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Posts Tagged ‘internet’

Time to retire IE6

09 Mar

Internet Explorer 6 is now ten years old and yet almost one in four of people using Internet Explorer are still using that version.

We read about exciting new technologies such as CSS3 with its gradient and shadow commands, HTML5 with its animation and video tags and yet many users cannot take advantage of them. Moreover, web designers keep having to compromise their designs just to render their pages in IE6.

Microsoft have put together a site called ‘The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown‘ site to try and encourage people to leave the ancient browser behind and start using the latest standards comliant IE9

IE6 countdown

We wish them all success in retiring the old browser.

 
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Posted in Internet, Web design

 

Wonderwheel and teachmeet

13 Feb

This is something we picked up from one of the teachmeet events (TES Article).

(here is a recorded teachmeet video).

It is a Google feature that has been around since 2009 and yet we did not know about.

You know the situation – you ask a student to do some homework on a fairly generic subject  such as ‘computing’. So they go into Google and type in the search term ‘computing’.

Result: 149 million hits.

Now one option is to use the ‘Advanced’ feature to refine the result. But did you know about the ‘wonder wheel’?

Open Google with Firefox and enter the search term ‘computing’.  As well as the usual list of hits, notice the items on the left hand side that include the clip below

Click on the ‘Wonder Wheel’ option and a mind map type of graphic appears that shows related search results. The student can then click on the branches to find more specialised results. It certainly seems a more user-friendly way of searching than the l boolean and other filtering methods of Advanced search.

Here is a Wonder Wheel of computing

 
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Posted in Internet, Useful websites

 

Could the Internet be shut down in the West?

07 Feb

Unless you have been on holday on a desert island (I wish), you cannot have missed the 24 hours media coverage of the developments in Egypt.

Notwithstanding the political developments, what has become apparent is that the Internet in Egypt was shut down for some days.

But could a government, say the USA, shut down the Internet? The answer seems to be yes. And plans are afoot to make it law that it is able to do so.

In Egypt, there are only a handful of ISPs and it seems they were told to effectively re-program their main routers so no IP traffic could find its way into the country. Traffic is directed through a router by a protocol called ‘Border Gateway Protocol’ or BGP. A quick change to the routers and the country became an Internet black hole.

Senators in the States are now pushing for legislation to have their own  ‘Internet off switch’, one that may give their government authority over privately owned computer systems.  Is this a good thing?

There has been such a furore over civil liberties that a statement has been issued to refute the implication.

It seems the Internet is now right at the centre of our democratic process in the West.

This could be a topic of discussion when discussing Society and ICT.

 
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Posted in Ethical issues, Government, Impact of ICT, Internet, Social effects of ICT

 

The state of the internet

31 Jan

Infographics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge.  These graphics are used where complex information needs to be eplained quickly and clearly*

Here is a link to a fascinating infographic full of facts and figures about the internet in 2010.  For example did you know:

- There were 21.4 million new websites published in 2010

- An estimated 89% of all emails in 2010 were spam

- That Internet Explorer now only has 47% of the market share for browsers

- That 20 million Facebook apps are installed every day

- That 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube every day

- That every minute 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube

As it stands it could be printed out to make a great poster for display in the classroom.  Alternatively you could take just a few of the facts from it and make a set of individual posters.

*source

 
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Posted in Classroom displays

 

Message Hop

29 Dec

I came across a superb web tool today called MessageHop. This tool allows you to quickly and easily create an animation using your own images and text and then share your work almost instantly with friends and colleagues. You don’t even have to sign up for an account – something which often stops many web tools being used in the classroom due to their age restrictions.

Here is an example that I put together in literally two minutes (excuse the text animations, this was the default but there were other options available).

You can then email the url to a friend or publish your work to one of the social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

It is an incredibly simple and intuitive tool to use and I can see so many applications for it in every subject from a tour of castles in History to the development of a glacier in Geography.

