Friday, August 25, 2006
UN Mission in DR Congo
Hello and good morning – this is Cybersurf – a brief look at what is happening on the internet. I am Steven Lang.
You are no doubt aware of the current turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the DRC because you are clearly well informed and obviously listen to SAfm. I am certain that you get most of your news about the DRC here on the news and information station.
But if you want to find out more about the political upheavals in the continent’s largest country; where do you go? Well if you’ve been paying careful attention to the station you will certainly have heard of MONUC the United Nations Mission in the DRC.
And MONUC has a very informative site that will give you all the background information and latest news about that country, but particularly about the elections and the aftermath of the recent shooting incidents.
You can find the MONUC site at monuc dot org that is M.O.N.U.C. dot org. When you log on for the first time you can choose to look at the English or the French versions of the site, then after making your selection you are taken to a very clean looking conventional site that is full of relevant information.
The main section of the front page carries one or two smallish photographs and the first paragraph of the top news stories. The stories are not updated with frenetic rapidity but they do have all the latest information.
Down the right hand side there is a section that carries articles from the news wires. When I looked there were two from Reuters, one from the BBC and one from AFP.
Below the News wires there is a section that takes you to election pictures, another takes you to news stories in the press – that is really news organisations that have web sites, and finally a survey where you are invited to give a Yes or a No answer to a particular question.
The real piece of organisation takes place however on the fairly normal looking left navigation bar.
There are buttons called ABOUT MONUC; Newsroom; press, activities, resources etc. all nicely grouped together and when you click on any of them, a drop down menu springs out of the word; so for example when I hit NEWSROOM – a menu spurted out with the following sub-categories:
Top stories, press reviews, Radio monitoring, press briefings, releases and dossiers.
There is plenty to satisfy even the most ardent news junkie – well worth the visit – but if you still crave more, then you can go to the links section and start practicing your French because the UN sponsored radio station Radio Okapi is only in French and so are just about all the other DRC related sites.
Even the one of the DRC Electoral commission – ok this site is in French, but if you are interested in the election results, you should be able to follow what is happening. The address of the site is cei-rdc dot org let me spell that out again cei-rdc dot org you can also type in cei-rdc dot cd.
And that wraps up Cybersurf for today, thanks for listening and please tune in again next Wednesday, same time same place for more on the best of the web.
You are no doubt aware of the current turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the DRC because you are clearly well informed and obviously listen to SAfm. I am certain that you get most of your news about the DRC here on the news and information station.
But if you want to find out more about the political upheavals in the continent’s largest country; where do you go? Well if you’ve been paying careful attention to the station you will certainly have heard of MONUC the United Nations Mission in the DRC.
And MONUC has a very informative site that will give you all the background information and latest news about that country, but particularly about the elections and the aftermath of the recent shooting incidents.
You can find the MONUC site at monuc dot org that is M.O.N.U.C. dot org. When you log on for the first time you can choose to look at the English or the French versions of the site, then after making your selection you are taken to a very clean looking conventional site that is full of relevant information.
The main section of the front page carries one or two smallish photographs and the first paragraph of the top news stories. The stories are not updated with frenetic rapidity but they do have all the latest information.
Down the right hand side there is a section that carries articles from the news wires. When I looked there were two from Reuters, one from the BBC and one from AFP.
Below the News wires there is a section that takes you to election pictures, another takes you to news stories in the press – that is really news organisations that have web sites, and finally a survey where you are invited to give a Yes or a No answer to a particular question.
The real piece of organisation takes place however on the fairly normal looking left navigation bar.
There are buttons called ABOUT MONUC; Newsroom; press, activities, resources etc. all nicely grouped together and when you click on any of them, a drop down menu springs out of the word; so for example when I hit NEWSROOM – a menu spurted out with the following sub-categories:
Top stories, press reviews, Radio monitoring, press briefings, releases and dossiers.
There is plenty to satisfy even the most ardent news junkie – well worth the visit – but if you still crave more, then you can go to the links section and start practicing your French because the UN sponsored radio station Radio Okapi is only in French and so are just about all the other DRC related sites.
Even the one of the DRC Electoral commission – ok this site is in French, but if you are interested in the election results, you should be able to follow what is happening. The address of the site is cei-rdc dot org let me spell that out again cei-rdc dot org you can also type in cei-rdc dot cd.
And that wraps up Cybersurf for today, thanks for listening and please tune in again next Wednesday, same time same place for more on the best of the web.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Google news and the Time fifty coolest web sites
Good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – four minutes of the latest information on the internet. I am Steven Lang.
