Global Voices Online

Archive for
July 19th, 2005

Stories

The WSIS Youth Caucus in Ghana

Andy Carvin · 12:24 · Ghana

I've just completed an interview with Leopold Armah and Regina Banini of Ghana's WSIS Youth Caucus, chatting about the role of African youth in the UN's World Summit on the Information Society. Have a listen to the podcast. -andy

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Smartphone+Bluetooth: Ghanaian Video Blogging Paradise

Andy Carvin · 11:40 · Ghana

A few moments after I posted my blog entry about the potential use of smart phones and Bluetooth wireless as a workaround for Ghanaian video bloggers, lo and behold I was approached by Lebanese blogger Mustapha, who introduced himself and sat down to chat, one Mac owner to another. He then pointed out he had the new Handspring Treo 650 smart phone, which just so happens has both video and Bluetooth capabilities. Lightbulbs went off, and in a matter of a few minutes we were able to post the following video clip. I wonder if it's the first smart phone video blog entry from Ghana?

Andy and Mustapha try video blogging from Ghana with a smart phone:
Low bandwidth clip
Medium bandwidth clip

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Video Blog Test from Accra

Andy Carvin · 09:05 · Ghana

It's my second day at the BusyInternet cyber cafe in Accra, Ghana, and I'm expermenting with video compression to see if I can work out the ideal size for uploading and downloading video clips. The bandwidth here is slower than in the US, so I have to be careful about how large a file I post.

Here are two versions of some footage from BusyInternet, one low bandwidth and the other medium bandwidth. The low version is around 600k, while the medium version is 1.3 megs. (For those of you keeping score, the uncompressed version of this 40-second clip is over 30 megabytes - pretty useless here in West Africa.

Anyway, here are the results. Click on the appropriate link to try each version.