Archive for April, 2009

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Online Learning with Fast Broadband Speed

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Online education is another feather in the cap for the World Wide Web. It is now possible to earn an online degree from an accredited university, all from the comfort of your home.

The diversity of options that online education brings to you is simply incomparable. You can get a high school degree or earn a bachelor’s degree in subjects such as arts, science, and business. In addition, more than a thousand programs from different universities are there for the taking.

To truly tap the immense reservoir of online education, it is advisable that you get a fast broadband connection. Since online education occasionally requires you to participate in video-conferencing or use sophisticated computer programs that need an internet connection to run, a fast bandwidth connection speed will certainly give you a hassle-free learning experience.

Online education often involves the downloading or opening of eBooks, online videos, or multimedia, and these can be efficiently done with a fast broadband connection. Most of the time, a dial-up connection will be insufficient to support online learning. To get a better online learning experience, you need a high speed broadband or DSL. It is also preferable to have consistent access to the internet.

Online learning is not only restricted to degrees; you can learn a wide range of fields of studies and get certified too. You can study photography, piano, guitar, and other things on the internet. It is also a good idea to take a bandwidth connection speed test before you enrol for an online course, so that you can find out whether an upgrade of your current bandwidth speed is required.

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Facebook Listens and Responds to Users

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Facebook just completed a week long public vote, in which Facebook members approved the company’s proposed changes to its terms of service.  The New York Times tech blog explains that the vote was prompted by an outrage that erupted in February over changes the company made to its privacy policy that appeared to grant Facebook ownership over any content, such as images or video, uploaded to the site — even if the original owners deleted their profiles. This is just one more challenge of the new age of internet speed, where people can quickly and easily share with large numbers of people.

After thousands of Facebook members joined groups devoted to protesting the changes and bloggers heaped scorn and criticism on the company, Facebook retracted the changed terms, drafted a new set and invited its 200 million members to weigh in. The new terms of service restore ownership to content and information posted to the site.

Although less than 1 percent of the members participated in the survey, the company said it would accept the results. Close to 75 percent of the participants who voted were in favor of the new terms of service.

No word yet on whether or not the company is planning to listen to its users about their dislike of the newly unveiled layout. A third-party application polling members on whether they liked the new redesign, which places heavy emphasis on status updates. More than 1.2 million users have given the site’s new look a thumbs down.

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Connection Speed for Internet Television

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Internet TV is a new addition to the great variety of content that is being offered on the internet. There are several websites that offer internet television. While some of them provide free service, others require a paid membership. Some of the major ISPs also have their own version of internet TV, and this is called Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV.

There are two primary means of watching internet TV, which are downloading the program and watching the streaming content. However, to do any of these, you need to have a fast bandwidth connection speed. Most people prefer to watch streaming television, but only a computer with fast broadband speed can handle streaming.

A slow internet connection speed will give you a choppy viewing experience, which takes the charm out of watching internet television. On the other hand, a fast bandwidth connection speed will allow you to watch your favorite programs as streaming content, with picture clarity and sound that are comparable to real television. It is a breeze to filter content by language, country, or sources when you are watching internet television.

Another unique feature of internet television is that it allows you to view programs that are not available in your region. It opens avenues for the television producers as well, since they can identify the target audience for their online niche programs.

Earlier, the kind of variety and flexibility that are offered by internet TV were only possible if you owned a DVR or subscribed to some exclusive cable package. However, with the coming of internet television, the scenario is changing. Internet television gives you a lot of viewing options. With fast broadband speed, access to your favourite television content is only a mouse click away.

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Time Travel With Internet Speed

Monday, April 27th, 2009

The World Digital Library, a website offering free access to antique an ancient rare books, maps, manuscripts, films and photographs from across the globe and throughout time, launched Tuesday at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the Yahoo Tech page reports.

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that uses Education, Social and Natural Science, Culture and Communication as a means to build peace in the world.

Bringing together priceless material, from ancient Chinese or Persian calligraphy to early Latin American photography, it is the world’s third major digital library, after Google Book Search and the EU’s new project, Europeana.

Libraries and cultural institutions from Brazil to Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States contributed content — on a non-exclusive basis — as well as expertise. And the world library is available in seven core languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish — with additional material in other languages.

