Hacktivate

Read ebooks hands free

2012-04-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Every year for Christmas I try and make Claudia a Christmas present. Sometimes it's a big success (an old laptop I turned into a digital photoframe that shows local bus positions, bike share station status and more recently streaming video from our baby monitor) and sometimes less so (a fish scale modified to set off a buzzer when pulled too far that was supposed to teach our dog not to pull on the leash). This past Christmas, my wife was pregnant so I decided to build something that would help us get through the late nights of breastfeeding.

Claudia loves to read, and we now buy a lot of digital books, which Claudia reads on an old Kindle and I on my phone. I decided that I wanted to come up with a way that would enable Claudia to read hands free while breastfeeding our baby. Besides Kindles and phones, Amazon also lets you read books on their kindle cloud reader. You just go to http://read.amazon.com, sign in with your kindle account, and all of your books are there and ready to be read.

When you put the browser in full screen mode, it makes good use of the screen. You can adjust the text size and spacing so that it is quite readable, even at a distance. Of course you can click an icon to change the page, but you can also use the right and left arrow keys to flip pages. With all of this in hand, the rest of my solution was pretty obvious.

I really only had to buy two things:

A music stand:

Musician's Gear Heavy-Duty Folding Music Stand Black

A set of foot pedals:

Scythe Usb-2fs-2 USB 2 Foot Switch Version 2

The music stand is adjustable to hold the laptop at eye level, is sturdy and easy to move around. The foot pedals basically work like a keyboard with two keys. I used the included software to configure them so that the right pedal would send the right arrow key, and the left pedal would send the left arrow key.

Needless to say, I was pretty psyched when I plugged it all in, went to the read.amazon.com and everything worked perfectly.

Now that Annika, our little baby girl, has arrived, my wife is using the system around the clock and it seems to be working flawlessly. With the background color set to black, it barely even lights up the room, which is helpful when you are trying to keep the baby in sleep mode.

Ways to improve it

It turns out that having a computer around really helps pass the time for breastfeeding mommies. Besides reading books, she has been watching a lot of movies and TV shows. It would be great if you could program the pedals to send "space" to pause a TV show. If the pedals could switch modes and send the right keys depending on which application had focused - then that would be awesome. Or simply allowing long presses or combo taps (left, right, left, right) to send other keys or key combinations would allow you to also launch new applications. Then she could scroll on websites or browse iPhoto. Maybe I can use voice recognition to do this...

Twitter Strategy for Humans

2012-03-07T09:24:00.001-08:00

Another from the Recent Emails I have Sent Department:

The most effective Twitter strategy is to use Twitter personally (as yourself, not as your organization) and engage in (and start new) online discussions about things that you feel strongly about. This includes education strategies, new products and, yes, sometimes even what you had for breakfast. The reason is that twitter is about online community and conversation, sort of like Facebook, but with people (not products or organizations) that you often have never met personally. No one wants to talk to a press release, or a corporate department they want real people (who eat breakfast). It is useful to have a corporate twitter identity, but mostly it’s just as a mechanism for real people to share press releases – the real value add happens in public discussion that everyone can see. Often those online discussions turn into post-conference meetings or drinks when people pass through town, and that is usually when the most important opportunities and discussions happen. One more thing – using Twitter during a conference is a great way to establish thought leadership, get followers, and participate in a discussion that is often much more interesting than what is going on at the front of the room.

[An entirely new strategy will probably be necessary once @horse_ebooks begins reproducing.]

Ode to Coffeescript

2012-03-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

(this started as email to a friend but I thought it might be useful to share)

I’ve been using coffeescript for about a year. Other than using it for my own projects, I have learned it's syntax from the coffeescript website and from the random coffeescript snippet that I see here and there.

I started using it to try and write expressive code that reminded me of Ruby. I like my code readable, with very descriptive (and sometimes long) variable names (never abbreviated) and few comments. If I can’t understand the code by reading it, then I probably need to split up my one-liner into a few lines or make a new function or two.

Being able to abandon a lot of the extra braces and parens for indentation helped for readability (I actually agree with Python over Ruby on this one), especially relative to the javascript that I was writing before.

Initially I used all of the looping shortcuts that coffeescript comes with, but now I tend to use underscore.js whenever I am looping/mapping/etc. I am not sure if this is what @jashkenas had in mind (did this guy really write coffeescript, underscore and backbone??) but I think coffeescript + underscore results in a really nice compromise.

I have only recently really understood that everything is an expression in coffeescript. Using it really helps me to modularize my code

Here’s an example I have just written that sort of sums up what I like about coffeescript:

Line 1. Takes advantage of "everything is an expression". Whatever the block indented below line 1 returns, will be set to formElement. This is so much better than initializing an empty string and then setting it.

Line 2. Note that I am using underscore to check if the value I am interested in is in an array. If so, then line 3 just returns the screen which bubble back to line 1. Same thing with line 4-5.

Line 7. See how we can do ruby style string interpolation. That is huge - so huge. Javascript doesn't let you do sane multi-line strings, nor can you interpolate. But wait - check out the crazy interpolation of line 8 - I start a multi-line map (underscore again!). Coffeescript basically enables quick and dirty templating inside any string. It's a bit dangerous to mix too much logic and templating, but for small things it is awesome. (I use handlebars.js for the big jobs)

Anyways, it's not the greatest code in the world, but it's real code I wrote yesterday and it's helping me get the job done.

I am one of those people that think you should learn a new programming language every year or so – and indeed coffeescript has made me a better programmer. So if you are learning it, I recommend that you stick with it. You’ll get it and be better for it.

Fall blooms and dies over a few weeks

2011-11-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul

2011-11-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

Memories

2011-10-28T06:26:00.001-07:00

Operation Say Yes

2011-03-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

It was ten years ago today that I asked Claudia to marry me. The intervening years have far surpassed all expectations of partnership, meaning, growth, adventure and plain old love than even the best Hollywood romance or English novel could inspire.

Here is how I recorded the events of that day:

On Sunday March 25, I was supposed to go with Claudia's family on my favorite hike in Southern California. But wouldn't you know just as we were pulling out of the driveway, my cell phone rang, it was work complaining that my code broke the latest build, and I needed to come in right away. Damn - I told the family to go on the hike without me - maybe I could catch up later. Claudia (my girlfriend) goes on the hike totally upset that I didn't go because I was basically the only reason she was going (she has been unbelievably busy writing and sending off applications for business school in Europe). In the meantime there was a shady looking character a few houses up from Claudia's parents' house sitting on the sidewalk with his hat pulled low, cellphone in his hand. I jumped in my car to head off to work but instead I doubled back and picked up the hoodlum (my brother Darren). We raced to the nearest gas station where the other members of Operation Say Yes were stationed. The game was afoot and we took off towards the hills past Malibu about an hour away. Meanwhile, Claudia's family made a well planned pit stop that puts Operation Say Yes ahead of them by about 45 minutes.

