Net Neutrality

Most people believe that Internet service providers (ISPs) aren’t supposed to discriminate against or prioritize users. In most countries, if you want to spend your whole day streaming TV or compulsively checking your Twitter account, that’s your right. But if certain ISPs have their way, it won’t stay that way for long.
The fact of the matter is, certain types of Internet activity use up more bandwidth than others. When you watch a television show by streaming, your computer isn’t just sending out a signal and getting a block of information back, it’s constantly sending and receiving data. Enough people doing something like streaming—and let’s face it, we all watch TV online these days—can slow down the Internet connection of not just one user, but everyone on the network.
The companies that control the telecom lines say that this fact should entitle them to “manage” the Internet use of the people buying their services. It’s not fair, they say, that it takes forever for one person to check their e-mail because another person won’t stop watching TV. They want the ability to use deep packet searching to slow down certain users who are taking up more than their fair share of the bandwidth. Management privileges, they claim, would also allow them to prevent their servers from crashing because of a sudden spike in usage—for example the shut down caused by the millions of people on the Internet after the death of Michael Jackson or denial of service attacks. This would also allow them to prevent piracy as they would know what you were sending back and forth over your connection and handicap your connection if you were behaving illegally.
There is a sinister side to ISPs having this kind of power. Proponents of net-neutrality—people who believe that everyone should be free to do whatever they please on the Internet without interference or limitation so long as they pay their monthly bill—forsee a future where ISPs will milk money out of their subscribers by instituting a tiered system of Intenet provision. People would only be able to access more bandwidth by paying more money. Even worse, they could “throttle,” or choke out the connection, of anyone found doing anything with their connection that they didn’t approve of, controlling the sites you were able to visit.

Bell Canada has already been caught throttling some of its users. Various ISPs in the U.S. such as Comcast have been accused of throttling, but won’t admit to it.
Here’s a short breakdown of what’s been going on around the world in the big war for the control of bandwidth:

Canada

Oct. 21, 2009
-The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that controls broadcasting in Canada okays “traffic management practices” on the part of ISPs.
-Encourages ISPs to discriminate according to economic lines, not content lines.
-Customers must be informed 30 days before practices come into effect
-Traffic shaping or “throttling” is allowed but only as a “last resort.” What a “last resort” consists of is not clarified in the legislation.

U.S.

-Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 presented to U.S. congress on July 30, 2009
-Claims:
-people are dependent on the Internet
-the internet is a resource akin to roads or electricity.
-unfettered access is vital
-The national economy would be severely harmed if the ability of users to operate freely were “frustrated by the interference from broadband telecommunications network operators.
-This legislation is being actively contested by telecom companies and various members of the Republican party.

E.U.

-EU Telecoms Package legislation dictates that large telecom companies already in operation must open their lines to newer ISPs at a regulated rate. Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner in charge of Information Society and Media says this will ensure competition for ISPs by preventing a monopoly by incumbent companies, and will save the government from having to legislate net neutrality; if people don’t like the service or find that their Internet provider is acting unethically they can just switch to a different provider.
-Net neutrality activists the likes of Cory Doctorow believe that this amounts to the death of net neutrality in the EU as the law relies on market competition to guard the rights of Internet users.

Censorship

The idea of censorship on the Internet might seem absurd to some. If the web let you find Two Girls, One Cup, there’s nothing you can’t see, right? Well, a lot depends on what country you live in, what government you live under and what search engine you use. As people become more and more depended on search engines and the good will of the telecom companies to get them where they want to go, users are at an increasing risk of being the victims of censorship, sometimes without even knowing it. Though China is most often on the receiving end of censorship charges, many fear that other governments will begin or have begun using the same methods to censor their citizens.

Search Engines

Baidu
- Documents appeared on Wikileaks in May 2009 about the censorship practices of Baidu, a prominently ranked Chinese Internet search engine. The document included a list of permanently banned words—89 events, Falun Gong, reactionary remarks—as well as a guideline for when certain terms would be deemed objectionable—Communist Party is okay, but Communist Party in conjunction with “topple” or “overthrow” would be objectionable.
-Objectionable posts are deemed “yellow, anti-information” and users who routinely search for such anti-information are flagged and monitored.
Google
-The international community was in an uproar in January 2006 when Google admitted that it intended to comply with the Peoples Republic of China and censor “sensitive” results that might be harmful to its ability to govern. As a result Google, like Baidu, will not let Chinese citizens access pages about the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Tibetan freedom movement or the Falun Gong, to name a few. Google defended itself by pointing out that they are the only search engine based out of mainland China that informs its users that the search results have been censored.
But China isn’t the only country that has requested that Google restrict its search results. In the U.S., Google censors “dirty” suggestions that might promote abuse or pedophilia. In the U.K. Google “delisted” Inquisition 21st Century, a website that says it challenges moral authoritarian and sexually absolutist ideas in the United Kingdom. In Germany and France 113 anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic and Nazi websites had been removed from the search engine.
These last examples are rather benign compared to the extent of Chinese censorship, but they serve as examples of Google’s willingness to comply with the censorship wishes of government.
Bing
-Bing was unveiled in May of 2008 and is supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to Google. The search engine is touted to be smarter than Google, employing filters to give users more accurate search results. How Bing uses its filters, however, has already been called into question.
Just one month after the search engine’s official release, reports were already springing up that Bing was filtering out “sensitive” terms from searches that used simplified Chinese script or came from an IP address in China.

