Though we are not great fans of flash animations — they’re distracting and their novelty effects wear out after a few visits — we decided to spice up St Joseph’s College website. The college is one of the oldest educational institutions in Botswana (it recently celebrated it’s 80th Anniversary) and we wanted the website to stand out. We think the blackboard-themed animation on the home page, interspersed with photographs taken around the school works well for this type of site. You can view the effect by clicking here. We invite you to tell us what you think of the design and animation. Do you think animations are essential to good website design?

The College’s IT department is fully trained on how to upload content and manage the website using our Open Source easy-to-use content management platform. We look forward to seeing this site grow.

At Cyberplex Africa, we try to ensure that every new website we build includes innovative, useful, and practical features. So, in addition to designing beautiful websites, we ensure the site will produce value without imposing an unnecessary burden on webmasters. Fleming Asset Management’s new website is an example. Among the innovative features included:

• Foreign currency exchange rate data: automatically updated daily from the Bank of Botswana,
• Stock trading data: automatically uploaded daily from information provided by the Botswana Stock Exchange, and
• Digital certificate to provide a secure connection to browsers and to assure their clients that the website is authentic.

Stock trading data is presented as a ticker tape and as tables listing the top 5 gainers and losers. In addition to reducing workload for the webmaster, this automation helps eliminate errors commonly perpetrated when data is transcribed manually on a regular basis. You can view the website by clicking here.

Fresh from its successful co-sponsorship of the African Venture Capital Association’s conference in Gaborone in April, VPB recently refurbished its website creating a more crisp, functional and streamlined experience for visitors. Cyberplex Africa reviewed the historical performance of the website, including reviewing visitor data, and then used this analysis to drive the graphical and logical design of the website. The site is now better organized and provides quick access to information and services from VPB. You can review the site by clicking here.

Botswana’s Centre for Human Rights, Ditshwanelo, is currently holding its annual Film Festival in Gaborone. Always notable for the sometimes disturbing and often thought provoking movies, this year’s selections do not disappoint — the full program is available here. One example: Shake Hands with the Devil — The Journey of Romeo Dallaire dramatizes the predicament General Dallaire faced when he was sent to Rwanda in 1994 at the head of a UN peace keeping force with severely limited resources and mandate. Ultimately, he was denied authority to intervene, and his force was reduced then abandoned and in the end proved incapable of stopping the genocide. Learn more about this movie here. Learn about the genocide here.

Ditshwanelo’s website which Cyberplex Africa recently developed contains information on the organization’s work in Botswana, the variety of which surprises many given the country’s reputation as a well governed, democratic, prosperous and peaceful nation in a historically troubled region of Africa. Take a look at it for yourself.

Website and web applications developers are familiar with MySQL — one of the predominant database platforms used throughout the Internet, including by powerhouses such as Google, Yahoo!, Nokia, and YouTube. More than 100 million copies have reportedly been downloaded and distributed during its history. On January 17th, Sun Microsystems announced that it would buy MySQL AB, the Swedish developer of MySQL for US$1 billion. On February 26th, Sun announced that it had completed the acquisition.

This stunning development shines the spotlight on the gains being increasingly made by so-called FOSS (free and open source software) solutions which “grant the user the right to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code“. MySQL is a key part of the LAMP stack consisting of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python, and was originally developed in Sweden by David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Michael “Monty” Widenius who had been working together since the 1980s.

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Despite its well-earned reputation for tranquility, good governance and notable wealth, Botswana’s level of access to the Internet lags most other countries, including fellow African ones. According to Internet World Stats, as of December 2007, the country has only 60,000 Internet users. The resulting Internet penetration rate of 3.3% is lower than the African average of 4.7%, and is significantly below the world average of 20%.

 By comparison, the top 5 African countries (in terms of population online) are Nigeria (8m), Morocco (6.1m), Egypt (6m), South Africa (5.1m), and Sudan (3.1m). In terms of % penetration, the order is Seychelles (35.4%), Reunion (27.4%), Mauritius (24%), Morocco (18.1%), Tunisia (15.7%). The population list is notable for emphasizing countries with the bigger populations, while the penetration rate throws the spotlight primarily on island nations.

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It is surely evidence of how quickly and thoroughly Internet history passes by, that few will have noticed as one of the most iconic personifications of the rise of the Internet passed into oblivion recently. In late December 2007, America Online (AOL) announced that it would officially cease development and support for the Netscape browser on February 1st, 2008. One reason why Netscape will not be missed is that its popularity has long been surpassed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (77% market share) and Mozilla Firefox (a 16% and growing share) — which itself traces its history back to open source software derived from Netscape. Aficionados of Netscape can still download the software at this website, but AOL will not provide any support.

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