Okay, time for an update to let you know what we've been doing at Ushahidi with the winnings from the NetSquared Challenge.

Ory and I are madly dashing around Kenya, meeting with local NGOs and users to determine what we need to build into Ushahidi's Engine (version 2). We helped sponsor the local Barcamp Nairobi, which was a huge hit and brought us even more developers.

I'm also gathering a group of top Kenyan web and mobile phone developers together who are volunteering to help spur on Ushahidi's Engine as a new free and open source initiative. So far we have 10 Kenyans, 1 Malawian, 1 Ghanaian, 2 South Africans and 3 Americans - quite the eclectic mix.

Some of these guys are focusing on the core PHP development, others on mobile iterations for Android, iPhone and J2ME platforms. Still other are helping setup the database schema, ensuring the UI is usable, and core tool usage for further development.

From the NetSquared prize, we're likely to bring on one or two more part-time developers from Kenya as well. A meeting with developers interested in Ushahidi later this week will finalize our decision on that.

What's up with the core Ushahidi team?

I'm in Nairobi for one more week, then back to the US for a while. Ory is off talking at a couple conferences. David is busily coding and managing developers, and Juliana is helping us keep from drowning in paperwork.

How are we getting stuff done?

If anyone is interested in what we use to keep organized, look no further than email and 37signals. We use Basecamp to organize our sub-projects, files and communications. We use HighriseHQ to keep track of our many contacts (Ory and I travel and speak a lot, so it's best to have a joint CRM tool). When on the road, we use direct Twitters for immediate communications, as that's the only thing that really works from Kenya.

We're likely to announce some other big news by then too, so watch this space.

(sidenote: Ushahidi was listed as a "Top 10 Startup to Watch" in July's Technology Review too!)