Telecom Companies

Denmark
-In 2006, one of Denmark’s largest ISPs, Tele2, was given a court injunction and told it must block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay
Iran
Iran has installed one of the most comprehensive mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet and it was Western Telecom companies that built it for them. With the help of industry giants such as Siemens AG and Nokia Corp. the Iranian government installed a monitoring centre in the government owned Telecom Company that holds a monopoly in Iran in late 2008. This equipment performs deep packet searches on all of the information flowing through it, everything from tweets to telephone calls to e-mails, serving as a “choke point” for dissent. An example of the power of this system is how effectively coverage of the 2009 post-election riots was stifled.
-To get around the monitoring during the riots, many people worldwide changed their Twittering locations to places in Iran to overload the system and hide the information coming out of the country.

Privacy

As more and more information, important and frivolous, is stored online people are starting to worry about the security of that information.

Social Sites

It seems like every new Facebook application comes with a flurry of privacy concerns. First it was the auto-stalk feature—also known as the news feed. Next, users were outraged to find out that Facebook claims ownership of all information users post on it and will save profile information even when an account has been deactivated. Finally, users were upset to find out that their information, including your personal photos, could be used in third party advertisements without your consent. As a result of the ongoing controversies, Facebook was recently pressured by the Canadian government to change its privacy policies and ordered by the U.S. government to pay $9.5 million towards a nonprofit online privacy foundation.

Deep packet searching

Not only is deep packet searching a really creepy way to censor your population, it’s also a really creepy way to invade users’ privacy. Deep packet inspection allows ISPs to screen all of the information it directs, allowing your Internet provider to know exactly what you are sending and receiving from your computer.

Hacks, Trojans, and phishing

Identity Theft is so big these days, that we’ve had to divide it into five sub-categories—business/commercial, criminal, financial, identity cloning, and medical identity theft. The more personal and financial information we put online, the more tempting it is for hackers to steal it for their own ends. There are all sorts of ways of accomplishing this: e-mail scams , Trojans, and good old-fashioned hacking. In the U.S. in the month of January along there were 31 recorded breaches of major databases. These breaches involved the theft of everything from credit card numbers to U.S. court documents.

Intellectual Property

No one is a stranger to the ongoing battle over Intellectual Property rights; you can’t throw a rock without hitting a public service announcement asking you if you would steal a car. But as web-based content becomes more prevalent and the Internet becomes the primary method of getting your stuff out there, the debate over IP is heating up.
Copy Right v. Copy Left
In the right-hand corner we have the likes of Rupert Murdoch. The owner of the News Corps recently announced that he plans to pull all of his sites’ content out of Google to prevent other people from using it without paying him his dues. In a stark contrast to the Obama administration’s permissive net-neutrality legislation, a secret copy right treaty was leaked that gives ISPs the right to actively police copyright infringements on user-contributed content.

In the left-hand corner we have the open-source community that believes IP laws stifle the natural evolution of software. Needless to say, it looks like right now the Right is winning.

Post from: Sherweb Blog

Swarm Intelligence

Ever wonder how a flock of a thousand birds or a billion buzzing bees avoid colliding into each other? Swarm intelligence looks at the way in which birds and various social insects flock together, and consequently, this is helping researchers and scientists develop new ways of enhancing surveillance photos as well as assisting in military procedures. By understanding and applying the rules that animals (or particles) use to identify and align themselves with their neighbors, replicating these instincts with technology could be highly beneficial in high intensity scenarios such as recognizing the best evacuation route out of a city during an emergency. Swarm intelligence can also be applied to images. By treating every pixel of a digital photo like a member of a swirling mass of particles, with a specific speed and direction, every pixel essentially uses a set of rules to look at where it is and where it might go next, a very useful advancement for surveillance photos [MSNBC].

Leaping Lizards! (The Jesus lizard that walks on water)

Nature is full of surprises, but one particularly stood out for Carnegie Mellon robotics professor, Metin Sitti, an undergraduate robotics class teacher, whose focus is on the study of mechanics present in the natural world. In 2003, professor Sitti and his students decided to build their own Jesus lizard robot. He used the basilisk lizard (commonly referred to as the Jesus Christ lizard), as an example of strange biomechanics. The 75 cm reptile, which can weigh anywhere from 200-600 grams, has the ability to cycle its legs at a specific angle which enables it to speed across the water for short distances. Smaller basilisks can run about 10-20 m without sinking.  After months of work, Sitti and his students were able to create the first robot that could walk on water, though he admits that getting the legs to touch the water perfectly each time was no easy feat. Understanding the lizard’s leg mechanics could bring humans closer to one day walking on water, which would be very practical during flood rescue missions [Mental Floss].