As soon as Team OSY arrived at La Jolla Canyon the group sprung into action packing gourmet food, bouquets of flowers, a table, coolers, chairs, a guitar, a computer, some speakers and more. Knowing that the von der Ohe family was hot on the trail they double timed it up 3 miles or so of steep and narrow terrain. Heroic efforts were par for the day, but my sherpa friends could have brought the mountain to downtown Los Angeles that day. With sweat pouring they came over a ridge and looked onto a green valley sprinkled with wildflowers and oak trees next to a flowing creek. I went on ahead hoping that I would find a nice place to set the stage for the evening's activities. The first overgrown offshoot trail that I took led to a green meadow that fell off into the creek with one beautiful oak tree in the middle. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were golden streams of light filtered by a misty fog coming from the sun that was right on top of the mountain illuminating the spot. The place literally glowed and I knew I had found the spot.

The team arrived and we set up a table, the chairs, tablecloth, candles, and a dozen roses as the centerpiece. Sean, our scout, ran back to find my girlfriend's family and hurried back with the news that we had maybe 5-10 minutes tops until they arrived. I took a bag of rosepetals and lined the trail for about 50 yards with the dark red flowers. I also strategically placed a couple of poems along the trail - one that included a hint of what was to come. I ran back, hid some speakers in the old oak tree and set up my computer to start playing a selection from Claudia's favorite Opera: La Traviata. I changed into a tie and sportjacket as Darren went back on the trail with flowers for Claudia's mom and sisters and to retrieve the true centerpiece of the evening - Claudia. Darren found Claudia - and brought her towards the spot - but first escorted her to a place where a nice dress and sweater were hanging for her to change into. After changing and looking magnificent, Claudia took Darren's arm and he led her to the spot. A gourmet meal ensued with my friend Jeff moonlighting as our server. We had incredible homecooked Italian food and Claudia's favorite Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. It was the most romantic and beautiful dinner ever. I played the guitar and sang a nervous rendition of "It's Your Love". I got down on my knee, took out a basin full of water and rosepetals and washed Claudia's feet promising to be her servant for life. Then I asked The Question. Suffice to say that Operation Say Yes was a success. We then laughed and ran and walked and kissed and hugged our way all the way down the mountain . . .

Shrooms!

2011-02-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

A few weeks before Christmas I received a heavy box in the mail. It was labelled "Mushroom Adventures" and a few days later my brother told me it was my Christmas gift.

So we opened it and followed the instructions, which were basically: add water to make mud and spread over the bark/dirt mixture, stick in corner and wait.

It was really easy, and before long we had a few mushrooms peeping through. We chopped them up and put them in pasta and they were full of flavor and totally fresh. The "adventure" part seemed to target tastebuds and greenthumbs, not neurons, but I wasn't disappointed.

Now we have so many mushrooms we can't eat them all - a nice problem to have. Thanks bro for an awesome gift!

Smartphones need web apps not app store apps

2010-11-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

via @andyi on flickr

I don't think you need to learn objective C, or the android environment in order to make useful smartphone applications. Html & javascript should be able to cover 90% (99%?) of the sorts of applications that are being written. I think it is actually a step backwards to force people with good ideas to have to write "close to the metal" (C) code, especially if you already know HTML and the concepts behind flash.

Take for instance this link:

http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/

It teaches you how to create a nice version of tetris that runs in your phone's web browser using html and javascript (iphone and android, maybe blackberry's, microsoft and PalmOS too?) . Not only is it touch friendly, but it works offline, and can even save your high scores on your phone (much of this is due to HTML5 stuff like manifest files and local data stores).

Jon Resig, the creator of JQuery (the wonderful and ubiquitous javascript library) has just released an alpha version of jquery mobile, which makes creating smartphone UIs easy. I believe this, and not objective C, is the future:

http://jquerymobile.com/2010/10/jquery-mobile-alpha-1-released/

If you hone your skills in developing browser based solutions that are awesome on smartphones, then you are gaining long term valuable skills, as you can expect that pretty much all phones for the next 5 years will have browsers on them. Learning objective C or the android API is a higher risk investment of your time - who knows what phone will be hot next year?

If you need to access lower level hardware, like the accelerometer or the camera then you probably need some closer to the metal code. Then again, location aware browsers show me that these sorts of interfaces will be exposed more and more through the browser as time goes on. Maybe you are doing graphically intense 3D visualizations, then that needs hard core C, but again 3D optimized graphics libs for browsers are on their way. Finally, smartphone browser apps don't get you into the app store, which might or might not be a good thing (no approval process but no chance to hit the app store lottery and make money).

I Hate Farm Subsidies

2010-11-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

Via @judybaxter on flickr

I just listened to an excellent Planet Money Podcast about cotton, cotton subsidies and a trade war between the US and Brazil. It interviewed Dahlin Hancock an American cotton farmer, as well as Brazilians and WTO people. It reminded me how much I hate American farm subsidies. Here's what I sent:

Thanks so much for the podcast on cotton and cotton subsidies. It was fascinating, and I loved how the story twisted and turned through the WTO process and showed how Brazil eventually found leverage despite the WTO having no power of enforcement. Great stuff.

But here is what I was disappointed not to hear:

* Mr Hancock, why do you need subsidies, and isn't that cheating? I mean, he was complaining about Brazil, but as far as I understand it, the American farmer gets paid extra because he can't otherwise compete with Brazil.

* What about African cotton farmers? It was only after Brazil became powerful and savvy enough to hire American lawyers that it had a chance to fight unfair subsidies. This leaves Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and many other developing countries with no voice. The result of the Brazil v US cotton war (the US now subsidizes Brazilian farmers too) only leaves an increasingly unfair playing field for everyone else. I mean not only do they have to fight already deflated American prices, but now the Brazilian industry has $150 million per year to subsidize itself with.

It seems to me that the result is a loss for the American taxpayer and a loss for developing countries. The only winners are Texan farmers, who should be in other industries (he dropped out of electrician school) but can't handle the extra training required. Is this actually a subsidy of under-education?

What a fascinating but grim story! More like it please!

American farm subsidies seem wrong to me. I love hearing my Grandpa talk about his boyhood days on the farm, but for America, those days are over. America is no longer a country of millions of farmers anymore. America has about as many computer programmers as we do farmers. For Americans, the future is about creativity, strategy, technology. Subsidizing those fields is a long term investment, and it can be done through education.

The only farming that the vast majority of Americans will ever do is in Farmville.

The next chance to kill farm subsidies is in 2012, when the farm bill comes up. How do we do it?

