Computer Software

Communication technology has advanced so rapidly and the entire industry has been revolutionized as a result of the advent of the Internet. Communication has become lot easier. These days you don’t need to wait for many hours to get a telephone line to talk to your friends and relatives living in some other country. We can easily make Internet telephone calls using the World Wide Web. Internet telephone services are a great advantage to the people who make frequent international calls.

Internet telephone services work similar to the other communication services operated through the net. Special software such as Skype is used for setting up an internet phone connection. An internet phone service operates better with a broad band World Wide Web link. Using the Internet telephone service you can just dial up to call your friends in much the same way you use a normal telephone service. You can use the external speakers supplied with the computer and a microphone, but using a microphone headset would be more convenient because it improves the sound quality.

Many people are always looking for ways to save money. If you are one of them and trying to find different ways to cut your telephone bills, then Internet telephone service is an ideal choice for you. There are many Internet telephone service providers around the world. They set up a broadband or DSL connection with a broadband phone adapter that is plugged directly into a modem or router. You can then simply connect your existing phone to the adapter and start making calls. You can see that setting up an Internet telephone service is very easy.

The regular telephone service companies usually charge something around $20 to $30 for the basic service and this does not include any other feature such as voice mail, call waiting and 3 way calling. The internet telephone services feature all the regular services plus voice mail, call waiting, etc and they usually don’t charge more than 25$ for the service, which is almost the same as your regular connection. So it is very obvious that the Internet telephone service can help you to save you a lot of bucks while giving you the opportunity to enjoy all the extra features. You can save nearly $500 per year on your telephone bill, which is a very useful amount.

The Internet telephone service has been made possible by VoIP technology. VoIP technology or the Voice Over Internet Protocol is how voices are carried over the Internet. It is similar to the other communications network. Using the VoIP technology, you can connect your digital phone to the computer and speak to your friends and relatives while you are surfing the Internet. The digital phone services can be much cheaper than the normal telephone and they also feature caller id and call forwarding. VOIP technology helps you to keep the cost of the landline telephone down. The Internet telephone service can be used in any place where an Internet connection is available. So it is really ideal for people who have to travel all over the world. You can receive and make calls from any part of the world.

However there are some drawbacks with the Internet telephones also, the Internet telephone service cannot be used in emergency cases and you may experience some delay in getting a connection. But Internet technology is continuing to develop each day and Internet phone service is also bound to develop further as a result of this.

Anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis has been faced with a 404 error message. This aggravating little obstacle to our research or fun-search endeavors can be a bit of an annoyance for most of us. The 404 error message commonly appears when we request a URL that the server does not have.

For some reason, the server chooses to simply flash a 404 error message rather than providing us with the information that we need. All we know from the information provided is that the page has not been found. This is usually a default message that most Web servers return when someone requests a URL that the server does not have. This is not to suggest that the URL does not exist.

The 404 error message is in violation to basic rules for error messages in general, according to some of its critics. The critics suggest that the 404 error message needs to be written in layman’s terms so anyone who reads it understands exactly what has happened. Every time I have gotten one, I immediately thought that I made a mistake.

Of course, the first thing we do when we make a mistake is re-enter the information just to be faced with another 404 error message. We may try again and again until we reach the number of entering the same information over and over again that makes us realize that it may not be entirely our fault.

Unfortunately, we usually check one more time just to be sure. The next step is to blame our source of information. We double-check our source to make sure that we were given the right URL only to see that we were right. Filled with self-doubt, we go right back on to the server and enter the same URL again just to find a 404 error message staring right back at us.

We do all of this simply because the server broke a very important rule. They need to make the error message clear as day for anyone using the server, not just the technically-savvy individuals who know not to waste time entering and re-entering the same URL over and over again.

Sometimes it is the user’s fault but there is no way of knowing this through the 404 error message. The second rule the servers break is not specifying what the user has done wrong. The vague information usually leaves the server confused and frustrated. It is aggravating when you know that there is something wrong but you don’t know what it is.

My brother’s wife is creating a website and she has asked me to come to her house to guide her through the process. She is extremely aggravated by the process and she seems very confused and frustrated. I agreed to give her a hand, but I really do not know that much about creating a website myself. I was flattered that she thought that I did know how to create a webpage, but I was not sure why she thought that I had experience with it.

I came to the sudden realization that my sister in law is under the impression that I am efficient at creating a website because she has visited my blog. I think that she is confusing blogs with websites. I may know how to set up a blog but this does not qualify me to tutor someone on creating a webpage. I have come to the realization that many people do not understand the difference between a blog and a webpage.

I am not sure if I understand the difference between creating a blog and creating a website, but I’m going to give it a shot. Actually I have trouble describing the difference between a blog and a website. A blog is a kind of online journal. The person who creates the blog posts short articles, pictures and various entries to give the blog some depth. There is little work in creating a blog. Blogs are free and very user friendly and I am quite comfortable with the format.

I imagine that there is significantly more work involved in creating a website. After all, there are professionals who work full time in the field of web design. I did suggest that my sister-in-law should use a service like Bravenet in her attempts at creating a website. Bravenet has everything a lay person needs to get started and it has a lot of information and technical support. I am going to walk her through the steps as they are presented by Bravenet and see if we can work together in creating a website.

If all goes well, I may even create a website of my own. For now, I am going to stick to blogging. Like I said, blogs are user-friendly and they are free. I really do not need anything else right now. In the future, I may call my sister-in-law to see if she can help me when I try my hand at creating a website on my own. Hopefully, she will get me moving in the right direction.

Nowadays everyone has a webpage. Well almost everyone… I had to wait a long time before jumping into the train, but now I have one too!

Should I say that I’m in?

I recently signed up for myspace so that I could create my own webpage. I thought it would be fun to have my own personal space to keep track of daily happenings by means of a blog, store and display favorite pictures and maybe even meet some new friends in cyberspace. I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch with friends back in Toronto, to keep them abreast of happenings here in Winnipeg, and to let them keep an eye on our kids as they grow and adapt to life in the Peg. However, I quickly got frustrated after only a couple of meager attempts to create my own webpage with myspace. I don’t know what I was expecting – I guess I wanted the computer to somehow know my information and preferences without me having to key it all in. So yes, I chalk it up to being pretty darn lazy. I did manage to halfway complete my profile. However, I find that when I’m put on the spot to produce content, I always think of really lame interests, hobbies and favorites, and then I’m left kicking myself when I come across as a loser, a poser or even worse, just plain dull! I think the secret to success when I sit down to create my own webpage will be to plan it all out on paper before I sit down to key it in. And yes, that takes forethought and planning and I seem to be sorely lacking in those two particular departments.

I did have a personal blog page for a while. I liked this approach. I’m pretty good at blathering on about this, that and the next thing. Now here was a way to kill two birds with one stone – I’d found my creative outlet AND I would in the process create my own webpage. Unfortunately, the novelty wore off pretty quickly with that too and I ended up with an abandoned blog page with a mere handful of entries.

I don’t know why the idea of having a webpage appeals to me so much. It’s really just another responsibility to hang over my head along with all the others. Perhaps when I can dictate my own webpage just using my voice, I will be more inclined to make a go of it. Until then, I’m stuck with a lame, boring profile page, and empty friends list and what was that url again…???

Who would have thought two years ago that we would be able to get broadband for free? Those were the days when it cost on average £25 for a 512k (per second) connection. Broadband was reserved for “cyber geeks”. The rest of us were happy enough with our super slow dialup connection.

A broadband revolution has been sweeping the nation ever since. Broadband speeds have increased dramatically and prices have plummeted. Now 512k is considered slow. Anything under 2Mb (per second) won’t do. The “cyber geeks” are really moving into the fast lane, with download speeds of up to 24Mb available.

Prices for broadband fell significantly during 2005 and continue to do so. This led to more people signing up to broadband as it became more affordable. This, in turn, lead to more companies offering cut price broadband to attract those customers, which led to even more customers becoming interested. And the cycle continued. About 80,000 per week now sign up to a broadband package in the UK.

It has gone so far that you can now get broadband for free. If anyone mentioned free broadband 2 years ago, they would have been branded as being insane. Now it is a reality with TalkTalk offering free broadband to its Talk3 customers and Orange to its mobile customers. Cynics argue that it is not free, as you have to buy another service to get it. But even then, it is a damn good deal.