Diving Beetle- advancing underwater breathing technologies

Though most insects and spiders will usually drown when submerged into water, aquatic insects such as the great diving beetle, which can grow up to 60 mm in length, possess rigid hairs on their abdomen that repels water and creates a silvery film of air to prevent it from collapsing. These air layers can essentially behave as gills, allowing oxygen in the water to flow in, and carbon dioxide in the air, to diffuse out. By studying how the diving beetle traps air and keeps it from drowning, researchers suggest artificial gills that mimic such a trick could help people breathe underwater [Live Science].

Shark Skin to make you swim faster

Because shark skin doesn’t collect slime, algae, or barnacles the U.S. Navy developed an environmentally-friendly coating to increase ship speeds while saving fuel. This also inspired the “Fastskin” suit, designed by Speedo to enable swimmers to swim at record speeds, is a technology inspired by shark skin. By looking at the skin of the shark and how it reacts in the water, it led to the discovery that shark skin varies across its body. The fabric used for the Speedo Fastskin compresses the body, which in turn stops the skin from vibrating, preventing muscle oscillation. The fabric contains tiny V-shaped ridges resembling dermal denticles, bumpy scales, like a rug of tiny teeth, which algae and barnacles can’t latch on to. This decreases drag and turbulence around a shark’s body. The new swimsuits were worn during the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, however by 2009, the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) changed the rules for competition-grade swimsuits, marking the end of shark-inspired swimsuits [Discovery].

Shark Skin to repel germs

Engineer Tony Brennan realized that a shark’s entire body is covered in dermal denticles which won’t trap bacteria, and it inspired a company called Sharklet to begin exploring how to use the shark skin to make a coating that repels germs. Today, the firm produces a sharkskin-inspired plastic wrap that’s currently being tested on hospital surfaces (light switches, monitors, handles) and as far as they can tell the technology has been quite successful in fending off germs.

Mantis Shrimps inspiring new DVD and CD technology

The mantis shrimps found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia are considered to have the most complex vision systems known to science. Whereas humans can only see in three colours, mantis shrimps can see in twelve and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light, light that vibrates in a single plane as it travels (just imagine attaching a string to a wall and shaking it up and down). Special light-sensitive cells in mantis shrimp eyes make it possible for mantis shrimps to convert linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa. Similar devices are also found in camera filters, CD players and DVD players but these man-made versions are far inferior to the mantis shrimp’s “biological tech”. Award-winning science writer, Ed Young, describes this rather expansive and complicated phenomenon most comprehensibly, if you would like to read more about it. Dr Nicholas Roberts, lead author of the paper published on Nature Photonics said: “It could help us make better optical devices in the future using liquid crystals that have been chemically engineered to mimic the properties of the cells in the mantis shrimp’s eye”.

Climbing up the Walls- Gecko-inspired robots

Though no one can deny that the idea of walking on walls is pretty darn cool, robot designer and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, Sangbae Kim, was so intrigued by the concept that he and his colleagues set out to build a climbing robot. Kim had already worked on the robot as a graduate student at Stanford. The scientists knew the robot’s feet should be sticky, however, creating a substance that would detach as easily as it would stick was more difficult then they imagined. But when Lewis and Clark College biologist, Kellar Autunm discovered that geckos use a phenomenon called directional adhesion. to stick to walls, Kim learned that “stickiness does not necessarily come from chemical composition; it can come from mechanical properties and geometry.”

Stickybot (the gecko inspired robot) has specially designed footpads that allow it to climb smooth surfaces. The pads of a gecko’s feet are covered with a forest of tiny hairs called setae, some of which are one-twentieth the width of a human hair. The setae, in turn, branch into hundreds of tiny smaller hairs called spatulae, which are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. These hairs cling to surfaces using tiny molecular interactions known as van der Waals forces. Collectively, the forces are strong enough to support the gecko’s weight as it scrambles up a vertical surface [MIT].

Cheetah-bot

Stickybot wasn’t the only of professor Sangbae Kim’s animal-inspired robotic designs. The cheetahbot is being developed in order to better understand animal mechanisms and replicate them in robots to achieve unprecedented levels of functionality and efficiency. The cheetahbot is built from a lightweight carbon-fiber-foam composite which is able to run at 70 mph without any fuss.

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Although most of SherWeb’s revenue comes from Hosted Exchange and Hosted CRM, web hosting remains a major segment in its offering. WebsiteSpark will definitely help differentiate SherWeb from its competitors.

Post from: Sherweb Blog

Updating your status with cryptic messages

sweet oh luscious life, celebrate your dreams while you are away. doesn’t it taste so sweet? like it’s growing on the trees
I’ll admit that sometimes cryptic messages can be quite poetic but it’s usually pretty obvious that they are intended for a particular person. Otherwise, you must find yourself terribly interesting and have a strong need for people to ask “Ooooooh, I wonder what that means.” It’s like including everyone to feel excluded.

