From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter

Here is the unbelievable story … Last Thursday (03/28/2008) a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company (Cogniview) of helping Robert Mugabe, The infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections.


Link to full story

The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the accusations came directly from the General Secretary of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party.

Before I go on with the details of the story, here’s my official response … this story is NOT TRUE. In fact it could have only been more fictional if we were accused of using alien technology. Here are some more facts:

The full story up until now…

On Wednesday, a day before the article was published, I received an email from a Yahoo email address, inquiring whether my company was helping Robert Mugabe win the upcoming Zimbabwe elections. The email was so funny, I assumed it was spam and deleted it (not before being very impressed with how well it was tailored for my company).

A day later, an email from the site ZimOnline alerted me that there was an article on the site that concerned Cogniview. The article was even funnier than the email. At this point my respect for the Zimbabwean scam-artists was at an all-time high. Not only did they send me a well crafted email, they went as far as to setting up a mock newspaper and publishing an article there.

And then it became very serious very quickly …

I was contacted by a gentleman called Phil Matibe, a human rights activist from Zimbabwe currently living in the US, who wanted to get to the bottom of this story (I will be speaking with Mr. Matibe later today).

We also started getting emails from angry people telling us that we “sold the Zimbabwean people for 20 pieces of silver”

And then additional articles began to appear. Apparently we got 3 million dollars for helping Mugabe.

What I think happened

About a year ago we developed an Open-Source PDF converter called CC PDF converter. This converter (which is available for download for anyone that has an internet connection) allows one to convert anything printable into PDF. It also allows adding a Creative Commons license as the last page of the document. And at the very end of this page there is a link to Cogniview’s website.

I also learned (from the people that called to chastise us) that the voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.

My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable).

Here’s what we are willing to do to help sort out this mess

Every respectable party (UN, US, European) that will want to investigate this matter will get Cogniview’s full cooperation. We will give them unlimited access to our legal and financial Records. We will also allow them to interview any employee in the company. Heck, they can strap us all to lie-detectors – we have nothing to hide.

But I’m hoping it won’t come to this. This story has the potential to damage my company’s reputation as well as to seriously damage the credibility of the MDC officials who spread this lie.

One last thing: If anyone from the MDC is reading this, please check your facts and denounce these lies. They bring you no honor.

I will continue to update as the story unfolds.

Asus Eee PC the Wave of the Future?

The latest gadget on my “I want I need” list is this little gizmo. The Asus Eee PC.

It might not look much but I think it is a vision of things to come.

While Apple was making big about their thinnest notebook, Eee PCs were delivering something equally remarkable, perhaps more so.

This machine comes in at just over £200, less (even as low as $299) if you are lucky enough to live in a more reasonably priced country and choose the base model.

It weighs just 2 pounds. I have books that are heavier and bulkier.

You see, for me, thin is not much of a selling point. Light is. Add to light cheap, and you have right there a winning combination.

For travelers, being able to pack power into a compact and light unit, delivering everything you need without going over your weight allowance or getting funny looks from the nice TSA folks, has real benefits. Even better having it at a low enough cost that you don’t convulse into panic every time someone waves their Starbucks over it.

The benefits don’t just end there. It runs Linux, hence the low price, but you can install XP if you have to. Wifi is built in, and has no hard drive so is power efficient. You can plug in external monitor and keyboard but the keyboard is well equipped for touch typing. Some models even have mic and webcam.

Of course the clones have arrived, but the Asus is still the leader. The question I have is how are Dell and Apple going to respond? This machine has found a niche in the market full of hungry consumers. Could it lead them to create an ultra compact and lower cost device to compete? You could argue the iPhone is kind of in that market but not quite.