Yesterday, I attended a conference of the International Marketing Council of South Africa. The aim of the gathering was to develop marketing communication strategies for the country ahead of the Fifa World Cup soccer tournament.
The meeting itself was inspiring, but I still believe the slogan – South Africa “Alive with Possibility” is vague and tame - but if you would like to find out more about our preparations for marketing this country visit the International Marketing Council web site at imc.org.za – that is imc.org.za
It is a reasonable site that encourages feedback. They said they wanted new ideas – so please find a better pay-off line than “Alive with Possibility” and send it to them.
(T) More news from Google is that they appear to have updated quite a few South African photos on Google Earth – the pictures are still quite old – probably from NASA’s deep archive – but hey, now I can see what my house looks like from way up there.
Secondly, Google has just released an online version of spreadsheets – you can find it by going along to spreadsheets.google.com – very easy spreadsheets.google.com
And you will be able to work on a spreadsheet with someone in another place or you can make the spreadsheet available to a whole team.
And still with Google – on their web site they are now advertising job vacancies in South Africa – it looks like they’ll be opening a local office soon.
Now I’ve kept the cool bit for last. Time magazine has released its latest version of the fifty coolest web sites of the past twelve months and the list reveals an interesting shift in the way people are using the web. And perhaps more important just who is using the web and what for.
The complete list for 2006 which you can find at time dot com – does not rank the sites in any particular order – nor does it appear to define specific criteria for what is cool. It does however, split the fifty sites up into seven different categories with interesting titles such as “travel and Real Estate” or “staying connected” and “time wasters”.
The time waster category for your information has sites dedicated to juicy gossip, computer games and other guilty pleasures – that description was, by the way, taken straight from the Time web site.
The big winners in this year’s list are the sites dedicated to sharing video clips, and personal information on the web. It seems to be all about creating the online community – but it’s not really the online community that most businesses want to us to have – rather its just teens and twenty-somethings sharing their personal experiences with others.
For example, Youtube dot com has lots of different sections, but what it is really about is sharing video clips online. I think most of the contributors take funny videos at home and then put them on you tube dot com to share with friends and family.
It is sort what www.flickr.com does for still images.
A big online community is the myspace.com site with a pay-off line that says – myspace.com a place for friends. It has blogs, chatrooms, games, music videos and the list goes on.
We don’t have time to go into any more sites so if you would like to catch-up on any of the addresses you might have missed, click along to the Cybersurf blog which you will find at Cybersurf.blogspot.com one more time Cybersurf.blogspot.com
Thanks for listening and please tune in again next Wednesday same time same place for more on the best of the web.
Yesterday, I attended a conference of the International Marketing Council of South Africa. The aim of the gathering was to develop marketing communication strategies for the country ahead of the Fifa World Cup soccer tournament.
The meeting itself was inspiring, but I still believe the slogan – South Africa “Alive with Possibility” is vague and tame - but if you would like to find out more about our preparations for marketing this country visit the International Marketing Council web site at imc.org.za – that is imc.org.za
It is a reasonable site that encourages feedback. They said they wanted new ideas – so please find a better pay-off line than “Alive with Possibility” and send it to them.
(T) More news from Google is that they appear to have updated quite a few South African photos on Google Earth – the pictures are still quite old – probably from NASA’s deep archive – but hey, now I can see what my house looks like from way up there.
Secondly, Google has just released an online version of spreadsheets – you can find it by going along to spreadsheets.google.com – very easy spreadsheets.google.com
And you will be able to work on a spreadsheet with someone in another place or you can make the spreadsheet available to a whole team.
And still with Google – on their web site they are now advertising job vacancies in South Africa – it looks like they’ll be opening a local office soon.
Now I’ve kept the cool bit for last. Time magazine has released its latest version of the fifty coolest web sites of the past twelve months and the list reveals an interesting shift in the way people are using the web. And perhaps more important just who is using the web and what for.
The complete list for 2006 which you can find at time dot com – does not rank the sites in any particular order – nor does it appear to define specific criteria for what is cool. It does however, split the fifty sites up into seven different categories with interesting titles such as “travel and Real Estate” or “staying connected” and “time wasters”.
The time waster category for your information has sites dedicated to juicy gossip, computer games and other guilty pleasures – that description was, by the way, taken straight from the Time web site.
The big winners in this year’s list are the sites dedicated to sharing video clips, and personal information on the web. It seems to be all about creating the online community – but it’s not really the online community that most businesses want to us to have – rather its just teens and twenty-somethings sharing their personal experiences with others.