Sending a HUGE mass private message so that whenever any one of the 200 people respond to it, you think you have new and exciting mail

I would say that nearly half of the messages I get are no longer aimed at me personally. I think others would agree that it is hugely disappointing and gnawingly frustrating to see you have a New Message in your inbox, only to find out you have yet again been the target of another group invite, cause or event that you want no part of.

Countdowns

“38 days until my wittle sweetiepie comes home !!!” (read: Aw-ful.)

Chain statuses asking you to post whatever it is in YOUR status to “spread the word”

Argh! I get these kinds of messages all the time, either from the aggressive hard-sellers, or the notorious do-gooders. Honestly, it truly is very sad that over a billion ants die each year from people stepping on them, but please, pretty please, stop monopolizing my News Feed with impractical ideals. I’m all for good causes, but when the same person continuously asks me to get involved, my kindness begins to wear thin and eventually I’ll just ignore them.

Pregnancy/Baby Picture Overload

I made the mistake of adding a girl I went to high school with even though we were never really friends. She was now married with a newborn on the way, but also seemed to think she was beginning a career as a pregnant model over FB. Until I realized that you could hide people from your News Feed I would be bombarded with pictures of her in negligees flaunting her big pregnant belly from over 400 different angles. (Don’t even get me started on the ultra-sounds!) When her son was finally born, it then became an incursion of baby pictures. Cute, but after 10, 20, 500 pictures, I got the point. The way I see it, if you’re going to be one of those people that adds everyone they’ve ever met, then your friends list likely includes a good three quarters of people who don’t really give a horse’s snot what your baby’s poop looks like.

Calling in sick for work yet making your status “Crazy Night… Still Bombed!”

If you’re going to lie, then for Pete’s sake, do it right, would you?

Posting awful pictures of people and tagging them

I think it’s pretty self-explanatory why this is bad form.

Adding work colleagues to your network but continuing to include the time you were naked in a hot tub filled with Jell-O

People never cease to amaze me with their utter disregard for who might see them on a medium as public as FB. If you’re going to add your work colleagues to your social network, then you should fix your settings so that only select people can see your racy content. An NDP candidate in Vancouver had to step down after several photos on his FB page were deemed inappropriate. One picture showed him clutching a woman’s breast, while another showed two people tugging at his underwear. Visitors didn’t even have to be signed up as his friend in order to view them.

Dissing your workplace/co-workers/boss whilst forgetting they are part of your network

I think this girl’s mistake says it all:

Carrying out personal conversations only you and another person are in on

A few inside jokes here and there, no problem whatsoever. It’s the grossly personal exchanges that are made public anyway which make me feel guilty for even looking. Again, an action which makes everyone feel inclusively excluded.

Posting important news (death, wedding, pregnancy) instead of calling people individually

You’d think it would be pretty straightforward- the more important the information, the more personal the venue used to disclose that information should be. How would you feel if you found out your sister was pregnant because you happened to check her FB status? Or that Granny passed away because Mom thought it would be more convenient to let everyone know through FB. Shouldn’t those closest to you find out before your acquaintances? If it’s going to be through FB, make it timely, be sure you’ve let the crucial people know first, and at the very least, send out a private message.

Application Overload

I don’t care what Chinese symbol you are, that you have completed Level 1 of cabbage mastery in Farm Ville, or that you’ve expanded your farm on Barn Buddy, if there is a button you can press not to share that information, you would do us all a favor by pressing it.

Breaking up over FB

Perhaps you recall the Daily Mail article about the British guy who divorced his wife over FB.  Lancashire resident Neil Brady decided to change his relationship status on FB to “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady”. Emma only found out she was single after getting a call from Denmark, from a friend asking her “how she was hanging in”. Breaking up is never easy, but using FB as a means of doing it, that is more than bad manners, my friend.

Adding people you’re not friends with

Not that I’m adverse to meeting new people, but call me old fashioned if I prefer getting to know someone in the flesh. I’ve had people from Greece to Guadalupe requesting to be my friend. I’ve discovered that I had been getting a person’s name wrong until actually seeing it spelled out when they tried to add me. I’ve even had someone ask me if I was on FB instead of asking for my number. I’m not sure what it is people need to prove by having a friends’ list of over 1,000 people (excluding those who use social sites for marketing). According to Barry Wellman, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, the average person has about 120 “friends” on Facebook. In real life, most people have an average of three very close friends and about 20 they would consider “pretty close to”. The fact that you’ll just add someone you don’t know in order to build up a number doesn’t make your “friendly” intentions seem very genuine.

Post from: Sherweb Blog

Imagine pulling up to a drive thru window at a computer store and taking a look at the menu. So many choices: powerbooks, netbooks, desktops, Mac, Windows, dual core, quad core, Microsoft Exchange, RAM, solid-state hard drives, iTunes, YouTube … and the list goes on and on and on!

You sit there in your car, considering the menu, pondering: Can it play the right games? Does it come in green? Sure, it’s cool… but can it do this or that? Would it just be a guilty pleasure? Too many calories? What would my friends think?

There are so many choices on the menu, but the prevailing stereotypes never leave the back of your mind. Windows does certain things really well, and Macs are not for serious business users… just for animators, musicians, and people who think they’re too cool for Microsoft.

