All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France.
This quote encapsulates all the wonderful changes that will be happening in my personal and professional life in the New Year.
Stay Tuned
So once in a while i come across a website i really think needs improvement and i usually talk ,blog or rant about the issues it has .
My intention in all this is not to show that the developers didnt do a good job , I am just saying there is a lot of room for improvement .
There are a number sites on my radar at the moment
Instead of writting a blog post everytime i see websites that are not what they should be , I propose we do something about it .
The Plan:I am seeking web developers,designers and usability consultants who will give thier skills pro bono(free) to consult on and even help in house teams to improve or even rebuild these websites .
My plea to the organisations :If you work for any of these organisations whose website is mentioned above please contact me at ethel@ethelcofie.com to see how we can help improve your website .
Also if you are a web developer,designer or usability consultant and wish to donate your skills to improve these website .please contact me at ethel@ethelcofie.com.
Update
BarCamp Africa UK was a success with about a 100 attendees congregating at the Vodafone Offices generating very interesting and pertinant discussions . The event had really good reviews furthur updates are on the wiki page
Videos
http://barcampafrica-uk.wikispaces.com/Streaming
http://bit.ly/3MHvus
Pictures
http://bit.ly/1Jr9zX
http://bit.ly/9tQUS
http://j.mp/2KGT1j
A Number of articles written about event
http://bit.ly/2pLRDF
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=1047
Trust that little voice in your head that says “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” ~ Duane Michals
I always have ideas floating around head and most of them i forget and others i realise i might never get the chance and time to do any of these so please feel free to take and ran with any of these ideas as you will….
A Female mentoring portal – A portal of females categorized according to career sectors or any additional
catogories to help match mentors and mentees(borne out my realising that i have never had a female mentor )
An ideas exchange portal or group where creative ideas are presented and interested parties can pick and work on
ideas(preference for a group though)
A tool that allows me to aggregate my calender from my phone and various calender into one place
will add to this list and when i remember the rest untill next time 
After BarCamp Africa in the US and BarCamp Diaspora also in US.
I think there was a sense from those of us on this side of the pond that we also need a BarCamp Africa in the UK .
Of course there will never be enough events that will bring together a group of talented entrepreneurs, technologist, charities, engineers, designers, bloggers, artists, with a passion for African development.
So a tweet , a retweet ,a couple of emails back and forth and an organizers meeting later we are on course for an inspiring and action oriented BarCampAfrica UK on the 7th of November 2009 .
Ps. The Next Organisers meeting is in secondlife ooo! check us out we are making use of all technological avenues open to us .
Find out more about BarCampAfrica UK and register on http://barcampafrica.com/uk
Untill the Next Post see you later
Being an African and a national of a country that belongs to the AU, I have had causeto visit the AU site many times and I have come to notice certain niggling issues with AU site’s http://www.africa-union.org/front page.
I must reiterate that the aim of this article is to bring these issues to the attention of the web masters, developer and administrators and thereby helping to improve the usability of the site.
The issue are enumerated below:
1 .When the home page loads initially it runs what I assume is a flash intro of the site. This is in theory is nice concept can become a usability issue and an all round nuisance when the user is not given the option to stop the flash from running fully and be sent directly to the main content pages but has to wait until the whole flash runs to click a link .This is especially a nuisance when that user logs on multiple times or use his back button to get back to the home page.
Many information and corporate sites e.g.Accenture , www.zdnet.comand numerous other sites do because they are increasingly aware of the nuisance this becomes .
2. When the Flash intro loads up, an African map is displayed.When the user passes his mouse over the countries on the map the colour of these regions lighten and the mouse symbol changes to a hand giving the impression that they are links when they are clearly not. At the best I think what should have being done was to display a information on that country as a tool tip when the user passes a mouse over the countries on the map.
3. Lastly there is funny problem with the links provided after the flash intro loads. There are parts of that text link which the user cannot click on. I can only assume here that the problem is that the link area is not wide enough and should be changed to cover a wider area than just barely covering the text provided.
They are small niggling issues but they go long to improving the user experience on the site, decreasing site dropout rate and the perceived quality of the site.
I hope somebody this article comes to the attention of the administrators of thehttp://www.africa-union.org/site.
Got sent this email by a friend, quite funny
PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing
APPLE: Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
SCSI: System Can’t See It
DOS: Defective Operating System
BASIC: Bill’s Attempt to Seize Industry Control
IBM: I Blame Microsoft DEC: Do Expect Cuts
CD-ROM: Consumer Device – Rendered Obsolete in Months
OS/2: Obsolete Soon, Too.
WWW: World Wide Wait
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs
PENTIUM: Produces Erroneous Numbers Thru Incorrect Understanding of Mathematics
AMIGA: A Merely Insignificant Game Addiction
LISP: Lots of Infuriating & Silly Parentheses
MIPS: Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers *[not a microsoft hater but its funny all the same ]
RISC: Reduced Into Silly Code
Its being too long since i l blogged but i have ideas floating in my head so this is a placeholder to remind of what i want to do when i get round to it
Potential blog items
Ranting about the poor usability of the fckeditor setting page on drupal 6
1.Fields to ‘include/Exclude’ why couldnt they just have 2 text areas 1 for includes and another for exclude – i get the impression that they just couldnt be bothered
2. The include/exclude drop down i was assuming would toggle to show in the ensuing text area the fields that were include or excluded unfortunately they just serve to indicators for saving included or excluded files making it a a usabilty nightmare for anymore who want to rack which files are either included or excluded
I know its open source but guys seriously
Ideas for Barcamp spill over Presentation
Update
Finally decided on the ->Forum: Moderate discussion on how porgramming is taught in our institutions , personal experiences and what could be done differently
I will write up the discussions an ideas that came up soon-ish
