Talk:Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT

Used with permission of the copyright holder. I am a Developer In Residence at the Centre and am placing the content, with permission, into Wikipedia. Guido 20:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is a copy of the permission email sent to Wikipedia and to the copyright holder:-

Director-General, Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence Accra, Ghana

Dear Madam:

I am an editor of the Wikipedia, a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia. The English-language version may be viewed on the Web at http://en.wikipedia.org/. We gather information from all types of sources, but the web sites of government bodies, institutes of higher learning, and other non-profit organizations are often particularly useful. As a unique and highly visible project, we freely and publically release our work, that it may benefit mankind. To this end, we deeply respect copyright, and are careful to prevent any infringement.

We would like your permission to include resources created by your organization in our encyclopedia. Specifically, we are interested in copying:-


 * Text from your home page, accessible at http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/ and text from the following pages:-


 * http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=59
 * http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=65
 * http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=58

In order for us to do so, it would be necessary for you to license your work under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which was designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for free works. You can find the license text at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.

If you licensed one or more of your documents under this license, you would retain full copyright. However, we would be licensed to distribute the material, as would future users of it. We would distribute your work free of charge. However, future commercial distribution could occur. This is because users of our encyclopedia are authorized by the GFDL to distribute it, or any part of it, for a fee.

The license does stipulate that any copy of the material, even if modified, must carry the same license. This guarantees that if licensed in this manner, no copy of your work could be made proprietary. That means that no one who distributes the work can ever restrict future distribution.

Please notify me if you are interested in licensing the content indicated above, as published in the Wikipedia as attached to this message, OR all of your copyrighted material in that web site, under the GFDL. I can be contacted by e-mail at guido@sohne.net, by telephone at +233 24 401 6467 (I am in time zone UTC -- please call anytime during the day), and by post at:

Guido Sohne PO Box OS830, Osu Accra Ghana

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Guido Sohne

Guido 20:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Also see the attached press release which indicates that this is in conjunction with an event occurring at the Kofi Annan Centre. This event being Africa's first entry in the Semapedia.

Guido 20:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Tomorrow afternoon at 3.30 pm I will be delivering a presentation/talk on Semacodes, Semapedia and the Wikipedia together with their glocal applications.

This technology is the Semacode [1] (a URL barcode), which was conceived in North America, with portions that were developed here in Ghana by local software developers. One of the very first versions of Semacode encoder was developed here in Ghana by local developers. The founder of the Semacode Corporation [2] and the Semacode Organization [3] contacted Mr. Guido Sohne for assistance in developing an early version of Semacode and Mr Sohne in turn recommended Mr. Francois Bonin to develop this software. The significance of Semacode is that one can now link a real world, physical object to arbitrary data. Before there has been no link, except for things like ordinary barcodes such as those used in stores to label products, or on books to indicate publication details.

Unlike Semacodes, traditional barcodes have limited storage for information, are fixed function and good for only one narrow application, and also require the use of special, custom hardware and software to read or access such barcodes. With the Semacode approach, all it now takes is for an ordinary camera phone, equipped with a Semacode reader software package (available free of charge by pointing your mobile phone's web browser to the over the air distribution from http://semacode.org/ota). There's no need to purchased any hardware or software to read these two dimensional barcodes. Semacodes, by embedding a URL into a barcode, enable any portion of the Internet to be 'attached' to any object, and can replace barcodes by going further to give arbitrary information on the Internet, not just the simple product number. After the successful development of the core of the Semacode encoding software (called the Semacode Tagger), Semacode went on to achieve user adoption, such as the inception of the Semapedia.

In the words of the founders of Semapedia, Stan Wiechers and Alexis Rondeau:-

"Semapedia is a non-profit project. Idea was to bring the amazing knowledge from the wikipedia to places in the *real* world where it matters. Being able to stand in front of a building and dive into its is history right on the spot is something incredible useful to anybody. Doing that by just taking a picture with your mobile phone of a semacode is a very very simple interaction that is understandable to everybody. We have been explaining and showcasing to people with no technical background at all and they still immediatly understand the use and value of our project. Semapedia is a community project, everybody can go to our site and create semapedia tags via a simple text entry form right away, print them out and start hyperlinking ojects to the information he wants people to know."

