This is the fourth post in a series providing non-technical advice about affordable and practical IT for people working in developing countries, especially where internet access is not great. The previous posts have been:
- tech tips 1: the basic set-up – getting a computer and setting it up.
- tech tips 2: blogs – easy ways to read blogs.
- tech tips 3: computer software – what software should you have installed on your computer.
This fourth post looks at online services, such as for mail, backup and online media.
Online services are a mixed blessing for people who live in developing countries. On the one hand, it is helpful to use services which you can access from an internet cafe or from an office PC. This means you can travel light but still get hold of the resources you need. On the other hand, services which only work when you are online are not much use in a place where internet access is expensive, unreliable, or unavailable; nor if you want to use those services on a plane or in a 4WD on a long road trip. This blog post looks at how you can use these services even if you don’t have a great internet connection.
Online mail
The big three webmail services are Hotmail (from Microsoft – 364 million users), Yahoo! Mail (280 million) and GMail (from Google – 191 million). I use GMail all the time, because it has the most features of the three, and I find that the spam filter is very reliable. There are lots of other webmail services, but few are as reliable or have as many features as the big three. If you are worried about privacy and security, either because of the work you do or to protect yourself from financial fraud, you might consider Hushmail, which focuses on security and encryption and is also free for personal users.
If your internet access is intermittent, you probably want to be able to read and manage your mail when you are offline. Fortunately you can do this, while still being able to use webmail from an internet cafe when you are on the road. The best way to achieve this is to enable IMAP on your webmail, and then use Thunderbird or Outlook on your computer. IMAP is the technical name for a clever protocol which means that any changes you make to your mail (move, delete, reply etc) on your computer will be reflected in your webmail when you are online, and anything you do in webmail will be reflected on your computer when you next connect. This is vastly preferable to using POP. With both Thunderbird and Outlook an additional advantage is that you’ll have a backup of your mail on your computer.
A few tips about online email services:
- Use a different password for your webmail than you do for other online services and keep it secure. You may not think your email is particularly important, but if a bad guy has your webmail password, they have access to almost all your other online services because they can simply tell those services to reset the password and send it to your (compromised) email account.
- If you are a freelancer, set up your own domain name (mycompany.com) and have emails to that address go to your webmail account. This looks more professional than having a webmail address (studmuffin@hotmail.com).
- Set up a honey trap email account for use for online services that need an email address. I use a hotmail address which I regard as disposable. That way, I don’t have to give my real email address to websites. I only log in to that hotmail account when I need to click an authentication link
Read more: What’s new in Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail – The Times of India
Online office applications
Google Apps is now clearly the leader in online word-processing, spreadsheet and presenation software. These are free, and they provide almost all the functionality you need, though less than the more feature-laden but expensive Microsoft Office applications. Google Apps are a great way for a team to collaborate on the same document or spreadsheet.
Free is good, but if you don’t have ubiquitous cheap and fast internet access, then this stuff isn’t much use. But Google is in the process of rolling out a free service that enables you to use your Microsoft Office software on your computer, with the files saved into Google Apps automatically. This offers the prospect of the best of both worlds: online collaboration and backup when you are online, but the ability to work offline using Microsoft Office tools.
Online backup and file sharing
Dropbox is an excellent service for (a) backup; (b) sharing files across more than one computer; and (c) transferring large files from one place to another, especially with slow or intermittent internet connections. It is free for accounts of up to 2Gb.
When you install Dropbox, it creates a folder on your computer which is just like a normal folder as far as your computer is concerned. You can copy or move files into it; edit them; or delete them. In the background, when there is bandwidth available, your computer will silently and invisibly synchronise those changes to your online dropbox space, and to any other computers on which you have dropbox installed.
I have two computer with Dropbox installed, and on each I have moved the “My Documents” folder into my Dropbox folder. This means that whenever I create or change a file, Dropbox updates the online version, and synchronises the changed file to the My Documents on my other computer. This means I always have the most up to date version of every document on both computers, without having to think about it. If the computers are connected to the same local network, Dropbox is smart enough to transfer the files across the local network rather than download the file from the online version.
