Thursday, November 17, 2011

Net Neutrality





What is "Net Neutrality"? Well, according to an article in PCWorld (August 31, 2010) by Paul Kapustka, he defines it as the act of blocking, degrading, or charging extra for legal content and applications on the Internet by Internet Service Providers (ISP). An Internet Service Provider could be in an agreement with another entity, such as an Internet search engine and can steer internet traffic to their site or search engine, or they could just block the service all together. They could even charge extra for downloading legal content and applications for services that you have already paid for, much like premium services for cable TV. However, the cable providers want to charge for the service of using their lines. The Federal Communications Commitee (FCC) sees this as an opportunity to finally regulate the Internet.

In an article by Grant Gross (IDG News Service, MacCentral  July 11, 2006) titled "Battle lines drawn over net neutrality"he states that large corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, would go up against consumer groups and internet companies like Google and Amazon.com. The broadband providers argue that they need to explore new ways for next generation internet users.

One business plan to be considered is to charge e-commerce businesses for preferential routing to their site. AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre was quoted in Businessweek that Vonage and Google were using the "pipes for free". He went on to say that because they spent the capital for the pipes, they expect an return on their investment.

Recently, in a Reuters News article (updated 11/9/2011) President Obama stated he would veto any Congressional measure to overturn the internet traffic rules. The Federal Communications Committee forbid any broadband company from blocking or degrading any legal content, but providing companies to manage their networks effeciently for customers. However, the Republicans view this as a way for the Federal Communications Committee to use it's power to regulate the internet.

So net neutrality will probably remain rather nonexistant for now, no one wants to cause any real problems to give ammunition to the opposition. As far as the investments are concerned, the big corporations will always keep through big money into the internet. The wireless providers are already being proactive with charging more for the mobile services.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Into the Internet - Chapter 1 assignment

What is the Internet? The internet is a vast number of computers all linked together, in a world wide connection of computers, smartphones, PDAs, and laptops. The protocol, is a standard set of rules for communicating between devices. This protocol is known as TCP/IP, or The Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol .

So what can the internet be used for? The internet is used for researching information, checking weather, news, and sports. Online shopping, games, planning trips, and more. Email and instant messaging are very popular ways to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Businesses use the internet for a variety of reasons as well. Keeping up to date on current events in their industries, real time stock market activity, researching new trends and important information in the industry or field of expertise. Ordering supplies, parts and materials for their company all can be done online, with just a few clicks of the mouse.

So how did the Internet get started? In the 1960's, computers had only been used by the universities and the government. With the Cold War going on, the Soviet Union and the US governments were both try to get the upper hand on the technology. The Soviets launched there first satellite, and the US was behind in the technology race. The Department of Defense was tasked with creating the technology that would advance us past that of the Soviets. The ARPA or, Advanced Research Projects Agency was created to do just that. In 1961, a man name Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California (UCLA) was the first person to come up with the idea of packet switching. The idea is similar to that of the telephone system. One party dials a series of numbers and connects to a party with that phone number. These packets could be seperated and sent to the receiving party on any number of routes and be joined together to create an image. After a successful experiment between two computers at both UCLA and Stanford University, the ARPANET was created. For the first time in history two computers were able to communicate using this new technology. In 1972 two men named Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn invented the TCP/IP protocol for the exchange of information used on the Internet. It was not long until the Ray Tomlison of BBN in Massachusetts created the first email program to send and receive communications.In the 1990, two students at the University of Minnesota, created the first file directory. A hiearchical system of organizing data into folders which can be stored on a computer for filing documents. Shortly afterwards, Tim Berners-Lee was able to discover a way to link words of text to other documents. This was known as Hypertext. This lead to more technological breakthroughs. The HTML was created for documents to be read by using special software. Berners-Lee is credited with the first web browser simply called WorldWideWeb. Finally, he came up with the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) which uses the web address to locate a document.

How to connect to the Internet? The oldest and slowest way to connect to the Internet is my using a dial up connection through your local phone line. This way just like making a phone call on a land line. The computer dials a phone number and connects to a modem, which converts the signal to analog to be transmitted over the phone line. This is painfully slow, but cheap. ( I am speaking from personal experience.) However, there is DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is faster because it is broadband, meaning it can separate the signal into sending and receiving signals. Cable internet connection is the fastest way to the internet. It uses your existing cable line to create a dedicated connection to the internet.

All information is courtesy of : scsite.com/internet3e/sources Shelly Cashman, Discovering the Internet, 3rd edition.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Module 1 - Blog Assignment





The start down the road of education.
photo courtesy of www.edbiyatdefteri.com

The first article was by Chris Brogan titled "How to Blog Almost Everyday"was rather insightful. He suggests that you blog about many topics, have convesations with a variety of people to discuss a wide range of topics. Also, the use of pictures and photos is very helpful to catch the reader's eye. "A picture is worth a thousand words". So that will automatically gain some conversation. Be more focused on what your customer or reader wants to see. The author also suggests, to mix up the length of your blogs, as well as, to write guest posts for other blogs.


The second article titled "How to Blog" by Farhad Manjoo was concerning the blogging efficiency. The author refers to a gentleman by the name of Felix Salmon, who says "Quantity is more important than quality", and continues with "don't be afraid of being wrong". The idea of setting a schudule to keep fresh ideas and updated information as a way to keep the interest of readers. The author draws a good comparison to both blogging and exercise. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Another good suggestion was to, get to the point of the blog. Try not to be too wordy. Most people do not have the time or patience to read a long winded blog.


The third article is titled "How to blog your way to small business success" by Matthew Bandyk.This was a rather interesting article. He suggests using a blog generating service like Typepad or Wordpress to automatically format blogs in such a way that search engines pick up on. That is very cleaver. As the author explains, anyone searching for a small business online would use a Google search. The author also suggests, keeping the self promotion to a minimum. Give people what they want to read about.

The next article titled "What a blog can do for small business" by Darrell Zahorsky was another very interesting article. He started out with the question, "What is a Blog?" He explains that a blog is a Web page with frequent updates to a journal. A man named Jorn Barger coined the name Weblogs in 1997. He noted also that there are two types of blogs, personal and business. Personal is like a diary, with opinions and research links. Business is a corporate tool used by both employees and customers, to share knowledge and expertise. Blogs are cost effective for a small business. No need to hire a web designer/developer, and any changes that need to be made can be done easily. Another advantage is that small businesses can share knowledge and expertise with a large audience.


Finally the last article titled "Use it or lose it: Five ways to keep your blogging regular" by Chris Brogan was a good reminder to keep your blog updated often. If you keep to a consistent schedule with blogs and newsletters, your readers will not lose contact with you. It is a lot harder to get readers to"warm-up" to you again, after a lengthy absense. Being inconsistent is also a negative. Going from posting three times per month to five times daily will certainly aggravate your readers and keep them from coming back to your blog.


So, how has blogging influenced your life?