Since just about everyone is, or has been, a Windows user, let’s talk a little about the ‘low fat’ portion of the menu. Let’s talk about Macs.

Just like Democrats, Republicans, the undecided, and the flavor-of-the-month club, there are diehard Mac fanatics, those who (like my mother) see the good in everything and everyone, the Mac-curious, and of course, the militant PC junkie. In the business world, I’d have to agree that Windows (that old workhorse) has usually been the favorite of the everyday data cruncher and preparer of documents, with those tried and true icons: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange, and their lesser known brothers: Sleepy, Dopey and Sneezy.

But who makes all of these products? Microsoft, of course! Sure, Microsoft has extended the olive branch a little, and produced ‘masterpieces’ like Office for Mac (included the infamous Entourage), but they always seem to not quite satisfy the average appetite. Let’s face it… if Microsoft made perfect products for Apple, then everyone (or at least many more) would change philosophies and cross the virtual floor. Apple, in the spirit of brotherhood, returned the favor with such snacks as iTunes and Safari for Windows, but I’m not sure that was a fair trade. Mac, of course, has iThis and iThat, but you really wouldn’t want to show up at a meeting and present your financial wizardry or propose a hostile takeover by showing people homemade slideshows of your kid’s 5th birthday party, complete with a soundtrack and cute captions (including Ken Burns style fade-ins), would you?

But, my fellow diners, to use a recently popularized ‘buzz word’, a change has come our way! Or perhaps a more appropriate word would be ‘Exchange’. Macs, thanks to two recent menu offerings (one from Seattle and the other from Silicon Valley) have made Apple more than just iTunes, iPods, iPhones, iMacs and MacBook Pros (or as considered by many, really big iPods). Yes, there’s more to Apple that just uber trendy gadgets and one billion tunes at a buck a piece. Mac users no longer have to settle for leftovers and can finally enjoy the Exchange experience in the dining room.

La soupe du jour comes from the kitchens of Mac itself: Snow Leopard. This most recent upgrade of the famous OS X Leopard has included a tasty little morsel bound to tempt the taste buds of the undecided and Mac curious: Mac Mail, iCal, and Address Book now work with Exchange! And quite well I might add. For a meager thirty buck upgrade, the Exchange experience can now be enjoyed using a genuine Mac product. And the setup couldn’t be simpler. Just create a new account, enter your email address and password, choose, Exchange and enter your outgoing and incoming mail server, and voila… you’ve got perfectly functional Exchange on your giant iPod! How cool is that? I’m not so sure that it will find your Public Folders, or that you can link it to SharePoint (that remains to be tested) but, if you’ve found Entourage to be too salty, the waiter has just offered you a low sodium alternative.

The second and potentially more tantalizing treat comes from the chefs at Microsoft: Entourage Web Services Edition. Gone are the days of disappointing meals that leave a slightly ‘less than full’ feeling in your belly. Microsoft Entourage Web Services Edition fills your plate with all the ingredients and functions you’ve been missing, and it’s pretty much at par with its big brother Outlook. There’s a little work required in the setup, but it won’t cost you anything. First, you have to get all the possible updates for your current version of Entourage 2008. If you don’t already have Entourage 2008, SherWeb users can follow this guide to get it. Then go to Macotopia or simply google ‘Entourage Web Services Edition’, download the new edition and install it. The setup is pretty easy too! Just follow this guide if you’re a ShebWeb user, and you’re in!

Pretty simple, wouldn’t you agree? Now those who prefer to stick with the low fat, sodium free side of the menu can finally have their cake and eat it, too, without the bloat or guilt!

If you’re still not satisfied with Entourage or Mac Mail, installing Windows on a Mac has never been easier. That way, you can pretend to be using Mac, which will always get you a second glance when you whip it out at happy hour, but deep down you’ll still know that you’re cheating on your diet!

So there you go. The menu has more choices than even before. And if, after all that, you’re still not happy, the choice is obvious. Go for the calories… get a PC!

by Stephen Pelley. A Level 2 Tech at SherWeb, Stephen supports Exchange (but prefers monogamy). He has been with the company since March 2009, and has been a Mac addict since his wife forced him to buy one in 1996 because she thought they were ‘cute’.

Post from: Sherweb Blog

How does it work?

E-memories act as a surrogate to our memories. The idea is that by storing our memories into a computer, we “free up” precious brain space to let in new thoughts and ideas. Bell and Gemmell argue that soon everybody will have a vast digital archive that will become an extension of the brain.

For over a decade, Bell has been storing his e-memories in MyLifeBits, a system designed to store just about everything that can be captured; songs, books, notes, photos… Carrying around video equipment, an audio recorder, an arm-strap that logs his bio-metrics, and a SenseCam; (a small digital camera worn around the neck which takes photographs of surroundings every 5-30 seconds), Bell records his telephone conversations, saves restaurant receipts, makes PDF files out of every Web page he views; he has also scanned all his photos, letters and any other memorabilia. But does this really scream trend all of humankind would be inclined to follow?

