The cheapest laptop selling at $99

"Africa" is its name.

It is the brainchild of Philip Appiah from PAAJAF, a humanitarian services NGO based in Accra, Ghana, West-Africa.

PAAJAF  foundation provides food and shelter, clothing, basic health care, community building skills, job training  and education for children, women and orphans.

Philip’s vision was to improve the lives of the poor through better access to information for better education, freedom, making a living,  etc.

Philip approached Cherrypal of the Tristate Hong Kong Group Limited, a globally operating group of lifestyle enhancing companies, focused on green technologies, health products and personal development.

Cherrypal has been known to produce cheap netbook as a way to bridge the “digital divide”, with the belief that everyone should have access to technology and the benefits of the Internet, not just those who can afford to spend at least few hundreds on a new computer.

This initiative has led to the making of Africa, priced at $99 and targetted for the global low income group.

Africa is the laptop produced by Cherrypal, with:

• 7" colour display
• 400Mhz processor
• 256MB RAM
• 2GB flash memory storage
• Integrated Wi-Fi b/g wireless networking
• Integrated 10/100M Ethernet wired networking
• RJ-45 dial-up port
• One USB 2.0 port and two USB 1.1 ports
• SD/MMC card slot that supports SD card , U-Disk and USB-HDD Card
• Microphone and built-in speaker 

It weighs around 1.2kg and includes a 7.4V 1800MAH Lithium battery that provides a runtime of around four hours.

It runs either Linux or Windows CE and is designed just for Internet surfing.

"We believe access to the Internet is an essential need nowadays and requires an extra effort from the global community to melt different cultures and backgrounds into one peaceful community." -- GreenOpenFair blog of Cherrypal.

Click here for more information and online purchase of the Cherrypal 7" Africa mini-laptop selling at $99.00.

Hiding your Internet web surfing trace with UltraSurf

UltraSurf is a very small program (less than 500kb) that will automatically change your Internet Explorer's setting to make use of anonymous proxy server in the United States. It is free. It also has add-on for Firefox browser.

It can be used to hide/obfuscate your computer's location, and be a workaround to overcome possible web censorship and blockage.

Any website you connected with your web browser is able to trace your computer's IP address, and use it to find out your location. What UltraSurf do is to connect your computer to their server, and then connect to the destination website with the IP address of their server instead of yours.

This will make any websites you surf on or browse into, to trace that you are coming from United States instead of your actual location.

You can see how the IP address is traced by visiting to http://whatismyipaddress.com/. See what's the different before and after you run UltraSurf.

UltraSurf also has options to allow you to remove your trace in your computer (what webpages you have visited) by deleting the cookie and history information automatically the moment you exit the program.

Click here to find out more about UltraSurf and to download it.

When piracy becomes a major economic activity with a stock market

Somalia, a country located at the "Horn of Africa", is strategically controlling the vessel traffic in Gulf of Aden which joins the Red Sea (with the famous Suez Canal at the other end) which forms the important water transportation between Europe and Asia. (map below)

Somali people have been suffering from civil war since the last decade, and now, the warriors, fishermen, and perhaps farmers have found a new "lucrative business" to take advantage of their geographical location. They become pirates and hijack merchant ships, then making multi million dollars of big bucks from ransom.

The Somali pirates are heavily armed. And to maintain their "operation cost" and supplies, they have even opened a 24x7 "stock market", which started with 15 "maritime companies" and grown to 72 in just 4 months time.

The stock market is opened to everyone, and they accept "investment" in the kind of cash, weapons or useful materials.

The following "testimony" is very real, from a 22 years old young Somali lady: "I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation. I am really happy to have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined."

It would be more shocking to hear the Haradheere town's deputy security officer spoken to reporter: "Piracy-related business has become the main profitable economic activity in our area and as locals we depend on their output."

Somali pirates have no doubt become today's marine version of Robin Hood in the eyes of their local people. They are even a very modernize version, equipped with AK-47 and rockets (rather than bows and arrows), and operating a stock exchange.

What do you think about this?

I feel that if the rich-poor divide around the globe become worse and worse, more and more such "Robin Hood story" will come into reality, and that might also be a cause for World War III.