AfricaHacktrip Hackathon In Tanzania

The africahacktrip consisted of a group of developers and designers from Europe, curious about the emerging tech hubs, they have been moving around east Africa including Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania  to meet , connect share and kickoff continuous exchange through the events they held in the different countries.

At the Africahacktrip Hackathon in Tanzania we happened to meet up with several great guys who really love tech, the event kicked off ataround 11:00am EAT with guys making up groups to work on the applications they had proposed later on, at the end of the day a number of applications were demoed, some of the applications demoed included, among others:

·         Mapping movements

AfirefoxOS app that visualizes your movements, then calculates burned calories

·         Education platform

An onlineplatform that provides educational learning content for students and teachers in schools

·         ICT in agriculture

Make information available, get around the middleman between farmers and clients

·         Personal Education Assistant

Offline capability for, timetable,contacts,easy notes taking and task management

·         Afyamap

Map all health initiatives in Tanzania

We had Mozilla’s presence at the Hackathon, with Mozillians like Arky,Mozilla's presence organizer who helped with starting up of a Mozilla community in Tanzania with lots of interest showed, Vicky and ash from Kenya and JB from Uganda who guided guys on how to develop FirefoxOS apps.

What I really loved about the trip is the great application ideas that came up and the team showed us that they are so willing to help us developers here in Africa with all the necessary support we need while developing the apps.

I really loved GitHub’s involvement in the Hackathon with lots of guys learning how to host their applications using GitHub

The highlight of the event  was the great ideas that were got from the hackathon,user groups coming up, the apps developed, the GitHub drink ups  and can’t forget the fun.

If I was told there would be another trip soon, I wouldn’t hesitate being part of it, it was an awesome time,Lots of thanks to the AfricaHackTrip team.

Website: https://africahacktrip.org/

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/groups/africahacktrip

@AfricaHackTrip  #aht13 @github @bunihub @mozillakenya @MozComUg #mozilla

FirefoxOS at Orange Community Innovation Awards 2013

I happened to take part in the orange innovation awards 2013, from 5-8 august, Organized Every year by Orange Uganda, it’s a competition which recognizes the most impressive ideas in mobile app developments. These awards allow young developers in Uganda to suggest an innovative application that could be used in agriculture, health, or education.

I took this chance to interact with the developers who were showcasing different apps and I was passing the FirefoxOS developer preview keon device around, everybody was excited with the technology and the fact that the apps are developed using Web Languages (HTML5, JavaScript and CSS)

They liked the phones whole interface thought it was kind of slow at responding and they didn't like the idea that it has no back/return key. When they learned that it had a market place they all were so eager to start developing apps and place them on the market place.

The most interesting thing was when I mentioned of the forth coming Hackathon just weeks away they were so eager to join us and discover the whole new experience of the FirefoxOS apps.

There were 20 apps being showcased and some of them were:

Noisy Gates

This enables people to measure the noise levels they are exposed to and informs them of possible effects. It suggests precautions that one should take to avoid the negative effects of the measured noise level.

AgroMarketDay

This app features agricultural markets, market days, farmers, their details and the products sold in different markets, in different districts in Uganda.

Mens Preg

This app enlightens women about their fertility. Accurately enter pregnancy status, frequency of intimacy and period flow and it predicts ovulation days, safe days, possible conception and delivery day.

Careerg

This app provides career guidance, motivates and helps students calculate university entry weights. It also shows locations of schools and gives advice on how to be a job creator.

The students showcased the apps to the exhibitors on the final day of the event and thebest apps were awarded

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jb-ochieng/

Relevant Link:  http://www.orange.ug/about-orange/community-innovations-awards-2013.php

FirefoxFlicks at New Horizon

Flicks at new horizon was amazing, the event started at around 2:30 EAT ,though we had a smaller number of students, I introduced the flicks competition and took guys through the most important things to have in mind for the competition i.e the rules, theme, entry criteria,how to enter and prizes to win.

When it came to explaining what  firefoxOS was, oh my GOD everybody was eager to hear about it, I went through it, its technologies, how to develop apps, developer engagement and how to submit for a while. Everybody couldn’t wait to attend the forth coming firefoxOS hackathon.