Mobile Phone Banking in Developing Countries to Leapfrog Old Banks

2010-04-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

Money makes the world go round. The more money, the faster we spin. In America each of us spends, on average about $50,000 per year. That works out to be $136 per day. Imagine if the only way to spend my daily $136 was to hand over cash. Not only does this mean carrying around $136 in my pocket every day, but it also means carrying my cash to the person that I am buying stuff from. Buying a sandwich - no big deal there. Paying bills sucks. You have to go the electric company, the phone company, the water company. How about going to the Amazon.com office in Washington DC with cash in hand to pay for the headphones I want them to send me. That would be lame. All of those businesses that you are buying from - they also have to deal in cash. Before you bought your sandwich, the sandwich shop owner had to carry cash to the flour seller. But where did she get the cash to buy the flour? She has to save it from the day before. To make sure no one stole yesterday's profits, she carried it home and hid it under the mattress at home.

Sounds crazy, but this is the reality in many developing countries. Introducing banks helps a lot, but only for people who have bank accounts. I have seen business owners carrying boxes and dufflebags full of cash to the bank in Malawi. I used to spend half a day locked in a storage closet every month counting out stacks of 500 kwacha notes (about $3) so that I could pay 25 Baobab Health employees. Walking out of the bank and then driving home with all of that cash stuffed in my bag was rather thrilling.

When everyone has a bank account and a credit card, this problem pretty much goes away. Instead of having to carry around money everywhere we have about a month's worth of available spending on our credit cards ($4000). This means that over the course of a month, my money can bounce around from employer to me to baker to flour grinder to farmer, before anyone really needs to settle up. This is such a monumental step forward in efficiency, yet so commonplace, that we take it for granted.

Why are some countries without banks and credit cards? Well bank accounts depend on reliably identifying who people are, which is hard if government documents like drivers licenses and passports are out of reach for most. And credit cards depend on banks, credit scoring and a communications infrastructure that is pretty much a non-starter in many places. (2% of all consumer spending in the US is spent on proprietary credit card infrastructure, which is ridiculous now that everyone is connectable via the internet and that credit cards depend on 40 year old technology to read a 16 digit number off a card)

Developing countries, are therefore left to plod along until that tipping point hits when enough people are rich enough to get bank accounts to get credit cards to build their national network and start scoring credit. Up until that point, people are carting around cash. After that point, money stops getting buried and starts flowing. Money jumps from person to person, with each person holding it just long enough to make more money. And if they decide to hold onto it, then the bank will figure out how to make more money with it.

In Malawi I plodded along with cash, as did everyone else. But mobile phone banking promises a leapfrog over both traditional banks and credit cards. And developing countries don't need to wait - they can get started now. Here's why:

Mobile phones can identify people even more reliably than a passport. Phone number (something you have) plus pin (something you know) is enough to securely setup a bank account. But mobile phones also come with a built-in communications network. This means that there is no need to visit a bank to do banking. Deposits and withdrawals can be performed by anyone with cash and a sufficient balance in their account. In these, the early stages of mobile phone banking, these activities are facilitated by agents who are trained and supplied by the mobile phone banking provider. This ensures a good experience for the customer, who might not understand how banking, let alone mobile phone banking works. Agents can accept cash and then transfer funds from the agent's own mobile phone banking account into the client's. They can also accept a funds transfer from a client and then pay them out in cash. Deposits and withdrawals sorted, although the agents and the mobile phone banking provider will charge for the transactions.

From here things get very fun. People can safely store money in their phones, so money is no longer stagnating under mattresses or buried in a field. When it is stored on a phone, it isn't just sitting there doing nothing. Banks will let other people use it, by investing with it. Practically this means that interest can be earned and more money is generally available to everyone the economy. Win! But it is more than just a savings device. Funds can be transferred securely between accounts, which means that any payment that used to happen in cash can now be done as a funds transfer between phones. I can now pay for my sandwich with a funds transfer to the sandwich shop, which is convenient. But now the sandwich maker doesn't have to carry the cash I paid him with to the flour seller. He can just transfer the funds and during the flour seller's next delivery it will be efficiently delivered to my sandwich maker. Money flows, economy grows.

Eventually the need to use cash at all pretty much disappears and a cashless ecosystem emerges, but that is years, perhaps decades away. Yet each step taken towards that eventual goal affords many opportunities for individuals and businesses to increase efficiency, save money and in many cases start entirely new businesses. I am particularly interested in looking at the edge cases, watching how people use mobile phone banking to do things that no one every thought of before.

One of the most obvious things that will happen will be replacing some formal mobile phone banking agents with informal cash in and cash out facilities. Many businesses take on a lot of cash during their daily operations. If the business could deposit this cash into their account by providing cash out services to individuals or other local businesses (people withdrawal from their accounts by transferring funds to someone that gives them cash) then neither group has to visit the bank or an ATM machine. Vice versa for businesses that need a lot of cash on hand, or who routinely make trips to the bank. Businesses can accept deposits by transferring funds to people giving them cash. The efficiencies gained from avoiding standing in line at the bank alone, are important, let alone the expense of travel, or for the banks, the expense of maintaining high capacity facilities and staff.

Other businesses are sure to emerge as well. Sending money to rural villages was the big surprise business in Kenya when m-pesa (the biggest mobile phone banking success story so far) was first launched. I expect online purchasing, discounts for electronic payments, loyalty schemes, real-time credit scoring, microfinance, credit card services, outsourced micro jobs and all sorts of other things will emerge that we can't even think of. These killer apps, will be the surprises that drive adoption.

Wow! Sounds great - why isn't this already happening? A number of reasons I think. Firstly, it takes a significant amount of time and resources to write the software and forge the required partnerships between banks, mobile phone operators and regulators. Massive marketing campaigns and having formal banking agents available throughout the target market are necessary to get to scale, and without scale mobile phone banking is virtually pointless. Marketing is critical financial education. I still know many Americans who don't use ATMs because they think see ATMs as a banking scam to extort fees. Malawian preachers warned congregations against fingerprint based ATM machines which "scanned your soul"! These sorts of barriers are not insignificant.

Finally, banking regulators are responsible for making sure that we have safe mechanisms for saving and investing money. Without financial regulation (think FDIC insurance), banks can close and people's money can disappear. It only takes one time for your money to disappear for you to never trust a bank again. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in developing countries and money gets stuck back under the mattress (literally) and a generation of financial progress is lost. These financial regulators are doing the important work in figuring out how to save people from getting burned by mobile phone banking. But like everyone else, they are moving slowly! But it will eventually happen, and it will be a great ride. I can't wait!

(thanks to Claudia for letting me read the cool stuff she comes across in her job researching this stuff at CGAP)

From Great Need Comes Great Innovation

2010-04-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended and presented at Africa Gathering DC - an Africa ideas oriented event with social media craftfully employed to amplify the great messages. There were artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, development workers and more sharing and remixing their hope for Africa.

