Gizmoz look at me dance!

Just playing around with a new widget! Just love new technology! Needless to say I can't remember when I registered, think it was an option is Skype or one of the IM's but hey I can dance and look cool at the same time. Thank god for the virtual world, cause don't think I look cool when I dance in the real one >:¬}

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

I love the internet and where it can bring you.

When I first got connected over (gulp!) 11 years ago (yes it did exist back in the stone age) most people had no idea what it was, back then there were only a few million pages. God I could have surfed it in an afternoon >:¬}.
Now with billions of pages there is not enough in a lifetime. I know between my blog and the websites my company creates (have to do a new one for it) at FBI we are adding at least a hundred pages a day between all the clients and their CMS (content management systems).

But the old fashioned browsing still can't beat finding new and cool sites. I am trying to spend atleast a few hours a week just browsing to see what I can find, cool sites, interesting items, or whatever. What I like, I will now StumbleUpon Page, http://del.icio.us/alexgogan it or Digg it. But the great thing is sometimes in Blogs or sites you read you find an interesting post, comment or link an want to find out some more. A few days a go I was reading (love the blog) As she says herself she is... Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever Observations and commentary by a post-modern neo-feminist libertarian cyberpunk on society, culture, politics and whatever. But from there she brought me to AdSense Tracker - A blog about blogging, the blogosphere, Web 2.0 and anything else I decide to write about.. Both of these sites are now my daily reading (well when they post something at least). AdSense Tracker because she has some excellent hints, tips advice and links to other relevant sites on blogging, and promotions and you know that she is not writing these posts with a prior agenda to earn money from clicks, downloading ebooks or whatever (while I am on the subject click on of the links and earn me some money but subscribe to my feed first
>:¬}.

But in reading her blog and a few others I have increased visits here 100% in the last week, and I know if I had more time I would be able to do so much more (maybe Christmas 2018 I will get the time). But I noticed an interesting site from Adsense Tracker called Fechr where they promise decent free traffic over 24 hours. Now I will take a look at this and see what happens, an update this post if there is anything interesting in the traffic. Hope so though, for me and for them, cause it then proves their business model.. hell if it works for me it must work for many other more deserving sites >:¬}


Seed Newsvine

Where the Internet has been and where is it going, part one.

I have been involved as a user and as a creator of Internet (in its modern form) services since 1996. Over the last 11 years I have seen many advancements in the technologies used, services and applications. So I thought I would share some of them here.

VOIP

I have used Voip services since 1996, yes believe it or not it has been around that long and a little bit longer. Back then in the dark ages I used to use Net2phone, Freetel (not to sure if this is still around, link is to an archive site) PowWow (brilliant, again link to archive site), Net Meeting and a few others. These I ran with windows 95 on a 28k modem to 36k modem and when duplex modems came out I was flying! The quality of these services back then were not too bad, (except two people talking at once was a problem). But then everyone loved to listen to me anyway >:¬}. The only paid for service then was Net2phone and it allowed me to call any number, whilst the others were P2P. Things have the appearance that they have come along by leaps and bounds. But remembering back to those halcyon days to be honest the technology was just as good, and the features on the software was so much better.

Actually with Net2phone I was hired by Cablelink in Dublin(more about CableLink and this in Wikipedia in the late 90's to turn them into an ISP and we provided cable broadband services to almost 30% of the network in Dublin during a commerical trial. We dialed the New York speaking clock over the Internet much to the amazement of the assembled press, at the press launch.

I will go more into the history of IM's in a later post, when with PowWow you would be able to whiteboard, type and talk conference call to several people and then take over the browser of the person you were talking to and bring them surfing with you... loved it, bloody VC's and their dotcom created craze ended this and so many other amazing app's long before their time. With the feeding frenzy for money.

Search

Ok, Search has stayed fairly static for the last 8 or nine years since the advent of Google, when they came along and kicked everyone's asses into Orbit. When they came out I used to use Meta Crawler as this searched the search engines. Before that it was AltaVista (link again is to the archive). Back then Alta Vista was the Google of its day because all Yahoo was a listings directory and it took MONTHS to get listed. You could never really find what you were looking for with these guys, but then in 1998 along came Google (take a look at how Google looked back in October 1998). I remember then I used to be able to email a human in there can get my sites listed quickly it was great, hell he even answered back! But now we have some new and exciting new entrants into the world of search, there is over 100 new search companies all viewing to be the next big thing, with Governments all over the world funding some of them (Japan, China, Russia, France, Germany etc.,).

But for now Google is still king, but here is a few new ones that I have played with and to be honest I like a lot. The next killer app they think that is coming is Visual Search and here are the main entrants into that market.

Quintura
This one works by showing you the results on the right and related keywords on the left a bit like the way Tags work now, so for the NewBe's out there who only know Web 2.0 then they will feel at home with this. Now at the moment they are more of a display results rather than a search engine as they are using Yahoo's search but like all new entrants it is only a matter of time. But it is worth using mainly for the related "Tags" on the left you may just find what your looking for faster and easier then in Google.

Kartoo
This is another visual search, I first came across this in 2002 and I loved it but it was a bit clunky. But now its a slick piece of work and an excellent piece of searching and visual technology.

Zuula
This reminds me of MetaCrawler of old, this was the meta search engine's search engine. In that it would search a number of different search engines and directories at once. Now with so many conflicting search results coming up it is handy to be able to click a tab and see the results of another search engine.

Gigablast
This is a standard search site but I must admit I have found pages in here that dropped off from Google, which for been No.1 is not good. What made Google great years ago is now I think their major downfall (more later).

