tech-ed collisions

establishing an Internet connection

Establishing an Internet connection can be a bit hit and miss sometimes - I have been trying to sort out wireless access to my (now not so) new home laptop for quite a few months. Unfortunately it came with Vista. Try googling 'Vista - local access only' and read through the dozens of forum threads by many, many frustrated users with the same problem to get an idea just how painful this problem is for them. btw wireless access hasn't been a problem for any other device at home (XP, Mac, Linux, Nintendo WII, a number of phones and other mobile devices, etc). Anyway, I have had to revert back to installing cable for the laptop which kind of defeats the purpose. Which brings me to the main point of this post- cabling. Cabling a home properly (ie tidily, through the walls etc so you don't have complaints about the mess your making) can be enough of a challenge for some of us but what if you're laying a connection from the USA to Australia. Here are some great pics on ZDNet giving a bit of an insight as to how it's done.

Filed under  //   Internet  

problems with the thin end of the wedge

In a previous post, I looked at filtering since it is quite topical at the moment. I guess one of the concerns that many people would have is who decides what is appropriate content for citizens to be exposed to, the values and contexts under which that is assessed and how it is to be implemented. It's interesting to look at the recent experience of one of the team from the GLOBE initiative who gave a recent presentation in Dubai covering technology enhanced learning, content, search, collaboration and who tried to find some appropriate images from the region while there and observed:

The conference in Dubai was a really nice experience: there is obviously a lot happening in the region, and the dramatically fast transformation that this society seems to be going through is really fascinating. There is a lot of energy and eagerness to change things for the better - the abundance of resources is also helpful, I guess… It is also clear that there are some issues to be worked out: when I tried to find some pictures on flickr to illustrate my talk, I found out that the site was blocked. Finding pictures with a creative commons license without flickr is far from easy. When I mentioned this at the conference, the typical reaction was that everybody gateways his internet traffic through other sites, in order to bypass the blocking services. Makes you wonder…
It certainly does make you wonder...

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Filed under  //   Internet  

on filtering

An opportunity to visit BETT recently enabled me to take a look at a number of approaches to Internet safety. This was particularly good timing in relation to the recent announcement from Senator Conroy to establish filtering for all Australian Internet users in order to protect a (very important) sub-set of Australian Internet users. Firstly, the protection of our children is paramount. In my own case, safety of our kids at school was probably more important than potential academic performance when we started looking at schooling options for them. However, when it comes to Internet safety I am not sure that a sledgehammer approach to filtering the entire country is the best way forward. We have seen before and we will see again how easy it is for those who want to, to bypass filtering. To me, the Internet is just too dynamic to pin our hopes on such a coarse solution. Our language and the context in the way concepts are presented make filtering incredibly difficult. Here's an interesting article on Crikey showing at a simple level, just how difficult it is. Putting a wall around something to protect it is a medieval solution and I hope we live in more enlightened times. If you believe walls are a good protection measure then placing them closer to the assets you are trying to protect seems to make more sense than building a wall far away. Most, if not all of the filtering solutions that I looked at were local solutions ie at the school level rather than the country level. Local solutions potentially give teachers more opportunity to intervene when the inevitable breach occurs. While filtering will no doubt play an important role in this area, it does not come close to protecting students from all potential harm via the Internet. For example, it does not stop things such as cyber-bullying, predatory behaviour in online messaging/communications services, or simply wandering 'off-task' and accessing content that is not harmful, but not subject related. Clearly other approaches need to be implemented to address these problems. There are some interesting technical solutions appearing which start to address these areas by capturing what is on the screens in realtime and allowing intervention as and when the incidents occur. Still, this only starts to address the problem by allowing teachers to intervene straight away and take appropriate action. More important still though is educating our students and giving them the ability to protect themselves from harm. In the 'real' world, we don't protect them simply by shutting the rest of the world off from them, but give them the skills they need to survive and thrive safely in that world. So it should be in the 'online' world. Fenced off societies do not seem to work - think of any that you know of and ask yourself if they are really looking after the interests of their citizens in the best way. At the very least, we should have the right to opt into that environment than opt out of it - that may appease the civil libertarian concerns a bit. Cheers, Jerry.