I presented a broad overview of the amazing things that I got to be a part of, when I lived in Malawi and worked with Baobab. My zooming/swooping/rotating "prezi" can be seen here: http://prezi.com/z1tsvo_xftb8/. I think a video was made too, but it isn't posted yet.

Here's a selection of the tweets people made about my presentation (thanks everyone!).

tracy1314 #agdc up now... Mike McKay of Boabab Health

tracy1314 #agdc @mikemckay social justice hacker... Setting up his presentation.

tracy1314 #agdc talking abt HIV killing the people who hold the future of africa in their hands

KateBomz #AGDC Mike Mckay "Social Justice Hacker" of Baobab HEALTH running a chilling @prezi presentation.

tracy1314 #agdc stuff is happening in developing countries that does not happen anywhere else. Good stuff!

tracy1314 #agdc there is shout from the roof tops awesome stuff happening in Africa.

KateBomz #AGDC "POVERTY PORN!"

MByrd No place for poverty porn in @mikeymckay book at #agdc

digitalafrican RT @tracy1314: Baobab health started with an idea that touch screen computers could improve health in Malawi. #agdc

tracy1314 I wish my Dr. Had this system! 30 sec to check in at the dr? Awesome. #agdc

ideasforafrica Hospital registration with this touchscreen system has gone from 20 minutes to 57 seconds in Malawi (Boabab Health) #agdc

nicktadd there are less than 300 doctors for 1million people in Malawi #agdc #omidyar

tracy1314 1 million HIV positive people and 300 dr. In Malawi. Plenty of HIV medication, not enough medicine to distribute medicine #agdc

nicktadd "I wish my Dr. Had this system! 30 sec to check in at the dr? Awesome. #agdc" -@tracy1314 - agreed awesome

KateBomz RT @ideasforafrica: Hospital registration with this touchscreen system has gone from 20 minutes to 57 seconds in Malawi (Boabab Health) #agdc

VaxTrac @mikemckay #agdc Great presentation on health, tech and !Success! by Baobab Health in Malawi.

EGlue RT @ideasforafrica: Baobab Health-started by using touch screen computers to improve healthcare in Malawi @mikemckay #agdc

KateBomz Truly awesome! 'at least' you have a doctor RT @tracy1314 I wish my Dr. Had this system! 30 sec to check in at the dr? Awesome. #agdc

AfricanAncestry #agdc @liveafrican used social media to promote sales of scarves; 5% of gross sales goes toward educating child of artisan for 1 year

tracy1314 Treatment protocols have to be strictly managed and documented... Result unmanageable paper mess #agdc

jkainja RT @africagathering: there are less than 300 doctors for 1million people in Malawi #agdc #omidyar

tracy1314 Time waste managing the paper. Touch screen clinical work stations at every point of contact. That guide them thru the protocol. #agdc

ideasforafrica Baobab Health- touch screen clinical work stations to guide healthcare worker through treatment protocol- more efficient #agdc

KateBomz Prime example of visual transparency #problem & #solution..Baobab Health presentation #agdc

marcopuccia LOL I agree! RT @tracy1314 I wish my Dr. Had this system! 30 sec to check in at the dr? Awesome. #agdc

tracy1314 #agdc helps w accuracy and prediction of supplies. Problem: computers are a non starter in Africa

tmarente RT @africagathering: there are less than 300 doctors for 1million people in Malawi #agdc #omidyar

marcopuccia "From great need comes great innovation!" - @mikeymckay #agdc

KateBomz RT @marcopuccia: "From great need comes great innovation!" - @mikeymckay #agdc

mollymali 9 months is avg life of a computer in rural village in Africa, @mikemckay of Baobab Health. #agdc

tracy1314 #agdc what to do abt power? You can't assume reliable power. Computers need power... What to do?

danyasteele Love that >> RT @ideasforafrica: "from great need comes great innovation" @mickemckay #agdc

tracy1314 #agdc low power machines run by car battery. When power on it chrges the batteries, when power down, baterries kick in. This same set up...

ideasforafrica Innovation 4 power: Use car batteries to run a whole clinic's touch-screens, works for days if power is cut. @mikemckay #agdc

tracy1314 #agdc works with out main power... Replace it with solar or wind>> again awesome!

marvintumbo RT @ideasforafrica: Innovation 4 power: Use car batteries to run a whole clinic's touch-screens, works for days if power is cut. @mikemckay #agdc

mollymali Hey @VOA_Crystal you should contact @mikeymckay from Baobab Health about putting computers into rural areas. #agdc

marcopuccia Focusing African ingenuity into high-impact innovation can create disruptive change! #agdc

ideasforafrica African innovation isn't just low-tech ingenuity, it can be harnessed for the high impact and high tech- @mickemckay #agdc

tracy1314 #agdc William kawemba on screen with Malawian building touch screen computers for boabab. >> thats some awesome innovation in that pix

africagathering Great presentation done by Mike McKay #agdc #omidyar

nicktadd Great presentation done by Mike McKay #agdc #omidyar

marvintumbo RT @ideasforafrica: African innovation isn't just low-tech ingenuity, it can be harnessed for the high impact and high tech- @mickemckay #agdc

madayo So impressed with @mikeymckay on necessity and innovation and "just figuring out how to do stuff" in Africa. #agdc

NYTimes on why Crowdsourcing with Ushahidi is the Future

2010-03-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

A few of my friends (Eric, Soyapi) have been working on Ushahidi for a while. The NY Times has an excellent article about how Ushahidi enables crowdsourcing and is providing transparency and insights in diverse situations all over the world.

Could wiki technology find Osama bin Laden?

Imagine if anyone in the rugged far reaches of Pakistan or Afghanistan could send an anonymous text message to the authorities suggesting where to look. Each location could be plotted on a map. The dots would be scattered widely, perhaps, with promising leads indistinguishable from rubbish. But on a given day, a surge of dots might point to the same village, in what could not be coincidence. Troops would be ordered in.
...
Ushahidi remixes can be found all over the Internet. They have been used in India to monitor elections; in Africa to report medicine shortages; in the Middle East to collect reports of wartime violence; and in Washington, where The Washington Post built an Ushahidi-powered site called “Snowmageddon” to map road blockages and the location of available plows.
...
What we would know about what passed between Turks and Armenians, between Germans and Jews — and indeed would it have happened at all — if each of them had had a chance to declare and be heard saying: “I was here, and this is what happened to me”?

Hacking Air Travel

2010-02-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

I travel a fair amount. This is the post where I plan to continuously refine and collect hacks that make travelling more enjoyable.

But first off, let me be clear on my scope. These are the unexpected things that I have picked up from other people or figured out myself. These are not seat exercises advertised in the seat back pocket nor is this a web site about earning air miles by buying silver dollar coins with your miles-earning credit card (although I do like that one). These are hacks.