I also did a simple search for the key words (not in quotes) Alex Gogan Morgan Llywelyn in the above engines plus two more and the results were:

1. Google - Not Found
2. Yahoo - Found
3. Gigablast - Not Found
   
4. Quintura - Found (but uses Yahoo so
5. Zuula - Found
6. Kartoo - Found
   

This is actually very bad for Google because here is the page with the term Alex Gogan Morgan Llywelyn. Ok I realise that this post is going to get spidered and then Google will list it eventually, but they have not for a few years now.

OK it was a vanity search but I am a vain and modest person, but did it to prove a point with Google, that over the next year or so, if Google don't get their act together in search again I think they will be in trouble. Maybe that is why they want to buy a wireless license in the states and also with Android mobile OS control the handsets. If they control free wireless, free mobile OS then they control the access so this could be their future money maker. But they still need search as they killed off the competition in less then a year when they were much more intrenched. Who's to say that Gigablast, or Kartoo or one of the others come along written by to shaggy haired guys/gals and take them out.

One more point of mention there is another interesting piece of software that you might like to try. I have played with it now for awhile and I LOVE IT, its called Space Time with 3D search. It really is something to download and play with as it is an amazing piece of kit.

Some screen shots

If man made global warming is a myth does it really matter?

There has been thousands, no hundreds of thousands of pages written on global warming, its effects and how it is going to damage and destroy life as we know it. Depending on your point of view man is 100% to blame for the current crisis, or man is not to blame, but it is a normal circular pattern of the global climate for the last number of eons.

Now I do not know which side is right, personally I think both are right and both are wrong. There is not enough data to say (this may surprise you that I am saying this) that man is to blame, but neither is there enough to say that he isn't. What is REAL IS THAT IT IS HAPPENING, and we can actually effect the results and the actual damages to ourselves and our planet.

From my research albeit done from a layman's point of view (but I would like to think an informed and open minded stance) from man been 100% to blame for the current situation to I would say anywhere between 30-50% to blame. Over the last few years research has come about that has led to some interesting facts, that were once theory.

1. Magnetosphere - This is an area that surrounds the planet that in essence protects us from the deadly solar winds that bombard us constantly, and which when the sun goes into its heavy cycle of flares protects us from becoming like Mars. DEAD! For more detailed information on the Magnetosphere and what it is, go to the boys in Nasa they seem to know a bit about space! This image was taken from the National Geophysical Data Center on the pages concerning Geomagnetism. Now you may be wondering why I am mentioning this in an article about Global Warming. Well its because this protects the Earth and its weakening.... Oh no not another thing we have damaged, well I don't think we have anything to do with this, but it is regular every couple of hundred thousand years it gets weaker and lets more of the harmful rays of the sun in.... we get hotter. Now for the last few hundred years it has gotten markedly weaker, this also happened to coincide with the start of the Industrial Revolution and our exponential growth. The weakening is a part of nature and in essence it is a way for the system to reset itself. Now once it goes and resets itself it will be back to almost near full strength but the fact it is weaker now than it has been for the last few tens of thousands of years and lets more and more of the Suns rays in will in effect increase the effect of Global Warming. One of the nice things when it goes is we will have much more Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights all over the planet. But it will heat us up even more, and with Mans own contribution in the over production of Methane, Carbon Monoxide and Dioxide it doesn't help. Another weird effect is that the magnetic polls reverse, in that North becomes South and vice a versa. Here is a chart on the growth of the number of posts on Magnetosphere English posts that contain Magnetosphere per day for the last 30 days. Also from 2010-through to 2016 there will be a series of major Solar flares which will hit us, when the Magnetosphere is at its weakest. Now this coinciding with an expected increase in Greenhouse Gas emissions and further warming could cause some serious damage to the environment. But I am just a layman what do I know.
   
   
   Get your own chart!

1. Global Dimming - Now I wrote about this in a previous post on the Effects of Global Dimming produced by the BBC and Horizon team. As stated here an what they discovered is that the effects o Global Dimming in fact actually reduced the Global Warming effect on the planet. But not any more... we kind of cured Global Dimming (which was a major contributor to Bob Geldof making a come back and becoming "sir" because o the World Aid). Global Dimming is (taken from NERC - National Environment Research Council) airborne particles in the atmosphere, released since the start of the industrial revolution, mean less sunlight reaches the planet's surface. These small particles reflect the sun's heat back out to space - global dimming. Remember the whole in the ozone layer?? That was created by all those nasty CFC's (Chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant) these were found in fridges, hairspray etc. well we kind of got rid of them and then this reduced the actual overall effect of Global Dimming. This then had a direct result in letting more of the Suns rays hit us and stay in the atmosphere and heat us up more because there is more Greenhouse Gases now. English posts that contain Global Dimming per day for the last 30 days.
   
   Get your own chart!

There is not need for me to go into any further of mans direct affects on the Environment as these are already well documented. But to be honest with you we really have to make a greater effort in curbing or waste into landfill, recyle more, use less power and more public transport. I know I am one to speak I have done in the last year over 100,000 air miles but I am trying to off set this by almost recycling everything even down to my wormary for organic waste I wrote some small things about how to do even the simplest of things and it can make a difference here.

Over the coming weeks I will be writing more about the environment and global warming issues in a blog over at GreenCareHome.com the nice people there asked me to contribute to their blog.

Magnetosphere
Global Warming
Global Dimming
Solar Flares
Geomagnetism

Nothing useful to say today

as I am in Prague airport waiting for my next flight and pulled an alnighter in the office so it is now 40 since my last curl up in lala land


But have some nice interesting things in my pda so if I finish them and get a chance will upload them here, if not when I get back from Bulgaria