Invention For Egomaniacs Seeking Immortality?

How we will be remembered, the legacies we leave behind, we all ponder it at some point and soon, if the Total Recall Revolution is really underway, we’ll be able to leave a thorough and accurate story trail behind us. But who exactly has the time, will, patience and dedication to capture and archive their every action? The obsessive compulsive’s utopia doesn’t seem cut out for everyone. However, the human quest for purpose and meaning would suggest that there is an element of wanting to be remembered and a way we’d like to shape that memory. If e-memories are like upgraded diaries, e-memories present a possibility of immortality in the stories we leave behind. Imagine being able to know and access your great grandparents’ entire history. Or how this could revolutionize the course of history all together. With e-memories, all data, notes and correspondences can be preserved and original source material can be accessed. This could have a tremendous impact on how we record history and its accuracy. On the flipside, it could be argued that because people know they are being recorded they will start acting a part rather than being their “regular” selves. But couldn’t this also be a means of diminishing crime?

Computer, what was my favorite toy growing up?

Creating such a dependent relationship with our computers is a bit of a frightful thought, especially when it comes to something as precious as our memories. The more developed SenseCams get, the more natural it will become to depend on them to record what is important to us. Conversations, heart rates, body heat, GPS traces, a legitimate fear is that this type of technology will cause us to be less dependent on our brains for accessing information. If the brain doesn’t exercise and hands over all its tasks to the computer, computers won’t be the extension of us but rather us the extension of computers. But look at what people said when the Internet first came out. Too much information for people to process would lead to total chaos. But humans get better at organizing information. And couldn’t it also be argued that remembering something is easier when we memorize it. Plugging in a memory and making it an e-memory is essentially three different ways to repeat and remember a certain moment. The processes of recording, transposing and being able to easily retrieve a memory with the help of a computer, could actually make our brains exercise in a more formulated way. The more you memorize, the more room for memory there is in your brain. That’s why actors can store and remember so many lines.

Do I Really Want To Remember EVERYTHING?

There are some obvious concerns about storing your most personal information in one easy-to-use, searchable database. Some of the firsts that come to mind are bugs in the system or the risk that it crashes and all your memories get erased. What if your memories get hacked? Stolen? Tampered? What about memories that our brain chooses to forget? Sometimes we experience unpleasant or traumatic events that the brain must edit in order to move past it and go forward.

We record events, write in diaries, take pictures of moments we don’t want to forget, blog our opinions. Still it is us selecting the moments we wish to remember and there may be a reason for that. For those who haven’t quite yet swallowed the idea of e-memories, the chances of it branching out rapidly into the mainstream aren’t likely just yet. At this stage of the technology, e-memories will be much more useful to those carrying out extensive research and maybe a handful of celebrities trying to stay ahead of the times. Nevertheless, research into e-memories will continue and it’s not  waiting for anyone’s approval to go forward.

Post from: Sherweb Blog

Now, once you decide to be a photographer, what’s next? How do you get your work known?

Following these few steps will have you well on your way to a successful photography business.

1. Build a business plan

First, you need to decide on a business plan. That is, what kind of photos will you take? Will you limit yourself to only taking pictures of nature, objects, landscapes, or people? Do you want to specialize or have a wider portfolio? What kind of pictures do you wish to take? Black & white, color, sepia, or something completely new and different. Will you digitally alter your photos to make them more artistic with fancy effects or will they stay as close as possible to the original?

2. Buy a domain name

Next, you will want to sign up for and purchase a domain name. You can get a domain name from any major search engine for a reasonable price. Make sure the domain name you choose is one that will represent you and your artistic vision.

3. Start taking pictures

Once you’ve purchased your domain name, start taking pictures, a LOT of pictures. Take a variety of them to showcase your different skills in as many styles as possible. Be sure to date, describe, and file the photos so you know their context and details for later referral.

4. Participate in contests

Begin running searches on the internet for any photography contests presented by magazines and newspapers. In this technical age, they don’t even need to be local as uploading pictures can be done from anywhere to anyone. These contests are a great way to take advantage of free advertising if you win. You might even make money if there’s a prize!

5. Showcase your work

Make sure to display your pictures on your website in a fashion that they don’t get lost in a flood of content. Properly building your site is very important, as your potential clients will be looking for your fingerprint. Having a bad site will taint your credibility, even if your pictures are works of art. Make sure to have it ready before launching it as a “site under construction” makes a very bad first impression.

6. Build a portfolio

Lastly, print your photos using a digital camera printer. If you don’t have one, any local photography studio will be happy to do this for you for a fee. Choose a sampling of various photos to showcase your photographic talents is a very good idea to make your clients want more of their sessions with you. Creating an album or a portfolio is a way to allure clients into taking a 2nd or 3rd session with you. You may also present a sampling of your work on the multitude of social sites on the internet. This is also a good way to reach a number of clients that you would never have reached otherwise.

