Sanaga Peregrinations

I was checking the latest article of Business Insider regarding the top 20 Innovative Startups in Tech  and the 20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need To Watch . I found some interesting tools and services, that I'd definitely see myself using or that I have already started using. Among all the products, here are the ones that caught my attention: iDoneThis is one of the gem I've recently discovered, it introduces the concept of "to done list " (vs todo list). It's a productivity tool that work the other way round, in the sense that the diary-based information helps you track your activities and achievements on a daily basis. DropBox  created a way to easily share and store files all over the web. Of all the cloud-based files storages services, this one is by far my favorite. Did I mention, it's free? yeah, it's free and it is a big plus for me. Hotel Tonight helps you make a last-minute hotel reservation from your mobile device (iOS and Androi...

Maybe Money does buy happiness after all ( New York Times ). Recent studies present a rebuttal of the Easterlin Paradox under which, " people in poor countries, not surprisingly, did become happier once they could afford basic necessities. But beyond that, further gains simply seemed to reset the bar. To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPod doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPod Touch. Relative income — how much you make compared with others around you — mattered far more than absolute income (..) Economic growth, by itself, certainly isn’t enough to guarantee people’s well-being — which is Mr. Easterlin’s great contribution to economics. (...) Economic growth can also pay for investments in scientific research that lead to longer, healthier lives. It can allow trips to see relatives not seen in years or places never visited. When you’re richer, you can decide to work less — and spend more time with your friends. " Tomorrow's emerging markets ( W...

Back in 2005, BusinessWeek (via Gapingvoid.com) had an article about blogs entitled " Blogs will change your business ". Back then, blogs were said to be a "prerequisite". Were they really? Maybe, maybe not, that's not the point of this post. The article continues stating " blog power simply doesn't translate yet into big bucks. For now, it's running mostly on people's passion to communicate ". That was 2 years ago, did that change a lot? Well, quite not much if you read this post from Alex Iskold on ReadWriteWeb : There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere . " Because of the power law, the long tail of the blogosphere is huge and so any individual blog is not easily discovered. That is, the chance that a random Internet surfer will find a blog that is part of the long tail is nearly zero. Whatever monetization means the blogger in the long tail settled on, be it Google AdSense or Amazon affiliate codes, it can only work...

Sharing with you some of the tabs opened in my browser. Le Cameroun simplifie la prise en charge du Sida ( Le Figaro ). According to the article, around 500,000 people are currently infected in Cameroon, that makes 1 person out of 34 has HIV. nc No picnic - A teddy bear row in Sudan ( The Economist ). " In more elevated western circles, it is becoming commoner to hear the view that Islam itself (rather than any extremist interpretations of the faith) is posing a challenge to western values that must be resisted. And if that view becomes more respectable, so too does a defensive Muslim reaction, which is often tinged with geopolitical grievance. " Facebook search expands — will it take on Google? ( VentureBeat ). New questions (read speculations) are raised about " Facebook’s ambitions, as it finds itself the David against the Google Goliath. Will it pull out the ultimate slingshot: a full-fledged search engine for the web, not just the Facebook site? This question is ...

For those of you who still wonder... :) Source image: Hugh Mc Leod, Gaping Void Tags: misc , blogging , Hugh mc Leod

Pour ceux qui débarquent, il y a toujours le lexique usuel du Camfranglais. Les Camerounais c'est bien connu n'aiment pas faire comme les autres (n'en est-il pas de même pour tous les peuples) et se sont inventés un répertoire lexical original. Certains d'entre-vous connaissent probablement le blog d'Etounou , que pour ma part je ne découvre que maintenant. J'ai un coup de coeur pour la rubrique " Parler Camerounais ", on y retrouve les explications de nos expressions bien Kmer " je suis en haut " etc... Il dépeint aussi des figures de notre tissu social tels que le "Fournisseur". On attend avec impatience la traduction des "grandes ambitions". Sur Etounou, on parle multi-lingue, francais, anglais, pidgin, francamer etc...Kans, son auteur ne manque pas d'humour tant dans les posts et que dans le "kosh" de ses commentaires. Bon vents à Etounou! Kans, si tu pouvais agrandir les images des dessins sur le blog, ...

Pour les plus curieux ou ceux ayany l'oeil alerte vous aurez remarqué un nouveau widget dans la section de droite du blog. Je viens de rajouter Sanaga à l'aggrégateur de blog africain Afrigator . Le mantra d'AfriGator est simple et ne va pas sans rappeler celui de GlobalVoices : " Africa's talking - are you listening? " Un outil bien pensé avec un beau design où les bloggeurs sont invités à s'enregistrer selon leur pays : celui ci peut-être soit le pays d'où vous blogguez, soit celui où vous êtes né (c'est mon cas), soit le pays de votre coeur (Ethan Zuckerman se retrouvant ainsi ghanéen - lire son post sur "the rise of the african aggregator ). L'outil fournit aussi des statistiques que je ne manquerai pas de comparer à celles de statcounter ou de google analytics. Les blogs sont donc classés par pays, mais aussi par côte de popularité. Un moyen simple et efficace de lire ce que les autres bloggeurs du continent écrivent. Je suis déjà ab...

Few days ago, we moved Sanaga Peregrinations to the new version of blogger. The transferring part was smooth enough, but few shells started appearing now and then. We are taking advantage of this holiday season to do some additional tweaks. I hope you'll like it. Any feedback on the new version will be much appreciated. Holy and Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays to all of you. Tags: blogging