Monday, January 31, 2005
WSIS Regional Prepcom in Accra, Ghana
To cut a very long story short – it is all about African people preparing an agenda to carry to the World Summit on the Information Society which is set to take place in Tunisia, in November this year.
The summit itself has many facets, but from an African perspective, the aim of the process is to help bridge the digital divide – a catch-phrase meaning to bring the internet “have-nots” up to speed with the internet “haves”.
So this week several African leaders, fresh from the AU summit in neighbouring Nigeria, will join a number of communications ministers and other officials here in Accra, in an attempt to plot an ICT course for Africa.
All concerned agree that Africa is way behind the developed world in terms of ICTs – everyone agrees that this is a bad situation that needs to be corrected quickly. Almost everyone agrees that great deals of money are required to bring Africa upto speed – but the cracks in the consensus appear when they discuss – who should pay up the money – and worse – who should spend it.
There is some harmony in that most people believe - those who can afford it, i.e. the rich countries, should pay for it. The donor nations argue that since they are the ones coughing up the money, they should decide how it is spent. Third world states – including virtually all African countries - say that since they know where the funds are most needed – THEY should decide how the cash is spent.
Essentially everyone agrees that you need to bridge the digital divide – but there is a clear cut rift between the rich and the poor – between the north and the south - on HOW that goal should be achieved.
(T) The process also creates significant rifts between governments and the private sector – and we have a classic example of the differences right here in Accra.
We are attending a government organized conference on ICTs – where internet connectivity is slow and sporadic.
Down the road is the biggest, most fantastic, internet café I have ever seen. Right here in the middle of hot, clammy Accra is a brand-new, fully air conditioned, modern building with two million dollars worth of the latest IT equipment installed.
There are two hundred PCs with flat screens all hooked up to the internet with oodles of bandwidth. It is a business centre, an ISP and a restaurant. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week – and customers literally take a number to wait their turn.
But here I am at the conference centre – no air conditioning, patiently waiting to send a short e-mail. Hope it gets through this time.
Thanks for listening to this special edition of Cybersurf from Ghana. Please tune in again next Monday – and remember to keep on surfing.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Telkom ADSL
When discussing web matters – one of the most important of these matters is how you access the internet. Do you use dial up, ISDN, satellite or your corporate network?
We often talk of broadband access to the internet – all this means really is that the pipe you use to download and upload information has a much greater carrying capacity.
Telkom is currently pushing its ADSL system of broadband. ADSL – a meaningless jargon acronym for most normal people stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line.
So what are the benefits of ADSL? Steven White, an executive in charge of ADSL development says there are four main benefits:
INSERT
“That is an always on . . . . .
. . . . works normally.
Last week, a site called MYADSL – that has been highly critical of Telkom in the past, noted that most customers are quite satisfied with the product. Most of the criticism has centred focussed on the high prices Telkom charges for its lines and for the cap on downloads.
Was Telkom surprised with the positive feedback MYADSL?
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“Yes, and no! . . .
. . . . for the larger base>
For many users, it can be quite confusing knowing what is the best way of accessing the internet – especially with some of the new products coming on to the market. One of these products is called WiFi.
INSERT
“Which will enable . . . .
. . . . back at home.
Steven White senior exective in charge of product development at Telkom.
Personally I still use the SABC’s network in the office and a simple dial-up at home.
But this could change.
And so we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf. Thanks for listening and do tune in again next Monday for more on the best of the web.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Google.co.za and Huygens probe
So I was very surprised yesterday when I clicked on the Google link and instead of going to Google.com – the browser went to google.co.za – an option I have never used. Many of the larger internet countries have domain specific Googles – but I never expected one just for South Africa.
I was even more surprised to find four other links inviting the user to search google.co.za in isiZulu, Xhosa, Sesotho or Afrikaans. It looks really intriguing except that they have spelt Xhosa in a way that I have never ever seen before.
I invite listeners who are good at these languages to test it out and share their impressions with us. Maybe you would like to “Maak van Google jou tuisblad!”
Maybe this means that we are finally registering our presence on the internet.
And talking about our languages on the internet, you might remember late last year we had a web site review of the wikipedia – a free online encyclopedia – well I believe they already have more than three thousand six hundred articles in Afrikaans.
Rapid change of subject to one of the biggest astronomy stories of our time – the Cassini Huygens mission to Titan – the largest moon orbiting around the Saturn.
The Huygens lander successfully touched down on the surface of Titan and has already sent back to Earth - a huge number of spectacular photographs.
It is the first time that humans have landed a craft on the moon of a planet other than our own – and it is perhaps most important because many scientists believe that Titan is one of the best places in our solar system to look for extra-terrestrial life.
All the latest information and many fascinating pictures can be found on the sites of the three agencies working together on this mission. The agencies are NASA, the European Space Agency and the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana. – their respective www’s addresses are www.nasa.gov/cassini; or www.esa.int and www.asi.it for the Italian agency.
All three of the sites are very good and look quite similar – but they have had big traffic problems. I had a lot of difficulty getting through on Friday and Saturday - so if you want to look at the great pics – you might need some patience.
Nobody was quite sure what to expect of the surface of Titan – some experts predicted an ice-field; others speculated about a sea of methane or maybe just some rocks.
Well the initial verdict coming from one of the mission scientists is that the surface of the moon has a consistency something like that of crème brulee.
Hmm.. wonder if it taste likes crème brulee too.
