Miss E .D .C

“We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.” — LarryWall, ProgrammingPerl (1st edition), OreillyAndAssociates

Laziness
The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.

Impatience
The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.

Hubris
Excessive prider. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.

culled from

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris

I just came across Paper.li , is this an awesome idea or what !!

Basically paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.

A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7

So A user can basically begin to publish in newspaper format
1.All their twitter links or
2.The twitter links of people on their twitter list or
3.All twitter links from a hash tag

Benefits
1.if you host events like i do you can basically create a giant newspaper of all thoughts and links from events
2.if you use twitter hash tags for discussions amongst users .. can u see the advantages of capturing all the that info in one place

and it alleviates the guilt of not blogging as much because you are always tweeting(well at least for me ) because all my link are in one place and i can put the link on my !!bingo

My favorite paper.li newspaper at the moment is The most influential people in tech Daily

Now they need to allow that newspaper to be converted to PDF…..*cough cough* feature request

For All Business Analyst the st and Developers who relate with the difficulties in getting that user requirements document locked down (Just for laughs)

image from the Modern Analyst website

I was at a clients on Friday evening whilst the Ghana Census staff came in to gather their data
I noted that the census staff asked a lot more questions than i thought necessary
E.g
How many people owned mobile phone’s in the house(i suppose this is for mobile penetration numbers)
What type of roofing agent was used for the house etc

Anyways i digress this brought on a discussion about data protection laws in Ghana and if any existed .I had no conclusive information so i deferred the discussion for another time ….

Fast Forward >> to Monday Morning
Question was still on my mind so I inquired of my facebook friends

Quick question does ghana have data protection laws in Ghana ? , i ask because i wonder how census data is going to be protected

… generating quite an interesting discussion on if data protection laws were important in the African context anyways i decided to actually find information on the subject.

After some digging (well googling actually) ..apparently the government(ministry of communication) is in consultation with stakeholders on Data protection [big smile on my face]

Accra, Aug 24, GNA – Government on Tuesday initiated stakeholder consultation for the passage of Data Protection Bill (DPB) and Electronic Communications Regulations Bill (ECRB) to serve as legal instruments for the safeguarding of personal data and privacy.

The Bill provides for the protection of privacy through the regulation of information processing relating to individuals including the method by which data is obtained, held, used or disclosed.

The stakeholder consultation which was to create a platform for operators to fine-tune the bill and make it relevant to Ghana’s environment, was attended by representatives from the Judiciary, security agencies, telecom operators, media practitioners, representatives from the National Communication Authority and financial institutions

So know we just need this consultation process to be completed quickly and a bill before parliament , that would bring a bigger smile to my face

ok now its time for lunch , catch you later

Series on Open Source Software for Business

Micro Finance Institutions

I have being working on encouraging many organizations to consider open source alternatives to a lot of the commercial products that are around at the moment.

Advantages of Open source vs. Commercial Product

-It’s simple: open source means that there are developers all over the world working to make this product better as opposed to commercial products who are worked on by relatively small team and all additional software features or update are based on their commercial viability

-Lastly it’s a far cheaper option; you don’t pay for the product itself you pay for the Implementation and customization only

Today I want to talk about Mifos and how rural banks and many micro finance institutions can this free open source software to administer and run their institutions .

Mifos is a management information system (MIS) featuring a user-friendly, web interface running on top of a robust MySQL database. Flexible to meet your unique operational needs and scalable for rapid growth, Mifos enables real-time access to data across your organization from any web browser.

Features include:

• client management,

• loan and savings portfolio management,

• transaction processing,

• Social and business reporting and analytics.

Advantage

Efficiency & Ease of Use- Speed up your client acquisition cycle, increase loan officer productivity, and manage your portfolio securely and effectively.

Growth & Scalability– Mifos is a centralized web-enabled solution built on top of a MySQL database. Its built-in scalability means you can rapidly open new branches and roll out new products and services; all supported by a modern architecture with the robust capacity to support up to 1 million clients.

Transparency & Insight– Through real-time access to your data and a powerful reporting engine, use effective business analytics and transparency to guide your strategy and satisfy external reporting requirements.

Security & Data Integrity– Client data is secure from corruption and fraud through in-depth audit trails tracking all changes, coupled with a granular role-based permission system.

Flexibility & Agility– Proactively respond to competition and changing client needs by rapidly creating new services through on-the-fly product definition.

Innovation & Evolution– Broaden your outreach and accelerate innovation by incorporating new front-end technologies and integrating with other systems and networks on top of Mifos’ common platform.

