Good day blog readers.  It's Wednesday morning and my class of teachers that was supposed to show up has not (which actually is a suprise, usually they are early!  Wait, I have been informed there are some national exams going on...), so I have decided to introduce the layman to a very specific technical issue that plagues Information Technology in the developing world: that of open data formats and other forms of open standards.  Don't worry, I know it sounds boring, but hopefully you will be interested enough at the end, and maybe you will have even learned something!  I can only hope.