Sit in the back, Jack

Window or aisle? Row 24 or 34 on a 767? Sites like seatguru.com have solved this question. But those answers are static and totally leave out the human factor. More important then where you are sitting is who you are sitting with. Three empty seats in the back of cattle class trumps one wide seat with a footrest in business class next to a chatty frequent flyer. Even one empty seat next to you with that extra tray table and foot room is a big win in my book. If there is only one empty seat on the plane, I want it to be the one next to me.

Airlines make you feel like you have power by asking, "window or aisle" but really we are at the whim of a seat selecting robot; an algorithm that determines your continent hopping happiness that is actually pretty easy to reverse engineer. It goes something like this: for a given person and their window or aisle preference loop over the available seats until a seat is found that matches their preferences. Like most algorithmic loops, they start at the beginning, or in our case at the front of the plane. Hence, all of the seats in the front get filled first. If you get a seat in the back, the chances that you will have an empty one next to you are pretty good. But the algorithm that we are hacking is slightly more complex than that. The seating algorithm also has to handle people that want to sit together. Instead of splitting up two people that are together the algorithm marches through the plane until it finds two empty seats together. So keeping this all in mind, my goal is to always aim for the back of the plane next to a seat where an individual and his/her preferences and potentially his/her partner are least likely to be placed. Most long haul flights have three or more seats down the middle. These are great for seat algorithm hacking, because they eliminate people with the window preference and because no one wants to be penisinbetweenis (as opposed to shotgun, left nut, or right nut in the calculus of high school seat selection ("can't call shotgun until we are outside") AKA stuck in the middle between two strangers). If you can see the seating chart, you can also eliminate couples by looking for a row that has only one empty seat next to an aisle. So in summary, my ideal seat tends to be a few rows up from the back (avoid the bathroom smell and the congregators) in the middle section with at least a single empty seat next to it.

(I am writing this sprawled out across three seats in the back of a long flight from DC to Africa. When I was checking in I asked for a seat in the back. I ended up assigned next to someone one row in front of an entirely empty row of seats. Oh yeah!)

(On my return 20+ hour flight I ended up with a four seat block all to myself)

Never blow your nose

Airplane air sucks. It's pressurized. It's recycled. It's dry. Flying for more than 12 hours usually results in a few days of bloody noses for me. I asked some doctor friends what was going on, and they explained that inside our noses we have thin membranes that don't like dry air. So I began snorting saline spray like Al Pacino snorting cocaine in Scarface.

That helped me feel better during the flight, but I still ended up with a sinus issues afterwards. My latest strategy is to make the nose off limits during flying. No saline spray. No blowing my nose. No nose rubbing. If my nose runs a bit, then catch the dribble on the way out. Let the fluids in your nose do what they are there to do: protect your membrane. In case this point isn't obvious, picking your nose while flying is so dangerous it's a wonder the TSA doesn't chop off fingers before flying.

Get up. Stand Up.

Sitting for a long time sucks. So head to a place where you won't bother anybody and stand. Bring a book and enjoy the feeling of blood circulating to your feet. Bonus points for hanging out in the galley for instant drinks and snacks. I really enjoy making crazy faces in the mirror of those tiny bathrooms.

These are not the droids you are searching for.

I am not very good at this one, but I am working on it. Essentially we are aiming for mind control. While getting into the ginormous queue at the airport you say to the line director, "you want to upgrade me to the first class line?". Or as you hand over your luggage you joke, "you were just getting ready to tell me that you have moved me up to business class". These have both worked for me. I know a guy that always points to the first class section and says "this way, right?" as he winks at the stewardess when he boards, and he often gets escorted to an empty seat in first class. I once sat with a friendly old bald guy in the exit row who claimed to get champagne on every flight he goes on by simply being fun and friendly with the airline staff. Of course there is a fine line between being friendly and flirting. Flirting works even better. The key is to realize that flight attendants are people doing jobs, and a bit of fun or human interaction or a chance to show off their power makes their jobs and their life better. Like I said, I'm not very good at this one. Especially the flirting.

Sprawl on the terminal floor

I spend a lot of time in developing countries. The airports are often crowded and less than sparkly clean. That never stops me from sprawling out on the floor, with my bag as a pillow and my feet stretched out in front of me. Will my clothes get dirty? Probably. Will I wash them? Definitely. It's important to maximize the hours with your feet up if you will be cramped on a plane for hours and hours.

Last one on wins

Why does everyone freak out when it's time to board the plane? So you can be the first one to sit in a cramped seat breathing recycled air? It's kind of like everyone standing up the second the captain dings the bell and the seatbelt light goes off only to end up standing around with your neck bent over sideways as the overhead bin crashes down on your head. Chill. I like to be the last one on the plane. It's like a free ten minutes of life. Go for a walk. Flip through a magazine that you would never buy. Drink a beer. Charge your laptop. Wait until everyone has gone. Wait until they start announcing your name. Then wander in, find your seat, and I bet you still won't be the last one on the plane, or at least the last one to be buckled up. There, I just added ten minutes to your life - you can buy me a beer sometime.

Massages near the airport

In Asia massages are cheap and traffic is crazy. I assume the worst about traffic and if I end up near the airport with more than an hour to kill then I ask the driver to drop me off at spa. You can usually pay $25 inside the airport, but for $5 on the outside, you get a sauna, shower and a massage that will make the upcoming journey just a fleeting nightmare between being pampered and being in the comfort of home.

Read while in line

Always have a book or magazine in your pocket. Long queues for security, missed flights, customs, buses, etc, etc are forgotten within the between the cover of a good book or magazine. Leave the journals, slide decks and legalese for later. Bust out Wired, the New Yorker or Neal Stephenson and find happiness.

How you gonna holler without facebook?

2009-12-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

On the 92 bus in Washington DC:

Getting on the bus, a young man is hitting on a woman:
Man: "Well how can I get at you, girl?"
Woman: "I dunno, hit me up on MySpace or Facebook or my email."
Man: "Girl, do I look like I'm made of money? How you think I'm gonna get on the internet? Where do YOU got internet?"
Woman: "I got internet at my job! But for you - shit, I dunno, go to the library or something."
Conversation continues for some minutes, then the man gets off the bus.

Older, homeless man who had been sitting near them the whole time, turns to the girl and asks incredulously: "How that young [man] gonna holler at you when he ain't got no internet?!"

Relationships are a huge driver of technology adoption. Don't underestimate them.

From Overheard in DC on the DCIST

Malaria and the US

2009-12-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

Malaria is no fun. I caught it and it felt like my bones were melting through my skin. But when you take the right medicine it goes away very fast. Unfortunately many, many children don't have access to the medicine (or the test) and die.

