climate change can benefit greatly from better use of ICTs in alleviating poverty and finding ways to farm sustainably. Not leaving the innovation to outsiders, developers and entrepreneurs across the Continent have been working on mobile and computer-based systems which tackle climate change in creative ways. This creativity was rewarded by the US Department of State?s Bureau of African Affairs in the Apps4Africa Climate Challenge. January 14th, 2012 saw the announcement of the East Africa winners of the competition at a colourful ceremony in Masindi, Uganda.

The winners

First place went to ?The Grainy Bunch? by 29 year old Eric Mutta of Tanzania for an application that has wide implications for nationwide food and economic security. It is a grain supply management system that monitors the purchase, storage, distribution and consumption of grain across the whole country. Mutta took up programming thirteen years ago and has steadily worked on ever more ambitious projects: from an sms-based mobile dating service which, at its peak in 2010 had 10 000 members, to his prize-winning Grainy Bunch. ??I?ve learnt that innovation works well for large companies, but it?s not so easy for a sole trader.? In the past, I had to spend a lot of time convincing people and explaining the significance of my apps. As they say: ?a prophet receives no honour in his own home?, but my defiance has paid off.? With the US$15 000 prize money, he plans to hire a programmer and continue to develop apps that will solve problems in society. ?I have to figure out how to turn $15 000 into $15 billion in fifteen years,? he chuckles.

The second place in the East Africa competition went to Kenya for the Mkulima Calculator which looks at climate and locality data to help farmers decide which crops to plant and when. The app focuses on the country?s most commonly grown crops: beans, maize, potatoes, rice, and wheat using national data published by the FAO. The climate data are from Nairobi Meteorological Centre?s records from 1940 to 2008.

In an interview with eLearning Africa, Jonathan Gosier, the Director of Product for SwiftRiver at Ushahidi and founder of AppAfrica said that he was impressed with the standard of entries received in the competition.? ?We still have two months of the competition left for people in the Southern Africa region, but we had over two hundred applications in the West/Central and East Africa segments of the competition.? And it seems that those throwing their hats in the ring were not pretenders. ?The standard was really high!? says Gosier. ?About half the applications were more than just ideas; they were actually apps that entrants had developed, but we also accepted ideas.?

This was the case with the third prize, which was awarded to Agro Universe of Uganda. The mobile and web-based application serves as a marketplace for crops by linking communities in need with those who have the required produce. The team of ten has not yet developed the app, but with the $3000 prize money, it will be easier to turn the idea into reality.

The drive for home-grown solutions

It is important for climate change solutions and mitigation strategies to be formulated by Africans. Gosier explains, ?Every country in the world has to figure out the best way to move forward during times of change and stress.? African countries are no different: They have a voice in their future. These solutions need to come from Africans because the proposed solutions need to consider the long-term impact on society as well as the short term gains. They also need to be sustainable, and unfortunately many of the solutions offered by foreign NGOs tend to be short term solutions in that they lack the element of sustainability that would give them long term impact.?

Picking the winners

Deciding which ICTs showed promise was no easy feat for the judging panel. Gosier explains that the committee was made up of technical experts, climate experts, social entrepreneurs and eco-activists from all over the world. The criteria which the judges sought in selecting the winners included the potential to scale the project beyond the country where it was developed, focusing on the theme of climate change and adaptation, and the impact that the application developer sought to achieve. The winning apps embody these ideals whilst simultaneously showcasing how young African developers are championing ICTs in creating sustainable solutions to today?s environmental challenges.

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Source: http://www.elearning-africa.com/eLA_Newsportal/youthful-innovation-at-apps4africa/

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Spears' sister was 'scared' to get birth control

By Us Weekly

Jamie Lynn Spears in Hollywood in 2007.

Long before Amber Portwood and Jenelle Evans gained notoriety on MTV's "Teen Mom," there was another pregnant 16-year-old making headlines: Jamie Lynn Spears.

Now 21, the former Nickelodeon star opens up to Glamour?about how giving birth to daughter Maddie (with then-boyfriend Casey Aldridge) changed her life forever.

PHOTOS: Famous teen mothers

"It was 2007. I had been on a Nickelodeon show, "Zoey 101," and after we wrapped shooting, I just wanted to go home to Louisiana and finish high school, be a cheerleader, all that. Then I found out I was pregnant," she tells the magazine's March issue. "I was young. I was in love. I was like every other teenager, except I had this last name. And I made a decision that is forever my decision."

PHOTOS: Can you spot Jamie Lynn's baby bump?

