Mount Meru on the way back from nairobi
Archive for November, 2003
The net within your office
2003
11.29
11.29
For many of us, access to the internet is something only possible through connections available in offices where we work. Many offices have connected their computers together in order to share a single connection to the internet. The most important use of this shared internet connection is clearly email. It is fast, simple and convenient. If you only know how to do one thing on a computer it is probably how to send an email.
One thing I have noticed is that within the typical office, the majority of emails are sent to other people within the same organisation. Someone else needs to work on a file on your computer, and the most convenient way of getting it to them is to attach it to an email and send it via the ISPs email server in another part of town, even though that person may sit less than ten metres away.
In the case of offices using email services from Yahoo! or Hotmail the email’s journey is even more arduous. To follow the path of our intrepid email can be to embark on an odyssey around the country, or even the world. The email might travel to a server up the road, then via satellite be beamed to a server in Germany, then on to Yahoo! Mail’s server in the USA, then back along the same path. Whilst this can occur in the blink of an eye, often the connection in and out of the office is of limited speed, and a PowerPoint presentation containing photos can take an annoying length of time to leave and return. Hours can be wasted transferring a file a short distance.
And it isn’t necessary. A Local Area Network (LAN) is about more than just sharing an internet connection and a printer. Computers on a network can talk to each other. It is possible to share your files across the network much more quickly than with email – LANs operate at speeds of at least ten megabytes per second – hundreds of times faster than most internet connections.
How to share files
So, how do you do it? It is remarkably simple. First you must make sure that your computers are all configured for networking. If you can connect to the internet with all the computers on your network you are halfway there. You need to ensure that File and Printer Sharing is enabled on all computers – search in Windows help (in the Start menu) to find out how to check this for your version of Windows.
Your computer must also be set up so that when you switch it you log on as a user – if you click cancel when prompted to sign in you will not be able to share files.
You should also ensure all computers on your network are set up in the same Workgroup. Again, see the Windows help for how to do this for your version of Windows.
Once these hurdles are overcome, file sharing is as simple as right clicking on a folder, selecting Sharing… and giving the folder a name by which it will be known on the network. You can tell at a glance if a folder is shared – shared folders have a hand added to their icon. The procedure is very similar for sharing printers.
Anything you put in a shared folder, including other folders and their contents, can be seen by other people on the network. Anything not within a shared folder cannot be seen from other peoples’ computers.
Seeing other peoples’ shared files.
Once a few people have shared folders you can access them from your computer by opening My Network Places (Windows XP and 2000) or Network Neighborhood (Windows 95/98).
In Windows 95/98 you will see a list of computers in your workgroup straight away. In Windows 2000 you may need to go into Entire Network and search around until you find your workgroup. In Windows XP there is a link on the left of the My Network Places which will take you to your workgroup.
Once you have a list of computers you can see open them and see all their shared folders – you can now access the files as if they were on your own computer, and even copy them.
You can use shared folders to create a repository of important documents and templates on one computer which can be used by everyone else. It is also useful to save large downloaded files into a single folder – other people who need the same download can get it from there rather than waiting for it to download over the net again. Anything you can store on your computer can be shared.
File sharing is an excellent way of saving time and reducing pressure on slow internet connections, making the most of your investment in a network.
Originally published in Arusha Times 298
Mombassa and beyond
2003
11.28
11.28
Well, I survived Mombassa and had a great time while surviving. Technoserve put me up in a nice 1970s style hotel on the beach so I swam at dawn two days in a row. Sorted out a network in the Mombassa office, and was taken around some interesting drinking dens by the chief.
Two days later, back in Dar, but had day off for Eid-al-Fitr – we went to the notorious Modern Green Day and Night Bar, which closes its doors for only the 24 hours every 10 years that everything must close for census day. Raucous.
Now finishing up some final details for the new server I installed in the Nairobi office, and looking forward to a day of buying maps and new shoes tomorrow, before heading back to Arusha on Sunday.
Mission accomplished, and how satisfying it is too!
Kahiu and Me
2003
11.25
11.25
Kahiu, boss of the TechnoServe Mombassa office enjoy another beer after a couple of days working and playing hard…
Nairobi
2003
11.23
11.23
Currently in Nairobi doing some work for TechnoServe, from where I assumed it would be easy to upload photos etc. I had assumed that Kenya, having a bigger economy and more western companies would have a much more robust connection to the net that Tanzania. How wrong I was. The national phone company has a monopoly on internet communication out of the country. ISPs exist with varying download speeds, but they have to channel all their uploads through JamboNet. This has meant that the internet connections available aren’t really fast enough for the sector to take off here. Result is very high costs of connection – TechnoServe Kenya has little choice but to pay $350 a month for a 16kb per second leased line. Ridiculous – they can’t even send and recieve attachments of any useful size. Insane. I have shopped around, and there aren’t many better options. They are going to double their connection to 32kbps, but it isn’t very exciting…
Tonight I am flying to Mombassa to set up a network for the TechnoServe office there.