I can also access all my files via the web from any other computer (useful if you are travelling and need a document you don’t have with you). If you accidentally delete something or change it and want to go back, you can recover old copies of all your files from Dropbox for up to 30 days – or if you pay $39 a year for Packrat, you can have Dropbox store an unlimited archive of your old files.
If you are considering putting a lot of data into Dropbox, and your internet connection is slow or you are charged by the Mb, you may want to consider doing this when you are next travelling.
One particular challenge in low bandwidth environments is sending very large files from one place to another. It is especially frustrating if the internet connection drops when you have downloaded 90% of a large file over several hours and you find you have to start again. Using Dropbox you can create a folder which is shared by the recipient and the sender. The sender copies the large file into the shared folder on their computer, and Dropbox will then synchronize it to the shared folder on the recipient’s computer. Because this all happens in the background, you can get on with doing something else; and the synchronisation will take up where it left off if the internet connection drops half way through.
There are alternatives to Dropbox which provide a similar service. Live Mesh provides 5 GB of free online backup space, as compared with 2GB of Dropbox. SpiderOak, Syncplicity and SugarSync all provide 2GB fee. Syncplicity is Windows only.
Online backup
If you start to use online services such as GMail, Google Apps, Flickr or even Facebook, you should consider making a backup of your data. Google does not seem likely to go bust or lose all its data but people do sometimes find that their account is compromised and they are no longer able to access it. If it would be a problem for you to lose all the photos you have stored on Flickr or Facebook, or of all the emails in your GMail account, Backupify might be for you.
You can download all your mail or all your photos to a backup on your computer, but that is not going to be feasible if you are in a low-bandwidth environment. Backupify backs up your data from one part of the internet “cloud” to another, so it doesn’t matter if the bandwidth where you are is not very good.
Online media
In some developing countries, or when you are in the field, you cannot easily access international media or the latest Stieg Larsson book. Often the internet may be too slow to be able to stream radio or TV programmes. But there is a lot that you can download for later, even if your internet connection isn’t all that great.
Here are some ways to use online media even when bandwidth is low:
a. buy Kindle books from Amazon. You can read your book on a Kindle, if you have one (I really like my Kindle). But you can also download free software to your PC, to an iPad, iPhone or Android phone to read your book. (Once you have paid for the book, you can read it on any platform that suits you). There are lots of free books (eg Shakespeare, Dickens) available. And you can also use the Kindle to get daily newspapers from many countries round the world. The books download very quickly, even on a slow internet connection.
b. listen to audio books. The market leader is Audible. This is a great way to “read” while you are travelling, such as on long car journeys if reading in cars gives you travel sickness, or on long flights.
c. listen to podcasts. This is a great alternative to radio if the local radio isn’t very good. You can download lots of shows from e.g. the BBC. I host a free development podcast called Development Drums. There is a list of other development-relevant podcasts here. You can get these, and lots of other podcasts, free on iTunes.
Even if you don’t have an MP3 player, you may be able to transfer audio books or podcasts to your telephone and listen to them on that.
Conclusion
Internet access in developing countries is improving fast, and many development workers now have either mobile internet access or access through their office, though it is not always very quick or reliable. The online services described above may be useful for you, even if your internet connection is unreliable.
Here are the previous posts in this series:
- tech tips 1: the basic set-up – getting a computer and setting it up.
- tech tips 2: blogs – easy ways to read blogs.
- tech tips 3: computer software – what software should you have installed on your computer.
Disclosure: I don’t have any interest in any of the services mentioned here. But if you click on the link for DropBox above and use that to sign up for DropBox, you and I will both get a little extra free online storage space.
This is the third post in a series providing non-technical advice about affordable and practical IT for people working in developing countries, especially where internet access is not great. In the introductory post, I talked about the basic set-up – getting a computer and making sure it is secure and properly backed up, and getting basic office software and email. In the second post I talked about easy ways to read blogs.
This third post looks at the software on your computer. It does not deal with online services (such as Gmail or Dropbox) which I’ll cover next time.
Web browser
Many people use Internet Explorer because it is already set up on their computer. But Google’s Chrome (free) is faster and more secure, and it just works. I also have Firefox (free) installed, mainly because there are some plugins that I like and which are not yet available for Chrome; but for day-to-day use Firefox is getting too bloated and slow. (The beta version of Firefox 4 seems to be faster.)
