Ghana
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
by George Appiah
Checking my website’s visitor statistics today, I found a lot of entries for the keyword “Stephen Appiah”. So people who are looking for information about Stephen Appiah, the famous Ghanaian footballer, end up on my website!
And because I have so much time on my hands these days, I decided to do a little digging around to find out how this successful footballer is managing his affairs online. Sad to say, I wasn’t impressed at all.
First, the website http://www.StephenAppiah.com doesn’t belong to Stephen Appiah. From the public WHOIS records, the domain name “stephenappiah.com” belongs to one Murat Akal from Instanbul, Turkey.
Surprised? Just remember the cardinal rule of the domain name game: names available strictly on a first-come-first-served basis. The only exception to this is trademarks, which can be contested. But the last time I asked, no one could claim a trademark for his/her name.
The official website for Stephen Appiah is www.StepApp.com, which is also the home for his non-profit StepApp Foundation, as well as his fashion brand StepApp.
This site appears on the first page of the search results for the the keyword “Stephen Appiah” on all the three major search Engines: Google, Yahoo and Live (Microsoft). So why do people still end up on my website, which is buried so deeply away?
That’s easy enough to figure out: the unscrupulous firm working on the website have decided to use their client’s website to promote themselves, instead of their client. This is the first page of a Google search for “Stephen Appiah”:
As you can see, Stephen Appiah’s official website is the third on the page, but it doesn’t mention his name at all — not in the title, and not in the description (actually there’s no description at all). It only says StepApp :: Powered by AccurrateConsult.com (the web design firm working on the website).
So unless you know the non-profit and fashion brand StepApp already, you’re not going to associate that site with the Ghanaian footballer. And if you know StepApp already, you’re likely to go directly to the site instead of searching for what you already know.
Does Stephen Appiah know about this? I doubt he does. Would he care if he knew? I doubt he would. Should he? Absolutely. And I’ll tell you why he should in an upcoming post.
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
by George Appiah
I saw this sign around the popular “Monkey Hill” in Takoradi — in the Western Region of Ghana. My initial reaction to the sign was: KEEP OFF - ONLY MONKEYS ALLOWED!
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
by George Appiah
Today marks the 51st anniversary of Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule. To all my Ghanaian readers: you’ve (presumably) worked very hard all year, and you certainly deserve a break. Go put on your best clothes, hook up with your favorite human being(s), and enjoy yourselves. It’s your day, enjoy it to the fullest.
[As for me, I'm still busy at work with a large entourage of professionals (who are much smarter than myself!!!) -- trying to put my new apartment in shape]
[Beautiful cat dog photo from DonnitaMae on Flickr, and edited with iPhoto on my MacBook 
]
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
by George Appiah
Later this year, somewhere in September, I’ll be packing my single little suitcase again, and head for Sweden for graduate studies. Now it’s not if anymore. It’s when — when the time comes.
That means I have about six months here in Ghana, six months in my new apartment, and six months to do all the things I have to do and clean up all the mess I create along the way.
The above is a photo exhibition at the Second House of Sweden in SecondLife.
Friday, February 29th, 2008
by George Appiah
In case you didn’t know, I run a little toy called GhanaBee for you news junkies to receive the latest Ghana news headlines on your cellphones. Every 30 minutes, this little toy steps out to automagically grab the latest news headlines from major Ghanaian news websites, and renders them for proper display on mobile devices. It also sends free SMS alerts via the Twitter API. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first and only website of its kind out there.
I have a small but loyal (and growing!) users, and I’ve received really great feedback from these folks. But the funny thing is that I’ve never owned a phone capable of accessing the Internet before! So I’ve relied on various cellphone emulators to optimize the display.
Anyway, today I discovered this little free software called iPhoney which brands itself as a “pixel-accurate” iPhone emulator. This is how GhanaBee displays on the iPhone. Cool, huh?
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
by George Appiah
In a classic display of our total lack of creativity and disregard for copyright laws in Ghana, the folks re-designing the official website of the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana have blatantly copied the UK Parliament’s website.
Take a look: Here’s the “new” Parliament of Ghana website: http://www.parliament.gh. If you visit the website, you’ll observe most links don’t work. Please forgive us… our copycats are busy carrying the images and links all the way from the UK to Ghana!
