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After the recent upgrade to Google Maps for mobile, Google is quietly continuing to add more features and enhancements to many of its online products.

Users of Google Reader now have their very own personal recommendation engine. Visit your discovery page to find a list of “interesting” recommendations from Google… based on other feeds you subscribe to, as well as your Web History data.

Google Reader also now supports drag-and drop subscription management. With this, you can now easily move feeds between folders, as well as reorder things up and down within the list. This is something desktop aggregators, and even other online feed readers like Bloglines and NewsGator, have had for a while. Better late than never.

Other Google properties have also seen some enhancements. Group chat in Gmail/Gtalk allows you to chat with multiple people in one single window. Along with group chat comes a new set of emoticons for your chatting pleasure.

Google is also flirting with some interesting digg-like experiments. The objective here is to empower you to influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.

While Google explains this experiment in detail here, I couldn’t find any link to try this. Hmmm. Looks like only a select few have been invited to play with it.

Have you tried any of these new features from Google? What’s your experience?

There’s never been a greater need for those devices we carry around to be location-aware. Location information not only helps us determine where we are, but location-aware mobile services also use this information to make mobile mapping and search faster and more convenient.

But the most common source of location information to date, which is GPS technology, is only supported on some of the bleeding edge mobile devices. In fact, fewer than 15 percent of the mobile phones to be sold in 2007 are expected to support GPS.

Now Google to the rescue! The latest update to Google Maps for mobile comes with a new technology they’re calling My Location, which enables users who don’t have GPS-enabled mobile phones to get location information.

But even for those gadgeteers with GPS-enabled devices, the My Location technology actually complements the GPS technology they already have, as it delivers a location estimate faster than GPS, provides coverage inside buildings (where GPS signals can be unreliable), and doesn’t drain phone batteries as quickly as GPS.

How Does It Work?

The video embeded below shows the simple magic Google uses to determine your location. In a nutshell, the My Location technology takes information broadcast from cellphone operators’ towers (Cell IDs) and sifts it through Google’s triangulation algorithms to approximate a user’s current location on the map.

But is it accurate? That’s the question. Now I don’t live in the US or any other country where Google has any siginificant geo-data, and I can only speculate from the technology angle.

Triangulation uses the Signal TOA (time of arrival), to estimate distances. In environments such as the inner city, with lots of structures, the signal bounces off here and there, which causes multipath effect, and this degrades accuracy - significantly.

In open areas free from reflected signal paths, TOA systems can be as accurate as GPS, depending on how the system is architected.

But, if your phone doesn’t have GPS, this service is surely better than nothing. Go download Google Maps for mobile with My Location, here »» www.google.com/mobile/gmm/index.html.

Here’s a little interactive map of Ghana courtesy of Google Maps. Use the arrows at the upper left corner to move around and to zoom in and out.

As you can see, you cannot get that much detailed view from this map. If you’d like to explore Ghana further from your desktop, download and install Google Earth, a free desktop application from Google.

This free desktop application combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. Works on both PCs and Macs.

But even with Google Earth, you still cannot get as much detail about Ghana as you could from other places like the United States. This is because Google has to license the geospatial data from third-party providers.

And guess what… Uncle Google will license this data only when it makes the most economic sense! Yeah, they only buy this data for countries where they make their money from. But would you do otherwise?

View Larger Map

Yesterday’s training for the Greater Accra Regional heads of the National Board For Small Scale Industries’ Business Advisory Centers went on as scheduled, but not without problems. The training which was to start at 9am could only be started after noon!

First Zipnet, NBSSI’s ISP decided a fine Monday morning like that was the perfect time for their service to go down. And since I possibly couldn’t teach about Internet without access to the Internet, we had to wait and hope. After waiting for a while, it was apparent to us we were going to wait all day. So we decided to change venue, from the NBSSI’s headoffice to the Greater Accra regional office.

But the regional office also had its own challenges. There’s no network of any sort available (at least not in the office we used). So after struggling to get a dialup account working on my laptop computer, we had to also put up an ad-hoc network, so all participants could access the internet via my laptop.

Anyway, in the end, the training went surprisingly well. I guess much of the magic came from the participants’ open and friendly attitude, and a high level of motivation to learn.

Here are some photos from the event, taken by my colleagues Remy Edmundson and Christopher Bennett.

Setting up the ad-hoc network

Training in full swing, after the long wait

Michael and Philomike, Participants

Gladys and Anthea, Participants

Remy helping participants

Chris helping participants

My joy, when it was all over

The training continues today. Will, keep you updated.

Something magical happened in the Tanzanian city of Arusha earlier this year: TED held its first conference in Africa, titled “Africa: The Next Chapter.” Thought leaders from across the continent gathered with counterparts from around the globe to build new and lasting collaborations.

While I couldn’t be at this conference, thanks to the magic that is the Internet, I’ve watched every single one of the talks published so far.

My personal favorites from the Arusha event are: Ashesi University College President Patrick Awuah’s talk on “Educating a new generation of African leaders“ and Economist George Ayittey’s talk on “Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa’s future“ … both Ghanaians (yeah, I’m THIS biased.. and I’m not afraid to tout it )

And building upon the phenomenal success of this conference, TED is now making this an annual event. From a post on the TEDBlog:

We’re delighted to tell you that there will be another TED conference in Africa next year, and that we hope to make it an annual event on the continent! TEDAfrica will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, September 29-October 1, 2008 (save the date!), and will follow the format of this year’s TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

In addition, a new South Africa-based nonprofit organization, TEDAfrica Foundation, has been founded. TEDAfrica Foundation will devote its existence to promoting a better future for the continent of Africa.