We then went straight to showing them some flicks that are already submitted, starting with the early entry winners, then we went to the Ugandan flicks that were submitted so far and then we completed with more videos. This helped them to get a clearer picture of what to do, To make sure we were on the same page,we asked for ideas from them but they were so quiet and couldn’t give their own ideas which forced Lawrence to ask everyone  to give their ideas one at a go.

Lawrence our awesome community manager noticed the guys were so interested to know about other products Mozilla has got for developers, he talked about addons, the maker party that is going on, the webmaker tools and opportunities available to contribute to.

We concluded the event with interactions and sharing contacts with guys who wanted help and clarity with creating their flicks videos.

Thanks to the flicks team for their co-operation

Cheers

Firefox flicks at Mulltitech Business School

The Mozilla Uganda Community is participating in this years Firefox Flicks video competition,We are encouraging aspiring filmmakers, animators and creatives from around the country to produce and submit short films that promote and educate users about the issues that affect their online lives and also raise awareness about Firefox,FirefoxOS and mozilla.

We had an official launch of the flicks season before we started moving to different film institutions to tell them about flicks, how to enter, the rules judges and prizes.

We visited Multitech Business School where we talked to over 35 internship students from Busitema university which is found in Tororo in the eastern part of Uganda, Most of them were IT and computer science students and a few were interested in Multimedia and video related activities.
I began by taking them through Mozilla, its Mission, projects, how to contribute and the mozilla-uganda community because they were curious to know about Mozilla.It was an interactive and interesting session



 I then took them through the Flicks competition, how to enter,the theme "GET MOBILIZED" ,the rules, prizes and judges they loved the whole idea, and promised to get straight to work, We got some cool ideas from them just to make sure they understood the concept.
The students were more interested in the other projects so i took them through firefoxOS, amazing, they were all left wondering about the languages used and the phones owesome capabilities with the use of CSS3,HTML5 and JAVASCRIPT.
We went straight through X-ray goggles, etherpad and thimble. The students loved the tools and we went straight to hands-on, at some point someone cleared all the etherpad content to see if it really allows working in real time and collaboratively,they got their hands dirty with hacking pages but we had a limited time left.

 

Generally the students were left amazed and asked us to go back another time. we session was concluded by Moses who talked about how to access us on social media, how to join the community , how to contribute and encouraged them to keep using the webmaker tools.
 Lots of thanks to the team(martin,kelvin,moses) for the great work, the whole community and the Flicks team.
LINKS:  https://etherpad.mozilla.org/remo-multitech-webmaker-training
                https://firefoxflicks.mozilla.org
                http://www.multitech.co.ug
PHOTOS: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.478418562248244.1073741830.173150682775035&type=1
@MozComUg @mozilla @FirefoxFlicks
Cheers

FirefoxOS developer preview devices in Uganda

FirefoxOS Keon developer preview devices are here!
I received the keon phone from geeks phone manufacturers a month ago through the mozilla reps program, the keon runs FirefoxOS, the new operating system for phones and tablets from Mozilla, it is a developer preview device that is intended for developers to interact with and test its capabilities with different API's and applications.
The OS is built based on Linux and can run HTML5,CSS3 and Javascript apps, the apps communicate directly to the device's hardware using Javascript and open web API's, this makes developing apps for the OS so easy and cheap

The packaging was so cool and I couldn’t wait to open it ,assemble and power it on already without even looking at the user manual though it was packaged with a user manual that I actually realized was there after a while.

It was a whole new experience to interact with a new operating system (FirefoxOS). The keon is really cool with its orange color that reflects the Mozilla Firefox color.

These are the specifications of the keon phone:

• CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 7225AB 1Ghz.
• UMTS 2100/1900/900 (3G HSPA).
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (2G EDGE).
• Screen 3.5″ HVGA Multitouch.
• Camera 3 MP.
• 4 GB (ROM) and 512 MB (RAM).
• Micro-SD which is easy to swap
• Wifi
• Bluetooth

I installed some applications that I accessed from the firefox Market place that comes installed in the OS, I installed twitter and wiki that were really running so well.

Will keep posting more as i flash the device with stable versions

Thanks to Mozilla for bringing the open web to our hands

#mozilla #mozillareps #MozComUG