Comments are now threaded, meaning that you can reply to someone’s specific comment rather than just adding to the post’s comments in general. Took a while to figure out and had to use a nightly build of the blog’s theme to make it work, so please make use of it.
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- Bibang Elninga on Two men: one mission?Hey there,I'm from Chad (Tchad) republic and as a college student in late 80s and early 90s, I had a couple of PCV teachers, among others Paul Jurczack who also happened to be my thesis advisor. If it... »
- Be thankful its just strep. It can be a little troublesome, but it is easily curable. I bet it would have been gone in less than a week's time. Its how you prevent it from happening again that matters... »
- Kamang? on Kenyan Phone TricksHello T.K. There's no call for you to get rude and abusive here on this particular forum. Paul has been exceedingly helpful to all of us. Let us try to keep the discussion civil so that we can all ben... »
- I don't think I would have been okay cohabiting with this...nor with the contents of whatever is in that egg sac. »
- Hey dude,I'm an ICT+Maths ed PCV in Tz and just downloaded this thing; super excited to see how my kids respond to it. Hopefully it'll be a hit and maybe my peers in country at other sites running OLD... »
- Hi Paul, Great blog! I'm actually leaving for Kenya May 30th and it's good to have a blog to reference for my many questions. I'm more than excited to start my journey. How is it being back? Has it be... »
- evroza on Kenyan Phone Trickspaul, most of what you've highlighted is true but please try updating your information if u still, in kenya. I'm a kenyan and I'd be of help with any inquiries. Truth is Safaricom is still the only IS... »
- Lillian on One Last ReflectionOh, oh - typed this twice »
- Lillian on One Last ReflectionPaul Your reflections have caused me to feel more assured that your experience there was mostly positive. If I could only pass along one thing it's this: follow your passions - if you're not passion... »
- Lillian on One Last ReflectionPaul- i finally read your final blog tonight after being a little down over the fact that I miss my young-uns in Cali. Your final reflections caused me to feel more assured that the outcome was a pos... »
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On a nerd note:
Recommend if you use firefox to download/get ABP – Adblock Plus which should remove most if not all your ad’s.
Most sites have mobile version you can access from your web browser, so always try mobile.xxx.com, many times they will not have ad’s or very little graphics.
I would also play with changing your browser type setting, look at refspoof, you might be able to make the world think your browser is a mobile phone and give you a slim line page.
Last, make sure people get the unlock code for Locked phones already on plans before they cancel!
Picked up all the Firefox addons. Refspoof acting like Opera Mini seems like a nice middle ground between Fennec and full-on Firefox. mobile.xxx.com was an interesting example… I’m surprised the blog didn’t flag it as inappropriate! I also updated the phone page to be more specific on a few fronts, so hopefully posterity will benefit.
Paul, greetings!
I’m in love with your blog for 2 reasons:
- your fab Kenyan Internet Phone Cheat Sheet – yay!
- how you were able to lock down one of your post. I’m not a blogger yet, so I will contact you in the future on how to do that (or, you could link me to instructions now).
Welcome to geeky blogosphere of mobile computing (and tethering)! In the coming months, I plan to find +/- contribute +/- create some type of central resource for mobile information that we can all access and share. For now, let me provide some links that might be useful to you and others.
Like you’ve written before, how the Kenya telecomms charge for bandwidth is mysterious and downright shady. I wished they charged based on time online, rather than data metering, that way all these tools would actually save the money.
As noted above, never leave home without AdBlock Plus when using Firefox.
There’s a FF add-in called ImgLikeOpera which does similar image blocking/filtering like Opera–Opera probably does it better.
I like ImgLikeOpera because its button/lever-thingy can sit in either the toolbar or statusbar.
For those who don’t know, User Agent (UA) switching can be a very useful tool for browsing mobile-specific webpages on a computer. Some (many?) mobile webpages are designed with specific mobile browsers. Some won’t even display a page unless the UA is a recognized setting; others will push you to the full Internet version of the page–annoying.
Looking at refspoof, I really like the functions the developer produced; I’ll have to study it more. There’s a veteran FF add-in, User Agent Switcher, which does the same thing but probably without extra functions. There’s also PrefBar which has extra features including a UA switcher.
I have a sh*tload of links to mobile browsing sites, too many to list here. I would love to post them on one portal or site for all to share, but unfortnately there’s just too many to recommend. Anyone have suggestions, let us know. In future contribs, I’ll share the links in posts.
Looking forward to your future posts. You’re gonna love Kenya!
Some of the suggested Firefox plugins are pretty great— I’m back from Opera for the time being. I’ve updated the phone page accordingly. Password protecting blog posts is easy with Wordpress: there is an optional password field per post.
Firefox tip (particularly for those non-geeks):
The advice you gave for about:config in Kenyan Internet Phone Cheat Sheet, these would need to be re-entered each time FF is started. To keep the changes permanently, add them to the user.js file in the > FF Profile folder <
Here’s an example of a user.js entry:
user_pref(“accessibility.blockautorefresh”, true);
The “;” is mandatory, at the end of each entry.
Your ‘GreaseMonkey Mowser Images script’ is very sweet, Thank You. There are many other mobile site optimizers, I encourage “the community” to experiment with some of them using your script. To start the race, try skweezer.net (the “Skweezer International” link is where you can configure settings), and PHONifier.