Digital Dynamics: Control, Participation and Exclusion
- International Conference
- Held November 6-9, 2003 in Loughborough, UK
- This conference is the second in a projected bi-annual series on digital futures. Papers will address current issues and developments in three broad areas: 1. Control - infrastructural innovations, intellectual property rights, piracy, surveillance, privacy, digital colonialism, commercialization. 2. Participation - citizens' activism, Telecentres and community networks, everyday uses of the Internet, new opportunities for participatio. 3. Exclusion - changing dynamics of 'digital divides,' initiatives designed to address digital exclusion
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
This truly minimalist Web conferencing software is no match - in terms of features - for the likes of Centra or Webex, but when you consider its price-to-features ratio, it suddenly looks very attractive. For $10-$30 per seat you can own a server that will give you: multipoint voice-over-IP, text chat, ability to display Web pages, and easy recording of live sessions. Or, if you prefer to rent rather than own, you can use it for $3-$7.50 per seat, per month. This is mind-blowing cheap when compared to the $2,000/seat (to own) and $200/seat/month (to rent) price tags of the leading applications. You can't go more bare-bones than iVocalize: no video, no markup tools, no ability do show live applications or even the staple of all conferencing - PowerPoint slides (unless you convert them to HTML first and place on a server somewhere), but its feature set is actually quite sufficient for conducting live Web meetings, especially since these more advanced features (e.g. whiteboards) are rarely used anyway. If you're on a budget, or are just starting up with Web conferencing, this easy to use software is definitely worth a consideration. Just keep in mind that, like nearly all conferencing software today, iVocalize server and client run only on Windows.
iVocalize client in session (click for full size) |
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Tuesday, July 1, 2003
Stanford University has just released its course management system, called CourseWork, as open source, available for free. Currently in version 2.5, this scalable, modular system allows easy creation of course Web sites with announcements, on-line readings, syllabi, schedules, assignments and quizzes, discussion boards, and gradebooks. Written in Java, it requires several 3rd party components on the server side - Apache, Tomcat, and an SQL database (e.g. Oracle) - but no specialized client for the end users: a Java-enabled Web browser is the only requirement. The system's look and feel as well as existing modules can be modified, and new components added. Stanford Academic Computing, the devoloper of this software, is itself working on new features for future releases of CourseWork.
- Conference on Collaborative Technology Processes and Tools
- Held October 20-21 in Annapolis, MD
- For professionals interested in the latest LAN- and web-based collaboration tools to enhance team communication and meeting productivity. Learn about decision-making support tools from expert practitioners. Experience leading-edge technology in action at hands-on sessions. Join us as a participant or presenter to share innovative ideas, best practices and success stories. Visit the exhibitor forum and learn about a wide range of collaboration tools.
Monday, August 11, 2003
This is the first ("milestone") release of a standalone mail and news client from Mozilla.org. This is also a piece of software I've been looking for a long, long time. It is so diminutive and unassuming that it does not even require installation: you just double-click on the downloaded .exe file to launch the program. It does not place any icons on your Start menu, on your desktop, in your Favorites, or any of the places other software likes to leave its paw prints in. (I realize that this may pose a challenge to people who don't know how to create a shortcut and drag it to the Quick Launch bar...).
Yet, despite its modets size and manner, Thunderbird has almost all the features I need in an e-mail client, and I consider myself a "power user". It supports POP and IMAP, offers customizable pane views, spell checking, HTML formatting, junk mail filters, automatic address completion, and more. Unlike MS Outlook it does not come bundled with all the extra frills I never use (e.g. Notepad, Calendar) and yet it lets me automatically direct copies of my sent messages to a folder on the IMAP server - something that the feature-bloated Outlook is incapable of... It is also browser-independent, so it brings up my preferred browser when a link in a message is clicked.
Aside from its lean, efficient functionality, Thunderbird is also exciting as a working example of the way most applications should be written: a core set of the most useful features, extendable with plugins. (13 such extensions are already available for the program.) You really need a calendar closely tied to your e-mail client? Download and install an extension. Don't you wish the "Mail Merge" function (and many others) in Microsoft Word were an optional extension?
Thursday, August 7, 2003
There's a dark and a troubled side of life
But there's a bright and a sunny side too
Though you meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side you also may view
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
A. P. Carter
Oh, how I hate spam! In just the last couple of years the ratio of spam to legitimate e-mail in my inbox went from 1:10, to 1:5, to 1:1, to the current 3:1. Yes, I now receive 3 spam messages for every valid e-mail - unbelievable! I bet it's only going to get worse. Luckily, most of this spam scum is automatically placed in the Trash by the clever bayesian filter built into my Mozilla Mail client. I still have to look at the subjects and senders to make sure that no legitimate messages landed there (the filter does make mistakes but it gets more accurate as you "train" it) before I flush the lot down the electronic drain. This is nauseating enough, so while I do this, I try to keep my mind occupied by thinking about the "bright side of spam".
Bright side of spam?! What's that?! For me, this is the amount of innovation and brilliant thinking generated by fighting this scourge. (No, I certainly don't see the lame attempts at "legislating" spam out of existence as brilliant thinking - not by a long shot...) One example would be the content-based filtering mentioned above. Another: the technique called Target Revocable E-Mails. The idea behind it is to give users virtually unlimited number of e-mail addresses and mailboxes, with the ability to create e-mail addresses... on the fly.
The first service to use this technique is eioMail.com. For $20/year, subscribers to the service receive their own subdomain with which to create e-mail accounts, say "bob.eiomail.com". (Using a custom domain costs $30/year). Then, whenever they need to register with an e-tailer (say, FunkyShoes.com, MuscleCars.com) or subscribe to a newsletter, they can provide them with addresses like: "funkyshoes@bob.eiomail.com", "musclecars@bob.eiomail.com", "sillynews@bob.eiomail.com", each going to a separate mailbox. When one of the addresses starts receiving spam, one can simply close it, without affecting the other mailboxes. It also makes it easy to find out, who sold your address to spammers (for whatever this info is worth).
This approach has flaws - most notably, it does not help those of us, whose primary accounts are already overflowing with spam - so I'm not advocating it here as a solution. I just wanted to point out one of the interesting ideas being tested out in the fight against spam. It makes me hopeful that there is a technological solution to this menace, just like there is a technology to protect oneself from computer viruses. I don't remember when (or if) any one of my desktops and laptops were infected by a virus - it happens so extremely rarely. One day, I hope, I will have to think hard to remember what a spam message looks like... (No Alzheimer jokes, please ;-))