On that tasty note we end today’s edition of Cybersurf – if you missed any of the addresses – never fear – the Cybersurf blog is near – specifically at Cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time – Cybersurf.blogspot.com
That’s it from Cyberspace - Thanks for listening and be sure to tune in again next Monday for more on the best of the web.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Firefox - new open source browser
Just to make sure that we all know what we are talking about – a browser is a program – or application – that we use to go from one web site to another – that is we all use browsers to surf the internet - and most of us here in South Africa use Internet Explorer – a program that generally comes bundled with the Windows operating system when we buy a new computer.
I believe that if you take all the versions of Internet Explorer or IE that are currently in use – more than ninety percent of South Africans use IE to surf the Internet.
This was not always so!
The first browser to gain dominance was called Mosaic – it was used by the first internet pioneers way back in the early nineties. Personally, I’m not that old, but I am told that it was very light and quick.
Because it did not keep up with the times – Mosaic came to an end in 1997.
The dominant browser in the mid-nineties – and the first to go mainstream was Netscape. I fondly remember using Netscape two and then version three – thinking that nothing could ever beat this.
While Netscape was the de facto standard, Microsoft was gearing up for the browser wars. The initial versions of Microsoft’s Internet explorer – IE One and two were catastrophic and lulled Netscape into a false sense of security.
IE three was at least in the ball-park – but IE four was the secret weapon of the late nineties that won the war for Microsoft. Some people still clung to various versions of Netscape out of some sentimental attachment – but four, conveniently bundled with Windows products, and given away freely to anyone who wanted it, was a big winner followed soon after by IE5; IE 5.5 and six.
Since the war was won, Microsoft has fallen into it own type of complacency while the Netscape people have gone open source with the Mozilla project.
The early versions of Mozilla were not very useful, but the open source Konquerer looked promising.
Last week, I finally decided to test the very latest version of Mozilla - it’s called Firefox and it is fantastic.
It downloaded very quickly off the Net – installed itself easily and copied all my settings, passwords and favourites from Internet Explorer.
It looks quite similar to my IE 6 but with the added benefit of tabbing.
If you’ve never used tabs it’s quite difficult to explain the concept – but once you have it – it is very intuitive. Let me try explaining.
Let us say you visit the SABC’s news site and wish to read four articles linked to headlines on the front page – if you open each one on a tab within the same window you will effectively group all the articles together. Sounds tricky but believe me you will manage very easily.
Tabbing is particularly useful for someone like me who likes to have dozens of pages from different sites all open at the same time – who says men can’t multi-task.
Anyway – I am very pleased with Firefox and I suggest you try it too – if you don’t like dit - it’s just as easy to remove.
If you would like to read this script, I will post it on the Cybersurf blog which you can find at cybersurf.blogspot.com. You can also post your comments on the cybersurf blog.
That’s it for today, thanks for listening and till next week, remember to keep on surfing.
Links:
Browser Timelines
A History of browsers
Browser Emulator
Monday, January 03, 2005
Tsunami videos on the Internet
As the year begins, many of us are still reeling from the shock of the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that claimed the lives of so many thousands of people just after Christmas. It is impossible to celebrate a new year when so many families are mourning the loss of their loved ones, or trying to stay alive amid such devastation.
The Internet has been extremely useful in helping people come to grips with the disaster and to understand what caused the immense human tragedy.
There are scores of sites that try to coordinate relief efforts, that disseminate news about the catastrophe and that try to explain what happened.
I am not going to be able to give all the addresses here on air, but I will post this script, together with many relevant addresses on the sabcnews.com site and the cybersurf blog – which you can find at cybersurf.blogspot.com.
Personally I have spent many hours watching video clips online of the tsunami battering various coastlines. Many holiday makers have put their home videos online to show the rest of us the incredible power of the waves that destroyed so many lives.
However, video clips generally use quite a lot of bandwidth and as bandwidth in South Africa is so restricted and expensive it takes quite a long time to download a two or three minute video clip.
On the other hand, some people who have put video clips on their personal sites have suddenly been hit with huge bills for bandwidth costs. One particular site – punditguy.com – has collected videos from several other sites and then allowed them to be downloaded from one place – Punditguy then got hit with a one thousand dollar bill for bandwidth costs.
He has subsequently put up an appeal on for donations – he says – he will use half of all the donations to cover the bandwidth costs and the other half he will send to the Red Cross relief effort.
A well-known tv and new media site called the lost remote has even made an appeal to ISPs to give discusounts to blogs and web sites that have been showing tsunami videos.
The best scientific explanation of how the earthquake caused the tsunami is on the US Geological Survey Site – you should type in www.usgs.gov let me repeat that one usgs.gov.
It is truly a fanstastic site with all you could ever wish to know about earthquakes and tsunamis. It has a special section, including an FAQ and an animation about the December 26 mega thrust earthquake.
The site also has several, up-to-the-minute lists of all earthquakes taking place all around the world, and it is quite scary to learn that since the big one there have been dozens of after-shock earthquakes in the Sumatra region measuring more than five on the Richter scale.
So as we close off today’s Cybersurf, let us hope that future editions will deal with happier issues.
And remember that I will post this script together with many useful links about the tsunami on Cybersurf.Blogspot.com and on SABCnews.com.
Thanks for listening and till next week, remember to keep on surfing.
Links:
Relief Agencies:
Video Material:
Earthquakes:
All about Tsunamis:
- International Tsunami Information Center
- Tsunami Research Program
- Tsunamis - Technical Hazard Sheet - Natural Disaster Profile - World Health Organisation
Areas affected:
