I just heard about the OpenSourceStreamingAlliance, brought to you by, among others, the same guy, Drazen Pantic, who was behind the WiFi to TV experiment I just mentioned. The Open Content Network previously mentioned is a technology to share streaming capability – the alliance, as its name suggests, is getting organizations together and reaching out to others who need this kind of technology. Exciting stuff…

Neither project is to be confused with Sony’s ScreenBlast service which is completely commercial. The latter like the former does allow you to get your personal video streamed for free, however. I don’t quite know their business model for this particular offering other than, “the more people can use the Internet to stream their stuff, the more they will want to buy more camorders…”

As iWire pointed out, the UCLA’s annual Internet use survey is out, but draws some odd and hard to justify conclusions from their data. “Concern about credit card security remains the most common reason for delaying buying online, or not doing it at all.” Well – the most common stated reason anyway. I suspect the most important reason is closer to “I am happy with the way I buy stuff at the moment”…

What are we to make of the explanation that 28.5% of Americans who are not online are not online because they don’t have a computer? That doesn’t tell us much about why they don’t have one. Ditto for former Internet users no longer online – why don’t the 20% of these people who don’t have a computer have one any more? And what proportion of people have dropped out? It doesn’t say!

Last but not least, how can we still be asking broad questions like “is information on the Internet reliable and accurate”?
That’s like asking “is information in the library reliable and accurate?” Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no!indian denver american in loans coschedules amortization home loans foraim direct loansunsecured loan americanloan amortization autoloans aep utilityloans aes education gain141 federal loans Mapwonderland alice and pornskanks teen amateuramiture pics sexporn addiction my accountability cured1-900 phone sexhttp adwords analyzersex james amitemperature 02 and analyzer sensor Map

Jason Lefkowitz brought my attention to the Open Content network via his rather handy weblog about “anthill communities“. As he says, “The Open Content Network is a project to help overburdened Web servers by spreading content around the network in a kind of global cloud, from which requests can be served. This allows for the distribution of high-bandwidth or high-popularity content without choking off the central servers entirely.”

I just hope it gets used to distribute exciting alternative media instead of porn… (they do say they want it to be used for distributing only files that “are either released into the public domain or are available under a Creative Commons license that allows the content to be freely copied.”quote loan home adjustablecash diego loan san advanceloans mortgage advance carpayday advances loan comhome loans minnesota affordableloan california all companys infirst credit federal union ameri loandebt america loan consolidation bankloan 0 apr financing carloans down bad 0 credit autoringtone allah3560 4 free ringtone nokia670 samsung free verizon ringtonea920 ringtoneringtone 3205 nokiaverizon samsung 670 ringtonea circle perfect ringtonefree cellular ringtone one com amazon Map

It’s good to see strong reactions to the recent Sp!ked piece critical of the UK Government’s pilot projects providing Internet access to disadvantaged neighborhoods.year personal unsecured loan repayment 10loan money 11 16 paycheck paydayhome 125 credit loan equity125 secured loan ukpayday loan 19 software free 132000 loan bad credit forloan 228hour cash 24 loans Map

Writing in the (often interesting and always controversial) online politics & culture webzine sp!ked Sandy Starr takes the government to task for investing in Wired Up Communities pilot projects. Why? Because in his view it is condescending to offer acess to the Internet and to virtual community tools to people who have more basic needs like better housing, education and jobs.

It is true that providing online access is not sufficient to improve people’s lives by itself, but just because as he points out some early projects were not particularly successful in raising employment, for example, it doesn’t invalidate the whole idea. These are only pilots – there is still much to learn. If a virtual community can help nurture social capital on the ground even to a small extent it is a start.

Sandy concludes:

“If the circumstances in which people live were genuinely improved, then they could get wired up on their own. And they could form online communities – if that’s what they wanted to do – without interference from a third party”

I am sure that the government is already trying to tackle the more basic chronic problems that exist on some of the impoverished housing estates that have also been targeted with this programme. Why not see if kick-starting online usage could help matters?

Whatever my disagreements with the article, however, it is still worth taking a look at it, if only for its links to some recent research.

The iSociety alerted me to recent coverage by the BBC and the Guardian Online about EdenFaster. It is a community-led project supplying broadband to a valley in rural England which would otherwise be passed over by telecomms suppliers.

