Recently I visited Kenya for the three-day G-Kenya event. I was there for two reasons:

• To talk about Android and the emerging mobile opportunities for African developers.
• To ask questions and find out more about the reality of mobiles and writing code from the people there.

Of the countries I’ve visited to talk about Android, nowhere have people had such a close connection to their mobile phones as in Africa. While most Kenyans own feature phones, those mobiles are already used as much more than simple phones. Mobile payments are already common, and cheap data plans mean that many people access the Internet exclusively through mobile handsets.

There were two Android announcements while I was in town: a new low-cost Android handset (the Huawei U8220), and Android Market access for Kenyans. I can’t wait to see the kind of apps that come from developers who live in an environment where mobile is so pervasive.

Day 1: Students

G-Kenya was set within the beautiful campus of the Strathmore Business School, so it was fitting that day one was addressed to students.

Of the three groups, the students where the most enthusiastic about Android. This was likely influenced by their confidence that by the time they graduate, modern smartphones in Africa will have become the norm.

I love talking to student developers — without the commercial pressures of finding customers or a monetization model — they’re free to innovate on whatever technology platforms they think are interesting.

Day 2: Developers

Modern smartphones are not yet prevalent in Africa, so it wasn’t surprising that many of the developers are currently focusing on feature phones. That said, it was generally acknowledged that it was a question of when rather than if smartphones would come to dominate. The trick will be picking the right time to invest in Android so that they’re ready to take advantage.

Plenty of developers believe that time is right now. It was a pleasure to meet the guys behind Ushahidi, creators of an Android app created to report and record incidents during the 2008 election violence. Since their launch they’ve expanded to offer a global platform for crowd-sourced news where timeliness is critical.

I love opportunity the Android Market delivers to developers like the idea of developers like Ushahidi and Little Fluffy Toys (of London Cycle Hire fame). An app the solves a problem for your local community can easily be expanded to offer solutions to similar problems across the world.

Developer focus in Kenya seemed to follow similar lines:

• Create products and services targeted at local communities (such as the developers creating a distributed system to help health-care workers record medical information in the field.)
• Build robust cloud-based services that provide access to users from any mobile platform.
• Expand from feature phones to Android to incorporate features like GPS positioning, maps, and recording video and audio.

Day 3: Entrepreneurs and Marketers

No one was surprised to see a lot of the developers from the previous day return for entrepreneur day, and the apparent lack of Android questions from Day 2 was more than made up for on day 3; the “AppEngine Challenge” on Day 2 fielded a record 30 entries, so it seems everyone was working on their entries rather than asking questions!

I didn’t speak on Day 3, but spent all day fielding questions from eager mobile developers hoping to catch the Android wave as early innovators and first movers. That included a team who were working to provide real-time public transit tracking of Matatu via GPS and Android devices.

Reflections

It’s an exciting time to be a developer in Kenya. I regularly asked developers how long they thought it would take for Android devices to become common place. Many suggested if I came back this time next year I’d see a flood of Android devices. Even the more pessimistic predicted no more than 3 years.

As I traveled back towards Jomo Kenyatta International, listening to the radio offering a free Sony Ericsson X10 Mini to one lucky caller, the future didn’t seem very far away.

It’s a fact that people who use SketchUp also use other tools; we live in a multi-app universe, and I like it that way. Figuring out what program to use for what, and when, and how to move data between them is the tricky part. And that’s why blogs like Ronen Bekerman’s are so useful. It’s chock-full of information about all things related to architectural visualization. V-Ray, Maxwell, 3ds Max, Photoshop, Fryrender, SketchUp – it’s all there.

W Boutique Residential Tower by Ronen Bekerman; SketchUp, 3ds Max, MultiScatter and V-Ray

I just found out about Ronen’s HOVER Challenge. Participants are designing, modeling and rendering structures that appear to float. The format is what interests me most: everyone is posting their progress to a forum where others provide advice and encouragement. Two caveats: You need to be logged in to see images, and only some of the participants are using SketchUp.

The deadline is coming up fast (October 20th) but I think it’s worthwhile to at least peek at what folks are up to. As I’ve said in the past – you should see at least one beautiful, inspiring thing a day.

I get a few emails every day regarding Google Earth’s “historical imagery” feature, so now seems like a good time to revisit the topic. Frank first wrote about this new feature back in early 2009 when it was released as part of Google Earth 5. I’ll leave his content below, as it’s a great introduction to how it works, but first we need to discuss one oft-overlooked aspect of historical imagery.

Historical Imagery can be newer

We mentioned it back in February of this year, but it’s important to realize that the newest imagery in Google Earth can often be found in this historical imagery feature.

Google is very careful about the imagery that they release to the default layer. If new imagery is good (but not good enough), they’ll often it put it in the historical imagery layer. Reasons why it might not be “good enough” can be due to some clouds in the way, haze/pollution, sun at the wrong angle (lots of shadows), and things of that nature. Despite whatever minor shortcoming it may have, the imagery still may be of value to you, so be sure to check for it.

How to use the Historical Imagery feature

Google already had more satellite and aerial imagery available for free than anyone. Now, they’ve added a new feature to new Google Earth 5 that let’s you turn back the clock and see other imagery they have for locations around the world. Click on the little “Clock” icon in the upper middle (or the “View->Historical Imagery” menu item). A time slider appears (see below) showing available imagery. If other imagery is available in your current view, you see little tic marks on the slider. Drag the slider (or click the left/right buttons) to see earlier or (or even newer) imagery.

For example, here’s a shot of the famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium from the 2008 Beijing Olympics as it appeared under construction on February 17, 2007:

And, here is a video showing this all in action:

This feature is amazing! The amount of data Google is storing must be immense! Several instances of imagery for millions of square kilometers! You may be able to see how your house changed over the years, or see aerial pictures of cities from decades ago. Expect to see lots of posts on this new feature.

In addition, Google has put up their own post with examples of historical imagery in action.