Jamie Lynn wasn't using birth control at the time because "like many young girls, I was really scared to go to the doctor." The reason? "I was on a Nickelodeon show, and it felt especially embarrassing to ask someone to put me on birth control ... I did feel responsible for the young girls and the mothers who I probably confused and let down. I apologize for that. But I wasn't trying to glamorize teen pregnancy."

"Everybody is dealt a hand of cards," Jamie Lynn reasons. "It was my choice to play them the way I played them. But the hateful comments hurt."

The star leaned on her older sister Britney Spears, 30, for support. "[Our bond as mothers], it's such a big thing, you know? Especially 'cause there's an age gap there -- she's 10 years older. I think if I were just a normal 20-year-old, I wouldn't be able to relate as much to her."

PHOTOS: Britney's incredible life so far!

Now that her life is more balanced, Jamie Lynn plans to re-join the music industry.

"I was a kid who did a kid show. Then I went away and raised my child, and the world has never met me as an adult. This is the first time anybody is really meeting me as a grown woman and grown mother making a decision about what to do with my life," she tells Glamour.

"Do people have an idea of who they think I am? Yes, and that's fine with me," Jamie Lynn says. "My music will speak for itself."

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/02/10302581-jamie-lynn-spears-i-wasnt-trying-to-glamorize-teen-pregnancy

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Humpbacks share ocean, but not their songs

Humpback whales living on different sides of the southern Indian Ocean bellow very different songs, suggesting the behemoths don't mingle much, or at least they aren't freely sharing their musical material, a new study finds.

The results, published in the January issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, give scientists more information about how culture in the form of these songs spreads among these whales that can reach lengths of 50 feet (15 meters).

Among humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), males are the typical crooners, singing their tunes at a population's winter breeding grounds, along migration routes and at summer feeding grounds. The songs consist of complex arrangements of so-called themes, which are mixes of wails, moans and shrieks that get repeated in cycles lasting up to 30 minutes, according to the researchers.

Like disc jockeys fading out one song while starting another, humpback whales also transition between song themes; these transitional "phrases" combine bits from both the preceding and subsequent themes. (A past mathematical analysis revealed just how complex these songs are, using grammatical rules to string together hours-long melodies.)

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   4. Humpbacks share ocean, but not their songs

While past research has suggested humpbacks sharing the same ocean basin also share similar songs, the new study suggests that's not the case for the two populations on both sides of the southern Indian Ocean.

The scientists used hydrophones to record humpback whale songs from 19 individuals in two spots along the coast of Madagascar and three areas along Western Australia during the 2006 breeding season. The team captured more than 20 hours of whale song (either whole song cycles or fragments of songs). Their analysis revealed a total of 11 different themes in both regions, with just one theme shared by both populations.

"Songs from Madagascar and Western Australia only shared one similar theme, the rest of the themes were completely different," said lead author Anita Murray, who conducted the research while a graduate student at Columbia University and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Murray and colleagues say the reason for the song anomaly is a mystery.

"It could be the influence of singing whales from other ocean basins, such as the South Pacific or Atlantic, indicating an exchange of individuals between oceans which is unique to the Southern Hemisphere," said Murray, who is currently a doctoral student at the University of Queensland in Australia.

The researchers note the findings are limited by the fact that they are based on just one breeding season, and further research is needed to elucidate the reasons behind the whales' distinct songs.

As for why the two populations share one song, the researchers speculate that "some number of males from Madagascar and Western Australia could potentially be in acoustic contact during the feeding season and during this contact cultural transmission in song content would occur," they write in the journal article.

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46243693/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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[ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered ] Open Question : Do ...

I had one last night of my girlfriend and her ex at a party with me. Her ex shows me a ring under the bed and says she?s married and she?s not who I think she is.The next dream consists of my girlfriend driving her car over a bridge. I?m on the passenger side. She jumps out of the car and I?m left in there to plunge into the river and I don?t think I survived.Do these dreams have anything to do with my relationship with her? She recently suggested we needed a break.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Answers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://top24-news.com/2012/02/02/lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgendered-open-question-do-you-think-these-dreams-have-anything-to-do-with-my-current-relationship/

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Source: http://artikelplaatsen.com/computers-en-internet/expand-your-business-venture-internet-with-these-online-promotion-ideas

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Canon imageFormula DR-C125

Canon document scanners are almost uniformly impressive beasts, so I had high expectations for the Canon imageFormula DR-C125 ($495 direct). I wasn't disappointed. Just like the Editors' Choice Canon DR-2580C ($875 street, 4.5 stars) ?which I reviewed in 2005, but is still one of the best desktop scanners available? the DR-C125 is fast for a desktop scanner and remarkably fast for scanning, recognizing text, and saving to a searchable PDF file. That's enough to make it an easy pick for Editors' Choice.

