Using any jabber-compliant Instant Messaging client, and yes that includes your Google-Talk, Pidgin and Trillian IM clients, simply add im@ddg.gg to your contact list and fire away.

Check-out the screen shots below to see how it works, and visit the DuckDuckGo Goodies page to get an idea of the possibilities.

I just love the quick response, especially on my Android phone it is a lot faster then any web-search, using the very lightweight XMPP as opposed to rendering HTML text and pictures. It also gives me just the relevant info, conveniently formatted for the small-ish screen.

A full explanation on DDG’s chatbot can be read on this entry on Gabriel Weinberg’s blog.

* for those that think DuckDuckGo is nothing more then a silly name, it’s actually a very quick, accurate and above all privacy conscious search engine. It can be accessed easilly using their secure search page at https://duckduckgo.com and just as easilly be integrated into many browsers as (the default) search engine. They do not track, nor do they log your searches and offer way less crap and spam in their results then, for instance, Google or Bing Search.

On a continent where only very few people have computers (and even those who do might not be able to run them when power fails once again), the new generation of smart phones (and the more complex feature phones) have in less then a year overtaken fixed broadband use and are now the no#1 means of connecting to the net in Africa. It does not hurt, ofcourse, that companies such as Huawei are now selling proper Android phones for only $100.

For visitors and residents alike, I thought it might be useful to put down the few very simple steps to be taken when getting yourself online…

Please note: this situation is up-to-date as of January 2012 but it sometimes seems the only thing moving fast in Africa is offers like these so if any of the following is incorrect, please let me know!

The right phone / tablet
Ensure you come with a sim-lock free phone, operating in one of the European / African GSM frequencies (so no US-only phone). For data, it helps if it supports at least GPRS/EDGE and if you’re in either Dar or Arusha, 3G networks. Outside of towns, best you can hope for is GPRS/EDGE with varying speeds.

Getting connected
Walk into any Airtel shop* available and spend Tshs 500/= (about USD 0.30) to buy a SIM card. Use a Tshs 5,000/= note (USD 3) and ask for the remaining Tshs 4,500/= as credit, half of which will be used straight away for your internet credit.

For just making calls you can buy SIMs and credit anywhere but for data the SIM needs to be activated in an Airtel Shop. Click here to find your nearest outlet. Make sure you do not leave the shop before they activate your new line for internet use. It’s just a click on a keyboard but don’t stress, it all happens on Tanzania time.

Configure your phone
To allow your phone to use Airtel (or Vodacom) networks, setup could not be simpler. Basically you leave everything either empty or default; the only setting required is:

APN: internet

For Android (2.x) phones, this can be accomplished by going to ‘settings’ > ‘wireless and networks’ > ‘mobile networks’ > ‘access point names’ > ‘menu’ > ‘new APN’ > name: airtel, APN: internet > ‘menu’ > ‘save’. Then, on the ‘APNs’ screen, make sure you select the newly created APN.

Purchase a bundle

In case you want to use your phone to connect your laptop (or computer, or entire office) to the net using a ‘tether’ application, you might want to spend some serious money to buy up to 3Gb of data, see this chart for the prices.

The reason I am using Airtel as opposed to Vodacom or ZanTel is not their service (LOL) but because of one bundle they offer that no-one even comes near, called, the ‘handset bundle’. If all you do is browse, check mail, chat and download the occasional app, you can buy 400Mb, valid for an entire 30 days, for only Tshs 2.500 !! Which means that for just over a dollar a month, you can be online 24/7.

Though this bundle has been active for over a year now, it makes no sense (see picture below); compared to the ‘dataplus’ offer for instance, it offers 1/4th more data, for an entire month as opposed to one day, for LESS money. Hmmm. Only in Africa…

To purchase this bundle, first ensure you have at least Tshs 2,500 credit (send *102# to check), and then:

1. send a text message with the word internet to 15444.
2. When you get a swahili reply, simply respond by sending “ndiyo” (yes)
3. You will get a confirmation of purchasing 400Mb of data.

To check your balance at any time, simply send the word “balance” to 15444. Your answer might be swahili, or english (this seems to be random) but the numbers are the remaining megabytes

* note: I’m not pushing Airtel above other operators here such as Vodacom (also GPRS/EDGE and 3G) and ZanTel (CDMA). People that know me know I have no great love for any of them, and I have just ordered my “I do not brake for AirTel employees” bumper sticker. They just offer the best deal at this point in time, check their pricing and bundles here…

 EDIT JANUARI 2012

I’ve received an email from Howard, active for the Tanzania Conservation Resource Center, and he pointed me to a page he made on this subject, which is much more detailed then my little attempt. Check-out his article here…

Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet. Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.