I’m seriously considering buying one of these Eee PCs for my next trip in May, but I hear there is a 9″ screen model with 1024x resolution coming so I might just try and pick one up while I am there :)

Anyone used one of these bad boys? What is the user experience really like? Is it cramped or comfy? Please share in the comments …

Mixx Fixes the Breaking News Problem

I am a sucker for the plucky under dog. This is always certain when said under dog tries harder and is much more friendly than the dominant player. Sometimes these under dogs turn out to be the winner over the long term, just look at Google.

My current fave plucky upstart is Mixx. I’ve written about how and why I like Mixx before. They just seem to want to improve the experience more than the competitors. It’s not just about the traffic but about actually sharing interesting and relevant stories.

A big problem with all these social voting sites is the vote process itself takes time, and that can mean once the site is popular breaking news takes so long to appear on the front page it is no longer breaking. Digg especially is lousy for news. Once it is on Digg front page you can be sure the news is 24 hours old or more.

Mixx though has a solution, but one that might well upset the more democratically aligned users.

They have announced that certain Super Mixxers will have the power to nominate a post as breaking news, which will catapult them right to the front page in a special breaking news area. You will still be able to vote up and down on the story, but everyone will get to see it regardless until it is no longer breaking I guess.

As I mentioned, there is one big problem with this already, and that is the level playing field of web2.0 is no longer level. Of course there have always been power users, but this makes it explicit and obvious.

The second problem as pointed out by Michael Arrington is they are depending on Super Mixxers actually being “Super”.

I’m sure the digg guys will be watching this carefully. Mixx are aggressively working hard on features, it might not be too long before they take the lead in innovation and people are calling new Digg features Mixx clones.

Retro Gaming and Childhood Computing Memories

1980s micro computers

Todays BBC News article about the computer they sponsored, the BBC Micro, takes me back to my childhood. While the machines back then didn’t have the power or cool factor of todays gaming machines, at the time they had a deep and lasting impact on the people, culture and what we take for granted today was born out of those geeks and their machines.

BBC Micro
The BBC did have a big impact in the UK, particularly in schools. It was too expensive for the average household so they released a more scaled down version. The only other time I can remember the BBC being so involved in something was when the internet was just starting to kick off they sponsored an ISP.

Radofin tv sports console systemWhile I didn’t own a BBC Micro, or its smaller, cheaper sibling the Acorn Electron, I am a proud member of the micro computer generation. We started out with one of those TV Sports Systems then graduated to a Commodore Vic 20.

Do you remember those sports consoles? Basically put batteries in, plug into the tv and play variations of Pong. Glorious black and white boxy wonderfulness. Kept me happy anyway.

commodore vic 20c64While other kids were already onto their second computers, usually the Commodore 64, we were just beginning with the Vic 20 as I turned (I think) age 9.

That little 3.5k beast had a profound influence on me. That and Star Wars made me the geek I am. Obviously I was jealous of the C64 kids, in particular my cousin Ian who would bring his over when he visited, but I was glad to own this little box of tricks.

Do any poll of geeks and the Commodore machines will rank highly. In other countries you will hear other names bandied as competitors. The TRS-80, the early Apple machines, but in the UK there was Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair and later, Amstrad.

sinclair zx81The alternative to the Vic for us at the time was the Sinclair ZX81. It was a popular (and cheap!) machine but far more limited than even the Vic 20. Sinclair had a massive share of the UK market with their machines but if it took the Spectrum to build real popularity.

sinclair spectrumStarting with the ZX80 they had several versions of the Spectrum, 48k, + and 128k models, even a 16-bit machine, the QL. That QL was the first mass market computer based on the Motorola 68000, beating both Apple and Atari to the punch, but ultimately failing in the marketplace.

amigaThe logical upgrade path for the Commodore kids was the Amiga, a 16 bit powerhouse. They did in fact have other computers that are lesser know, the 64c and the 128. The Amiga had its biggest rival in the form of the Atari ST.

Acorn didn’t want to sit back and let Commodore and Atari take the whole market. They built their most powerful machine, the Archimedes. It didn’t set sales figures alight outside of the education sector, but the legacy of that ARM RISC work lives on in a multitude of products to this day.

