One of my projects is the book AIDS Is Real and It's In Our Church, which I co-authored. The English version has been quite a success, Hausa and Amharic editions are in print, and now we're working on the French version. One of the technical problems we've dealt with is simply how to share the files between authors and editors on different continents, while being sure that corrections and updates are made to the right file. Once, in the Hausa version, I spent quite a few hours making corrections and then discovered that the file I'd been given was not the latest.

There are many approaches to this issue, which after all is a common one whenever people are collaborating on documents. One of the particular constraints for some of us though, is that the solution has to be low-bandwidth, simple, and free (or at least very low cost). It simply isn't practical to be uploading and downloading a 20 MB file every time it is changed.

I've looked briefly at Google Docs, which works fine and would be my first choice for documents that don't have a lot of formatting requirements. Collaborators work (even simultaneously) on a document in Google's own format, stored in cyberspace somewhere, and that document can be exported when necessary to another format. Documents can be text (with pictures), spreadsheets, or presentations. Google Docs is free, doesn't require any setup, and lets users work online or offline (that is, you can edit documents even while not connected to the Internet, and they will be saved again when you are online).

Google Docs won't do what I need at the moment, though, which is to allow people to edit Microsoft Word and Publisher documents. That is where Dropbox has been a real help. I use it to

* Share files with co-workers, automatically keeping everyone's copies synchronized

* Work on files from different computers without having to do anything manually to keep them synchronized

* Keep online backups of projects I'm actively working on, so that the backup is always current.

Here's how it works:

1. Download and install the free software (currently a 14 MB file). It creates a special My Dropbox folder on your computer.

2. Register as a user with the service. You get a 2 GB online folder free, and can pay for more storage.

3. "Once installed, any file you drop into your Dropbox folder will synchronize and be available on any other computer you've installed Dropbox on, as well as from the web. Also, any changes you make to files in your Dropbox will sync to your other computers, instantly."

4. Dropbox does not transfer the entire file each time it is changed, but only sends the changed portions. This means that when I change one word in the 20 MB file, only a small amount of data has to be sent back and forth over the Internet, not 20 MB. That makes it useable over our low-bandwidth connection.

You can use the Dropbox folder like any other folder. Drag files into it, make sub-folders, add and delete files, and so on. All those files and sub-folders will be transparently synchronized with your online folder and with any users sharing those files. That last point is important. People sharing your files do not have to do anything to keep their copies up to date, as Dropbox does that in the background.

Example:

1. I create an "AIDS is Real" folder inside my Dropbox folder and drag my 20 MB aids_is_real.doc file into it.

2. If my collaborator does not already have Dropbox installed, I send her an invitation to install it.

3. I mark the AIDS is Real folder as shared with my collaborator, for reading and updating.

4. The Dropbox software automatically downloads aids_is_real.doc into my collaborator's computer.

5. I open my copy of the document from my local Dropbox folder, make some changes, then save and close the file (changes are not synchronized until the file is closed).

6. Dropbox software automatically saves my changes to the online copy and to my collaborator's local copy. When my collaborator opens her copy, it is always up to date (as of the last time she was connected to the Internet).

7. Likewise, when my co-worker changes the file on her computer, those changes will be reflected in my local copy (almost) immediately.

Give it a try! It's well worth the effort if only for the ability to keep 2 GB worth of your important projects safely backed up online. (Of course, how safely depends on the long-term survival, security, and stability of Dropbox; you shouldn't depend on any one service for the backup of your valuable data).

This is the first article in my series on low bandwidth development.

One of the key things that I'm always keeping in mind when I've web makin' is how in the heck to make a website load faster. It's often the case that a lot of sites built in Europe or the US often ignore this component. While broadband in these areas is to the point of nearly being ubiquitous (even my mom out in the countryside can get it now), it's still a good idea to not go nuts and have a big fat pile of files and bytes for someone to pull down in order to see the site. This detracts from the user experience, even on fast connections because everything takes time to load, even if fast. A site that is less snappy is a site that is less user friendly and one that the user will bore of. Google get this with their sparse, yet highly functional interface. Yahoo! gets it decently well with their more full-featured, yet still rather lightweight interface. Facebook could obviously care less, which is why I'm assuming friends in African don't use it all that much. Or maybe they just don't like me anymore...

The other day I read in Aid Worker Daily (a new favorite of mine) about The Loband option. Loband is a nifty site that strips out all the images and the "what-what" to give you a very sparse, yet fully-informative website. All the content is there, just without most everything else. Sure, it's kind of ugly, but if you're on VSAT in Sub-Saharan Africa, it's a lot better than waiting a couple of minutes for each page load.

But all of this is from the group at Aptivate who I've just now become a big fan of. They're common sense web and IT folks, which are a group of folks I love as I tend to work in the same way. Being spoiled by resources makes for bad work. Having boundaries like slow machines and internet makes for much better work as you have to think and solve things within your boundaries. That being said, anyone who doesn't know of their web design guidelines should probably shut off their Photoshop and stop building sites. Some of it is extreme for conditions where your internet connection is just slightly faster than a slug, but even when you are sitting atop "fat pipes", these guidelines should be heeded. Yeah, I know that they might seem like common sense, but they are oh so often ignored in favor of using whatever slippy doo dah hoo hoo that's the latest thing in Web #.0 which the marketing folks might be crazy about at a particular moment.

I was in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress but I had to make sure I visited the biggest club in town, too bad they played away that Saturday, however, I think the derby with Espanyol would have been a better game...

How I wish I got to meet Messi (not that I care that much). But the closest I came was those fake photos that people take by the pitch side...

The 3D images were so good, I struggled with the shades but hacked it. The movie was not voiced, just images of Barca greats. No matter the language you speak, after 10 minutes, we all got the gist of the club and its immense history...

We've just recently renewed our About section to be a lot more helpful. Instead of the one line summary of what Maneno is trying to do, we've broken down the core elements of what we're working on here. This is so people can see why we're not just another blogging platform, but a new approach to age-old problems which have never really been solved by other systems.

We've also moved our Spread the Words section in to About as it seemed like a more proper place for it. Other Projects are some of the smaller things we're working on, which are either augmented by or provided support to Maneno. And of course if you want to know a bit more about the people behind Maneno, there is a full Board of Directors section. We are a non-profit by the way. That was never really fully talked about as much as it should have.

By far and away, the most important section in all of this is Support Maneno. There are a number of items in there which lay out all the ways that people can help support our cause to get more African voices on the web. A number of these aren't even Maneno specific, such as starting a BarCamp in your area, which can go a long way to promote all of the issues like African linguistics and connectivity to people that you know.

Anyways, just a bit more transparency to the project. We hope people find it useful. Oh, translations for the entire About to our other languages are coming shortly.

Today I randomly found a blog that got me so hooked up that I ended up reading every single entry of it. It's called "Agitate every thirty seconds", with the subtitle "Darkrooms were cooler when there were chemicals", and as you've probably guessed is the blog of a photographer. A photographer that seems to be as cool as the title of his blog suggests, who has spent the last couple of months traveling around northeastern DRC. Or her blog -I have no idea if the author is a guy or a girl, so I guess I shouldn't use the masculine form.

The blog is worth visiting just for the photographs, which are stunning. For example, the one below taken in the Ugandan border which I love because of the juxtaposition between the woman's angry expression waving the umbrella and the message in the background "Go share the love". Or this series taken in Bangadi, a village 40km south of the border with Sudan. But the writing stands on its own too. Here's an introspective sample from a post titled "That's the one thing we got":

I’m not sure whether I’m an optimist or pessimist. I’ve been walking the line for years, but have most recently had a foot on the optimist side. I think I need to hold on to a touch of optimism in order to function as a journalist. I need that nugget of hope that humanity is not lost, that people can be good of their own will, and that solidarity in the face of evil will effect change. Even in the face of atrocity, that little lighter of a flame burns in me. Perhaps when it goes out I will have lost my soul.

Senegalese army hitching a ride back to Tambacounda for la permission, riding in cars with toubabs.