So where is the market going to go?

The rapidly changing world of telecommunications is going to force many of the smaller players out of the market. They simply will not be able to survive as margins are squeezed. Even the big players are finding the going tough. Telecom giant Cable and Wireless announced this week that it is broadband subsidiary, Bulldog, will no longer be offering broadband to residential customers.

Packages that include 2, 3 or even 4 products will become commonplace. Broadband providers have realised that they cannot make enough money from broadband alone to survive. So they are bundling broadband with other products, such as home phone, digital television and mobile. Market leaders such as TalkTalk, NTL and Telewest have been doing this for some time.

Broadband speeds will continue to rise as the technology moves forwards. This will lead to broadband becoming the centre of home communications. Your digital TV and home phone will be transmitted over a broadband connection.

The world of broadband has certainly come along way in the past 2 years, from a geeks product to mass market. The next 2 years will just as interesting, as broadband becomes the main communications platform in your home.

Back in the dotcom days, when dialup Internet connections were everywhere, free ISP offers were inescapable. The deal was that you viewed advertising while your computer was connected to the Internet, and in return you got your Internet connection for free.

The rise of more expensive and technically-complex broadband connections, however, has almost entirely killed this business model. Some free ISPs remain, but they are struggling. Only demographics that are undesirable to advertisers use dialup nowadays, making it almost impossible for them to sell their advertising inventory for as much as they would like.

However, this varies widely from country to country. In America, for example, free ISPs like Juno and NetZero are still holding on to a significant market share, thanks mainly to very large geographical distances between towns making broadband impractical in some places. AOL dialup, although not free and not even very good, is also surprisingly dominant in the American market.

Many European countries, on the other hand, are in the middle of broadband price wars, with some telecoms providers such as the UK’s TalkTalk offering free broadband service as part of their telephone strategy. This broadband can often be of dubious quality and requires the customer to sign up for phone service with the provider, but on the other hand it doesn’t feature any advertising or deliberate crippling of the services in the way that many dialup ISPs did.

However, in the future, we could be heading for a return to the free ISP, thanks to the rise of wireless networks. Sending wireless signals around is essentially free, apart form the initial cost of the equipment, and as wireless technology improves it will become cheaper and cheaper to cover whole towns and cities with access to wireless broadband. It is possible, in the future, that subscription-based ISPs could die entirely, to be replaced by local governments and authorities handling Internet access, in the same way as water or rubbish disposal.

It took just a little time for XML to become very popular format for information sharing across Internet. It is a standard practice now for major web resources to deliver their data in the form of RSS.

RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is mostly used by news websites, weblogs and podcasting but the tendency shows that everybody is trying to keep his information as RSS.

Web feeds are widely used by the blog community to share the latest entries’ headlines or their full text, and even attach multimedia files. Since mid-2000, use of RSS has spread to many of the major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, PR Newswire, Business Wire, and the BBC.

Using RSS helps you to feed yourself with all kinds of information instead of constant surfing the internet for needed content. It can also help you generate unlimited content for your websites very effectively. To gather data wanted you obviously need a program or service which can help you generate RSS feeds on a given topic.

MG WAY CORP has developed a tool called RSS FEEDS GENERATOR which serves as a producer of various rss feeds from over 30 search engines and services such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Feedster, Blogdigger, Icerocket and others. ( )

It’s very simple to use. First, you need to specify the type of rss feeds you want to get whether search results feeds, news feeds, blog posts feeds, images feeds, media files feeds, tags feeds or others. Then you choose the services providing such information and after all you enter up to ten keywords for feeds generation. In a second you will get a list of quality RSS feeds you are interested in, separated by categories. Now you can put all those links into your RSS reader, use them in rss parsers, content generation scripts, blogging software or somehow else.

This is a simple tool for information processing in the form of rss feeds for people who get everything they need from the World Wide Web for business matters or for personal use. The thing is that rss feeds exchange is one of the steps for consolidating and regulating of data sharing across the Internet. The usability of RSS FEEDS GENERATOR can’t be overestimated. More over it is FREE for everyone to use.

