All Shows

Show of 1-3-2004

Email of the Week

  • How Can I Remove My Name from Google Lookup? ? Zen Duncan
    • Enter data exactly as it appears in the google lookup
  • Search Engine News for 2003
    • Big News of the Year: Google Revised Algorithm filter ?link-farms?
      • Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google.
      • On Friday, 21st November, Google decided to tighten the "filter".
      • Google are trying eradicate obvious search engine manipulation from their most competitive results.
      • Separation of legitimate searches from commercial searches using paid positions
    • Search Engine Traffic Distribution for 2003
      • Google 29.5%, Yahoo 28.9%, MSN 27.6%, AOL 18.4%
      • Ask Jeeves 9.9%, Overture 4.8%, InfoSpace 4.5%, Netscape 4.4%
      • AltaVista 4.0%, Lycos 2.4%, Earthlink 2.0%, LookSmart 1.7%
  • Top Search Terms for 2003
    • Lycos 50
      • KaZaA, Britney Spears, Dragonball, Paris Hilton, IRS, Kobe Bryant, Christmas, NFL, Pamela Anderson, Brooke Burke
    • Yahoo Top 100
        • Kazaa, Harry Potter, American Idol, Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Eminem, WWE, Paris Hilton, Nascar, Christina Aguilera
    • Google Zeitgeist
      • Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Matrix, Shakira, David Beckham, 50 cent, Iraq, Lord of the Rings, Kobe Bryant, Tour de France
  • Using GPS to track the kids
    • Big Brother, meet Big Mother
    • Wherify Wireless GPS lets you pinpoint you kid?s location to within a few feet
    • Circle representing you child in displayed on a street map
    • Breadcrumb feature can trace movements over time
    • In an emergency, wearer can place a 911 call by pressing two buttons
    • $200 plus $20-$45/month service fee
  • New Technology Used to Track Cattle
    • Technology is being used to help solve the Mad Cow Disease problem
    • If there’s a bright side to the U.S. mad cow scare, it’s that it could speed up the U.S. move to a centralized system that electronically tracks animals as they move from fields to feed lots to food stores.
    • Two tracking approaches have been proposed: Retinal Scans and RFID
    • Retinal Scanning
      • Optibrand (Fort Collins, Colo) manufactures a system that identifies animals permanently and painlessly by capturing its unique retinal vascular pattern.
      • The digital pictures are stored in a database with information about the animal, such as colour, weight or even genetic lineage
    • Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID)
      • RFID is used to track cattle in Australia, but has not been adopted in the US.
      • Downside is that tags can be switched
    • Look to see fast progress in this area, with retinal tracking adopted first
  • Gadgets of the Week
    • SideWinder Cell Phone Charger
      • Retail Price: $24.95
      • Supports most (but not all) cell phones
      • 2 Minutes of cranking provides six minutes of talk time.
      • When charges, bright LED can be used for reading or walking
    • USB Memory Flash Memory Drive
      • Sizes supported: 32MB, 128 MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1 GB
      • Best value (256MB for $65 at Best Buy)
      • Supported by Windows 95, 2000, XP, and Mac.
      • Driver required for Windows98
      • Can be combined with necklace, watch, keychain
    • Maxtor One Touch USB External Hard Drives
      • 200MB ($279), 250MB ($329), 300MB ($369) Options
      • USB 2.0 and Two Firewire 400 connections
      • Able to Daisy-chain 62 devices using Firewire
      • Once Touch Backup on selected files/directories
      • Uses Rantz Retrospect Express Backup Software
      • Firewire transfer rate 50% faster than USB
  • USB versus Firewire
    • Universal Serial Bus (USB) ? Developed by Intel
      • USB Implementors Forum is setting the standards
      • Designed to replace serial/parallel ports
      • Transfer Speeds
        • USB 1.0 ? 1.5 Mps (Also called Low Speed USB)
        • USB 1.1 ? 12 Mps (Also called Full Speed USB)
        • USB 2.0 ? 480 Mps (Also called High Speed USB)
      • Supports up to 127 devices in small peripheral network
    • Firewire (IEEE-1394) ? Develop by Apple
      • 1394 Trade Association is setting the standards
      • Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a) up to 400 Mbps
      • Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b) up 800 Mbps (first drive released Jan 7, 2003)
      • Firewire 400 is faster than USB 480 because it provides its own management of data transfer.
    • What does transfer rate really mean?
      • Time to backup a 40GB Harddrive
        • 1.5 Mbps (59.2 Hours), 12 Mbps (7.4 Hours)
        • 480 Mbps (11 minutes), 800 Mbps (6.66 minutes)
  • Linux Update
      • Download software from www.asterisk.org
      • Asterisk provides voicemail with Directory, Call Conferencing, Iteractive Voice Response, Call Queing, Three-way calling, Caller ID, ASDI, SIP, and H.323.
      • Needs not additional hardware for Voice over IP
      • Supports all Digium hardware including T1 and E1 interfaces for connection to PRI lines and channel banks.
      • Support Internet Phone Jack products from Quicknet
    • Linux Story: Virginia Tech Linux Cluster
      • Rated as 3rd Fastest Computer
      • Fastest computers are now clusters
      • VTech assembled 1,100 Apple Macintosh G5 computers
      • Each G5 has two 64-bit IBM PowerPC9 processors
      • Clocked at 10.3 trillion operations per second
      • Cost $7 million to build and maintain
      • Can?t handle applications yet, need additional software development
    • Linux Story: Isreal Shuts Door on Microsoft
      • Isreal has suspended purchases on Microsoft productivity software
      • Will use existing MS Office versions rather than upgrading
      • Working with Sun and IBM in designing Hebrew Language version of OpenOffice
      • Moving toward Open source to save money
      • Other countries exploring the use of open source software (like Linux, OpenOffice) include France, China, German, Britain, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and Russia.
  • Site of the Week: Archiving the Internet (www.archive.org)
    • The Internet Archive is building a digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, it provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and general public.
    • Archives sites as they where using the ?WayBackMahcine?
  • Web Creator: Tim Berners-Lee Knighted
    • Tim Berners-Lee combined HTML with URLs to create the World Wide Web
    • The honor was announced December 30, 2003 as part of Buckingham Palace?s New Year Honor?s List
    • Currently serves as Director of the World Wide Web Consortium
    • Invented ?global hypertext space? while he worked at the European Particle Physics Laboratory at CERN in 1989
    • Berners-Lee used the underlying TCP/IP protocol available on the Internet
    • Prior to that time Internet applications were limited: ftp, text email, file searching.
    • His invention was popularized by Mosaic Browser.
  • Stratford News
    • Next Start January
    • Masters Degrees e-Business, Telecommunications
    • Bachelor Degrees in IT, Business Administration, and Hospitality
    • Associated Degrees in Digital Design and Animation, Web Services and e-Business, Networking and Security, Culinary Arts, Hospitality, and Business Administration
    • Website: www.stratford.edu
    • Phone number: 800-444-0804