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The internet came to Arusha some years ago, but it is only recently that Arusha came to the Internet with a real presence in the virtual world. Naomba.com is a new Arusha based web portal set to take its place alongside the Arusha Times and other web sites showing the real face of Arusha and Tanzania to the rest of the wired world.

Background who, why, where

Naomba.com opened for service in November 2003. Naomba.com’s founders saw a need for Tanzanians to connect with each other quickly and easily using the internet, as has happened in other countries around the world. Traditional means of communication, such as printing, take a long time to create and distribute. Control of the publication is often as much in the hands of printers as the person paying for it. Whilst the internet can cut out some of these problems, it remains an expensive option for the smallest of businesses, many of whom find it hard to see how using the internet can benefit them. Why should a Tanzanian barber or fundi pay anything to advertise online? Is it worth even the smallest risk? To allow the smallest of businesses to find out what the potentials for them are, naomba.com’s founders decided to make basic internet services free.

Basic Services

The core of naomba.com’s service is providing its customers with a web presence. People can find out about your business via your web page on naomba.com. They can then contact you via your naomba.com email address. All for free!

Web hosting

Naomba.com will provide every registered business with a simple web page. This features up to five photographs, a description of your business, information about where you are physically located, opening hours and, if you have one, a link to your main web site. You can easily change these details yourself whenever you want. Once the page is completed, your business can be found through naomba.com’s directory – a bit like the Yellow Pages. People looking for plumbers in Arusha can search on naomba.com and find one nearby. Businesses can also tempt customers with printable discount coupons.

Email

Naomba.com offers a very attractive email service – like Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail, naomba.com is free. However, naomba.com give you much larger storage space (10mB per user) and the site has no annoying adverts, meaning it is faster to download – something those of us paying by the half hour will appreciate. Spam and virus protection are included for all accounts.

Public Services

In addition to the basic offer of a web presence, Naomba have a range of services of great use to Tanzanian communities.

Buy & Sell

Users of naomba.com can advertise things they want to sell, or things they are seeking to buy – a bit like an online version of Dar Advertiser or Arusha’s own Buy & Sell magazine (with which naomba.com share listings). naomba.com’s buy and sell listings can include photographs and are free!

Jobs offered/wanted

You are not limited to buying or selling objects on naomba.com – users can seek employment by advertising their skills. Likewise, employers seeking to fill a gap in their workforce can find suitable staff through a vacancy notice on naomba.com. Naomba.com has the potential to reach employers or potential staff around Tanzania, not just in your local area. Again, this service is free.

Events listings

If you want to publicise an event you are organising, naomba.com’s event diary is the place to be seen. Or if you are short of something to do, see what other people have lined up in the near future. All listings are free. If you have photos from an event, naomba.com will show them – the most recent photos appear on the front page! Coverage of corporate events may incur a small charge, but community events can post photographs for free.

Advertising

Larger businesses may want to advertise their services more prominently. For a fee, naomba.com will include an eye-catching advert on their front page, linking through to your business’s page. You will be able to see how effective
your advert is, as naomba.com keep track of how many people click on it.

News and other content

The front page of naomba.com includes the latest headlines from AllAfrica.com, as well as local weather forecasts for the next few days. Naomba.com also run regular photography and writing competitions which can be entered online.

Plans for the future

In the very near future, businesses listing on naomba.com will be able to list their products on the site, and provide a means for people to buy or reserve these products from the comfort of their homes/local internet café. It is already possible to book airline tickets and hotel rooms through the site, but very soon, for example, your car parts store may be able to let customers know what is in stock. Work is also underway to translate the site into Kiswahili.

With so many free services, who can afford not to have a web presence through naomba.com? And since all the information on naomba.com is about your local community – the time has surely come to change your home page from one based in America or Europe to this new home grown site!

Originally published in Arusha Times 322

These days it feels not a month goes by without an outbreak of a new “worst ever” computer virus. Last month is was Sasser, the month before Bagel, both of which spread around the world in a matter of hours.

A computer virus is a programme that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes.

Viruses can wreak havoc on an unprotected computer deleting files, breaking software, sending out embarrassing emails to your friends and customers and hogging your internet connection in order to attack prominent web sites.

Worse than that, a virus called Doomjuice plants evidence on your computer that if found by detectives could suggest you were involved in the development of the recent MyDoom virus. It doesn’t do this via email, but by accessing a back door MyDoom opened on infected computers.

For a computer to become infected virus code must be run on it. Code can get onto the computer in a number of ways – in an email attachment, by downloading an infected programme, or copying a document from a floppy disk. Just having the code does not mean your computer is infected. It must first be run.

How does this happen? The virus code may be hidden inside a programme you want to run – the virus gets run with it. Many viruses sent by email will trick you into opening an attachment such as the infamous ILOVEYOU email with attached
“love letter.” Some viruses have found ways to automatically run attachments in Outlook Express and Outlook. Word and Excel documents have a feature known as macros, which can be used to write viruses which run when the document is opened.

So you want to avoid viruses? What can you do? One of my friends successfully kept virus free for many years by keeping his computer a “virgin.” He never connected it to the internet, and never shared floppy disks between his and other peoples’ computers. In this day and age where computers are synonymous with communication this simply is not an option. With so many ways for a virus to run it is hard to protect yourself just through being careful.

The only solution seems to be anti-virus software.

In Tanzania, chances are when you bought your computer it came with a copy of Norton Anti-Virus. This makes many of us feel safe. However, the copies of Norton that are bundled with new PCs tend only to have free updates for three to
six months. After that you are susceptible to any new viruses that emerge. You have little choice but to subscribe to the updates (if you have a credit card) or buy another boxed copy of Norton. You don’t have many choices, and both of
them are Norton.

While Norton may be a good product, the credit-rich world has a huge choice when it comes to anti-virus software, with most providers making their products available for instant download. A quick check on the anti-virus testing web sites www.check-mark.com and www.virusbtn.com shows that there are a great many products which will protect you against all but the most very recent viruses. Since they all do what you really want more or less equally well, the choice can be made on price and ease of use.

Up until recently the only anti-virus product that matched the average Tanzanian’s spending ability was Grisoft’s AVG. AVG is a free download, and updates are also free. It is not as user friendly as more expensive software, but is as effective in protecting you from viruses. Recently Microsoft teamed up with Computer Associates to provide a year’s free protection using eTrust EZ Armor. This is a slicker product than AVG, with daily updates and a host of features such as pop-up ad blockers and a firewall.

Important: When installing new anti-virus programme be sure to uninstall any previous ones. Running two anti-virus programmes at the same time can crash your computer! Norton is notoriously difficult to remove completely. Search on Google for “remove Norton” to get advice on how to do this.

Most viruses take advantage of security holes in Microsoft products. As a result Microsoft regularly issue fixes for these holes. You can download any fixes you need from windowsupdate.microsoft.com. You should do this at least once a month if your computer is connected to the internet! Microsoft also has information on securing your computer against viruses and other threats at www.microsoft.com/security.

By keeping Windows and your anti-virus software up to date you should be protected against most viruses.

Interesting sites

• www.vmyths.com – all about virus myths and hoaxes
• www.cert.org/homeusers – advice on computer security for home and small business users
• www.check-mark.com – checks that anti-virus software works
• www.grisoft.com – Get AVG here
• www.my-etrust.com/microsoft – free EZ Armor

Originally published in Arusha Times 320