Blogging in India
I'm blogging while traveling in India. That means not so much bad connectivity - I haven't had a problem locating internet access in small towns yet, and speeds are ok, today's the slowest so far, through dialup, and it's about 36K. Yesterday I found an internet cafe in a train station (the train was delayed 3 hours). It turns out you can happily connect between 6 and 10 computers with a mobile phone connection and that way set up an internet cafe pretty much anywhere. Speed of the main line is 125K, although it feels more like 56K. All 3 internet cafes so far (except todays') use some form of mobile telephone connectivity. I have some nice pictures but no patience to upload them now. Although they're not ubiquitous, I see quite a few people with mobile phones here.
Other annoyments include bad keyboards, cramped areas (Indians are small), but overall internet availability is pretty good and widespread. Blogging becomes a matter of making some time.
In a day or two, I'll be in Malapurram (Kerala), where the Akshaya project is providing fast internet and more to the whole region. They are using some fascinating tech, and what sounds like a great model to make the whole thing sustainable. I'll spend some time trying to find out how that's working out, and what value a project like that brings to the users from their perspective. I hope I'll be abe to surmount the language problems.