internet

It's been an uphill battle this week with our internet service provider, who has been doing maintenance in this area resulting in major outages for Acorn's Chambana.net datacenter, along with all of the other network services in the building. Between me and my supervisor we've probably spent about 4-5 hours on hold with tech support over the last couple days. …read more

For Teaching Teachers/Students About the Web http://lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college... ---Educational resources available online. A great thing to show to teachers as something that can be integrated into their lesson plans. http://www.googleguide.com/ ---How to use Google. Its more than just finding out stuff about Paris Hilton. A good place to start to understand how to use Google better in preparation for explaining to teachers or students how to do so. …read more

So I just ran across an interesting site, the Librarian's Internet Index. As the name suggests, it is an index of websites organized into categories and then subtopics. Each area contains links and short descriptions of relevant, useful websites. The sites listed have actually been reviewed by librarians and recommended as containing quality information. These aren't just random Google search results. Seems like this could be a useful research tool, especially for folks working with young people in/outside of schools. The site also offers a "New this Week" email newsletter. Opening of the Oct. 26 newsletter: "This week grow what you know with websites about elections, Halloween festivities, iron ore, invisibility cloaks, federal spending, spider bites, paper cranes, prisons in the UK, and more. Bon appetit from librarians Karen, Wendy, Jennifer, Maria, and Charlotte." …read more

Forgot to mention - DId anyone catch Moyers on America last week on PBS? It was called "The Net at Risk", very informative. Starts off with what the phone and cable companies promised to do in the 90s with the fiber optic networks. Then proceeds into the net neutrality issue and a whole slew of metaphors to describe the internet and what the phone/cable companies / congress / fcc may do. Watch for free online! http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html

  CUWiN is participating in One Web Day (http://www.onewebday.com), a celebration of the openness and freedom of the Internet and how it has become a major part of our lives. On Friday, September 22, CUWiN will join other community network organizations around the world in celebration and education. CUWiN will be hosting an open house were people can become familar us, what we do, and community wireless network. We will also be designating part of our office space and allowing the use of our LAN for gaming (BYOG -- Bring Your Own Games). The organizers of One Web Day are encouraging people to document their celebration by uploading photos from the day the Flickr, and tagging them with onewebday. …read more

This morning a co-worker placed an article from the July 2006 edition of Communications Engineering and Design Magazine entitled "Net neutrality legislation--my take on it" by Jeffrey Krauss, President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy. Net Neutrality is an important issue; pending legislation and changing business practices have the potential to dramatically change how we use the Internet. Below I have responded to some of the points Mr. Krauss brought up in the article. "There's an enormous coalition supporting net neutrality, hundreds of individuals and organizations and companies that I have never heard of. But if you follow the money, you find that it's really Google, Amazon.com, eBay and Yahoo! that are behind this campaign." Yes, there is wide support for Net Neutrality and for good reason. I run several small websites (and am known to browse the web myself), and am happy that Google, Amazon.com, et al are behind the campaign and helping to pay for it. I don't have the money or resources to fight for Net Neutrality as well as they can, so I'm really glad that …read more