This image shows malaria incidence in the US in 1870. With 100 years of democracy, and during a time when factories were being built on a scale never before imagined, the US was as endemic or more endemic to malaria than many of the worst places in Africa today. The maps shows that in many places (including Washington DC) more than 10% of the deaths were caused by malaria. The average lifespan was about 40.

Many people wonder what is wrong with Africa. Why is it so corrupt? Why is there so much disease? Why is it developing so slowly? Charts like this remind me that Africa is developing much faster than the West ever did (although perhaps not as fast as the East).

(I just heard today about a malaria vaccine today on trial in Malawi that sounds pretty effective. Let's hear it for technology and progress!!!)

Filipinos Facebook and Farmville

2009-12-03T07:37:00.001-08:00

I've never played Farmville. Despite being an unabashed technophile, I haven't really played computer games for a long time. I remember a pre-teen family vacation to Yosemite where the undeniable highlight was neither waterfalls nor bears, but a visit to Sierra Online, a little office in the middle of nowhere from which sprang such amazing things as Space Quest, King's Quest, and (ahem) Leisure Suit Larry. I thought that the magic of computer games had captured my heart, but in retrospect it was simply the magic of computers. Years later I turned down a job building a snowboarding simulator for the x-box so that I could work with a bunch of Linux geeks on software for the British government. My 12 year old self still despises me.

But games are big, and I feel like I am missing out on something by not playing them. World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Civilization - am I missing something? It wasn't until a recent trip to the Philippines that I realized just how huge Farmville is. I have friends on Facebook who play it, but I blocked all updates from it long ago, so it is out of sight and out of mind. Until I went to the Philippines. There I found Farmville a lot harder to block, because it kept invading real life.

Everywhere I went people were playing Farmville. The look on their faces implied that they were using the hotel reservation system, or catching up on email at the coffee shop, or writing a paper on impact assessment. But the moo of a cow or the snort of a pig gave them away. A subtle stroll behind their screen confirmed it.

I was doing an informal assessment of computer experience in health care workers at the rural health clinics where our project was going to be piloted. The answers were pretty consistent. "We don't have any experience with computers." Followed by contemplation, perhaps a giggle, and then, "except for playing games".

We continue to underestimate how rapidly people adopt technology. Remember when you first joined facebook? Back then did you ever imagine that your mom might friend you? Did you ever imagine it would take just a few months? A few years ago I showed my Malawian housekeeper how google worked. Now she's on facebook.

This isn't the first time we've underestimated ourselves. Remember cellphones? People who can't read and earn less than $1 a day tend to have phones in Malawi, especially if they live in the urban areas. Nobody expected Africa to become connected so quickly.

We need to stop underestimating people. Don't expect Africans to be content with boring old SMS and voice for long. Smartphones, droids and even iphones are much higher up Maslow's hierarchy of needs than we realize, especially if nobody around owns a computers, your schools suck, and the government controls the radio and newspaper. Africans have leapfrogged over landlines. They are now leaping over laptops.

(Desperate housewives, lonely on their isolated farms, also surprised the world by being the early adopters of the strange world of cranks and dials and operators that made up the original telephones of the 19th century)

Back to my Filipino friends who "don't know how to use computers", but do know how to play computer games (it was Farmville that they were playing). While Google is organizing the world's information, Facebook is organizing the world's relationships. It sounds like a silly mission statement at first. Yet consider the universal pursuit of friendship, love and community. If they can pull it off, then we will have taken another step forward in the evolution of our species. If Facebook can enable that which virtually defines us as humans then I think we are going to be seeing a lot more Farmville being played.

Some strange headlines are beginning to form themselves:

Web Farm Dot Oh - the Next Internet Bubble
Facebocracy: Filipinos Ratify World's First Facebook Based Constitution

One last thing about Facebook and the Philippines. The Philippines is the text messaging capital of the world. They send 1.6 billion SMSs every day and their population is just 80 million. No one sends more SMSs than the Filipinos. As in Africa, smartphones are being rapidly adopted. But people don't have a lot of money to spend on unlimited data plans like the ones forced upon us here in the US. So you might expect a blackberry like option - where you can get unlimited email access on your smartphone. Isn't that the logical upgrade for the SMS crazed Filipinos? SMS migrates to email? Nope, that wasn't an option that the cellphone providers were offering. But for 20 pesos a day (about 50 cents) you can get unlimited access to Facebook.

Ubuntu Web Appliance

2009-11-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

I am working on a project here in the Philippines that uses computers to help rural health care workers capture and use data more effectively. I am really trying to figure out how to make the hardware configuration as easy and off the shelf as possible so we can quickly scale this up once we have the kinks worked out. Unfortunately off the shelf appears to mean a Windows XP netbook with Limewire and who knows what else pre-installed. For various reasons some of these virus magnets can't be wiped because they are owned by someone else.

I have written a script that creates an efficient, appliance-like, ubuntu client. It is customized to automatically connect to the right wireless access point, and it is bundled with a firefox profile that starts on boot and which has a full screen plugin pre-installed, the home page pre-configured, and a nice little plugin called 'try again' that automatically refreshes the page if the connection is lost. Of course, this lovely little piece of work is useless if I can't install Ubuntu.

That is until today, when I figured out how to use remastersys to create a custom bootable Ubuntu. Remastersys creates a bootable iso of your currently installed Ubuntu that you can put on a flash disk (with USB Startup Disk Creator) and boot from and use without making any changes to the hard drive. It's like the Ubuntu install disk but with all of my carefully crafted magic. So now I can convert the useless windows bricks into kick ass appliances without ruffling any feathers just by plugging in a USB stick. Removing the disk and rebooting will return them to their original spambot state. And if they ever decide that the Ubuntu setup is superior (and they will of course) the bootable disk has an option to install onto the hard drive. My USB bootable ubuntu appliance is here in case anybody wants it (but you might as well build your own). Oh, one last trick: use VirtualBox to create your ideal Ubuntu. It makes it really easy. VirtualBox snapshots are helpful in crafting the perfect, compact and clean image (but ideally you should use scripts so that you can repeat anything you do later).

A nice day's work if I do say so myself!

mysql replication

2009-11-12T02:43:00.000-08:00

I am currently working on a script to automate the process of setting up mysql database replication. I followed various tutorials but I always got stuck here:


mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

Endless googling was no help (which is why I am blogging this). Eventually I realized that /etc/mysql/my.cnf was context sensitive, meaning that I couldn't just append the replication configuration to the end of the file. This meant I needed to insert the configuration into the appropriate place in the file. This meant inserting multiple lines of text into the middle of the file. Eventually I came up with the following:

(Update) I used to do this with ruby, but I switched to perl since ruby isn't installed by default:

MYSQL_CONF_ADDITIONS="
# ----------------------------------------
# Allow connections from all addresses
bind-address = 0.0.0.0
# ------------------------------
"

perl -i -p -e "print '${MYSQL_CONF_ADDITIONS}',$_='' if \$_ =~ /bind-address.*127.0.0.1/)" /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Hopefully this will be useful to somebody, someday, somewhere.

