Tuesday, January 31, 2006
CyberHamas
The biggest international news event of the past week has been the astonishing victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. Not even the movement itself expected to do as well as it did – and the surprise win combined with the illness of the Israeli Prime Minister has put yet another convoluted twirl into the normally hazardous Israeli/Palestinian relations.
Now if you would like to read up on how the latest events are likely to impact on the Middle East – I have a few very interesting sites coming up.
First of all I tried to find the official results of last week's elections and thought I'd try the site of the Palestinian National authority located at www.pna.gov.ps – not much luck there – while the site is quite extensive it does not appear to be regularly maintained and when I typed in “elections” in the search field I only found the results of the 1996 vote.
\nDigging around some more I found the Central Elections Commission Palestine – which appears to be the authority that manages local elections – something like our Independent Electoral Commission – at the following address: \nwww.elections.ps. \n \nThis site had just about everything you wanted to know about elections in Palestine – including turnout figures for last week\'s voting – but it did not have the full results.\n\n \nHowever, I was able to find full results in anther web site known as the electronic intifada – to get to this site, type in electronicintifada dot net that is electronic intifada one word\n dot net. \n \nThere is a very official looking scan of a document that appears to contain the official results – and I have no reason to believe that\n I can\'t say. ",1]
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Digging around some more I found the Central Elections Commission Palestine – which appears to be the authority that manages local elections – something like our Independent Electoral Commission – at the following address: www.elections.ps.
This site had just about everything you wanted to know about elections in Palestine – including turnout figures for last week's voting – but it did not have the full results – yet!.
However, I was able to find full results in another web site known as the electronic intifada – to get to this site, type in electronicintifada dot net that is electronicintifada - one word - dot net.
There is a scan of a very official looking document that appears to contain the official results – and I have no reason to believe that the results are anything but official.
Electronicintifada dot net is a very interesting site that carries far more useful information and interesting content than the official PNA site. If you wish to understand the thinking behind the intifada this site is a must.
Finding out more about Hamas online was not very difficult provided you take American and Israeli sites at face value – but if you want to read about HAmas from a Hamas point of view it is not that easy; especially if you are Arabic challenged.
However, I did eventually find an English language site called hamasonline.org – it appears to be the real McCoy – so to speak – and it is the official Hamas site but it has not been very well maintained.
In fact, in a rather bizarre turn of events – while still on the Hamasonline.org site I clicked on a button called “newsletter” and it took me to another site called hamasonline dot com that had a category for Jewish singles. How weird is that?
At that point my overheated grey matter just crashed, so this is a good point to end Cybersurf this frisky Monday morning.
Thanks for listening and please tune in again next Monday for more on the best of the Web
Monday, January 23, 2006
Bird Flu
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, your weekly window where web matters. I am your Cyberhost, a very frustrated Steven Lang having spent a good chunk of my weekend fighting a virus – or more specifically a Trojan.
A Trojan is a type of virus – or as the experts call it – malware. It is generally a form of software that was put on your computer against your wishes, or as happens most of the time – without you even knowing it.
Now I take internet security very seriously – I have a firewall, virus protection and anti-spam software – yet I still got this Trojan that is very difficult to get rid of. You can understand if I feel somewhat aggrieved.
(T) H5N1 is a far more dangerous virus that could do much worse than simply bogging down the internet with ridiculous spam. This strain of the Avian influenza virus – H5N1 has been the cause of grave concern for about eight years.
At the moment, it appears that humans have only caught avian flu, or bird flu directly from birds – mainly poultry. Health officials are however, very worried about a mutation of this virus that would allow it to become contagious between humans. Since this flu has a very high mortality rate, scientists say that if the H5N1 mutates – it could cause millions of deaths all over the world.
The World Health Organisation has taken the lead in monitoring and advising on methods of containing the virus. The WHO has an extensive sub-site directly linked to its main site at www.who.int/en . The sub site has a section on “Avian Influenza: am I a risk?” – It has a page on frequently asked questions, a page on “Ten Things you need to know about pandemic influenza and an extensive fact sheet. Incidentally, the WHO has fact sheets on most major diseases.