Because I use a couple of different computers, I use Xmarks (free plugin for both Chrome and Firefox) to synchronise the web browsers across computers and across browsers. As well as synchronising bookmarks it synchronises passwords and it can even open the same tabs for you when you move from one computer to another.
Player for videos and music
I use VLC media player (free) because it seems to be able to play just about anything I throw at it. Lots of people like MediaMonkey (free).
Communications:
Skype (free) is very useful for people who travel. Skype-to-skype calls are free of charge; and you can use Skype to call people in other countries very cheaply (because your call goes over the internet to the destination country and only goes into the telephone network for the last part of the journey). The latest version of Skype supports 5-way videoconferences; but that isn’t going to work if you are on a dial up connection.
However, for technical reasons that are too boring to explain, Skype can be a pain if you don’t have good bandwidth. A good alternative is Google Talk (free) – but it does not do conference calls, and you cannot dial out to normal telephone numbers like you can with Skype.
I’ve also heard good things about Oovoo for multi-user videoconferencing.
Podcasts
I love having podcasts to listen to – I subscribe to podcasts ranging from film reviews to politics and technology. Many mainstream radio servicies, especially the BBC and NPR, are making their programmes available and there are specialist programmes (such as my Development Drums podcast). Podcasts are a great way to keep in touch with what is happening back home: you can listen to them on long plane flights and car journeys, or in the gym.
Many people will already have iTunes (free) installed on their computer and this provides an easy way to download podcasts automatically. And if you have an iPod or an iPhone, you can set them to transfer the downloaded podcasts to your device automatically. I don’t use iTunes for my podcasts, partly because I don’t like Apple’s attitude to controlling its users.
I use RSSRadio to manage my podcasts – it has really powerful controls (for example, you can decide which directory you want the podcasts to go into, and how many back-episodes you want it to keep). I then use a utility called SyncBack (free) to keep my MP3 player up to date automatically.
Other people recommend Juice (formerly iPodder) or MediaMonkey for downloading podcasts. A new option which is growing in popularity is DoubleTwist – particularly valuable for people with Android phones.
If you like Twitter, you’ll like Tweetdeck (free) which makes the flow of your twitter feed manageable. I find this much easier than using the website.
Faster downloading & file sharing
In developing countries, downloading from the internet can be slow. It can also be irritating if the download breaks half way and you need to start again from the beginning. Free Download Manager (er, free) can help you with this.
Proxy service
Another way to overcome a slow internet connection is to use a proxy service such as OnSpeed. These typically charge a fee. You set up your computer so that you get your information via this service, which get the data on your behalf and compress it before sending it to your computer.
These services can also be useful for getting round blocks imposed by some countries on access to particular websites.
Utilities
For compressing and uncompressing files: 7-Zip (free)
For managing photos: Picasa (free)- this is both a website for storing photos, and photo management software you can install on your computer.
Privacy and cleaning computers (important to avoid identity theft): C-Cleaner (free)
Turn your computer into a wifi hotspot: Connectify (free, but Windows 7 only)
Next time, I’ll look at online services relevant to development workers.
Every time I add a new blog post, several hundred people now receive it automatically by email. (If you would like email updates in future, just type your email address into the box at the top right of the page. You can also remove yourself from the list at any time in exactly the same way.)
It isn’t surprising that people prefer to have blog posts come to them, rather than to have to make the effort to visit every blog they want to read. This is especially true if you have low bandwidth or if internet access is expensive, as is often the case in developing countries. I guess that’s why some people like the email option. But most blogs do not offer email subscriptions; and if you follow several blogs you might find it a bit of a pain to have your email clogged up with this stuff.
So you don’t to want to visit each blog individually, and you can’t or don’t want to get them all by email. Not everyone knows that there are some good solutions to this problem, especially if they are not all that interested in technology. So here’s a quick guide to how to read blogs and other websites easily.
I read over 250 blogs regularly, because I find them informative, entertaining and interesting. I get more diversity of opinion and ideas from those 250 blogs than from reading one or two newspapers; and often you get the chance to learn from real experts in their fields, without the casual mistakes, prejudices and dumbing down that you get when those views are intermediated by lazy journalists.