Designed for a small or home office or as a personal scanner in any size office, the DR-C125 offers a suitably small footprint, at 11.8 by 6.1 inches (WD). Even better, unlike most desktop scanners, it doesn't need extra room for an output tray.

Paper normally follows a U-shaped path. Starting from the 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) in back, it moves under the scanner, takes a u-turn, and continues up to the output tray that's parallel to the scanner front. For heavier weight paper or business cards, you can bypass the output tray with a nearly straight-through path that pushes the paper out through a slot in the front.

Setup and Software
Setting up the DR-C125 is mostly standard fare. However, I have one quibble with the installation program, which treats the applications that come with the scanner almost as an afterthought. When you run the installation, you have to choose between a Typical or Custom install, which really should be called Minimal and With Programs.

With most installation routines, the Typical option would install everything. With the DR-C125, however, it installs only the driver, scan utility, and user manual. Worse, it doesn't tell you that other programs are available, or that you can install them only if you choose the Custom option.

Choose Custom, and you get the rest of the software you paid for, including PaperPort 11 for document management, OmniPage SE4 for optical character recognition (OCR), Presto! Buzzard 6 SE for business cards, and recopy PDF Pro Office for working with PDF files. You can also install an Evernote connector that lets you scan directly to Evernote.

As you might have noticed, most of the applications are either SE versions or older versions. The current version of PaperPort, for example, is PaperPort Professional 14 ($199.99 direct), well beyond the version 11 Canon provides. Although not as robust as the full versions of the current programs, however, the software is capable enough to handle most personal or small office needs.

Scan Speed and Document Management
The DR-C125's 600 pixel per inch optical (ppi) resolution is typical for document scanners, and more than you need for scanning text. The default resolution is 200 ppi, which is also typical, and all you need for most documents.

In my tests using the Canon scan utility to scan directly to image PDF files at the default 200 ppi and color mode settings, I timed the scanner at 25.4 pages per minute (ppm) in simplex mode, just a touch faster than the 25 ppm rating. For duplex mode it was essentially the same speed per page, or 50 images per minute (ipm), with one image on each side of the page.

Far more impressive is that the scanner didn't slow down at all when I scanned directly to a searchable PDF format, which is generally the most useful format for document management applications. Even with the added step of recognizing the text, it took just 1 minute for 25 pages or 50 images.

Being able to recognize text without slowing down is something very few scanners can manage. For document management applications that depend on searchable PDF files, it makes the DR-C125 much faster in practice than other scanners that offer faster raw scan speed, but add time for recognizing the text. The Editors' Choice Kodak i2600 ($1,195 direct, 4 stars) came in at 76.9 ipm for scanning duplex pages to image files, for example, but with text recognition added, it slowed down from 39 seconds for a 25-page, 50-image file to 1 minute 16 seconds.

Other Test Results
The DR-C125 also scored extremely well on our OCR test and reasonably well on our business card test. In combination with OmniPage, it read our Times New Roman test page at sizes as small as 8 points, and our Arial test page at 6 points, without a mistake. It also did surprisingly well with some additional fonts that aren't part of our official tests, because most scanners do so poorly with them. In particular, it read two highly stylized fonts with thick strokes at sizes as small at 8 points without a mistake.

On our business card tests, the scanner had no problems feeding stacks of cards, with BizCard doing a reasonably good job of recognizing the text, parsing it, and putting the data in the right fields.

This combination of speed, OCR accuracy, and business card handling is impressive for the price. Even more impressive is the ability to recognize text and save to a searchable PDF file without slowing down. All this makes the Canon DR-C125 both an Editors' Choice and, for those who need to scan to searchable PDF format, a potentially better choice than faster, more expensive scanners that slow down when recognizing text.

More Scanner Reviews:
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/z9EbiVdterI/0,2817,2399603,00.asp

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Airline fee rules herald return of honest price tags

By Bob Sullivan

Cry as it might about the new federal rules designed to clarify flight ticket prices, the airline industry brought this on itself. The hidden fees and ?after charges? encountered by flying consumers had reached such absurdity that one might rightly call them an attack on the English language.

Witness, for example, Spirit Airlines "passenger usage fee," which adds up to $16.99 to flights purchased online ? each way.? The fee?s name implies that buying a ticket costs one price, but actually using it costs extra.? That's absurd.? It's also not quite what Spirit is doing -- the fee is assessed to consumers who purchase tickets through the airline?s Website. The only way to avoid the fee is to buy tickets at the airline's airport counters.??

Spirit Airlines held "The Weiner Sale" last year, with airfares advertized as low as $9 each way to selected cities.