Healthcare protocols save lives

2009-11-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend this excellent article in the NYTimes about how we can use data to create healthcare protocols that dramatically improve outcomes and reduce overall costs. (This is what we were trying to do in Malawi and what I am trying to introduce in the Philippines)

Here are the key points that I want to remember:

To enter mainstream use, any such treatment typically needs to clear a high bar. It will be subject to randomized trials, statistical-significance tests, the peer-review process of academic journals and the scrutiny of government regulators. Yet once a treatment enters the mainstream — once we know whether it works in certain situations — science is largely left behind. The next questions — when to use it and on which patients — become matters of judgment, not measurement. The decision is, once again, left to a doctor’s informed intuition.
...
“Guys, it’s more important that you do it the same way than what you think is the right way.”
...
Whenever possible, the guidelines are also embedded in the hospital’s computer system. Doctors and nurses are presented with a default choice — how much of a given drug to prescribe, for example — and have the option of overriding it. Most important, the electronic records system allows both committees and doctors to track patient outcomes.
...
He could not simply tell Intermountain’s doctors what to do, no matter how much research he brought to bear. Doctors have a degree of professional autonomy that is probably unmatched outside academia. And that is how we like it. We think of our doctors as wise men and women who can combine knowledge and instinct to land on just the right treatment.
...
Perhaps the clearest example is the Pronovost checklist. As many as 28,000 people in this country die each year from infections that come from intravenous lines. Several years ago, Peter Pronovost, a Johns Hopkins physician, developed a simple list of five steps that intensive-care doctors should take before inserting an IV line, in order to prevent the introduction of bacteria. The checklist reduced the infection rate to essentially zero at 108 hospitals in Michigan where it was adopted. Pronovost published the results in The New England Journal of Medicine
...
But in our current health care system, there is no virtuous cycle of innovation, success and expansion. When Intermountain standardized lung care for premature babies, it not only cut the number who went on a ventilator by more than 75 percent; it also reduced costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Perversely, Intermountain’s revenues were reduced by even more. Altogether, Intermountain lost $329,000. Thanks to the fee-for-service system, the hospital had been making money off substandard care. And by improving care — by reducing the number of babies on ventilators — it lost money. As James tartly said, “We got screwed pretty badly on that.”
...
As long as doctors and hospitals are paid for each extra test and treatment, they will err on the side of more care and not always better care. No doctor or no single hospital can change that. It requires action by the government.
...
Yet somehow, both doctors and patients have come to imagine that a physician can accomplish far more than any human being reasonably can. As a result, modern medicine is accomplishing far less than it reasonably should.

Childcare Amazon.com style

2009-11-05T07:36:00.001-08:00

Noise blocking earmuffs...check
Music...check
Children locked away in kiddie jail...check

ssh all the time

2009-11-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

Using autossh and reverse ssh tunneling to bust out of NAT'd networks and firewalls automatically.

In another lifetime I blogged about how to reverse an ssh connection. This was by far my most popular post ever. It earned enough in google ad money to cover my hosting costs. Those were the days. Those days are gone, and now lots of people have blogged about using reverse ssh tunnels. It's time to take it to the next level and make reverse ssh tunnels easy and ubiquitous.

I want all of my machines to be setup with an ssh tunnel whenever one of them finds an internet connection. That way I can always access all of my machines no matter where I, or they are the world. I want this even if they are in some high security firewalled corporate prison or if they are sharing the same IP address as the other million NAT'd users tethering internet through their phones. This should happen automatically and without fuss.

To do this you need to have ssh access to a machine that can be seen from the internet, and the ssh daemon machine needs to have the GatewayPorts option set to yes (this is not the default). See my old post for more information.

Here's the recipe.

(Update! I have made this much easier by scripting the whole process, see the bottom of the post!)

Create a file:

/etc/network/if-up.d/reverse_ssh_tunnel

(you are using Ubuntu, right?)

Put this in it:


#!/bin/sh
# ------------------------------
# autossh reverse tunnel on boot
# ------------------------------
# See autossh and google for reverse ssh tunnels to see how this works

# When this script runs it will allow you to ssh into this machine even if it is behind a firewall or has a NAT'd IP address.
# From any ssh capable machine you just type ssh -p $PORT_MIDDLEMAN_WILL_LISTEN_ON localusername@middleman

# This is the username on your local server who has public key authentication setup at the middleman
USER_TO_SSH_IN_AS=change_me

# This is the username and hostname/IP address for the middleman (internet accessible server)
MIDDLEMAN_SERVER_AND_USERNAME=luser@example.com

# The following two numbers can be whatever you want, but need to be unique if you have multiple reverse ssh tunnels
# Port that the middleman will listen on (use this value as the -p argument when sshing)
PORT_MIDDLEMAN_WILL_LISTEN_ON=11829

# Connection monitoring port, don't need to know this one
AUTOSSH_PORT=27554

# Ensures that autossh keeps trying to connect
AUTOSSH_GATETIME=0

export AUTOSSH_PORT AUTOSSH_GATETIME

su -c "autossh -f -N -R *:${PORT_MIDDLEMAN_WILL_LISTEN_ON}:localhost:22 ${MIDDLEMAN_SERVER_AND_USERNAME} -oLogLevel=error  -oUserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -oStrictHostKeyChecking=no" $USER_TO_SSH_IN_AS

Make sure that you fill in the values to match your own logins (send me a comment if you are confused about what to put in).

Now whenever the machine acquires an internet connection it will run the above script (that is why we put it in /etc/network/if-up.d). Then from any internet connection you can ssh -p 11829 USER_TO_SSH_IN_AS@MIDDLEMAN and you will get forwarded to your own machine.

You should put this on all of your machines. That is all.

Oh one more thing. For this to work you need to have passwordless public key authentication working between your machine and the middleman. Use this:


ssh-copy-id

It will take care of all of the gory details of copying and concatenating your keys so that you can ssh in without typing anything.

This blog post is a mess and needs some serious revision, but I needed to post it, if for no other reason so that I could find the info when I needed it!

Update

I put everything you need to set this up into a script on github. If you have a server out on the internet with the GatewayPorts option turned on, then all you need to do is the following:


wget http://github.com/mikeymckay/reverse_ssh_tunnel/raw/master/setup_reverse_tunnel.sh
chmod +x ./setup_reverse_tunnel.sh
sudo ./setup_reverse_tunnel.sh

Someone is doing something nasty

2009-10-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

Someone is doing something nasty. That's the title of my favorite Linux error message. It's to stop another computer from emulating another computer in order to try and steal passwords. They call this a man in the middle attack.