In the end, with dedication, practice and a willingness to try new things, you will be well on your way to making your hobby a flourishing one!

by Michel Dubuc. A Level 2 Tech at SherWeb, Michel supports Exchange and CRM clients. He has been with the company since February 2008.

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Ubuntu:

The name of this Linux distribution translates as “humanity towards others.” Initially released in 2004 by Canonical Ltd. and the Ubuntu Foundation, the focus of Ubuntu was usability, accessibility and internationalization. The first publicly released version of the operating system, version 4.10 or Warty Warthog, was functional, but not exactly pretty. New versions of the operating system have come out twice every year since Warty’s release and are always named after some sort of animal.

Most credit Ubuntu 7.10 or Gutsy Gibbon, released in 2007, with the operating system’s real take off. Sleek, integrated and user-friendly, Gibbon polished Ubuntu for the average desktop adopting many of the conventions that have made the Mac operating systems so successful—good graphics, good fonts and an intuitive interface.

Most important to the rising popularity of this distribution is the fact that the system requirements it needs to run are minimal. On a laptop or desktop the newest version of Ubuntu, Jaunty Jackalope, requires a 300MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 4GB hard drive capacity. New versions of the established operating systems require quite a bit more from hardware: Windows 7 requires a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM; Mac Snow Leopard needs an 867 MHz processor, 1GB of RAM. (These are the bare minimums you need to run the software. If you want to run them without lag, you’ll need faster systems than that) A better system can never hurt but Gibbon and its successors can run on the bare minimum.

What has that got to do with anything, you ask? Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are getting praise everyday for being bigger and better. Why is the little guy packing such a punch?

The Netbook:

Netbooks made their début around the same time gibbons were getting gutsy. Gaining popularity in 2007, these tiny computers—also referred to as mini-notebooks or subnotebooks—were conceived to be low-weight, low-cost and portable. They catered to people who wanted wander around town using the increasingly ubiquitous Wi-Fi to hop on the Internet at a café or use simple word processing software to take notes in classes or meetings. They were designed to be companion devices to the computers and laptops that people already owned.

The downside: netbooks typically come with 7-10 inch screens, the RAM can vary anywhere from 1GB down to 256 MB, and the price tends to go up with the processing speed.

As of January 2009, 90 per cent of the netbooks shipped came equipped with the Windows operating system but some of the most popular netbooks—Dell Inspiron Mini 10v, Toshiba NB100, Acer Aspire One, ASUS Eee PC—give the buyer the choice of a Linux operating system.

Linux’s key strength is its ability to adapt. New versions of Ubuntu come out every six or so months and the developers at Canonical haven’t been ignoring the netbook invasion. Ubuntu now offers Netbook Remix, specifically designed to function more efficiently on the smaller netbook screens and to better utilize the Intel Atom processor found in the top selling brands Acer and ASUS—as well as others. Canonical actually worked with Intel while creating its software with the aim of supporting the chip (and to gain favour with Intel and the netbook manufacturers, no doubt).

Linux’s connection with netbooks has rocketed it into visibility.

The Economy:

Needless to say, with the economy in the state it’s in, many people are opting to economize. So what do you do when you can’t afford a laptop but can’t take your desktop with you? You buy a netbook. And people have been buying them in droves. In 2008 14.6 million netbooks were shipped. So far in 2009, the shipments of netbooks have gone up by 40 per cent.

The tiny computers can go for as little as $99 USD (though this usually entails signing up for some sort of data plan) but usually cost between $300 and $700 USD. As mentioned earlier, as the quality of the netbook you’re buying goes up, so does the price.

The less expensive models usually come with slower processors and less RAM, conditions that make Linux an ideal operating system.

As people choose the more affordable options like the cheaper netbooks, technology that’s not great but good enough to get the job done, larger swaths of the population are being exposed to Linux software, and the operating system gains in popularity.

The Ubuntu distribution and all of the software associated with Linux are also completely free for anyone who wants to download them, making a Linux-based system ideal for someone who wants to upgrade, but can’t afford licensed products, or someone who just wants to keep their older, slower system running instead of buying a new one.

The Community:

The open source community is probably the most consistent factor in the rise of Linux. The programmers and promoters of Linux-based software are vigilant in fixing and improving the products they create quickly. Allowing users to change and create software also allows Linux to respond to the rapid technological changes we face today. This gives Linux products a versatility that some of their competitors lack— Linux has adapted to almost all of the hardware we’ve thrown at it: netbooks, phones, GPSes. The open source community has a mission, a direction and will support the open source alternative, even if the established licensed software holds an advantage. This support allowed Linux to flourish in relative public obscurity for years, and has helped it emerge now as a powerful competitor.

Despite Linux/Unix server options losing market share to Microsoft server products, their desktop software is continuously gaining ground.

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GIMPshop instead of Photoshop

GIMPshop is a hacked version of an old open source favourite GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP. GIMP let people do pretty much everything that Adobe Photoshop could do without having to buy the expensive software ($700 USD to buy the new Photoshop CS4).

The only problem, Adobe users couldn’t get used to the GIMP interface. Many people were used to the look and feel of Photoshop. Then along came Scott Moschella. Moschella took the GIMP code and matched it to the interface of Photoshop, thus GIMPshop was born.