By ADSL South Africa, 11 June 2006

The state of affairs in regard to broadband or ADSL in South Africa can now easily be categorized as a crisis. A crisis when compared to most all other countries. The Demand for broadband is growing but service deliverance and offerings remain outdated and horrendously expensive even with Telkom’s latest lower broadband price offerings. Promises of better offerings and service are not going to do it. Action is what’s needed.

Local is lekker but not when loyal ADSL users in South Africa have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world mainly due to Telkom’s incompetence. “Ten years ago South Africa was ranked the 14th most connected country in the world. Today, we’ve slipped down to 37th place. The reason is the lack of choice afforded to the Internet consumer due to Telkom’s stranglehold over the industry,” according to Greg Massel, Co-chair of The Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa (ISPA). The situation is even worse concerning broadband. South Africa comes last when compared to OECD countries with a local broadband penetration rate of only 0.5%. This is a massive 2700% worse than the OECD average of 13.6%.

A drastic improvement in customer service is one of the vital necessities needed to turn confidence around. For instance the message irate broadband users get when they phone Telkom more than once in order to get solutions to their problems just shows how much Telkom really cares: “If you did not call Telkom to do business,” the canned voice says, “take the time out to speak to a family member or a friend. You are denying someone else the opportunity to do so [deal with Telkom]. Please remember that these calls are recorded and can be traced.” Telkom’s CEO Papi Molotsane’s mission to delight customers will fail before it even started with a response like this. No person in his right mind will just phone and ‘annoy’ Telkom call centre staff for the fun of it. Citizens mostly only get hot under the collar when they are faced with the seemingly whirlwind of incompetence of Telkoms call center. . The fact is that Telkom and Sentech, both pet dogs of the ANC government, seem to know the art of getting people complaining in no time at all. MyWireless subscribers at Sentech will agree on this especially since their latest battle with Sentech in regards to significant downtime experienced and Sentech’s pathetic response to complaints or inquiries.

Cooperation between the major role players is another much needed necessity to ‘turn the boat away from the rocks’. Not the wishy-washy kind of cooperation backed-up by empty babbling but the kind that’s backed up by solid action. The recent ICASA hearings offered the perfect chance for just that but it seems that Telkom for one is sticking with its old guns. ICASA has for instance called for free local access but Telkom is unwilling to move back to their old model in order to make local access more affordable. This is the reason why DataPro launched a ‘local only’ ADSL product in order to reduce pricing for users with local connectivity.

Another factor that needs to be addressed is the welfare of staff at Telkom. By the look of things staff at Telkom are overworked and underpaid. A situation totally unacceptable if you take the billions Telkom made in the past financial year into account. Sure shareholders want to see a good return on their investment but not to the point where employees suffer. It’s a simple equation. If the majority of employees suffer than there must be a correspondent loss like for instance in the level of customer service. The big Telkom bosses, and major shareholders for that matter, should get their act together and fast. Don’t tell us you can’t use the power invested in you to change things for the better. Don’t try to fool us. This is the simple message that needs to be sent home to the top of Telkoms management and we’re sure most members of staff at Telkom agree. At least by the series of strikes and demonstrations that have taken place over the last 7 months.

Last but not least. Another much needed necessity is effective telecoms regulations. It’s not a matter of secrecy that the relevant authorities have mostly failed. We’re sure a lot of reasons for this can be found but the fact of the matter is that it’s totally unacceptable. The launch of the second network operator (SNO) in a few weeks from now will shed more light on the overall effectiveness of regulations. This will not be clear from the start but maybe only after weeks, months and even years in business we will get to see the real benefits of such a move. We can only hope that things will change for the better.

It must be said that the aim mustn’t be to sink Telkom but to patch her up and have her ready to sail for the benefit of all South Africans. Real leadership is needed – not the type of leadership that fades away after the cocktail party. All participants and role players need to address the issues at hand in a way mutually beneficial to all.

Life has not been the same with the invention of the internet. It has changed the way we communicate and live our lives. High speed internet is so called, as it has a high rate of data transmission. Customers get connections at bandwidth of 256 kilobits or more. It is often called Broadband Internet access. These days the broadband implementations are up to 30 Mbit/s, which is several hundred times faster than those times when internet had become popular such as ISDN and 56 kbit/s. It even costs less than ISDN, and sometimes no more than the cost of 56 kbit/s; though the rate may differ from country to country.