Following the initial development of the Semacode encoder, Mr Guido Sohne has continued with his interest in Semacodes by releasing free software to create Semacodes. The first version of this software was developed as an experiment to investigate the benefits of writing code for the Apple Mac OS X operating system. Mr Sohne acquired an Apple PowerBook and used the Semacode as a goal to achieve as a learning exercise for his newly acquired hardware. This software grew to include a port of the Semacode encoder to run within a web browser, so that it could be accessible on all platforms, and not just the Apple platform.

This talk will explain and explore the possibilities that are opened by the use of and application of Semacodes, and will also serve to launch the first African use of this technology which will take place during the talk, as I demonstrate how a Semapedia entry is created by tagging a physical location and associating that location with a Semacode. The talk will be of most use to people who have a GPRS activated camera phone and to those who are interested in the dimensions of technology development, adoption and adaptation in Ghana.

I would thus like to invite all recipients of this message to attend the event and participate in this groundbreaking first for the African continent which will be hosted at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence at 3.30 pm on the 6th of April, 2006.

Guido Sohne, Chief Software Architect, CoreNett Limited.


 * semacode @ wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semacode
 * Semacode Organization - http://semacode.org
 * Semacode Corporation - http://semacode.com
 * Semapedia, the Physical Wikipedia - http://semapedia.org
 * Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence - http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh
 * Semafox - http://sohne.net/semafox/
 * Semacoder - http://sohne.net/semacoder/

Guido 20:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is a copy of the response from the copyright holder regarding placement of content used under the GNU FDL ...

From: dorothyg@aiti-kace.com.gh Subject: Fw: Permission requested to use content from http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh under the GNU Free Documentation License Date: April 10, 2006 3:59:24 PM GMT+00:00 To: guido@sohne.net Cc: isaacr@aiti-kace.com.gh

Dear Guido, We grant permission placing the content used frin our website in your press release under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Thank you for your contributions.

- Original Message - From: "Isaac Rockson II"  To: "Dorothy Gordon"  Cc:  Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 8:34 AM Subject: RE: Permission requested to use content from http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh under the GNU Free Documentation License

Permission granted. All the best with the WIKI project.

Isaac

-Original Message- From: Dorothy Gordon Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 11:13 AM To: Isaac Rockson II Subject: Fw: Permission requested to use content from http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh under the GNU Free Documentation License

- Original Message - From: "Guido Sohne"  To:  Cc: "Gordon Dorothy"  Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 8:14 PM Subject: Permission requested to use content from http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh under the GNU Free Documentation License

Director-General, Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence Accra, Ghana

Dear Madam:

I am an editor of the Wikipedia, a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia. The English-language version may be viewed on the Web at http://en.wikipedia.org/. We gather information from all types of sources, but the web sites of government bodies, institutes of higher learning, and other non- profit organizations are often particularly useful. As a unique and highly visible project, we freely and publically release our work, that it may benefit mankind. To this end, we deeply respect copyright, and are careful to prevent any infringement.

We would like your permission to include resources created by your organization in our encyclopedia. Specifically, we are interested in copying:-

Text from your home page, accessible at http://www.aiti- kace.com.gh/ and text from the following pages:-

http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=59 http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=65 http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=58

In order for us to do so, distribute the material, as would future users of it. We would distribute your work free of charge. However, future commercial distribution could occur. This is because users of our encyclopedia are authorized by the GFDL to distribute it, or any part of it, for a  fee.

The license does stipulate that any copy of the material, even if modified, must carry the same license. This guarantees that if licensed in this manner, no copy of your work could be made proprietary. That means that no one who distributes the work can ever restrict future distribution.

Please notify me if you are interested in licensing the content indicated above, as published in the Wikipedia as attached to this message, OR all of your copyrighted material in that web site, under  the GFDL. I can be contacted by e-mail at guido@sohne.net, by telephone at +233 24 401 6467

(I am in time zone UTC -- please call anytime during the day), and by post at:

Guido Sohne PO Box OS830, Osu Accra Ghana

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Guido Sohne

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) training
CISA-training

We look forward to training personnel from your audit, accounts and IT departments. - Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Partnership with ISECURITY is pleased to invite you to participate in Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) training.

Date: 23rd April, 2011 (14 saturdays) Time: 9:am-2:pm Fees: Gh950 Contact Director of Studies or Prince on 0302679542-5 E-mail: info@aiti-kace.com.gh

http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/cisa.jpg

Prince A. Kpasra Business Liaison Officer Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT Mobile: 233 244 441 219 princekpa@aiti-kace.com.gh pkpasra@yahoo.com Direct Line: 233 302 679546 Skype:kpasra Website: www.aiti-kace.com.gh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.43.196.10 (talk) 09:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)