Intimacy & Outreach– Client management tools like surveys help you collect market knowledge and deliver value-added services. Let your field staff focus more on customers’ needs and less on data entry.

If you work for a Micro-finance institution and are interested in Mifos deployment … what are the next steps …

-Firstly you need to document your processes as a microfinance institution , e.g. what are the steps in loan processing , what are documents produced and who are the officers involved in this process .This can be done by management and in-house IT team or hire a professional Business analyst to facilitate the process

-Secondly you need to investigate Mifos and see if it aligns with your business needs, If you find that it mostly aligns and that little changes need to be made (i.e. not more that 50 % percent of the core Mifos system needs to be customized) then I recommend you talk a technical person like me who can work on customization and implementation. E.g. If in addition to having the system working in your offices you want your loan officers to able to register new customers and collects loan payments via their mobile phone

If a lot more than 50 % of features need to be customized it’s better to look at other micro-finance MIS solutions available

-Thirdly Implement the Solution: that means if you don’t already have computers you need to purchase a couple, if you don’t already have your computers networked have them networked so that Technical team can implement the system on your premises

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.

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

Suggestions……

In need of quick design for a website, if you are like me and you probably developing the website as a favour to a friend or family member but don’t have enough time for drudging out designs your best bet is a free online CSS templates that you can download and personalize for use:

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

http://www.free-css-templates.com/

http://www.free-css.com/

Else if you need to put together a simple a quick and easy website which you give over to user to take control of the content then your easiest bet is using word press as a Content Management System Mark Kirby has an excellent tutorial on his website http://mark-kirby.co.uk/2008/wordpress-as-a-cms-talk-and-sample-code/

If you want to add an album to your website but don’t have the space or bandwidth I suggest use online photo social sites like and Flickr and use the API’s to retrieve images on demand Or just hotlink from your Facebook albums. A bit dodgy but it works!

I wrote a tutorial on how to use flickr API which I presented at Bar Camp Brighton 3 http://etheldcofie.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/flickr-api-how-to-perform-authenticating-using-php/

If you need to knock out your own custom social netwrok for your friends, family or people with similar interest( chocolate loving geeks perhaps !) then use Ning.com. It is great platform that allows you to create your own social network and even register a domain that points to your customized social network.

This section will be updated as often as i can with short cuts and life hacks… watch this space

I am a developer at work and at heart who had not done much formal testing except to verify that the system I was developing worked [J] .I however moved into a new job which dictated as part of my contract that I had to go through a two month period working as a full time test analyst for the experience .

My reaction: What! No building stuff, no development well at least not at work for the next two months *groan groan* I am going to die before I complete my time I just know [my melodramatic side showing]

So I started my stint praying time would go fast and I wouldn’t realize it. l also acknowledge above my melodramatics that it was probably a good learning experience which will make me a better developer in the long run .

I started out running manual scripts for an online financial system painful yes, by the end of the second week I was fast losing my will to live.

So to keep from going crazy I turned to reading materials on what testing was all about and what made a great tester. There had to be more to testing! Right?

Yes! Right, My perception of testing as developer changed dramatically when I moved to 2 relatively small size projects [less that 10 people ] working as the sole test analyst on the first and as an adjunct test analyst on the second .

So what changed for me?

Being the only test analyst on a project means I had to learn quickly what was required of me , what mentality I was to adopt to be effective in my role and of course how to work smart as opposed to laboriously , what tools would make my work better or not .

Fundamentally I believe I begun to thoroughly enjoy being a test analyst when I bought into the mentality and attitude of a tester.

No it’s not being sadistic it’s the fact that I am the last line of defense for the customer it’s my job to make sure that the customer gets the best product possible [or die trying J]

There will always be something wrong with the system and if it’s big enough to make the users experience or systems substandard then I will find it .oh yes I will ….

..And the love for breaking things especially software

Also automated testing appealed to the developer/programmer in me, I could write/program automated test s that could do a lot of the mundane repetitive tasks and User Acceptance Tests that needed to be done

What I learnt

I took away for my time as a test analyst:

Tact: saying to developer fix this! Fix this Now! Is hardly going to get you anywhere .When to push when to stop when to assert and to smile and let go.

A better eye for detail when I am developing :I have a sort of split personality now when I am working I look at the system through the eyes of a tester and a developer.[I still believe it not right for a developer to double as his/her own test analyst ]

…And a whole new respect for the testers I work with.