For example, Youtube dot com has lots of different sections, but what it is really about is sharing video clips online. I think most of the contributors take funny videos at home and then put them on you tube dot com to share with friends and family.
It is sort what www.flickr.com does for still images.
A big online community is the myspace.com site with a pay-off line that says – myspace.com a place for friends. It has blogs, chatrooms, games, music videos and the list goes on.
We don’t have time to go into any more sites so if you would like to catch-up on any of the addresses you might have missed, click along to the Cybersurf blog which you will find at Cybersurf.blogspot.com one more time Cybersurf.blogspot.com
Thanks for listening and please tune in again next Wednesday same time same place for more on the best of the web.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Mars opposition – yet another urban legend
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – a moment of reflection on the internet connection. I am Steven Lang.
Today we are going to talk about Mars – the planet – or rather we’re going to talk about a bogus e-mail chain letter entitled “Mars Spectacular”
This e-mail that has been circulating all through the internet contains quite a pretty powerpoint presentation with lovely pictures of Mars saying that on August 27th the planet Mars will appear brighter than ever in history and will be as large as the full moon to the naked eye.
It even has a photo of the moon and another photo illustrating how big Mars will look next to the moon.
Actually this is balderdash.
The e-mail started way back in 2003 when on August 27th Mars did come unusually close to Earth – but it still did not appear even close to the size of the full moon.
If you received such an e-mail and then passed on to someone – you are probably a little embarrassed – but how were you to know?
The answer to that one is quite easy – go to the Snopes dot com web site – that is S.N.O.P.E.S dot com web site. It is all about urban legends and essentially it tells you whether they are true or not.
So for each entry it starts off telling you what the claim is – in this case – that Mars is going to pass remarkably close to Earth.
Then it tells you about the status of the claim – that is whether it is true or flase.
The site then offers an example of the urban legend and an explanation of the origins or the legend.
Incidentally, not all urban legends are without basis.
It is a good reference site because all its explanations are linked to credible sources, and while idly surfing through the site I could not find fault with any of their explanations.
The site has hundreds if not thousands of urban legends, but on the front page of snopes dot com there is a list of the 25 top urban legends and currently the one about Mars Spectacular is number one.
Now if you’re curious about the name of the site – snopes is the name of a family that appears in many of William Faulkner’s books.
I still haven’t worked out the linkage – but the site is well worth the visit – if only for amusement’s sake.
And that’s a wrap for today’s edition of Cybersurf, thanks for listening and do join me again next Wednesday – same time same place.
Today we are going to talk about Mars – the planet – or rather we’re going to talk about a bogus e-mail chain letter entitled “Mars Spectacular”
This e-mail that has been circulating all through the internet contains quite a pretty powerpoint presentation with lovely pictures of Mars saying that on August 27th the planet Mars will appear brighter than ever in history and will be as large as the full moon to the naked eye.
It even has a photo of the moon and another photo illustrating how big Mars will look next to the moon.
Actually this is balderdash.
The e-mail started way back in 2003 when on August 27th Mars did come unusually close to Earth – but it still did not appear even close to the size of the full moon.
If you received such an e-mail and then passed on to someone – you are probably a little embarrassed – but how were you to know?
The answer to that one is quite easy – go to the Snopes dot com web site – that is S.N.O.P.E.S dot com web site. It is all about urban legends and essentially it tells you whether they are true or not.
So for each entry it starts off telling you what the claim is – in this case – that Mars is going to pass remarkably close to Earth.
Then it tells you about the status of the claim – that is whether it is true or flase.
The site then offers an example of the urban legend and an explanation of the origins or the legend.
Incidentally, not all urban legends are without basis.
It is a good reference site because all its explanations are linked to credible sources, and while idly surfing through the site I could not find fault with any of their explanations.
The site has hundreds if not thousands of urban legends, but on the front page of snopes dot com there is a list of the 25 top urban legends and currently the one about Mars Spectacular is number one.
Now if you’re curious about the name of the site – snopes is the name of a family that appears in many of William Faulkner’s books.
I still haven’t worked out the linkage – but the site is well worth the visit – if only for amusement’s sake.
And that’s a wrap for today’s edition of Cybersurf, thanks for listening and do join me again next Wednesday – same time same place.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
No more Betas for me
Good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, your weekly guide to the internet. I am Steven Lang.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that Microsoft has just released a third Beta version of Internet Explorer seven. A Beta version means that the product is still being tested and is not yet ready for market. If you believed the party-line about the new product – IE 7 was set to regain the initiative from Firefox – my current favourite internet browser.