There is a tutorial here if you would like a quick run through on how to set up your first animation.

 
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Posted in Applications & software, Web 2.0 tools

 

The PDF is dead, long live the PDF

22 Oct

I don’t know about you, but I thought the PDF file format was one of the things that made printing easier. And indeed it does. But of course, when it was a simple set of commands designed for classic postscript printers there was no way it could be used for anything else.

But Adobe, the owners of the PDF format have followed the trends and made the pdf format able to handle multimedia such as Flash and other file formats. This has the effect making the file format much more active in terms possibly affecting the way a computer runs.

This article summarises some of the issues. Don’t get paranoid though – pdf is still a wonderful way of creating printed copy.

 
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Posted in Social networking, Standards, Uncategorized

 

Google ponders on the social Internet

19 Oct

The search giant Google is recognising a new trend on the Internet, namely that people tend to ask their online friends for advice rather than look to a search engine. For the first time according to comScore, people spent more time on Facebook than on Google sites.

The problem for Google is that fundamentally what really matters to advertisers is how many people see their ads, wherever people gather, that is where the money is going to be.

Read here for the New York Times article

For example, they turn to their Facebook friends and ask questions such as ‘Can you recommend a good baby sitter” or “I fancy going to a new restaurant – any recommendations?”.

You can see how difficult this kind of question can be for a search engine because it involves a value judgement and local knowledge.

This is an interesting case study of how people change the way they use technology and suddenly the market leader has to change the way they do things – can they do that or is the culture too ingrained to be able to change? Time will tell.

So is this the new trend? Will Facebook become the new search engine for complex questions?

 
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Posted in Internet, Marketing, Social networking

 

Control a real 4×4 over the internet

08 Oct

This is quite a gimmick – Mitsubushi are rigging up an Outlander Sport with remote control kit then letting people loose on it over the Internet.

So from October 15th you will be able to log in to their microsite and take part in the first remote control 4×4 experience.

This shows the lengths companies are now willing to go to attract the Internet generation and also just how advanced our communication technologies have become.

Book soon though as this is no doubt going to be fairly short campaign.

This story is an excellent example of how companies make use of simulations.  Students could consider the benefits and disadvantages of getting people to ‘test drive’ using this method.  It would also fit in well with discussions about marketing and how companies are increasingly trying to use innovative technology to hook us into buying their products.

 
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Posted in Marketing, Models & simulations

 

Facebook unveils ‘groups’ feature and user controls

08 Oct

It seems that at last Facebook have started to listen to peoples’ concerns about privacy and how their data is being accessed and used by third parties.  They have introduced features which aim to give users more control over their personal data on the site.

The first is a ‘groups’ feature which will allow users to set up different groups and share different information with each group.  This allows people to distinguish between groups such as close friends, family and work colleagues.  Until now, whatever was posted on your page could be seen by all your friends and as we all know there are times when something you share with your best mate might just get you the sack if seen by your boss. 

Although this sounds like a good step forward there is the potential for the groups feature to fall flat on its face.  Yes, you can set up a group with your close friends but at the moment friends who are allocated to that group can add their own friends – something over which you have no control.  In some ways, whether this is an oversight or not, it almost negates the idea behind the security and privacy of the groups feature.

Another new feature will allow users to download all of the data that they have ever put onto Facebook, including photos, status updates and wall posts – something not possible until now. 

Read more here

 
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Posted in Privacy, Social networking

 

One Laptop Per Child develops new tablet

06 Oct

The one laptop per child organisation (OLPC) continues with its efforts to allow all children, especially in poorer nations to have access to a computer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11475335

With the support of chip maker Marvell, they have been given £3.5 m to develop a tablet version of their $100 computer. Without the generosity of commercial operations such as these, the digital divide would be that much slower in closing.

They plan to show it off at the CES show in January 2011 and to be ready in 2012.

This story would be an useful topic when discussing the effects of ICT on society

 
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Posted in Impact of ICT, Social effects of ICT

 
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