Category: ICT

A Note To The Minister of Education: No, Tim, You're Wrong.

August 27, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

According to this Trinidad Express article:

EDUCATION Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh says the $83 million to provide laptops for successful Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) pupils is not as exorbitant as some people believe.

He said the cost worked out to approximately $4,000 per computer, which had a number of special features, and Government was able to lower costs by eliminating the middle man...

Nonsense¹. First of all, $4,000 a laptop is exorbitant for laptops for children - that equates to roughly $625 U.S. per laptop. The 'special features' really aren't that special - they are customizations of existing software that can be done with a few clicks of a button. There are really no 'special features'. So, remember '$625 U.S.' and check pricing for individual laptops on Amazon.com. 'Special features'? 

I suppose you don't realize that we have the specifications for the tender (available in this post). {Read more}

Life in a Small Market, Tickling the Global Market

February 22, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

I sat across from an attractive female academic not too long ago as she asked me about helping her find a USB mass storage device for her Apple laptop. Trinidad and Tobago, of course, is a small market - and the people who bring down hardware bring what is most likely to sell. And Apple compatibility is really not as big of a draw as the typical Apple user may think. The majority of the market in Trinidad and Tobago uses the PC platform - so when people bring in computing paraphernalia, it's basically for the PC platform.

It wasn't too long ago that a Bajan friend had problems with Apple- you can read about it here and here - but to save you the trouble of clicking the links, I can simply tell you that reading it will make you think different of Apple. But really, it is just life in a small market.

It doesn't just mean Apples and oranges. Automotive parts for vehicles pre-abused foreign ('foreign used', aka 'foreign abused') vehicles are known for unavailability of parts, black licorice is an oddity instead of a commodity and the author has pondered selling his soul for a pack of Nutter Butter cookies at some times. It isn't to say that there isn't some demand for these items - it's that, relatively speaking - there isn't enough demand for such items. One day they will be on a shelf somewhere, and when they are found they aren't reordered because the businesspeople involved don't necessarily want their money tied up on dusty shelves.

Magazines arrive 2 weeks late. Bookstores and music stores are subject to the ordering taste and whims of the owners of the stores. {Read more}

The CNMG experience: How to crash T&T's Carnival Big Truck

February 16, 2010 by Edmund Gall

A few weeks ago, the T&T government decided to award sole rights to distribute coverage of major Carnival 2010 events to its own media house: the Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG).  On the face of it, this seemed sensible: award management of the distribution to a trusted partner.  However, though CNMG has been streaming its own programmes on the Internet for over a year at www.ctntworld.com, it proved to be completely unable to handle streaming of T&T Carnival.

First, we have to question whether the decision to manage radio, video and Internet coverage of Carnival 2010 was borne out of a wish by the government, through its Ministry of Culture, to really make the most of this tremendous marketing opportunity.  According to local photojournalist, Mark Lyndersay, it appears that the motivation was control rather than optimisation: see his extremely enlightening BitDepth article on the matter.

Second, the expected first step for CNMG would be re-licensing of other providers to share in the distribution of the events for a fee.  It did this with the radio feeds, since Internet users can listen to coverage of events via non-CNMG stations.  However, CNMG decided not to share Internet streaming with other distributors, as described in this When Steel Talks (WST) article on the exclusion of T&T culture media house WACK.  Given government's history of planned failure, folks involved in culture rightly became worried by this imposed single point of failure for video coverage. {Read more}

Better Websites in Trinidad and Tobago - Drupal Group's First Meeting

February 10, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

Out of the blue, a message on the Trinidad and Tobago Drupal Group caused an impromptu meeting at Haagen Daz, Gulf City, here in Trinidad and Tobago. Being used to just Shivan Jaikaran and myself as being the Drupal-folk in Trinidad and Tobago, I was pleasantly surprised that there are many more of us.

If you've never heard of Drupal, it's the open source content management system that makes sites like this possible - and what makes Drupal possible is the great community behind it. Locally, one of the better known installations of Drupal is the Trinidad Guardian website. Shivan announced the launch of the Trinidad Guardian's main stage launch with Drupal. You can view it here. {Read more}

Caribbean Innovators Challenge: Mobile Applications!

January 21, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

It wasn't too long ago that I was waxing poetic about innovation. Even my last post about the need for an emergency SMS system for nations is a good lead in to the Caribbean Innovators Challenge:

  {Read more}

$TT 77 Million For Motor Vehicle Software

November 27, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

According to this story, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is purchasing software from Nova Scotia that hasn't actually worked in Nova Scotia yet:

...The $12.9-million system at Nova Scotia’s registry has not worked as intended since it was introduced in April 2008.

"The problems we’re having in Nova Scotia is in how the software is working with our system, and we have a dedicated team that is working intensely on resolving the problem," Ms. Jennex said...

That equates to $77,461,283 TT dollars for software that is not working in Nova Scotia.

So - problem one is that the software isn't working where it is being purchased from. Problem two is that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is investing in foreign software when we have the intellectual capital in Trinidad and Tobago to handle such a project. {Read more}

Taking On The Myth of a Local Silicon Valley

November 5, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Ace Suares, a friend of mine in the Netherlands Antilles, has been hearing a lot about Trinidad and Tobago's IT initiatives through a group called iGovTT. Frankly, without Ace I wouldn't have been able to write this because I've been busy with other things over the last few days.

Apparently iGovTT been quite busy in Curacao telling people about their big plans while they don't even have a functional website.

Honestly, I had not even heard of iGovTT before. It was mentioned before in the newspapers, but only briefly and never anything of worth. From this document (PDF), mined through Google, their mission is: We are the first choice for ICT services globally through the exploitation of Trinidad and
Tobago’s knowledge-based society.

Seriously, they need to work on that vision statement. 'Exploitation' screams for a replacement word. Actually, the whole vision statement should probably be ground up and fed to stray dogs as a matter of saving the world from yet another idiotic vision statement.

Because of all of this, Ace has been pointing me at things within Trinidad and Tobago's local media - something that I truly appreciate - and this requires me to get to writing about what is wrong with what they're doing. The list of what they are doing right, in my opinion, is much shorter. Perhaps that's why they're trying to sell that short list in Curacao. {Read more}