Here is Patrick Awuah’s talk from this year’s event in Tanzania:

… and here’s George Ayittey’s talk:

Guadually I’m getting back on my feet. I’ve not had the need to visit the hospital for quite some now, and I’m grateful to all of you for all your support and encouragement throughout this past and painful year.

Here are just some quick updates for this week…

NBSSI Training

Today and tomorrow (Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th November), I’ll be doing training for the heads of the Business Advisory Centers of the National Board For Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) in Greater Accra region.

This was originally scheduled as a one week training, but was reduced to 3 days and eventually 2 days. And even then it’s just 9am-2pm, not full days as was originally planned. So I’m not sure how we’re going to squeeze everything into this limited time now.

An oh, this is a pro-bono training, as they couldn’t find the budget for it, but I decided to go ahead with it all the same. This training was arranged by Remy Edmundson of Integrity.

WordPress Hackathon

From the From the 1st to the 21st of December, I’ll be holding a marathon of WordPress training at my apartment in Atomic/Haatso, Accra, Ghana. This training is dubbed 21 Days Of WordPress Poetry and …

All sessions are absolutely free and open to anyone! I’ll provide details and topics to be addressed later in the day.

I’ll Be 28 This Week!

Wednesday, 28th will be my 28th birthday! Wow… I’m this old? Anyway, I’ve no idea yet how this day is going to be :-). Maybe I’ll return to my long lost “self” … shut out the rest of the world entirely and reflect upon this thing called life (which I’m supposed to be living and doing such a poor job at it!).

6 Months On The Road … Or Maybe Not

And now the big thing: From the 1st of January (February?) I’ll be embarking on a full 6-month expedition, which should take me to the capitals of all the 138 (?) geo-political districts in Ghana!

Details will be provided soon.

Yep, so that’s about it for now. Kind of busy really. What do you think?

Update: Integrity link and many typos fixed.

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No, Bill Gates is NOT going back to school to study, and I hope you were not burned by that title like I was.

This evening after sitting and staring at my computer for heaven knows how long– and not knowing what to do, I gave up and opened Google Reader to find something interesting to read.

That’s when I came across this great article published by Time way back in June 2007, and I wanted to share it.

The article traces Bill Gates’ life from his early high school days to age 22 when he dropped out of Harvard University to go after his passion, and continues through to his phenomenally successful business life, his transitioning out of Microsoft, and his present full-time philanthropy work in improving global education and health.

Gates’ life is a classic American riches-to-even-more-riches story. Growing up the son of a successful Seattle-area attorney, he was a curious fusion of nerd and bad boy. He was a straight-arrow student, but it was never enough to be the best. He had to push everything a little too far — he wanted to win the game and break the rules at the same time to show he was even smarter than the guy who wrote the rules. In high school, he and Allen, with whom Gates would later co-found Microsoft, were obsessed with programming a mainframe owned by a local company. But mastering it wasn’t enough. “We did this thing where we proved you could steal the password file,” Gates says. “Paul and I were banned from using the computer for a year.”

This is a great weekend reading for anyone who likes to explore the making of geniuses.

In the picture below is Bill Gates in 1984 (left) when he dropped out of Harvard, and Bill Gates during commencement ceremonies at Harvard University June 7, 2007.

Ullie Anna was not just a lonely little kid’s imaginations. Growing up, Ullie Anna was the only real friend I ever had.

Ullie Anna was the only one I ever wanted to be with… in my thoughts, that is. But that was where you’d always find me anyway.

Now I don’t quite remember the exact timing or even the circumstances of our individual paths crossing. But I can never forget what a pivotal role this imaginary character came to play in my my life, even to this very day.

Over the years, many more sweet and prim, flesh and blood Ullie Annas have come into this little life of mine– and gone. “He’s just too consumed in himself”, they must have thought. And now I can only sit back and count my loss. If only I didn’t have to care about this thing called life which I’m supposed to live, I wouldn’t care… like I never have over the years.

These are love notes to all the Ullie Annas who have crossed my path over the years. Some are lifted directly from notes and poems I’ve kept for so many years. Some are reflections on what life could have been. And yet others are dreaming… mere dreaming, that someday, somehow, I might find one more pretty and prim Ullie Anna in my life.

All I wanted to do was import my registered Webinars from the On24.com online events platform into Google Calendar.

But no matter how hard I tried, Google Calendar kept shying away from these iCal calendars that Outlook gladly accepts. Hmmm.

So I decided to do what any mentally retarded ape would do: add one calendar– any calendar at all– that Google deems valid, export it, and then find out what’s under the hood.

I searched the public calendars for “Ghana”, and look what fresh apple I found: Apple User Group Ghana! From their website:

People who use Apple technologies have joined together in user groups all around the world. Hundreds of groups offer members the chance to become friends with other Mac users, get questions answered, and have a lot of fun. Groups are for everyone from first-time computer users to experts — from every profession, background, and age. Want technology to do more for you?

So check us out to see what you think. You can get help and offer help, you can make new friends and contacts, and you’ll have fun. If you’ve got a Mac, you’ll want to join the Apple User Group Ghana (AUGG).

The group meets on the first Tuesday of every month, and membership is open to… who would have guessed… users of Apple products. Remember it’s Apple Users, not just Mac users. So even if you own an iPod, they’ll welcome you.

And no, this post was NOT written on a Mac. I don’t have a computer of my own now. But when I do, it’s sure going to be a MacBook Pro!