Which computer did you start with? Do you remember home computing fondly? Share your memories in the comments …

The End of the Ebook?

Kindle Ebook ReaderYesterday I had a debate with my friend Ryan about the future of ebooks.

I had just uploaded my audio and PDF transcript and was seeing subscribers coming along nicely. I was suggesting the same tactic for another project we were working on together.

You might already know, I am a big fan of ebooks. I buy them, I read them, I give them away, I even plan to sell them.

Free EbookRyan doesn’t believe in them. He thinks bloggers should do series posts instead. In fact, he doubts ebooks have much of a future.

I can see his point. Ebooks are about reading a large amount of material in one package. Most I imagine get read online rather than printed out or downloaded to a reading device such as Amazons Kindle.

Then look at prominent bloggers such as Aaron Wall and Brian Clark, their content has been turned into member sites rather than ebooks. Aaron in particular is surprising as for years he made a good income out of his SEOBook but now his content is delivered as an SEO Training Course.

It is easy to see the attraction of a member site for content producers. First off is obviously the recurring revenue. One sale versus monthly income. After that it is also about lifetime value, a one-off book purchase versus an ongoing relationship with all the opportunities that implies.

For the customer, with a member site you get not just words and pictures but video, audio, discussion, web conferencing, chat, and maybe tools and utilities also. An ebook is capable of more than words and pictures but rarely is.

The downsides to ebook delivery is clear also. Ebooks are routinely copied and shared, it is so easy to do and largely untraceable. The more people try to prevent it, the more damage is done to legitimate customers by applying restrictive DRM and other draconian measures.

Is this the beginning of the end for the humble ebook or is there life in the old dog yet?

Please share your thoughts in the comments …

Free Mobile Phone Calls?


My wife lost her phone recently so we have been on a hunt for a new handset. While I saw that phones could do Skype  when I bought my n95, I didn’t think the feature was as widespread or as good value as it really is.

Talking to the phone shop guy we discovered on Three network Skype calls are completely free. Yup, you don’t pay even for the data. How does that work? A voice call over the internet has to be quite a lot of bytes. If they don’t charge for the call, and don’t charge for the bytes, all they are getting is your monthly subscription?

Well, regardless, we will take it!

For those people without smart phones, or with phones where Skype is not available, there is now a Skypephone3 Skypehone screenshots handset available.

When I travel those short “how are you doing?” calls add up to a princely sum. To be able to make them for free will be a big bonus. Add to that the fact that if I am not online she knows not to contact me or the other way round.

One shame is despite the phones and Skype being capable, there doesn’t seem to be a video option. That would be really cool. After a few days away from family it is nice to get to see them as well as speak to them. My daughter is old enough now to be able to tell me in detail how her day went but the pets in particular don’t talk very much, heh.

OK, lack of video I can understand, but for some reason from my n95 I can not initiate text chat. Seems a strange thing to be missing, especially as the screenshots at Skype.com seem to imply you can.

From our small tests the call quality seems just as good as using Skype from your computer but I would love to know your experiences, I worry if it is seems to good to be true then it just might have a sting hiding somewhere!

QIK Live Streaming Internet Video from Your Phone

There are many streaming video tools out there for watching video. Not that many for recording video, even fewer to record live video from your phone.

That’s what Qik does. It records and broadcasts live video right from your phone.

I must say I am impressed.

Qik on Nokia n95From grabbing the application to sending out video live took all of 20minutes, anyone with a more reliable internet connection would be able to do it in a quarter of the time. Quite a few smart phones are supported:

Nokia S60 phones: N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N91, N92, N93i, N95, E50, E51, E61i, E65, E70m E90 Communicator, 3250, 5500, 5700 Xpress Music, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic, 6121 Classic, and 6290.

