The NOVICE MASTER|Welcome to Uncle Che’s NOVICE MASTER. This blog is all about Science and Technology, Business and Economy, Home and Family, Personality and Self Improvement as well as personal opinions, reviews and lifestream

…when the vision includes many missions and and endless number of projects, you may want to give it a “legal” identity and put together a small group to help.

Running an NGO has always been part of my dreams. I can’t resist the urge to help friends and relatives who are in need, and if I have the opportunity of extending that far and wide, why should I take chances?

I was very happy when I started a project to help bloggers and prospective bloggers blog free of charge, and also educating the less “literate ones” on blogging. I called this project “Pen 2 Net“.

When Pen 2 Net started off, I noticed that female bloggers in Africa needed much more care and attention – encouragement, so I planned for a service specifically for that purpose. I called it Bloggress.

I am an Unsigned African artist (HipHop) and I know the type of problems I face. I am not alone in that domain. I hoped for a platform that could help my music get heard out there. CamHooD is a project that will be of great help to all unsigned African Artists.

The Afroweb is small and still growing. Information in it can easily get lost in the great pool of the world wide web. As a result, I saw the need of building a search engine specifically for African websites. These sites which rank very low on Google will have a better chance of someone getting them using a customized search engine powered by Google itself. I called this African search engine AfroWebia.

In the pipeline are two projects I deem very important too. The next will be a blogging platform for Africans who do not want to blog independently and and another will be some sort of a Computer Literacy Site for the “caveman”.

My PC’s specs are good.
Pentium 4 with a 2GHZ processor and 512MB RAM.
I am using Windows XP service pack two and I have Firefox 3.

I really can’t understand why my PC is so slow lately. Since the original hard drive that came with it crash, my buddy has never been the same. Could it be my hard drive is not good? I have replaced my hard drive several times and each time I do so, my PC works very well for about a week and starts diminishing in performance. Does this entails I only go for bad hard drives?

I am considering buying a new hard drive again and reinstalling my computer at the start of next week.

Now, what’s the problem with my internet connection. Doesn’t anything around here work well anymore? At times, my internet connection goes so slow that I can’t sign into my Google Account or navigate to the Write Page of my wordpress blogs.

This is so frustrating. I have many projects at hand and I really need to get them done quick. I temporarily suspended CamHood so that I could hurriedly finish Pen 2 Net. I haven’t even looked at Noela‘s project, Bloggress, that I am helping her with. Most of the time I try to do something with Lainy, I feel like slowing her down since things are pretty slow this way. I just started Uncleche.net and….

Oh my God! I really need more help with myself now…

What is your contribution to the world wide web?

The world wide web is a network of millions of computers, each containing information accessible through the internet. The information is vast and almost limitless because there is very little restriction to who contributes to the web. As long as one has the tiniest knowledge about writing and publishing, he/she can rightfully put up some piece of useful text, photos, music or videos.

Any piece of information you publish on the web is of great importance to at least a few thousand users, even if it is just your diary you are publishing online. People do learn from other people just by following up their daily activities or reading their biography. To publish online, however, one should be ready to put up something that is not against basic ethical principles. Why contribute to hate, racism.

Most people do not contribute to the world wide web because they either don’t have the means or they don’t know how. In developing countries, the means is always the case. There are many individuals without computers connected to the internet. In some more developed countries where almost everyone is connected to the internet, there is still a great deal of people who do not know what to publish or where to publish.

Traditionally, in the past, publishing to the internet meant having your own personal site. Not everyone would like to go through the hassle of paying for and maintaining a web space. Even if the time and money is not a problem, expertise might be. Some people would still find it difficult publishing information on a website that has been built for them. Of course, this requires knowledge in html.

Later on, article directories made things easier for all. Most people would just write what they want to publish and submit to an article directory. If the writing is in accordance with their guidelines, it is published. The main problem with article directories is that they are very selective on what is published. This is both good and bad news. “Selective” doesn’t mean what they don’t take is bad. At times, not just any god piece of writing is necessary.

The most recent method of contributing to the web, that was introduced in the late 90s is blogging. With blogging, one is free to express him/herself as much as possible. One can publish at any time and also publish almost anything as far as it sticks to modern ethical rules (no hate, porn or illegal stuff).

With blogging, you control what you publish, and format it to suit your own taste. Blogging can be fun and rewarding. You get to meet like and unlike minded individuals, make friends, exchange ideas, and in some cases, make a few dollars a month.

It is almost a year now since I started blogging. In October 2007, I was marveled that I could “own” my own personal space on the web and publish my stories to. Although I never new exactly what I was doing till early this year, I gradually developed interest in blogging and didn’t relent my efforts to learn how to blog better. I ran a couple of blogs on blogspot and at the same time, i was contributing articles to blogging communities. I later on abandoned all the stuff I was doing and started all over. During my blogging lessons, I learned a great deal of html, css, cpanel, ftp, databases, etc and could courageously start experimenting stuff on wordpress.

I had a very hard time learning how to blog because I didn’t know exactly where to turn to for knowledge. It is very certain that there are numerous blogs in the blogosphere that are dedicated to helping newbies with their blogging endeavors. AZ Blogging, owned and maintained by my humble self, is one of them.

I took my time on AZ Blogging to make sure a newbie doesn’t find blogging some sort of rocket science. What is A Blog? AZ Blogging answers that. If you have never been into blogging or want to know more about blogging, checking out the posts on the sitemap can be of great help.

Blogging is one big revolution on the web. Don’t miss it!

Third world countries, especially those of Africa, usually take a “very long” time to pick up with recent developments in science and technology. The Internet as a whole and blogging in particular is part of this immortal tradition. Blogging, though an old concept that commenced before the start of this century has not yet fully established its roots in Africa. However, one can’t deny the fact that the Afro-Blogosphere (presence and influence of African bloggers and blogs) is gaining breadth and depth at an always-increasing rate.

When I started blogging about a year ago I scarcely heard the word blog mentioned around me (although I was not very sure of what I was getting myself into). Recently, I realized that Africans are more into blogging than I ever thought.. After a quick search on Google, I was very surprised by how many African blogs I found, most of which were listed on www.geoblogdirectory.com and www.afrigator.com. I also found www.afrikeo.com, a site that features feeds from African blogs and news sites. Pay a visit to Afrikeo, and you won’t believe how many blogs’ feeds are fed into it.

Africa, just like the west, is full of talented and skilled individuals in various walks of life. This includes writing as well. Writing is an art that can be easily transformed into blogging. The afro-blogosphere has a very great potential of tippling in just a few months if more Africans are sensitized about blogging and given some basic training.

Below are 3 (out of a thousand) reasons I think Africa does not have as many bloggers and blogs as it is supposed to.

1. A majority of Africans are still new to the Internet. They lack basic knowledge on various web related stuff. As a matter of fact, most can barely check their emails, chat and do simple searches on Google. Networking on Myspace, Hi5 and Facebook is an extra plus. Most Africans are still to hear the words blog, blogging and blogger. Sensitization can help a lot in this aspect.
2. A typical African, relative to the westerner, works harder to earn a living and therefore lacks time for items placed low in the scale of preference. Most Africans will do very hard work during the day and just manage to have enough time to rest and sleep at night. So, Africans who have heard about blogging and have the potential to blog may be held back by time constrains. This is hardly the case with the West where majorities of people have enough time to stay online for several hours a day.
3. Blogging is “expensive” in Africa. Though certain platforms like Blogger (by Google) take care of domain and hosting costs, most Africans who are ready to blog still find it a very great deal paying for surfing time in cyber cafes. This, of course, is a problem because a computer at home connected to the Internet is still considered a luxury in most parts of Africa.

There are many problems standing on the way of potential African bloggers, but instead of pondering much on those problems, I think the experienced bloggers have a responsibility of encouraging others to blog, especially in the domain of sensitization. If bloggers in Africa reach out to their fellow mates and colleagues and educate them on the subject of blogging, I believe blogging in Africa will experience an exponential rise.

Personally, I started a blog (www.azblogging.com) with some lessons that I think can help newbies start blogging. AZ Blogging hosts a form that can be used to ask personal questions related to blogging and get customized lessons tailored to fit the skill level of the inquirer.

Long Live Blogging in Africa!

The best part of cheap web hosting plans is that setup fees, monthly fees or any other extra charges are almost negligible. In cheap hosting packages no doubt, prices are very cheap but you have to live with limited resources like CPU time and other server related resources. You also have to keep in mind that you are sharing servers with other customers so you are at the mercy of the performance of their sites as well.