And here’s the official website of the UK Parliament: http://www.parliament.uk
And finally, here is the previous website of the Parliament of Ghana (from the Way Back Machine:
Thanks to my friend Remy Edmundson for the tip.
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
by George Appiah
If you’ve been reading about the struggles that I’ve been sharing here recently on this blog, let me tell you this is nothing new. I’ve been in in constant $h1t$ nearly all my life, often too personal for any one to comprehend, and often through no fault of mine. The above photo brings to mind three years of enduring pleasure in pain.
From January 1994 to December 1996, I had my secondary education at Fijai Secondary School in Secondi (NOT Takoradi, FWIW!) in the Western Region of Ghana. While at school, the entire year group was sent home and later made to sign a bond of “good behaviour”, for whatever crime I never got myself to understand. And our final exam, the (then) Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE), was cancelled nationwide, and we had to re-write the whole damn thing again.
But I digress. I just wanted to share this great photo of my friends, which I found today… taken over a decade ago back at Fijai Secondary School. From back to front, left to right: Fritz Williams, Moses Bentil, William Ayitevi, Emmanuel Insaidoo, Cyril Mettle, Gershon Worwu, [psss... can't remember this guy's name], Tsemeng, Maranatha Acquaye, and Manfred Amissah.
Where am I? Of course I’m not in the photo, but looking at this squad, I couldn’t be too far from the scene. Either I shot the photo, or I stood aside and opted to be out of the photo (the latter being more like it).
Guys… where are you all? George misses you all, dearly.
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
by George Appiah
From the very beginning we knew our little baby was NOT going to be a household name. Rather we wanted her to be the unknown giant upon whose shoulders many Smart Ghanaians would stand and lead our nation and the rest of the continent towards a safe, just, and prosperous future. And while things have been moving quite uneasily slow for us, we’re moving forward nonetheless.
A major initiative currently underway is a center to be run in conjunction with the Institute of Mathematical sciences, an institution founded and headed by our very own Prof. Allottey.
Yesterday, accompanied by my two partners in crime - Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson - I went to inspect the status of work on a facility at McCarthy Hill, Accra, which is likely going to be our new home. This facility currently houses the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and is being expanded to temporarily accommodate the yet-to-be-launched Allottey Andam University College.
We couldn’t have access to indoor facilities, but here are some photos we took from the compound. Enjoy.
Just looking spying around…
On top of the world ….
Starting the journey back to ground zero…
Almost down now…
This beast will give us Internet access… for the time being
Man… George Appiah loves to squat!
It’s been a good day… we’re ready to return home now!
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
by George Appiah
What can chicken and rice get you? Not much. Well, that’s what I’d say, as I don’t take in meat, and don’t really like rice. But apparently others — very prominent people in our society — will do just about anything for a plate of chicken and rice.
Yesterday I had a great conversation with one expatriate (who came to Ghana as a cook, and is now the General Manager of a major hotel chain) who has found the almost magical power of chicken and egg to get whatever he want from Ghanaians.
- For chicken and rice, this man says he can buy a minister (not the religious type, but I guess those will be even cheaper to buy — say, for banku and wele? )
- For chicken and rice, he can buy a judge of our courts
- For chicken and rice, he could even kill a person and run away with it (how? because he can keep a medical doctor away from his patients — with just chicken and rice!)
- And… for chicken and rice, he can get any Ghanaian girl to open her legs (but I must add that my expat friend says he’s not done this before — and my thinking is that he has found no need to use this chicken and rice bait at all, as these girls, willingly come in a drove!)
We spoke at length about many other issues, and this man’s openness and deep insights on these other issues (especially those involving technology, which I was very much aware of already) left me no reason to doubt his chicken and rice story at all.
Hello Ghana! In our quest for daily survival and economic significance we seem to have left something behind: our daily prayer for God to make us cherish fearless honesty. Or is it that God is not answering our prayer?
And looking at the high-profile people this man claims to have been able to buy with nothing but a plate of chicken and rice, I’m left wondering what’s happening further down their ranks.
Help us, oh God, please do!
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
by George Appiah
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
Finished exploring this
interactive map of Ghana? Return to
Ghana Travel Guide for more Ghana travel tips.
