Trinbago Techie

This May I will be 41 years old. I spent most of my life living in Trinidad except for the 5 years I spent abroad for university and work between 1998 and 2003. I had to wait in Chaguanas and decided to start this blog post. I am happy being grateful and appreciative. The first thing that came to my mind is the weather. We have two seasons in Trinidad and Tobago, a dry season and a wet season. It can be annoying when the sun is really hot or when the rain in falling and you have to travel somewhere but generally I appreciate the warm tropical atmosphere. It sure beats the bitter cold I experienced in New York and Atlanta. Coconut water and a walk around the Queens Park Savannah. Bake and shark on Maracas beach. Coffee and crix on a rainy Sunday morning. The next thing that comes to mind is that Trinidad and Tobago is a land of many opportunities. Not perfect. Not the best. Not first world but I feel many times better than many other places. From cheap electricity to free education and

I was without headphones for a few weeks now. It feels strange to actually be using headphones once again. I set out to purchase a pair of wireless earbuds. I looked at the options from two shops and settled on the Anker Soundcore Spirit from Roc Boyz in Chaguanas. I mostly didn't want to spend too much money and was guided by this. There are some seriously expensive wireless earbuds if money is not a problem. I was content with the reviews and Anker is a brand I trust. They make sturdy and competitive budget devices. One downside of using wireless earbuds is that I cannot use the ota radio app on my phone. The wired headphones are needed as an antenna. These days I am listening to Spotify and when I came home I quickly retired to my room with the AC on high and turned on some African music from Putomayo. Time to escape to a far off land and write this first impressions for my blog. I had to use the large tip for my right ear as my right ear was slacker. The earbuds now fit comfort

Earlier in the day, for the Spotify app, the app store said your device is not compatible with this version. For Spotify Lite and spotify.com , I was greeted with not available in your country. When I tried again in the afternoon I was able to sign up at spotify.com and install the Spotify app from the Google Play store. Before this rollout trinis would have to use a VPN to get access to spotify. The free tier of spotify is limited in features, contains ads and audio quality is less. Premium plan costs US 5.99 per month. I enjoyed using the Spotify app. Clean and simple UI and intuitive UX. I am not bothered by the lesser audio quality in the free tier. I am a light user and I can see how a heavy user would be compelled to go premium. In the future I could compare Spotify to some of the alternatives. Some comments from searching "spotify trinidad" on twitter Spotify is out in Trinidad boys and girls! GO GET THE APP, SIGN UP AND USE IT. Honestly the best app for streaming mus

I saw a post on instagram that Star Link satellite internet would be availaible in Trinidad and Tobago in 2022. The screenshot said Star Link is targeting coverage in your area in 2022. Availability is limited. Orders will be fullfilled on a first-come first-served basis. Then a form to make a fully refundable US 99 payment. I read on TT Weather Center that SpaceX Starlink Satellites Spotted Across T&T Skies This is great news for persons in remote areas with little or no options for internet. I wonder if TATT was approached for permission by Star Link as I think would be required. I emailed TATT as follows, "Does Star Link ( https://www.starlink.com/ ) need permission to offer service in Trinidad? Have they applied for such?" TATT responded to me on 22 Feb 2021 and in short said no application was received and they would need to apply. This type of internet is great as a backup connection and during natural disasters. The ping times is also another selling point.

What is a workflow? A workflow is a group of tasks to get a job done. In our digital world this consists of data processing. Workflows are everywhere. The government in Trinidad and Tobago would benefit greatly from investing in a workflow platform to create and manage workflows. Early in my career I had the opportunity to work with what was then IBM's Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes is all about documents and workflows. Some of the components of a workflow include documents, sections and fields, users, roles and access, views, actions, agents and notifications. I found Lotus Notes had the tools and features to be easy to use and allowed me to create and manage many workflows quickly. And that to me would be the selling point of a workflow platform, speed, efficiency and ease of use. Of course the different platforms would have to be evaluated to determine best fit based on budget and needs among other things. We could build our own platform. That is a serious consideration and an opportu

Trinidad and Tobago Internet Governance Forum is a yearly event that brings together persons interested in discussing topics related to our use of the internet. Every year since 2018 I religiously tune in and make notes so that I can share on my blog. These are my takeaways from the different panel discussions. These are paraphrased in my words. DIGITALIZATION – The Multistakeholder Approach The pandemic is forcing us to advance the digital agenda locally Digital transformation is a group effort, we all have our part to play When going digital, a shared vision is important Good communications is pivotal to team work and multistakeholder approach Time to spend the money and just do it but how to decide what to spend on Our education system is not working for us Transformation is more than automation and putting things online, process reengineering is needed Cybersecurity in the New Norm Online is here to stay and we cannot decide to stay away as a way of dealing with online threats Outd

EmployTT was a category at the inaugural HackTT competition in 2019. A team of developers from UTT came first in that category. iGovTT has since developed EmployTT and hopefully this new EmployTT website fares better than the shuttered GHRS and website which functioned in the same space. We knew it was coming and May last year I asked them to get more info about it. Jan 18 2021 iGovTT put a coming soon on their socials which piqued my interest and I was ready to test it out and blog about it. Only today I saw the website was launched at https://employtt.gov.tt/ The ad says, easy, convenient and secure. I question the quality assurance on this one as there was lorem ipsum text on the about page at time of launch. Notifications from the system are not encrypted and says smtp10.gov.tt did not encrypt this message. The website provides very basic functionality. I applaud them for getting started and I am really hoping for improvements over time. With feedback from us and them being open to