Now not being a great technical expert, I have long since learned never to touch the first Beta version of any product – that is for the geeks who love finding bugs and ways of eliminating them.
My experience has been that sometimes the second, but almost always the third Beta version is just about ready for the market. The overwhelming majority of problems are invariably sorted out by the third Beta version.
So, I decided to try out the latest version of IE7 – knowing full well that it was still in the testing stage – but I had already used so many Beta versions before – what can go wrong?
That was where my nightmare began.
First of all you can no longer get internet explorer on the giveaway CDs that come with certain computer magazines. So you have to download it from a dedicated web site.
Click on download – and a screen pops up telling you to disable your firewall and other security elements. This is making me nervous already. Why do they want me to do this?
Next, it tells you that before you can download IE7 it will check to see if your copy of Windows is legit. This is astounding.
Would Ford say that you cannot install a Ford brake pad until they have checked that you have a genuine Ford clutch plate?
Wait! It get’s worse! Then it says that in order to verify the legitimacy of your Windows XP – it has to download another piece of check-up software before it will even think of letting you download IE7.
Right - so I jump through the hoops and I give control of my computer to the boys from Redwood.
I then spend half an hour unsuccessfully trying to download the program. Eventually I am sitting with Microsoft plug ins monitoring my machine and half a downloaded IE7.
So out of sheer frustration, I make my next big mistake, I try to remove IE7 and all the other stuff that Microsoft has put on my machine.
The next thing is that half my programs stop working because two strange DILL files – files with dot D L L extensions are missing. And guess what? You can’t download the missing files because without them you can’t download anything.
Of course, I thought that I had messed up badly, so I used another computer to visit some chat rooms to find out how to solve my problem.
I found that many other people had experienced the exact same catastrophic series of events and that the only way to resolve them is to download the missing files through another computer and then install them on the problem machine.
I have now resolved not to fiddle with Beta versions of anything and for the foreseeable future I will use Firefox on my home computer.
That wraps up today’s edition of Cybersurf – be sure to join me again next Wednesday for more on the best of the web.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that Microsoft has just released a third Beta version of Internet Explorer seven. A Beta version means that the product is still being tested and is not yet ready for market. If you believed the party-line about the new product – IE 7 was set to regain the initiative from Firefox – my current favourite internet browser.
Now not being a great technical expert, I have long since learned never to touch the first Beta version of any product – that is for the geeks who love finding bugs and ways of eliminating them.
My experience has been that sometimes the second, but almost always the third Beta version is just about ready for the market. The overwhelming majority of problems are invariably sorted out by the third Beta version.
So, I decided to try out the latest version of IE7 – knowing full well that it was still in the testing stage – but I had already used so many Beta versions before – what can go wrong?
That was where my nightmare began.
First of all you can no longer get internet explorer on the giveaway CDs that come with certain computer magazines. So you have to download it from a dedicated web site.
Click on download – and a screen pops up telling you to disable your firewall and other security elements. This is making me nervous already. Why do they want me to do this?
Next, it tells you that before you can download IE7 it will check to see if your copy of Windows is legit. This is astounding.
Would Ford say that you cannot install a Ford brake pad until they have checked that you have a genuine Ford clutch plate?
Wait! It get’s worse! Then it says that in order to verify the legitimacy of your Windows XP – it has to download another piece of check-up software before it will even think of letting you download IE7.
Right - so I jump through the hoops and I give control of my computer to the boys from Redwood.
I then spend half an hour unsuccessfully trying to download the program. Eventually I am sitting with Microsoft plug ins monitoring my machine and half a downloaded IE7.
So out of sheer frustration, I make my next big mistake, I try to remove IE7 and all the other stuff that Microsoft has put on my machine.
The next thing is that half my programs stop working because two strange DILL files – files with dot D L L extensions are missing. And guess what? You can’t download the missing files because without them you can’t download anything.
Of course, I thought that I had messed up badly, so I used another computer to visit some chat rooms to find out how to solve my problem.
I found that many other people had experienced the exact same catastrophic series of events and that the only way to resolve them is to download the missing files through another computer and then install them on the problem machine.
I have now resolved not to fiddle with Beta versions of anything and for the foreseeable future I will use Firefox on my home computer.
That wraps up today’s edition of Cybersurf – be sure to join me again next Wednesday for more on the best of the web.