But I don’t want to visit 250 websites each morning. Nor do I want all that stuff arriving in my email each day. I don’t want to read everything that they all write: I want to skip through the headlines, or a brief summary of each article, so that I can see which ones I want to read properly.
Fortunately there is a wonderful behind-the-scenes feature of almost every blog – and many other websites – called RSS. I’ll spare you the technical details, but this stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and it means that you can pull the contents of a blog or website to another place. And that in turn means you can get all the blogs you want to read in one place.
The simplest and most widely-used solution is Google Reader. This is a website which lets you read blogs, rather like Hotmail or GMail lets you read your mail. You tell Google Reader the addresses of all the blogs you want to read, and it pulls all the posts to one place. It looks a bit like an email programme: you can easily see what’s new, and skip through the headings until you find something that looks interesting. When a blog post is new and unread it shows up in bold.
As well as blogs, you can subscribe to the feeds of other websites, such as the BBC Africa News or DFID Press Releases. You can even set up a Google Alert for a specialist subject – such as your own name! – and have that appear among your feeds. You can have all your friends’ Facebook statuses in a feed. This means that you can decide what you are interested in, all over the net, and bring it all together in one place.
You can put the blogs in folders – mine are grouped into “Africa”, “Development”, “Technology” and so on. Some people put their “must read” feeds into one folder, which they look at each day, and their occasional reading in another folder for when they want to do some browsing.
However, Google Reader is an online website, and that may not be ideal for you if your internet connection is slow, or if you are on a plane. One solution to this is Google Gears, which is a way to access Google services like Google Mail and Google Reader if you are not online. I have found Gears a bit unreliable in the past, so it is not my preferred solution.
There are many other ways to have your computer fetch the information from these feeds when you are online. (These programmes are technically called aggregators or feed readers.) Some of them can be set to download the content to your computer so that you can read it later offline, like you can with your email.
If you have Outlook 2007, then you have a feed reader right in front of you. You can tell Outlook which RSS feeds you want to read and they will appear in a separate folder underneath your Inbox. To use this, you can go to the Tools menu, choose Account settings, then RSS feeds. Paste in the address from the blog or website you want to subscribe to. (Use Ctrl+V to paste into the box). Apparently you can also add feeds to Outlook automatically from Internet Explorer.
I prefer not to use Outlook for reading blogs, however. I use FeedDemon instead, which is a free download. This is very easy to use, and it has the neat feature that it synchronises with Google Reader. So if I add a new subscription to Google Reader, it is automatically added to FeedDemon. If I have read something in FeedDemon, it is marked as read in Google Reader.
There are other feed readers, such as SharpReader. (I use FeedDemon because of its synchronisation with Google Reader.)
If your office does not let you install new software, you may be stuck with Outlook (if you have Outlook 2007) or an online service like Google Reader.
Which blogs should you be reading? If you are in to development you may be interested in my list of the best development blogs – look at the suggestions in the comments, which include some important omissions from my original post. There is a longer list of what I am reading down the right hand side of my blog page.
How do you get started? Adding subscriptions manually is a bit of a bore at first. Fortunately there is a way to share subscription lists. To get you started, here are twenty two key development-related blogs in the form of an OPML file. Right click the link and download this file to your computer, and save it to your desktop. Then in Google Reader or Feed Demon you can import this file and it will automatically add these blogs to your subscriptions. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t like them or if you find this too much). I can’t see a way to import an OPML file into Outlook, unfortunately. ** UPDATE: See the comments for how do to this in Outlook. **
The key point of all this is that there is a way to subscribe to blogs and websites, so that all the information you are interested in comes to you in one place, whether from blogs, newspapers, website, facebook or even search. This makes it really easy for you to see what is happening all over the world as you drink your morning coffee.
And if all that sounds terribly complicated, don’t forget you can get this blog by email by putting your address into the box on the top right of the page – or, if you must, send me an email and I’ll add you manually.
Happy reading …
Most of the people who read this blog are interested in development rather than computers. Many of you live in developing countries, where the internet can be slow and expensive, and computer support can be difficult. So I thought it might be useful to give you some non-technical suggestions for how to manage if you live somewhere where the computer facilities are rather basic.
In this first post in a series, I’ll look at the basic set up.
Continue reading
Some rights reserved