Email of the Week
- How Can I Remove My Name from Google Lookup? ? Zen Duncan
- Go to Removal Page (www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html)
- Enter data exactly as it appears in the google lookup
- 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%
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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)
- Time to backup a 40GB Harddrive
- Linux Story: A Software PBX (Asterisk) VoIP System
- Asterisk is an open source PBX that runs on Linux
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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