Broadband connection means 56 kilobits/sec in at least one direction, and this bit rate is accepted all around the world. Broadband can also mean lower-bitrate transmission methods, as specifically no bitrate is defined by the industry. Some Internet Service Providers (ISP) take advantage of this and market lower-bitrate connections as broadband. Advanced technology in broadband can simultaneously carry and process a good amount of information at a faster rate. This gives greater connectivity or better web access, as well as higher download speeds.

DSL and Cable Modems:

Broadband connection is usually delivered through telephone lines or through cable networks. The two most popular consumer broadband technologies are DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modem; both transmitting 256 kilobits per second or more, and starting at approximately four times the speed of a modem using a standard digital telephone line. Cable modems use your cable line for access to the internet. They can be cheaper than DSL. VDSL and pushing fiber optic connections are some other newer technologies that are opening up the possibility of higher performance for streaming data, such as audio and video streams, as they would permit speeds 100 times faster than the typical DSL or cable broadband connection.

Dial-up Internet Access:

In dial-up internet access, the client would have to dial up the ISP using a modem and a telephone line to establish a modem-to-modem link, which would then be routed to the Internet. This is used mostly in rural or remote areas where there are no broadband connections. This can be a time consuming process. Establishing a telephone connection and to perform handshaking before data transfers take place can take time. This way, the duration of the connection would incur costs. With modern dial-up modems the maximum possible speed is 56 kilobits/sec.

Advantages of DSL over Dial-up Connections:

• DSL is faster – DSL has the advantage when it comes to speed. DSL modems are much faster than dial-up modems. DSL provides from twice as fast speed, up to 125 times faster than a 56 kilobits/sec dial-up modem. The only limit to the speed with DSL is the speed of the Internet itself and all the different computers attached to it.

• No interference – Even though DSL uses your regular phone line, it doesn’t block your phone calls. You can also take and make calls while using the Internet. You do not have to log off the Internet to make a call, whereas in dial up connection you will have to log off to use the phone.

• DSL is always connected – With DSL there is no need of a modem and you do not even need to dial up to do something online. You can check anything, browse through the web pages, check emails; your DSL connection will always be there.

• Reliable – DSL is reliable as it is not dependant on your phone line, as phone networks always experience problems; unlike a dial-up connection where you cannot connect without a phone line.

In many countries now the governments have taken an active role in spurring broadband use, and help in building communications infrastructure for public utility like in highways or airports.

The term bandwidth is very common these days, especially because its technology affects almost all aspects of our lives. You use bandwidth when you connect to the internet, when you use the telephone, when you watch television, and in many other activities. But what exactly is bandwidth? Read on to find out and see how it can change your life.
Bandwidth defined
The term ‘bandwidth’ refers to the amount of data or information that can be transmitted over a network in a given time, or, in much simpler terms, is a measure of how much ‘stuff’ is sent through any connection. Information sent can take many forms depending on the channel.
How bandwidth affects you
Bandwidth in internet terms is usually expressed in either bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (kbps), or megabits per second (mbps). The higher the bandwidth of your connection, the faster you can upload and download data from the internet. Dial-up connections are low speed at only about 50+ kbps, while better cable connections go from 500 kbps and up. Whether you need a connection that has bigger bandwidth depends on your purposes for using the internet. If you only use the net for text-based research purposes, you don’t need much bandwidth. A whole page of English text is only about 16,000 bits, so if your modem can move about 57,000 bits per second, you are more than covered. You may need higher bandwidth if you upload or download full-motion and full-screen video, which, depending on compression, requires roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second. It is wise to subscribe to a high-bandwidth connection if you use the internet for pictures, graphics, music and videos.
The telephones use bandwidth, too – in fact, a bandwidth of about 3,000 ‘cycles per second’ (cps) is required for voice transmission. The bandwidth required for television broadcasting is even higher at about 6 million cps, and satellite system prevent interference by spreading television signals using bandwidth of as little as 17.5 MHz to a as much as 72 MHz.