UNESCO along with 32 partner institutions helped to create this brainchild of James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, (the world’s biggest library), who co-chaired the official launch alongside UNESCO director general Koichiro Matsuura. They hope to build partnerships with 60 countries by year end, with Morocco, Uganda, Mexico and Slovakia already signed up to work with the project.

By drawing on content from libraries and archives worldwide, it aims to reduce the rich-poor digital divide , expand “non-Western” content on the web, promote better understanding between cultures and provide a global teaching resource– a great way to help the Internet live up to the terms world wide web and information superhighway, right?

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Cyber Safety for Kids

Friday, April 24th, 2009

According to Wednesday’s USA Today, the Department of Homeland Security and several major tech companies are teaming up to launch a nationwide program in K-12 classrooms to make the younger generation aware of dangers on the Internet.

The pioneering program will teach youngsters not just to be wary of online predators and bullies but alert to the tricks of data thieves and scam artists, who use the reach and speed of the internet to prey upon the naïve.

According to surveys by the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance and the Pew Internet American Life Project, 79% of teens who use the Internet are not careful about sharing personal information, yet only 3% of state school curriculums includes lessons about smart use of social networks and chat rooms.

Websites like webwisekids.org and protectkids.com offer information for parents and kids, but socialization and community guidelines are also the responsibility of schools.

“Our children need help,” says Bill Sanderson, principal of International Studies Academy, a public high school in San Francisco. “We require our students to use the Internet for research and study. We must ensure that they are properly educated on how to keep themselves safe online.”

Michael Kaiser, executive director of the NCSA, said the larger goal is to prompt schools nationwide to “embrace a comprehensive approach to teaching cybersecurity, cybersafety, and cyber ethics.”

Volunteer instructors have already been send to schools in Maryland this week, and tech giant EMC will do likewise in coming weeks in California and Massachusetts. Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco and other tech firms support the program financially.

Volunteers will teach from a prepared curriculum, called C-SAVE: Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education. NSCA plans to lobby state legislatures and local school districts to adopt C-SAVE “as a national framework to guide cybersecurity teaching in all K-12 [schools],” says Kaiser.

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Broadband for Schools

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

More and more schools are jumping into the broadband bandwagon these days. This is happening because broadband with fast bandwidth speed makes it possible for students to avail of a wealth of knowledge and information on the internet.

There are several benefits of connecting schools with high bandwidth speed. Besides giving access to a number of resources, a high cable speed will also facilitate interactive learning and link students from one part of the world to another via high definition video conferencing. Also, teachers can utilize certain websites as teaching tools. For example, geography can be taught with the help of Google or Yahoo Maps. The possibilities of enhancing the educational experience of students with fast cable speed are endless.

Broadband packages are being offered in most schools around the world at discounted rates. In UAE, Etisalat is providing high cable speed to schools with the objective of promoting information technology to the students. In Ireland, HEAnet is one of the managers for a nationwide Broadband for Schools program, and it is aimed at providing secured and filtered internet for students. Most internet service providers are offering customized services for schools, and these usually include IP address management, network management and monitoring, web hosting services, and above all, filtering and security of high speed broadband content.

Additionally, the typical high bandwidth speed packages that are specially designed for schools have features such as a 2 Mbps download speed and 256Kbps upload speed, a 25 GB monthly volume cap, and a 50 MB web storage space.

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Cyberspace is all A-Twitter

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

“As Ashton Kutcher becomes the first to collect 1 million followers on Twitter and Oprah Winfrey sends out her first tweet, tech observers are debating: Does Friday mark a new peak for the microblogging service? Or the beginning of its demise?”  CNN began it’s concession article, bowing  to Ashton Kutcher who edged them out for the first to gain 1 million Twitter followers. 

In case you’re afraid to ask what Twitter is, here it is from the horse’s mouth (or rather, their  Home and About Us pages):  Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices… all around the world, people access information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends.

It feeds our need for speed, so why would its newfound popularity bring about its demise?  Overhype? “It’s really about everyday people having a voice,” said Ashton Kutcher, Twitter Millionaire. And that’s good, right?

Kutcher also realized it could be used to mobilize people to do some good in the world, so Kutcher challenged CNN, saying he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day in late April if he beat CNN, and 1,000 if he lost. CNN agreed to do the same.

Winfrey joined in the fun, tweeting Friday morning that she would donate 20,000 mosquito bed nets to charity, and then another popular Twitter user, “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, agreed to donate too.

So all in all, Twitter is changing the world and with incredible speed!

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Tweaking Your Internet Speed

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Computer users in the world don’t have the same internet connection conditions. While some users may have a slow dial-up connection, others may have a high speed DSL connection or high speed broadband. However, Windows XP provides a default setting that is set as a “one size fits all”. That is why more and more users are tweaking the Windows default settings to optimize their internet connection speed.

The TCP/IP protocol settings can be tweaked to boost up cable internet speed. There are a few other popular tweaks that can improve your internet speed as well. One effective way is to disable the “Network Task Scheduler”. To do this, you have to click the “Start” button and select “Run”. Type in “Regedit” when the regedit screen appears, and then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>
Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>
Remote Computer>Name Space. Find the key {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} and delete it. Close Regedit.

You can also remove “Shares” for “My Network Places”. To remove Shares, type “gpedit.msc” in “Run”, and this will open up the “Group Policy Editor”. Navigate to User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Desktop, and enable the option “Do not add shares of recently opened documents to My Network Places”. For both of these settings to work, you will have to restart the computer.

Before you tweak for cable internet speed, you are strongly recommended to run “System Restore” and create a “System Restore Point”. After you have finished these basic internet tweaks, you should reboot your computer. And then, you will experience the difference in your internet connection speed.

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Feed the World with Internet Speed

Monday, April 20th, 2009

A new search engine may be able to deliver real-world results by providing meals to schools in the developing world. Hoongle.org, a custom Google search engine, promises to donate 20 grains of rice per search.  

This is along the same lines as GoodSearch.org, powered by Yahoo!, which donates to a charity of your choice each time you search. Launched in 2005, they are now partnered with over 78,000 nonprofit organizations and have raised thousands of dollars for a variety of charities. In some cases, tens of thousands of dollars.

Since Hoongle.org rolled out in September, the site has generated more than 8.5 million grains of rice, or the equivalent of 4,000 meals from their 90,000 users in 130 countries,. The search engine works through Fill the Cup, a campaign of the United National World Food Program that delivers food to schools around the world.

Vladimir Hruda, David Whitehead and Salmaan Ayaz are undergraduate students at the University of Richmond. Hruda, the mathematics economics major who first came up with this new way to to carry out social change through technology enlisted his friends and Hoongle – a combination of the words “hunger” and “Google” — was born.  “Typically charity requires donation,” Ayaz told the New York Times. “But [t]here’s no cost to us, or anyone, for doing this.”

Hoongle.org’s strategy is similar to that of FreeRice.com, a simple vocabulary game where each correct answer donates 10 grains of rice to developing countries. Close to 63 billion grains of rice have been donated to developing countries via the UNWFP, but the novelty of Hoongle.org is less likely to wear off. Set Hoongle as your default home page, search engine or both, and feed the world with internet speed.

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U.S. Needs to Get Up to Speed

Friday, April 17th, 2009

In a recent report commissioned by the United Nations entitled “Measuring the Information Society - the ICT Development Index”,  154 countries were ranked on their use of information and communications technology (ICT).  Sweden was ranked number one, with South Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands and Iceland rounding out the top five. However The United States fell from 11th to 17th and Canada from the top 10 to 19th. The new top 10 includes Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Finland and the United Kingdom.

The report said “This is largely due to impressive fixed broadband uptake in some European countries, compared to, for example, the United States and Canada.”

“While Western Europe and Eastern Asia have made significant gains on the IDI (ICT Development Index), Eastern Europe is the region that has improved most its ICT levels between 2002 and 2007, with the most dynamic growth in the IDI of all regions worldwide.”

They also say the Global Digital Divide is still very much a challenge, despite the fact that “by the end of 2008… close to a quarter of the world’s population [was] using the Internet.” Still, “major differences in ICT levels between regions and between the developed and developing economies remain. This is particularly true in the area of broadband.” 

While high-speed Internet is available in almost all countries, the developing world has only a 2%  penetration, with still only 20% in the developed world. That’s for fixed line users. “At the same time, fixed broadband networks are increasingly being complemented by mobile broadband networks. Given the limited availability of wired access in many of the world’s developing countries and rural areas, and the rapid spread of IMT-2000/3G mobile cellular networks, mobile broadband is opening up exciting and new possibilities…[and] it has a clear potential to help more and more people communicate, and increasingly at high speed.”

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