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Filed under  //   Internet   policy  

Interesting info if you have an Australian domain name

auDA, the Australian Domain name Administrator has released an interesting issues paper from their 2007 Names Policy Panel. From the auda site:

auDA's 2007 Names Policy Panel is currently reviewing the policy framework for .au domain names, including: * whether .au should be opened up to direct registrations (eg. domainname.au) * whether the policy rules for domain names should be changed * whether registrants should be allowed to sell their .au domain names. The Panel has released an Issues Paper, May 2007 which sets out the current situation and invites comment on suggestions and options for change.
This could have implications for all Australian domain name users, including closed domains such as gov.au and edu.au. The paper is here if you are interested.

Filed under  //   Internet  
Posted May 21, 2007

IPv6 for e-Business Roadshow

The IPv6 for e-Business Project is presenting seven FREE half-day SEMINAR WORKSHOPS on the IPv6 for e-Business Project, at cities around Australia in March 2007: * Sydney 6 March * Brisbane 7 March * Adelaide 15 March * Perth 16 March * Hobart 21 March * Melbourne 22 March * Ballarat 23 March The IPv6 protocol offers almost unlimited IP addresses, built-in security options, simpler address administration, widespread mobility support, and quality of service capabilities. IPv6 for e-Business is a project for raising awareness and assessing readiness for IPv6 to build Australian capacity for future innovation. It has developed Enabling Tools for businesses to plan and deploy IPv6, and will also demonstrate the new IPv6 Easy Access Device. See http://www.ipv6.org.au for more information: you MUST RSVP to ed@isoc-au.org.au to attend!

Filed under  //   Internet  

My Firefox

Firefox has for a long time now been the browser of choice for me. For quite a while I had the impression that I was keeping it pretty lean and not adding in too many extensions but it they just seem to keep creeping in. Here is my current list:

  • Colorful tabs: The description for this goes "Colorul Tabs colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface". While I agree with the first part, you can make your own mind up about the last claim in this sentence. Still, it is a useful add-in.
  • ColoUnReadTabs: Marks unread tabs in red-bold-italic allowing to easily identify them. Well.. having a tab with a red-bold-italic title almost forces you to click on it to get rid of the red-bold-italic.
  • DOM Inspector. Probably useful to developers but I never use it.
  • Download statusbar: "View and manage downloads from a tidy status bar". This one is pretty useful but takes up too much space at the bottom of the window for me. Will probably disappear off my list soon.
  • Forecastfox: My weather station. For some reason I just really like it.
  • IE Tab: "Enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Mozilla/Firefox". Definitely in my top 3. There are a couple of sites I have to access in IE and this goes some way to making that a more pleasant experience.
  • lori: "For tracking the life of a request". Gives me useful information on how long a page takes to download etc. Very useful but the only problem is there seems to be a bug in it. The seconds/milliseconds timer seems accurate enough but the minute timer seems stuck on 30 minutes so every page seems to load in 30m (x)s (y)ms. Now I realise that broadband in Australia is pretty poor but really...
  • Mozcc: "Provides an interface for viewing embedded Creative Commons Licenses". This is disabled at the moment as it won't work on current versions of Firefox but it was a truly useful extension. I hope some work gets done on it.
  • Sage: A useful RSS/Atom aggregator.
  • Tab Effect: For those of us that wish we had a Mac this provides a lift to an otherwise dull Windows interface.
  • Tab History: "links opened in a new tab retain their history". Very useful.
  • Undo Closed Tabs Button: " Add a toolbar button to undo closed tabs". Again, very useful.
I'd love to know what others are using. Cheers.

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Filed under  //   Internet