Flipping through the back pages of SA while at the dentist office, I saw this neat gun the blows fog rings lit up by blue leds. They even have an Airzooka verison.
My mother, a computer geek, lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo (ex-Zaire) and volunteers her time in various ways in hospitals and recently said this about computers and the DRC.
If you're going to donate software, just remember that most people in Africa do not speak English.
1. Outlook and a browser would be first on the list. Congolese want to explore and the most impotant thing for them is exploring the world through WWW and keeping in touch with loved ones.
2. Second on the list is antivirus and anti-spyware. After various worms like Blaster receed here, they persist for months in the RDC because no one protect their computers. I often hear about the crippling effect viruses have on computers there.
3. With few printers and no projectors, Powerpoint, Excel, and Word are possibly over the top.
4. RPGs, Strategy game would just not make sense . Sport, Racing, and first person shooter would be a better choice.
She says that the situation there is dire. The school system is rudimentary and most have never seen or touched a computer. The average person there finishes school before 6th grade to work. Most work laborful jobs, the lucky ones work as maids, sentinels, chauffers, and other service jobs making $30-$50 a month.
With computers costing twice as much there than here and Cybercafes charging several dollars an hours, very little of the population can afford computing of any kind. FYI, With almost no phones lines, everyone uses cellular phones and to connect to an ISP, you need to buy a $1000 transmitter that gives you about 6 Kilobytes max a second. The monthly charge is > $100 a month.
In 2003 and then in 2004, They had an Internet Festival aka "Fête de l'Internet" . The most popular booth was by far the President's booth. He had some computers with free internet access and there was apparently a line around the corner to use this access.
A craigslist for RDC called infoCongo was started and this is one of the most popular sites there. Unfortunatley, with a small amount of user base, what's popular there looks quite void to US Standards.
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Flipping through the back pages of SA while at the dentist office, I saw this neat gun the blows fog rings lit up by blue leds. They even have an Airzooka verison.
When applying for a job, will google HR peruse my gmail to make sure I'm the right candidate.
If you're going to donate software, just remember that most people in Africa do not speak English.
1. Outlook and a browser would be first on the list. Congolese want to explore and the most impotant thing for them is exploring the world through WWW and keeping in touch with loved ones.
2. Second on the list is antivirus and anti-spyware. After various worms like Blaster receed here, they persist for months in the RDC because no one protect their computers. I often hear about the crippling effect viruses have on computers there.
3. With few printers and no projectors, Powerpoint, Excel, and Word are possibly over the top.
4. RPGs, Strategy game would just not make sense . Sport, Racing, and first person shooter would be a better choice.
She says that the situation there is dire. The school system is rudimentary and most have never seen or touched a computer. The average person there finishes school before 6th grade to work. Most work laborful jobs, the lucky ones work as maids, sentinels, chauffers, and other service jobs making $30-$50 a month.
With computers costing twice as much there than here and Cybercafes charging several dollars an hours, very little of the population can afford computing of any kind. FYI, With almost no phones lines, everyone uses cellular phones and to connect to an ISP, you need to buy a $1000 transmitter that gives you about 6 Kilobytes max a second. The monthly charge is > $100 a month.
In 2003 and then in 2004, They had an Internet Festival aka "Fête de l'Internet" . The most popular booth was by far the President's booth. He had some computers with free internet access and there was apparently a line around the corner to use this access.
A craigslist for RDC called infoCongo was started and this is one of the most popular sites there. Unfortunatley, with a small amount of user base, what's popular there looks quite void to US Standards.