Internet Assist North Shore

Spurred by an article by Pat Booth in the North Shore Times (24 Feb '09, p7), today I kicked off an initiative I hope will see some good done.

The article was titled "The sad plight of the unconnected" and bemoaned the rapid move to mainly online services by all manner of buinesses and service providers - both public and private - including schools. People who don't have computers or can't afford one are left poorly served and literally unconnected.

There isn't much that can be done for people who do not want a computer, but it certainly is possible to help out people who may want one, but lack the resources to get one. Many in Booth's article sited the cost of a computer and an Internet connection as the main reason for being unconnected. Meanwhile, the recent annual rubbish collection on the North Shore saw many computers put out for collection that may well have had salvagable parts in them. I have a box of old hard drives that are small by modern standards, but that would do excellent Internet access service in a Linux-based PC with a modest amount of RAM. So there certainly is potential.

It's obvious why services are moving online. It's faster, cheaper and...cheaper. The dilemma faced by people on low incomes who can't afford to be online is that there is even less incentive for business to pay more to reach people like them, who can't afford to buy their goods or services anyway.

Schools hard pressed to stretch their budgets as far as possible are understandably reluctant to pay "extra" to reach students whose parents may not be able to afford to pay their school fees. It may not be a looney idea for schools to provide Internet access to students who don't have it, can't afford it, but would love to have it.

"Internet Assist North Shore" (IANS) is an attempt to close the connectivity gap for as many as we can.

If you think you can help out, have an old computer, or know someone who can't afford a PC, make yourself known here.

IANS is on twitter, too: @IANSNZ

The blackout protest appears to have worked!

The news that the government will suspend S92(a) of the new Copyright Act until at least March 29th tweeted through on Twitter a few minutes ago:

@MsBehaviour  said: 

"#Blackout News!!! NZ Govt announce a delay in #S92 implementation until 29th March. If no agreement, will suspend. #blackout FTW!! RT! 17 minutes ago from twhirl"

...and ricocheted around several tweeter-ers....including Juha Saarinen, who drove the protest.....with Bernard Hickey observing:

"and we read all about it first on Twitter. Sensational! 8 minutes ago from TweetDeck"

The details are still unknown to me, but here's hoping they drop it completely. That part isn't clear yet.

UPDATE: More details here.

Wifi everywhere!

It's amazing! There is wifi everywhere! 

Wandering around my neighbourhood with my iPod Touch (with WifiTrak installed), I've been amazed by the number of wireless access points / devices I'm seeing. Sometimes there are ten or more visible at the same time. It is very rare for the iPod to report "No networks detected". There is almost always at least one...

Even more amazing is the number of homes / businesses who don't use any encryption AND have DHCP turned on.

Wide open wifi. Incredible. If your device (iPod, Laptop, whatever) is set to "auto-connect", then you can't avoid connecting to them. Interesting legal issues there, I suppose.

Coverage by these unsecure APs comes close to being ubiguitous. On average, it would be about one for every 200 metres in the area I walk around in. Wide open wifi Internet is never much more than a  minute's walk away. That makes it hard to resist the temptation of taking advantage of what might be described as the unwitting 'generosity of spirit' demonstrated by people who don't secure their wireless Internet access at all and leave DHCP turned on to allow you to connect easily.

It's like leaving a basket of shiny, fresh apples sitting right on the footpath......

New Gmail Themes!!!

Google's Gmail now has a good selection of new themes for use with your gmail account.

Here is a sample, using the "Planets" theme.





Go have a play! It's very kewl (IMHO).

Google Chrome for Linux

If you're looking for a challenge, you can build the latest pre-release versions of Google's Chrome browser yourself. The best platform to do this on is Ubuntu 8.04 as that is the Linux distro that Google are using for development. It's an open source project, so they are making their source code available as they go along.

You can find the details here.

Google "Chrome"

I installed Google Chrome today and I have to say I like it. I'm using it right now. I find it fast and - so far - reliable. Idiot / Savant at No Right Turn likes it too, but for the lack of ad blockers. A show-stopped for him, but I've never bothered with ad blockers as I most often don't read the ads anyway...though do occasionally see one that is genuinely interesting.

I like the address space also being the search space. You can either enter the name of the web site or the words you want to search on. Nice.

Each tab being a separate process really appeals to me. That is what multitasking is all about. We'll just to see if it scales well when you have a lot of active pages open. How much do the ones in the background get? Enough? What effect will they have on a resource hungry task on the primary page....or does it pre-empt all others?