This open source program has a huge list of features, works on the major platforms, and gives users the option of customizing the software to what works best for them.

Unfortunately, GIMPshop doesn’t support PS plugins, but usually has an alternative one for most of your needs.

Cinelerra not Final Cut Pro

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to buy a good quality video camera these days, but you do need quality video editing software to fine polish the finished product. Cinelerra is highly advanced professional video editing software, created by Heroine Virtual Ltd.

This fantastically free program doesn’t put a cap on the image resolution of the video you’re editing (you can work in HD), contains a huge list of audio and video effects, features non-destructive editing, gives you unlimited tracks to edit on, has context sensitive menus, headroom extended meters and lets you preview effects in real time (That’s right, no more time wasted waiting for something to render just to see if you like it). You can edit like the professionals without having to pay out ($1000 USD for Final Cut Pro).

But for all its pros, this program does have its cons. This powerhouse only operates on Linux and only comes as source codes. You’ll need to know computers to use it. The original program doesn’t offer community based development and comes with no support from the developers.

Fortunately, if you’re worried about not being computer savvy enough to hack it on your own; you can check out Cinelerra-CV, an online community dedicated to debugging and providing support for the original Cinelerra program.

Go with Audacity When You Can’t Afford Pro Tools

If you’re editing music or cutting audio together, Audacity provides the basics and provides them reliably. Audacity definitely isn’t on par with Pro Tools, but it’s a great alternative for people just starting out. It allows you to record live audio, digitize tapes and records, change the speed or pitch of whatever you’re recording and edit a wide variety of file types—MP3s, WAV, AIFF or Ogg Vorbis. Audacity has a number of useful audio effects you can use and features non-destructive, multi-track editing.

The interface is friendly and easy to use, it’s compatible with the big three operating systems, the software is extremely stable and it’s absolutely free. You can’t lose. You won’t get all of the bells and whistles you’d get with a licensed, professional grade program, but Audacity should be able to give you what you’ll need and get you on your way.

Quit Quark and go with Scribus

If you’re starting any kind of business, you can’t get away from having to do a certain amount of graphic design: letter head, promotional posters, maybe album covers. This could mean that you’ll have to hire a graphic designer or, if you think you can pull off the design yourself, shell out for a desk top publishing program like QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign. Graphic designers cost and conventional desktop publishers can run into the hundreds ($800 USD for QuarkXpress and $700 USD for Adobe InDesign), and drain your cash reserves.

Scribus offers new businesses or fledgling designers a chance to conserve their money while pursuing their careers. It runs on all of the major operating systems, supports most image formats and can create scalable vector graphics.

The only major downside is that Scribus can’t create or read any of the traditional file formats, so you’ll have to do everything within the Scribus program.

Swap Microsoft Word for OpenOffice

Microsoft Word is a must for computer users as it often comes installed on new windows based computers. But if you don’t already have Word and want it, you’ll have to buy the entire Office Suite. The cheapest suite on the market right now is Microsoft Home and Student 2007, with a price tag of around $150—a lot of money to lay down for users on a budget.

Luckily, in the open source world we live in, you have options. Open Office 2.0 was released in 2005 with the aim to provide all the same tools Microsoft Office offers.
The Open Office layout and feel is very similar to MS Office with an added bonus it can open a variety of file types including .doc and .docx. Open Office also works on most of the major platforms: Windows, MacOS and Linux. Earlier versions of this software did have bugs, but one of the advantages of open source software is that many of the glitches are patched quickly—feature enhancements and bug fixes are released every few months.

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This powerful tool allows you to perform a very large scope of operations on a user’s Exchange account. For example, custom applications can send emails and scan a user’s mailbox for new mail. They can even reschedule calendar items and update tasks. All these operations are performed for a user account directly on the Exchange Server.

It can be very useful for an organization that wishes to standardize or automate communications through email. Each email can be analyzed and edited before it is sent. Special routines can be run when the user deletes or creates objects in Outlook. One may want to hook custom archiving software to their mailbox or validate the content of outgoing emails. These scenarios and plenty others can be implemented through EWS. Many organizations have implemented EWS within Outlook plug-ins, but it can be part of any application since it doesn’t rely on Outlook to function.

Another important aspect is the fact that EWS is platform independent. That’s right! You can access the same data from your Linux box. This widens the possibilities for non-Windows clients. (Hmmm, think of cell phones?)

Of course, all these functionalities are available to SherWeb’s clients as EWS is fully enabled for all our users of Hosted Exchange.

Developing applications using the Exchange Web Services tool requires basic web services programming skills. For those who don’t have these skills, consider that Exchange 2010 will push EWS even further. Learning it now will likely benefit your organization in the future. Microsoft provides a helpful starter’s guide as reference.

We would like to know how you are leveraging EWS in your organization. Please share your success, or failure, stories!

by Patrick Malouin. A software developer at SherWeb, Patrick works mainly on service provisioning and in R&D. He has been with the company since February 2009.

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