Lots of fun (I am actually enjoying working very very hard), but we aren’t really seeing much of the real Kenya. We went to a night club the other night where the president’s kids hang out really. Personally I prefer the sort of place that taxi drivers hang out. We saw the first bull shit testosterone fuelled fight we have seen in a year, and it was shocking. Not something odd to see out on the town in London or Carlisle, but we had forgotten how lame wealthy people are.
And birds
2003
11.23
11.23
I don’t think these birds can handle the giraffe pellets, but they hang out with the warthogs nonetheless.
Warthogs
2003
11.23
11.23
As well as giraffes, warthogs turn up to feed on pellets. Look how the little ones kneel in the mud…
Feeding giraffes
2003
11.23
11.23
We visited the Langatta Giraffe Centre. A firm favourite where you can feed pellets to giraffes and feel their rough and slimy tongues, and scratch them behind the ears.
Researching the World Wide Web
2003
11.22
11.22
From the experience of many visits to internet cafes I have noticed that many Tanzanians do not know how to search the web, or even how to go to sites that are not in the last ten visited list. If you cannot do this you are not benefiting any more from the web than from buying a magazine. The web is much more powerful than that.
What is out there?
There are web pages about pretty much everything you can think of – no subject or opinion is too obscure or too offensive.
It has been calculated that there are over 500 billion web pages on the internet. With more than 10 web pages for every person alive in the world, there is sure to be something of relevance to you. The first rule of successful web use is you should always assume that your subject is covered somewhere. However, since there are so many pages that are pretty pointless, the task of finding what you need can be daunting.
Luckily there are many resources out there that are specifically designed to help you find what you need.
Search Engines
Search engines automatically visit vast numbers of web pages and catalogue all the text on the page. When you type words into a search engine it looks for all the pages it knows contain those words, orders them somehow, and shows you
the results. Hopefully the first few results will be relevant, and you can go on your merry way.
Unfortunately, search engines are not very intelligent – if you are not very specific in the words you type into one you will find thousands of pages that are not very specific. For example &quo;business opportunities&quo; might seem like a great thing to search for, but you will find all kinds of nonsense if you actually try it. Typing in &quo;business opportunities East Africa&quo; or even &quo;business opportunities Arusha&quo; is likely to give results that are actually relevant to you. In general, the more details you give about what it is you want to find, the faster you will find it.
The mother of all search engines is Google (www.google.com). This is one web address you should know by heart.
Web Directories
Web directories such as Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) collect lists of web sites and categorise them by subject. You find sites by clicking on subjects that sound like what you are looking for. Each click brings you to a page with more specific subjects on until you find what you want. Directories are good for finding sites devoted to a subject, but can feel a lot slower to use than search engines when you are looking for something very specific. They are good choices for broad research as you can find related subjects more quickly.
Portals
Search engines and directories might direct you to a portal, which is a page listing web sites devoted to a specific subject, often with reviews or descriptions that help you judge the quality of pages at the other end of a link. Portals are pages you might come to time and time again. Good portals are updated regularly. A good example of a portal is AfricaOnline’s web site (www.africaonline.com)
Manual Entry
You won’t always go to a website via a search engine or portal. Often the best source of information about where to go online isn’t online – it is friends in the bar or newspapers. What you find out is the web site’s address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
URLs look like www.arushatimes.co.tz or news.google.com. They don’t have to start with www. Sometimes they are preceded by http:// – this isn’t mandatory these days, but when you see it you know a URL is coming next. Longer URLs
including at least one / will take you to a specific page on the site. Without any / will take you to the site’s home page. You can remove parts of a long URL after the first / in order to get to the home page for a site e.g. www.howtomendit.com/answers/0000029.htm takes you to a page on refreshing web pages, while just www.howtomendit.com just takes you to the site’s home page.
Once you know a URL you can type it directly into the address bar near the top of the screen in Internet Explorer – right next to the arrow that brings up the last ten sites visited. Hit enter after typing the URL in and off you go!
Your web address book
As you move around the web you will find pages you want to visit again. Use the Favorites menu in Internet Explorer to keep a note of these so you can go back in future. You can press the Ctrl key and D at the same time to add the
current page to the Favorites menu. You can also use the History menu (under Explorer Bar in the View Menu) to see a list of all the sites you visited in the last month.
The web is as powerful as your search skills are. Used well you can find out almost anything.
Rather than give URLs this week, see if you can find pages about searching the web using a search engine!
Originally published in Arusha Times 297