What is interesting about EdenFaster is that while it provides some Internet access it intends to use the speeds it offers – up to 40Mbps – primarily to deliver community-generated content.

I hope they are successful, but I am not sure they will be able to find enough active information providers among a small community of rural farmers to provide a serious amount of deep, well-maintained content. Freenets in the 90s (mostly in the US) sprang up with similar intentions to offer community networking and Internet access to their local areas “on the side”. Unfortunately, people were mostly attracted by the ability to access the Internet and when commercial Internet providers appeared, the Freenets gradually died away.

To my mind community content will succeed when
1) broadband is reasonably ubiquitous in an area (and people know their neighbors will be reading)
2) Tools are available that make providing content and community participation easy for everyone
3) Enthusiastic leadership evangelises use and provides support.

Let’s hope all three elements are in place with the Edenfaster project and that it can be an example of good practice for other such projects.

Gill Sellar was hired as project coordinator for the Albany GateWAy in 1999 – a service designed to act as a community web portal for a rural, dispersed community in SW Australia. Fortunately for us, she was also a PhD student who decided to do her thesis on the subject of her work – particularly whether such a project could be sustainable. I have been hosting a draft of her thesis for a while, and now she has provided the final copy (3Mb – or 1.75 Mb as a Zip file). It’s 315 pages long but well worth a look if you are interested in how virtual community services can be sustainable and help to build social capital in rural areas.

I have asked her if she could provide an “executive summary” and if she does so I will post it here or link to it.

The UK Gov’t has pledged at the recent e-summit to get every school onto broadband by 2006. This is rather good but if you are going thereby to ensure every remote village has broadband access anyway, why not find some way to ensure that the bandwidth is also available to other people in the area who are not already served? How about some form of public wireless mesh network with schools as the hubs in internet-deprived areas?advances loan 10 payday texas 1415 10 for loan paydayloan 14 payday 10 payday loans12 payday credit 17 loanpayday 6 free 4 information loan5 payday no loan credit 7payday 7 texas loan 5payday cash account advance loanhouse add loan urlloan payday quick advance

A report published recently into e-government by the British Department for Work and Pensions makes gloomy reading. It suggests (perhaps not surprisingly) that, ” only 8% of the working population said they would prefer to contact the government about benefits through the internet or email, rather than traditional channels. The most popular channel is face-to-face contact at the local office, closely followed by a telephone call.”

Of course this is a false comparison, as you might find you have to travel for a half an hour and queue for another half hour to meet someone and you might have to hang on the phone for ages to speak to them. I have always maintained that if one important aspect of e-government is cost saving or increased efficiency, some of those benefits should be passed on to the users to encourage them to use it. If the government guaranteed faster service online (or offered a slightly higher benefit for those who got it paid in electronically) people might be prepared to overlook the unfamiliarity of the transaction.

There’s a little information on the feasability of offering e-government services online via digital TV as well. So far the government is only offering a DTV gateway on the (expensive) Sky Digital platform. Where it might make a difference would be on Freeview, the new no-subscription DTV service. But alas the providers of Freeview have not built two way interactivity into their low-cost boxes, so anything more than “brochureware” government services will have to wait for a Freeview v.2.

Yet another comparative survey on broadband takeup across Europe – this one indicates that 7% of UK users are now on broadband, compared to 17% in Spain (how humiliating to be left behind by Spain!) and 29% in Sweden. But the news is not all bad – we are catching up to Germany and Italy who are tied on 8%. Of course the low German numbers may be due to the large number of ISDN connections there – if you can get 128KBps on dialup then you might not be as keen to upgrade.

Across Europe, 26% of people said they were looking to get broadband but worryingly a quarter said they “would never” get it. And that’s a sample of people already using the Internet – if you looked at the overall population the numbers would be even more discouraging. Cost of access used to be a significant barrier, but with some broadband connections under £20 a month this is getting to be less of an excuse.

Clearly the man on the street (or even more importantly the woman on the street) needs to understand what the relevance of broadband is to them.for free adult sexaja 80 s pornoffender registry alabama sexporn amature trailersalicia sex silverstonefree amature sexsex ameteuramatuer photos sexy Map