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Either way, consumers have had enough, and now the Department of Transportation has, too.? Could similar rules for other industries, such as cell phones or pay television, be far behind?

On Thursday, new consumer-friendly federal Department of Transportation rules kicked in that require airlines to quote prices including all required fees and taxes.? The airlines aren't happy and have filed lawsuits over the requirement.

But already, consumers should notice the changes. For example, in the past, you might typically see an ad for a $199 one-way fare that in reality cost $245 after security fees, taxes, and other tack-on charges were applied. Now, airlines must use the $245 figure in an ad. (AlaskaAir.com uses this example on its Website.)

The rules do not require inclusion of "optional" fees, such as checked luggage costs, in the advertised price -- so consumers still have a lot of homework to do when they are shopping around for the best deal on a ticket.

Still, after years of battling what I've called "The Death of the Price Tag," a phenomenon that makes it nearly impossible for consumers to properly comparison shop for many products and services they buy, there's finally a small reason to celebrate.

"Now there are no more '$9 fare' sales. Airlines have to advertise the full price," said Christopher Elliot, a travel writer and author of ?Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals." ?(For some airlines) deception has been their business model. It's definitely not only the airlines who were doing this kind of thing, but they have made an art out of it."?

Chris Schneider / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Travelers wait in line for security screening at Denver International Airport in this file pic.

The new rules clean up some other advertised price issues, too. For years, airlines have hawked bargain-basement round-trip tickets by slicing the price in half and publishing a one-way fare -- even in situations where purchase of a round-trip ticket was required. In other words, there was no way to buy something anywhere near the price in the ad. The new rules require prominent disclosure of the round-trip price.

Edgar Dworsky, who operates Mouseprint.org, cheered the changes and said other federal regulators should consider similar requirements.

"The car rental industry is notorious for quoting a low daily rates, but when you add up the fees and everything else, the price comes out to 20, 30, even 40 percent above the stated price," he said. He also cited a friend in New York who recently signed up for cable television and Internet service after answering an ad claiming the price would be $99 per month. ?His bill was $147. He didn't realize he would be charged extra for a box in every room, and goodness knows what else."?

Tack-on fees are huge business for the airlines. Domestic carriers collected nearly $5.7 billion in baggage and change fees alone in 2010, according to Consumers Union. So naturally, the airline industry is hardly going down without a fight. Spirit Airlines is risking the wrath of regulators by railing against the new rules with a large pop-up notice placed on its home page labeled "Warning." The notice accuses regulators of planning to "carry out their hidden agenda and quietly increase their taxes...And if they can do it to the airline industry, what's next?"

Industry trade associations are also complaining about the change. Steve Lott, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, has complained in several publications that "basic economics" dictate consumers will shy away from flying because prices appear to be higher.

In other words, Lott suggests, deceptively low price tags are good for the economy. If that were true, then fixing the economy would be easy -- simply let all retailers cut the price tags they place on items by 50 percent.??

In reality, price transparency is essential for economic activity, and it's just as likely that more clarity will lead to more purchases, not fewer.

Sadly, the new airline rules go only half-way toward real price transparency in the airline industry.? The aforementioned Spirit Airlines "passenger usage fee" still rates as optional in this new system, so it would not be included in advertised prices.

The real solution, says Elliot, is to force airlines to offer up their entire fee schedules to third parties that could create true apples-to-apples comparisons for consumers.?

"There are still some fees that were traditionally included in the price of the ticket that are, as the industry calls it, 'unbundled,? now,? he said. "What would be great is if there were some way of forcing them to release data to the outside world, to online travel agencies, so they could build a fare tool that would include all of that."

And the simplest form of consumer protection in America would be a rule that simply forbids all firms from advertising a price for any item -- monthly cable service, airplane tickets, or a telephone line -- that is impossible to get. The problem is so rampant that many industries, such as auto sales, have adopted twisted language like "out-the-door-price? or ?OTD price" to distinguish between fake price tags and real ones.? The Department of Transportation has taken one small step in this direction; other regulators should take notice.

Other friendly features of the new DOT airline regulations:

*Consumers now have 24 hours to cancel flight purchases without penalty, as long as the flight is at least seven days in the future.? That will give consumers extra time to shop around for prices; it will also allow them to get out of bookings made in error. Some airlines already extend such refunds to consumers as a courtesy; now, they all have to do it.

*Also, airlines must display baggage fees on the first screen of Websites containing a fare quotation for a specific itinerary, and must show the fees on ticket confirmation notices, too, the DOT says.

?

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Source: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10273610-new-airline-rules-give-meaning-to-price-tags-other-industries-should-follow

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