It uses almost all the screen for what you want to see. Unlike MS IE and - to a lesser extent - Firefox, you don't loose a quarter of the screen to toolbars of various sorts and dubious utility.

The only niggle I have about Chrome so far is that I can't remove the web site I went to by mistake (a type - "herlad" instead of "herald") from my "most viewed" sites on the front page without wiping the history for at least the whole day if not all the history. Maybe I can...but I haven't worked it yet. I did manage to get of it by wiping out all the history. Wiping each of the last 6 days (imported from Firefox) didn't do it.

Bottom line, though.....is that I like Chrome. I like it a lot. It feels good. Now I just have to wait for the Linux version.

 

Mozilla "Ubiquity": Try it. You'll (probably) like it

I don't load my computers down with useless toys. My systems tend to be somewhat basic and if I don't use an application much, I tend to get rid of it. Maybe that's due to my years as a Resource Management Analyst on the former NZ Dairy Board's mainframe systems, trying to better just a little bit more out of the hardware and software by making most efficient use of it.

Yesterday I discovered Mozilla's "Ubiquity". It's a sort of command-line for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

But much more than that. I've been having fun working out how to most effectively use it - particularly the ability to highlight some text on a web page, invoke Ubiquity, and watch it find resources, from a variety of sources, related to those selected words. There is much more to it than that, despite the first version being described, at v0.1, as a prototype.

Watch the video below and see how easily Aza Raskin is able to create a "mash-up", using Ubiquity, into an e-mail he's drafting. The potential for it to be a very powerful tool is there.

It's available on Mac, Windows and Linux. You can checkout the tutorial and it installs in a handful of seconds. It's only 185k. You can learn how to develop your own Ubiquity commands, too.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Vodafone's broken internet

Since yesterday afternoon, I haven't been able to access Google Mail or Blogspot via my pre-pay Vodafone.

On the Vodafone 715, I get a grammatically interesting "Received a invalid response". On the Motorola, I get a more direct Error 502.

I called Vodafone and paid the $1 to speak to Customer Service. They told me the problem was a known one caused by upgrades to Vodafone Live and would be resolved....whenever. No, I would not be notified.

I tried a few minutes ago and it's still not working. That's a 31 hour outage by my count.

[UPDATE: 07:47am Monday - Still can't get to gmail.com. http error 503.]

Back of mind wonders: Do they create problems after introducing the $1 charge to drive some revenue? Or to see what call numbers are like? Or to see how many people objectto loosing this part of the service? They ditched CNN from Sky Mobile without a word....and appeared not to inform Customer Service beforehand as they had no idea what was offered, never mind what they had stopped offering.

Vodafone is starting to feel like just another concrete-eared telco.

[UPDATE: 07:47am - Still can't get to gmail.com. http error 503.]

Free Internet on Vodafone - sort of

Until July 27th, Vodafone mobile users can visit several popular Internet sites via their mobile browser, as much as they like, for free. (You do need a 3G phone).

Access to TradeMe, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube or Wikipedia won't cost anything. After July 27th, Vodafone say they are introducing a "casual user day rate" of $1 / day for the first 10MB, then $1 for each additional megabyte that day. That is still expensive, but better than the $10 per megabyte currently charged for casual use.

There doesn't appear to be anything on the Vodafone web site I can link to, but if you go to "Vodafone Live!" on your (Vodafone) mobile, the details are all there. You should also have received a txt message from Vodafone letting you know. I got mine about 30 minutes ago.

Having paid C$32.95 / month last year for unlimited Internet access in Canada from BCE, I've been waiting for the local mobile Internet pricing to sharpen up and it looks like that process is now under way.

Yahoo! (so to speak).

If you need a cheap 3G phone, the Vodafone 715 (Made by Huawei - a big Chinese electronics maker) is now down and dirty at $128 (full price - no contract) at Hill & Stewart in Auckland. It has previously been $149 at DSE and $178 at First Mobile and was priced at $199 back in December. It's a great wee phone with almost all the ells and whistles except voice command and making video calls with the screen on the front and the video camera on the back is problematic. But it's and MP3 player, video player (3gp and 3g2 formats) takes good still photos (1.3mpxl) and can record video and sound. You can buy a optional 512MB ($40) or 1GB SD chip ($60) to keep your songs, pics and vids on.