Selected TechNotes – January 2006

Control of the Internet

There has been a lot of debate in the past few months over the control of the Internet. Well, really, it is the control over the registration of “top-level domain names” – the names like .COM and .ORG. All groupings of names below this level are dependent on the registration held by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, http://www.icann.com).

It is the opinion of CIO Insight author, Stephen Ryan that: “The Internet has been developed through consensus from the engineering, not the political, community for the past 30 years, and it continues to run in a manner that is effective, efficient and responsive to its users” (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1790290,00.asp). There would no doubt be opposing opinions, but the track record of expansion of the Internet and what people are accomplishing through it, certainly seems very good. It is my perception and opinion that many international organisations, with huge cash flows, seem to struggle for very long and accomplish very limited global cooperation. And yet some governments still try to limit what information their citizens are able to access. This has become much more difficult because of the Internet. Hopefully, cases of genocide and human rights abuses will slowly be reduced through the free flow of information in spite of the attempts to limit access to information. One may wonder why some organisations and governments still try to place restrictions on access to the Internet when information always finds a way to filter through.

On the one hand, can the world allow something of the power of the Internet be controlled by any one government (albeit by a non-profit company under its control)? Or can we risk imbedding the control of such a powerful business and development tool to fall prey to the vagaries of politicians who are in office for a short time, or their bureaucrats? Is it time to develop a new way of collaborating that is more acceptable all-round? An organisation, as one example, that has had to cope with comparable complexity is the IMS Global Learning Consortium, which strives to support the adoption of learning technology worldwide. They work with 50 members and affiliates to develop and promote “the adoption of open technical specifications for interoperable learning technology”. Quite a mouthful and no doubt very difficult to reach consensus and compliance. All their specifications and publications are made available to the public at http://www.imsglobal.org/.

Recharge stations

More and more devices these days need recharging, which results in a multitude of cables, transformers and clutter in the home. A company in the US has come up with the idea of making a small cupboard that fits on the wall with a fold-down table. All rechargeable devices are kept inside the cupboard. When closed, it stands just 18cm out from the wall. Called the eNook, cupboards of this design are destined to be a useful space saver in homes and some work areas, see: http://www.anthro.com/eNook

Improvements in Webmail services

eMail accounts that are based on the web as well as programs that download emails to your PC are both popular and have been undergoing big changes. The storage space available in these has increased from typically 5 Meg, to over 1,000 Meg and sometimes over 2,000 meg (e.g. Google mail). Many services, such as Hotmail, can easily be started by going to the website and creating an account at no charge. Others, like Google, also free, require one to receive an invitation from an existing member. All in all, there is no shortage of free email services, once one has access to the Internet. One may ask what is the next “frontier” – after the massive increase in storage space lead by Google, AIM and Hotmail? It seems this will be the improvement in the quality of the user experience. Online services are set to become more like their PC-based counterparts. Examples of these, which are in beta at the time of writing, are Windows Live Mail (http://ideas.live.com/), AIM Mail (http://webmail.aol.com/) and Yahoo Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com/). Features allow users to drag and drop emails just like in the desktop programs.

The next generation of eBook readers?

I’ve written and spoken many times about the convenience of reading books on PDAs – especially because of the portability and convenience of being able to change the size of text, background and text colours, as well as brightness. There always seems to be a problem with how the reading lights are positioned in aeroplanes. They always seem to have bright spots and even those are seldom just where I would like them to be, to make reading comfortable. The PDA (a Palm Pilot Tungsten T5 in my case, http://www.palm.com/) has been the answer for me. It is small, light and I can change the brightness so that I can read in a bright or badly lit airport; or even in a plane with most of the lights turned off. Not only can I read eBooks on it (http://www.ereader.com/) and abstracts of books (http://www.getabstract.com/), but I can also listen to audio books (http://www.audible.com/) and music.

Some users have told me they feel claustrophobic reading on the small screens of a PDA. For some of those users, the tablet PC may be the right kind of device. Now Sony has announced that it will be producing a new eBook reader with a screen that is bigger than a PDA, but smaller than a PC. They apparently did not have such success with the last eBook reader they brought out a few years ago; maybe this time they will succeed. For more information on this development, see: http://newsletters.businessweek.com/c.asp?id=596781&c=58c95909b4e0ec6e&l=6

Risks with carrying notebook computers

More of us than ever are carrying notebook computers between the office, home and while travelling. This gives rise to the possibility of having your notebook stolen – along with all the data you store on it. If you ever typed all your credit card details into a document to fax and then saved a copy, it is still on the PC that is now in the hands of some thief. There are a number of ways you can reduce both the stress of recovering from the loss of a notebook PC and reducing the risks associated with the potential abuse of the information stored on that computer.

An article in a recent computer magazine may be of some help, see: http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,123402,00.asp.

Backups can be done while travelling using small, portable hard drives. You can carry the hard drive in a different suitcase than the one in which you keep your PC or leave it at home – then email all important files to yourself at a webmail address. If your PC is stolen, you will have the backup you left at home, plus the files you emailed yourself.

The copyright holders make no representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or application of the material in this report which represents the opinions of the authors, nor does it warrant the claims of any of the products. The results and recommendations may or may not apply to the specific circumstances of third parties. Third party use, therefore, is at the discretion of the user.



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