If you go through the WHO sub-site on Avian influenza – you will be a very worried person – but at least you will have a thorough understanding of the virus.
However, if that is not enough for you then I suggest you try the SciDev.net site. It is also very authoritative and carries more information about bird flu than you would ever want.
To find out about our state of preparedness in South Africa, I went to the Department of health site and found very little useful information – a press release put out last October saying that the department was working with the WHO. Even the Department of Foreign Affairs had more information on avian flu than the department of health. I really hope that the lack of information on the Health web site – www.doh.gov.za – means that they are so busy preparing for the pandemic that there has been no time to update the web site.
I searched through a number of South African web sites looking for information on Avian flu and found that the best resource is the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town. You need to navigate your way there from the UCT home page at www.uct.ac.za.
And if you still don’t find it – click along to the Cybersurf blog which you will find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – I will put the entire script on the blog together with a number of useful links for you to do more research on avian flu.
That address one more time – www.cybersurf.blogspot.com
That’s it for today; please join me again next Monday for more on the best of the web.
Monday, January 16, 2006
New Horizons for Pluto
Hello good morning and welcome to a rather spacey edition of Cybersurf where we look to the furthest reaches of our solar system. I am your Cybershost Steven Lang.
Only yesterday, the Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth carrying samples of dust and carbon based samples from its close encounter with comet WILD 2 (pronounced Vilt). The purpose of this mission was to fly into outer space, approach the comet and collect dust samples from the tail and from interstellar space on its aerogel array.
The reason why scientists want to bring some dust back to Earth is because they believe these tiny particles can reveal valuable infomration about the origins of our solar system.
To find out more about this apparently succesful mission - the Stardust comet sample return mission - you should type in the following address: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov.
Not only is the site full of pictures and information – but it also provides a podcast containing interviews with scientists involved in the project. Besides this, the site invites Internet users to get involved and participate in a distributed computing project to help analyse the data brought back by Stardust.
However, yesterday’s landing is only a preview to an even more exciting mission that is set for lift-off in roughly thirty six hours.
Ask any school child which is the furthest planet from the Sun and she will tell you that Pluto is not only the smallest planet in our solar system but it is also furthest from our life giving star.
But ….
This is not neccessarily true – first of all because, Pluto does fly closer to the sun for part of its orbit – thus making it closer than Neptune – but nowadays – it is not universally accepted that Pluto is in fact a planet. Some astromers say that if it were discovered now, in the twenty first century instead of in 1930 – it would be considered too small to qualify as a planet.
Incidently, an eleven year old girl – Venetia Burney – named the planet after the Roman god the Underworld. – And just as a amazing – Mrs. Phair, as Venetia is now known, s still alive and doing well in England
About six months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of 2003 UB313 – a body which appears to be larger than Pluto and further away from the Sun – so if Pluto is a planet well then, shouldn’t 2003 UB313 also be given such a title?
The problem is that there appears to be quite a few planetismals out in the Kuiper belt that are in the same size range as Pluto.
So let us return to the NASA mission set for launching tomorrow.
New Horizons – as it is called - ll be the first ever on to Pluto and the Kuiper belt. To find out more visit this site:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ - I’ll repeat that http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
The front page has a count down read-out till lift-off; a web cam image of mission control; a timeline of all the important dates on the way to Pluto – New Horizons will only get there in 2015, and loads of other relevant infomration.
So before I blast off out of this studio let me remind you that you can find the full script of this program on the Cybersurf blog which you will find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com
Thanks for listening and remember to keeep on surfing.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Keeping Tabs on Sharon and one dollar per pixel
In the last few days, the declining health of Israeli Prime Minister has been one of the top international stories. News junkies have been checking in all the time for progress reports on his health, and also to read speculation about the consequences of his removal from the Middle Eastern political landscape.
You have frequently heard us on AM Live interviewing journalists from the Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post newspapers – both of them well known Israeli publications and both having excellent English language online sites.
The Ha’aretz site at www.haaretzdaily.com/ - let me spell that for you H.A.A.R.E.T.Z. D.A.I.L.Y dot com is a highly commercialised portal site that not only gives you up-to-date news but also offers plenty of opinion from news-makers and from online users. There is lots of advertising – especially travel packages to Israel, study options and real estate adverts.