I can see a lot of bloggers switching their iPhone for a n95 just to get access to this system.

Your streams can be public or private, although I had a bit of an issue with all my streams being set to private and now I don’t know how to make them public – D’oh!

Just like YouTube, you can easily link or embed the created videos, but most importantly viewers can watch in real time and send comments as you stream. Impressive!

You can see videos as I add them to my profile, but you would be much better off watching the fun and games over at the SxSW group from folks such as Scoble and the b5media crew.

33+ Top Software Tools for Bloggers

Blogging SoftwareWhenever I help a new blogger get started I tend to recommend the software tools I use myself. While that does help, I often wonder if I should show more choices. There is no reason why anyone would use exactly the same setup as me, particularly as I am now a Mac user!

With that in mind, here is my round up of all the software and tools I can think of that a blogger needs. Please add any I have missed in the comments …

Blogging Software

  1. WordPress
  2. Drupal
  3. MovableType
  4. CommunityServer
  5. Expression Engine

Feed Reading Software

  1. Google Reader
  2. BlogBridge
  3. Bloglines
  4. FeedDemon
  5. Netvibes

Traffic and Statistics Software

  1. Performancing Metrics
  2. Sitemeter
  3. Google Analytics
  4. Stat Counter
  5. FeedBurner

Editing Software

  1. ScribeFire
  2. LiveWriter
  3. Qumana
  4. Ecto
  5. BlogJet

RSS to Email Distribution Services

  1. FeedBurner
  2. FeedBlitz
  3. Aweber

Social Bookmarking Tools

  1. StumbleUpon
  2. Digg
  3. Reddit
  4. Mixx
  5. Delicious

Audio/Visual Tools

  1. Audacity / GarageBand
  2. Flickr
  3. Skitch / Snagit
  4. IShowU / CamStudio
  5. YouTube

My Essential Daily Tech Feeds


Staying up to date with the technology field is a lot easier than it used to me. Back when I started my career at age 16 it was tough to keep up, the only source of information was expensive telephone directory weight magazines. Not ideal, especially as my weekly salary was only in double figures.

Switch to today and the problem isn’t the cost and lack of good tech information, but the wealth of free information. We are deluged and it is hard to know the truth from the rot.

My routine is to check the following sites and feeds. Depending on how much time I have will depend how far down the list I go, from the top, essential, to #4 onwards, interesting but non-essential.

Here are the top 10 tech sites that I turn to every day:

  1. TechMeme – If I am really in a rush I don’t even check my feeds, I go right to TechMeme and by scanning the front page I can get a good idea if there are any big stories today. TechMeme is a brilliant service and every niche should have an equivalent!
  2. TechCrunch – Feed – With bloggers spanning the globe, TechCrunch either gets the scoop or gets the news soon after. If there is a big story you can be sure it will be on here.
  3. The Register – Feed – Living in the UK it is nice to have a British perspective, plus tech doesn’t have to be serious.
  4. GigaOM – Feed – If I have time I like to read the analysis and insight from the mighty Om
  5. ReadWriteWeb – Feed – I make my living from the web so a lot of my reading is focused on that. RWW is the best of the bunch.
  6. Scobleizer – Feed – There are not as many occasions now where Scoble breaks a story first but it is always interesting to catch up with what he is up to. His Twitter feed is making a daily visit to Scobleizer less essential.
  7. Engadget – Feed – I’m a gadget fan but as most gadget fans will tell you, there are more gadgets arriving than hours in the day to keep up with them
  8. Gizmodo – Feed – Another fine gadget blog, you do need that second point of view
  9. Wired – Feed – I used to buy the Wired print magazine, now when I have time I like to read online. It’s not always to my taste but some of the stuff on there is both brilliant and content you can’t find anywhere else
  10. BBC – Feed – There is rarely anything on BBC tech that I would miss but there is often something new and interesting.

Which sites do you check regularly for your daily dose of Tech?