Selected TechNotes – December 2004

The Global Library
Everyone is talking about it and apparently it’s true – Google is going to establish a major library on the Internet. Virtual libraries are not new any more; they have been around for years. A few examples are mentioned. The African Digital Library provides access to thousands of free, full-text eBooks to anyone living in Africa (www.africaeducation.org/adl) and there are other projects that also specifically aim to benefit developing countries. The Commonwealth of Learning established a virtual library of content that is accessible via the Internet and makes this available to anyone needing information on open and distance learning (www.colfinder.org/public). The Internet Archive is working hard to capture images of the Internet before they are erased (http://www.archive.org/) – it is described as a digital library of cultural artifacts in a digital form. One of the differences with the new Google service is the planned size – some 15 million books are slated for inclusion, and some forecast this could be a lot higher. For every idea, there are always ample critics and some say Google is trying to capture the knowledge of the world – an impossible task. It is of course, impossible for any library, digital or print, to replace the genius contained in peoples’ minds. What can be done is to make accessible to more people, the written information that has helped many countries advance more rapidly than others, where people have not had access to the same volume of information and educational resources. (See: http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html)

Cell phones leapfrog conventional phones
The continents with historically, the lowest density of telephones on the planet is starting to see some change. The number of cell phones is rapidly outpacing the numbers of landlines, a trend that is set to continue. Walking around cities in Africa and Asia, it is commonplace to see multitudes of people carrying cell phones, even those who live in informal housing settlements. Instruments have become easy to obtain and prepaid airtime packages make it possible to have a contact number where others can reach one. A big difference between North America and other parts of the world is that text messaging (known as: “SMS” – for “Short Message System”) is preferred to voice calls, due to its lower cost. In most countries outside of North America, the user usually pays per second/minute, regardless of the calling distance within their home country. The expansion of cell phones is now pushing their possible use in education. A growing proportion of people who do not have access to the Internet, do have access to cell phones, which have text messaging functionality. A learner who receives distance education study materials by post can send questions to their institution or lecturer by SMS and receive short updates, important messages and notes of encouragement via their cell phones. The expansion of the networks in many developing countries means that users in surprisingly deep rural areas now have quick message access at relatively low cost. Other typical uses for the services in the future will be relevant news flashes, local market conditions and local weather reports – all essential to people running micro-enterprises in developing countries.

Not to be left out, the airline industry is likely to include a modified version of cell phones, which can be used while in flight. These will communicate with a small cellular aerial inside the plane, which in turn communicates the signals out via satellite. Satellite phone calls from planes have been notoriously expensive for most people to use, but SMS technology could make communication from your seat in the air more affordable. In-flight Internet access is available in many business class cabins now, but once again this can catch the unwary user off-guard. Many users would not know how to restrict the size of emails they are about to download via a plane’s Internet access line (possibly costing large amounts in data transfers), but if the messages were limited to the usual SMS lengths,it would be an affordable option.

Newer cellular phones can “concatenate” SMSs now, sending up to 4,500 characters in one message. That’s nearly as long as this blog! Being plain text with no graphics helps to keep the size of the message down (and to a lower cost). Of importance to organizations now is to look at their clients/learners/users and assess to what degree they already carry cell phones. If this proportion is medium to high, does your organization have time-sensitive messages it needs to get to its clients/learners/users? If the answers to these two questions are “yes”, someone might need to be allocated the task of investigating the potential benefits of the technology. Your local cell phone providers would no doubt be helpful in exploring these ideas.

Update on Desktop Searching
I previously reported on the Google search feature; the one that you can use to search the files on your PC (and find them quickly for the first time!). The rest of the pack is beginning to catch up now. You can now shop around for others, some free and some at a cost. There is one from Ask Jeeves (http://sp.ask.com/docs/desktop/ - free); Microsoft came out with the “MSN Toolbar Suite” (http://beta.toolbar.msn.com/ - free) and Yahoo, who has partnered with X1 Technologies (http://www.x1.com/ - apparently about USD75). Even with a few minor scares reported in the press, the Google desktop search proved to be a very valuable tool on my PC, so I’m confident the competition will help to ensure we have good products developing in this area in the future. If you and your colleagues frequently spend time trying to find documents, spreadsheets or email on PCs, one of these free programs may be just what you are in need of. Be aware that just after the program is first loaded, it needs to look through all the files on your PC and this will slow it down for a few hours. It might be best to install it when you will not need your PC for high volume work.

IBM to exit the PC space
It’s been reported that IBM is selling its PC division to a Chinese company called the Lenovo Group. The Group will be able to use the IBM logo for five years after which the products will change to their new brand. The impact of this is due to place the Chinese company as the 3rd largest PC provider in the world and allows IBM to focus on its large-scale government and business markets. The main reason for this move is said to be the changing of the PC market to primarily a consumer electronics sector, which better suits economies of scale. This is an area that could be even more price competitive in the future.

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