The other English language daily – the Jerusalem Post – has a very similar lay-out to Ha’aretz and the political viewpoint – slightly to the left of centre - is also very close. Check it out for yourself at http://www.jpost.com/
If you are interested in finding out what is happening directly from government – it is best to use the foreign ministry site which is at http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/ - the MFA standing for ministry of foreign Affairs.
I was also curious to find out if there is a kadima site for Sharon’s new political party - and there is at: www.kadimasharon.co.il – but in all likelihood – you won’t be able to read it because it is in Hebrew.
(T) Let us now get a whole lot more frivolous. A young man from Wiltshire in England – Alex Tew is his name – needed a lot of money to be able to pusue his bisiness management studies course at university – so he though of a brialliant way of becoming a millionaire. He is only 21 years old by the way.
His idea was mind numbingly simple and astoundingly successful. He put up a web site and offered to sell off the front page one hundred pixels at a time at a cost of one dollar per pixel.
It is a great publicity stunt and advertisers have bought in big time – and why shouldn’t they. The tiny bit of real estate on http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ allows you to advertise and put up a link to your own site and since his site gets over a million visitors a week – this is a good investment. The last one thousand pixels available Alex has put up for auction and that latest bid was just over one hundred and fifty two thousand dollars – a figure which will comfortably take him past his stated target of one million dollars.
My question now is – if he can earn a million dollars before his twenty second birthday – why does he need to study business management?
That’s it for today. If you need to refer back to some of the web addresses I mentioned, please go to the Cybersurf Blog which you will find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com one more time.
Thanks for listening and till next week remember to keeeeep on surfing.
Relevant links:
- Ha'aretz newspaper
- Jerusalem Post
- Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Kadima Party in Israel
- Million dollar homepage
Monday, January 02, 2006
Citizens journalism & reporter.co.za
The concept of citizens’ journalism has always been controversial at the very least. The notion that new technology allows just about anybody to become a reporter – is very disturbing to some people – especially to fellow journalists.
However, we have seen in the last year or so – some of the most impressive footage of the South east Asia tsunami was taken by amateurs; some of the most horrifying pictures taken after the London bombings were taken by private individuals using camera phones and blog reporting is often so much more interesting than the real things.
But the tsunami videos and the
And therein lies the problem – it is very difficult – and sometime impossible, to tell the cream from the crud. Simply because blogs are not required to go through any editorial process – no one checks the facts, the spelling, the grammar or the validity of these reports.
Does this mean that you can never trust any type of citizen journalism? On the contrary – some of it is very reliable and in
The news site is called ohmynews.com – that is oh as in O.H. M.Y.N.E.W.S. dot com – ohmynews dot com. The original was in Korean but the English version has been going successfully for a few years already.
The founder, Oh Yeon Ho, heads up an organisation that is part blog and part professional news agency. It receives about 70% of its copy from some thirty eight thousand “citizen reporters”. More important to some – it has a more than viable business model – in 2004 it reportedly made a profit of about four hundred thousand US dollars – most of it from advertising.
Political observers say "Ohmynews" influenced the election of outsider president Roh Moo-Hyun in February 2003 -- and it was no coincidence that Roh granted his first post-election interview to the site.
Great success story – and normally when there is a successful business model there are immitators – Wikipedia is trying a similar model and here in sunny South Africa (P) we have reporter dot co dot za.
The reporter dot co dot za project sponsored by the Johnnic Media group, has apparently only just been launched because there is a devastating lack of content – for the meantime. I am quite certain that it will do well – it has good backing – the site is technically sound and user friendly – but above all – the site will pay for stories – not a huge amount but I think you’re supposed to be a journalist for the love of it – not that my bank manager will settle my overdraft for love, or money – he wants blood.
And that wraps up the citizens journalism edition of Cybersurf – if you missed any of the URLs – or web addresses please click along to www.cybersurf.blogspot.com one more time – www.cybersurf.blogspot.com thanks for listening and remember to keeeep on surfing.