Unfortunately, I am always caught doing something nasty. It's because I work with a lot of Linux machines, and I setup VirtualBox or VMWare servers, and each new server looks like an untrusted machine when I try and ssh to it. This always results in me getting this:


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
d7:63:c7:d5:65:55:33:fc:bf:b5:d6:f9:c1:a5:2e:d6.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/crazy/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /home/crazy/.ssh/known_hosts:66
RSA host key for [localhost]:2222 has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

So then I have to open up the known_hosts file, find the line, delete it and then reconnect.

After years of doing the nasty like this, I finally figured out how to use the ssh config file to solve this problem (and do other cool stuff too):

From ~/.ssh/config:


Host chits
Port 2222
HostName localhost
UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
StrictHostKeyChecking no
LogLevel error
User chits

This combines a couple of nice things. Here is the stuff that protects you from the nasty:


UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
StrictHostKeyChecking no
LogLevel error

It looks at the null file to check for a match on the new server's key. It eases off the strict-o-ness level, and it doesn't bore with warnings that you already know.

The other stuff just makes it require less typing to login to my virtual servers which listen on strange ports and require funny user names.

Simply deploy Sinatra permanently

2009-10-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

Sinatra is an awesome tool for creating dynamic websites really really fast. But their deployment recommendations just don't match their overall KISS ethos. So here is my recommendation if you want to deploy a sinatra app really quickly:

If your sinatra app is in:


/var/www/sinatra/cool_app.rb

Just insert in /etc/rc.local (before the "exit 0" line)


nohup /usr/bin/ruby /var/www/sinatra/cool_app.rb&

And then run the same command. Now your application is running, and the next time your system reboots it will start up again.

Open source software needs designers

2009-10-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

A friend recently challenged me with the following hypothesis: Open source is something that is valuable to programmers but when programmers are writing open source software they have no incentive to build software that is useful for end users. Because of this, we we end up with overly complex software that may not even address the need of the end users and hence the original intent of the project.

After thinking about this for awhile I have decided that I agree that there is a serious disconnect between software developers and end users, but I don't think open source has much to do with it. Programmers are good at logical thinking (without emotion), understanding complex documentation (pages of text), and holding multiple concepts and equations in their heads at the same time. In fact they tend to thrive on this kind of stuff. Case in point, I was just looking at a product that allows you to remotely control someone else's PC. Let's have a look at two images on their site:

Whether you are a computer programmer or not, that is a terrible attempt to communicate something. The only thing it communicates to me is that this setup is complex. Perhaps that is how the programmer's mind visualizes what he is building, and that is fine, but let's keep our private parts (brain dumps included) to ourselves, eh?

I thought this second image (they are both on the same page) was pretty funny. Instead of explaining that the software can help your mom when she "loses the internet" by letting you control her computer from afar, the developer decides to show you how you can recursively connect to yourself and create an infinite number of desktops within desktops. "Whoa dude, isn't it crazy what I can do?? I feel like my brain is going to explode!" Sorry, elite hacker dude, it's not cool. It's lame and I am sorry that normal people will never use your software because most people don't like software that makes their brain explode, they like things that help mom. Most people, but not computer programmers. The more head-xplode-dacious the better for geeks!

This problem gets compounded when you have programmers in DC "solving" problems in Africa or the Philippines. Not only do we have the programmer/normal person gap, but we also have a cultural gap (take it from me, never use the word stupid in the Philippines) and a geographical gap (body language and timezones matter). The greater the gap, then the more useless the stuff we end up with is. The more time programmers spend in country the more we can reduce this gap. Or even better, find some programmers from the country itself. This can improve things a lot, but you still have the classic gap between programmers and end users.

The way to solve this is to have programmers never design anything that a user will see, ever. Instead you have designers design stuff and programmers implement it. Back in the dot com days I worked for a big technology consulting firm and every project had at least one business strategy person, a designer and a computer programmer. We created some world changing stuff, but we were expensive, spent a lot of money on flashy artsy offices and flamed out. But I worked with designers and learned to understand their value (and my own shortcomings in that area).

Macs and iphones aren't programmed in California - they are Designed (check the back of your iphone). I hear that Apple has heavily relied on their Silicon neighbor IDEO to do a lot of their design work, or more likely they probably just hired a bunch of IDEO people. IDEO is a pure design firm, they spend most of their time watching and talking with users, and the other part of their time is spent trying to think outside the box by crossing and combining design patterns from disparate genres and seeing if they can come up with something useful. I just installed an iphone app called Party Whistle designed by the IDEO guys. It is the antithesis of the above examples:

When you launch the app you see a party whistle on the screen, and a little icon recommending that you blow into one end of your phone. When you do his, the whistle expands and makes funny noises and all sorts of wacky stuff. Emphasis on wacky. Nothing useful. It doesn't help plan a party or coordinate party favors, it is just wackyness designed elegantly and simply. This is what you get without programmers.

What we really need is to take the brilliant visual ideas of designers and connect them with innovative plumbing that programmers do.

Usually we do this backwards, and we give the problem to the programmer and they plumb it, then they make it so that they can use it, then they try and make it look nice. With a single designer or artist or business plan you have nothing. But with a single programmer you can usually create something, even if that something is just a shadow of what it could be. It's this shadow world of foggy potential that the programmers tend to fester.

How does this relate to open source? It doesn't really. The best programmers hate to create boring stuff like menus and reminder windows because all of that stuff has been done before. They would rather reuse someone else's code so they could focus on doing the really challenging (brain exploding?) part. This is how programmers are wired, so if they aren't allowed to use open source they will be less happy and will be forced to waste their time on reinventing the wheel. Whether it is open or not will have no impact on usability.

Open source lets programmers stand on the shoulders of giants and build the stuff that they think is important and cool. As a result open source has little to do with cost (of any kind) and more to do with creating an easy way for programmers to share, communicate and collaborate. I prefer working with open source software because I can find other developers trying solve the same problems on IRC. I can google for documentation and wiki my own thoughts to it so that others benefit and see how cool I am. I can join mailing lists. It also means that open source programmers write their code so that others can read it and use it and modify it easily. All of this leads to high-productivity, innovation and personal fulfillment for open sourcers.

It doesn't lead to good user centric design.

Yet open source programmers are figuring out good ways to work together. Open source fosters that, and that is why the innovation is coming out of open source. Open source enables programmers to work on the innovative stuff. Tools like cucumber (story based testing) and github (facebook for geeks) and others are further helping programmers spend their time on innovation, and less on the debugging and already solved problems.

The challenge then is to figure out how to use the open source approach so that it can bridge the geeks with the artists. Imagine if designers could easily express their prototypes without having to waste a lot of time explaining it to programmers. When artists can hook into code as easily as they can doodle a design, then we will have a renaissance that spreads beyond just the geek elite.