They write. And somewhat predictably:

…the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done.

Read the entire article here. (source)

Make no mistake, being ‘hacked’ does not just happen to people using an insecure password (you’d be surprised how often that happens). With any chain being as strong as it’s weakest link, danger comes from the fact that not all on-line services have adequate protection against hackers. People do not have to hack your electronic-banking password if they can hack an out-of-date message board or improperly secured social networking site you use the same password on.

Bring on the Password Database

Much better is to use something called a ‘Password Manager’ or ‘Password Database’. This is an application which allows you to store all your passwords, bank accounts, pin numbers and other info you want to keep a secret, safely encrypted behind one ‘master’ password.

Keepass, a free (open source) password manager for Windows, Mac, Linux and portable use

Simply select a good, secure password or pass-phrase and then let the program itself generate random passwords for every site you register onto. Make them long, and use numbers, a mix of upper- and lower-case letters and special characters. That way, even if the password for one of your account gets hacked, all your other information is safe.

And what if I’m not near my computer?

There’s a number of portable applications, allowing you to take the database with you on a memory stick. But that’s no use if your host computer does not run Windows. Or if it’s a locked-down browser at an internet cafe somewhere. For those times, there’s services that allow you to store all your secrets ‘in the cloud’. A good example of a cloud-based solution (with plugins for nearly every operating system, browser and smart-phone) is LastPass, which gets rave reviews everywhere.

One thing worries me though; do I really want my deepest secrets, which is what passwords are or at least unlock, in the hands of a third party?

There’s two possible solutions to this, and both are offered by the same platform; an Open Source application called Clipperz.

Zero Knowledge

One solution is to simply host your own on-line password database, which you can by installing their “community edition” on your own web-server. The other – a better fit for non-geeks maybe, is the use of their hosted platform, in which I have somewhat more trust because even if their data-store is hacked, your information is safe thanks to the architecture of their software, interestingly called “Zero Knowledge Web Applications“.

Both versions are Open Source, since peer review of source code is the only way to be sure there’s no back-door access to your data. The program uses Ajax and JavaScript to ensure all data is encrypted with a 128bit cypher on your local workstation and no unencrypted data is ever transmitted across the network. Your username and password are also encrypted through the use of the SRP protocol, ensuring these are not even known to the database itself, and to top it all off, all data is transmitted across an SSL channel.

It even supports One Time Passwords; passwords that – you guessed it – work only once, that you can use to log-on when using a computer you do not fully trust, averting the risk of key-loggers stealing your master password. There’s an incredible number of people that know an incredible amount more about this then me and I’d say if the above wets your appetite, don’t trust me, read up from the articles below…

Clipperz, a Zero Knowledge Web-Application

References

• A great LifeHacker article on how to choose a strong password.
• The expert at work, Bruce Schneier on Security: Choosing Secure Passwords.
• The Kerckfoff’s Principle on how good security should not depend on closed-source code.

Read on, what people in Africa actually think.An article in the Daily News, proposes:

There are many questions we get…why China and why now? My answer is why not? China has no hidden agenda in its relationship with other nations of the world… There is no hidden agenda in our cooperation with China. It is a relationship based on mutual understanding and equality – they understand our situation.

and indeed

Not only that. China took concrete steps to support the industrialisation of the young African states, our country in particular, when it took steps to put up textile mills, thus making meaning to Tanzania’s production of raw agricultural products such as cotton to be produced and processed right here in the country.

Read the entire article: Why China is a welcome partner in the Developing World.

Another interesting article on the same: A true story of China in Africa (African Politics Portal). I quote:

Despite the fact that Chinese immigrants and residents of Dar es Salaam might, at times, have very different agendas and perhaps strikingly different ways of seeing and analyzing this partnership, their on-site cooperation is greatly influenced by their common history, past success stories of mutual cooperation, and future potential benefits of this partnership, be those real, potential or imagined.

And beyond opinions, the Council on Foreign Relations has (somewhat surprisingly) a well thought-out debate on this issue here.

They, the Chinese, invest in our infrastructure and in return they get to feed their own exploding population on Tanzanian grown produce. Unlike the West though, they actually build factories here, allowing Africans to add value and creating lasting employment.

They expect pay-back on their investments but do not give a flying monkey what happens with the money itself - and - do not demand our government privatizes every last industry in return.

Also, human rights? People have such short memories.

I honestly don’t see what’s wrong with doing business on an equal footing. But maybe that’s the problem; Africa might not want to deal with the old guard anymore?