First Impressions of the Kindle Fire

I am holding in my hands my new Kindle Fire.  Anyone who knows me knows I love to play with, explorer, and experiment with new gadgets and bee technology.  I received the Fire as a Christmas present and spent three hours downlouding apps and seeing what this new Kindle can do.  The perfect Christmas Eve.

Two years ago, I bought a 2nd Generation Kindle.  When I bought it, I was unsure whether I would use it.  I do enjoy physical books, the look, the feel, the smell.  But I was curious to see how it worked.  At that time, the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Sony e-reader were both out and I took a look at both.  The Sony was the smallest, and felt too small to effectively read on it.  The Nook and Kindle were comparable.  The main differences were that the Nook supported ePub and the Kindle supported Mobile, and that there were in store advantages to the Nook.  The in store parts didn't make much difference to me, as there isn't a Barnes and Noble where I live, and I only visit one about once a month.  The main advantage of ePub over Mobi is that most libraries that support electronic checkout do so with ePub.  Online, every site I've wanted to download from that supported ePub also supported Mobi and often native Kindle format.  Ultimately, I went with the Kindle because I usually shop online through Amazon not Barnes and Noble, and because our local library doesn't support electronic checkout and isn't likely to for years.

That initial Kindle was amazing for reading.  It was very nice on the eyes with its electronic ink, compared to reading an ebook on a computer.  The interface for reading was very simple and intuitive.  I loved being able to carry many books with me without the space and weight issues.  I loved being able to highlight something or write a note and having it available from a web browser.  I loved being able to buy a book and have it immediately.  But everything else left a lot to be desired.  PDFs were unruly to read, and didn't support bookmarks, highlighting, notes, and resizing (except by turning it and viewing half at a time).  The web browser was abysmal and barely usable on websites made since Mosaic was popular.  And there was no way to add apps, though no one else could either.  It was a ebook reader, everything else was experimental.  But it did its job well.

About six months after I got it, there was a major update to the software.  This improved web browsing a little, but mainly added the ability to share your notes and highlights on Facebook and Twitter.  I really liked that as it allowed me to share interesting parts with friends and family.  And some of them bought books from Amazon because of reading what I shared.  It was a very nice feature to add that I took advantage of and enjoyed.

Last April, I played with an iPad 2 in an Apple store down in Colorado.  I really liked it, and have wanted one ever since.  My experience with the iPhone 4 I got in June to replace my Blackberry Storm 2 that broke solidified my desire.  Over the last eight months, I've looked at and dismissed every other tablet that has been in stores for me to try out in person.  None of them impressed me like the iPad.  This Kindle Fire, though, comes close.

First impressions?  It's a beautiful device, runs well, is easy to use, but is missing some things, enough that it isn't an iPad killer and hadn't changed my mind about wanting an iPad.  I am very happy with it.

Pros:

* The colour and clarity of the screen are amazing.  I think it beats the iPad and every other tablet I've seen in this area.
* The size is perfect.  The screen is quite a big larger than my old Kindle, but the over all size is a lot smaller and very thin.  This Kindle fits perfectly in one hand.
* It runs very smoothly with no app crashes so far, and no slow downs.
* The battery life seems good so far.  Three hours of use used about 40% of the battery, maybe less.
* It runs a customized copy of Android 2.3.  Because if this, there are a lot of apps in the Amazon App Store that are generic Android apps that wouldn't be available yet if they had to be rewritten for a new device.
* The WiFi support makes downloading and browsing very fast in comparison to my old Kindle.
* I really like hoe the autocorrect shows a strip of suggestions you can see easily and select.


Cons:

* No support for sharing from books to Facebook of Twitter.  This is a step backwards.
* Fairly low selection of apps.
* The colour display is nice but hurts my eyes more that the liquid paper.
* The Blogger website doesn't work correctly so I'm typing this in Evernote and will copy it on the computer to post later.
* Lack of 3G support means if requires WiFi.  But the hotspot on my iPhone solves this.
* The key spacing doesn't seem quite right, so I make ggd same mistakes I make on my iPhone despite larger buttons.
* No camera or GPS chip, making some of the apps I want for the iPad impossible on the Fire.


Over all, I like it a lot and am happy with it.  It is a good replacement for my old one, and will tide me over until I get my iPad.  It really is a wonderful device and woryh having.  If they can fix the lack of Facebook and Twitter support, it will be a wonderful replacement for the older Kindles.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

Twitter: Different Clients for Different Needs

How do you access Twitter?  From a web browser?  An application running on your computer?  Text messages on your mobile phone?  Applications on your mobile phone?  Through a third-party website?

As Twitter has grown, so has the Twitter app industry.  To begin with, you could only use Twitter on their website.  Now there are literally thousands and thousands of ways to use Twitter.  Twitdom holds a directory of over 2000 Twitter applications, and this doesn't include websites that post, display, or interface with Twitter, or applications not registered with the site.

Today I read the following article in the Ars Technica blog on my Kindle.  It raises some concerns.

Twitter permission change hurts third-party mobile apps

While the authentication issue is a concern for developers and may impact end-users, the wider concern of Twitter wanting to limit third party applications has a direct effect on me and many Twitter users.

Web sites won't have an issue with the new authentication change, as OAuth is built for that.  And it doesn't look like it's websites that Twitter is concerned with.  It's actual clients.

On the desktop, I have tried many Twitter clients, some web-based, some traditional applications.  Of these, Seesmic Desktop is the one I've found most useful.  The abilities to use it with other services besides Twitter is very nice, and the support for multiple accounts is the main draw for me.  But most of the time, I use the normal Twitter website when I'm on the computer.  With Chrome plug-ins to allow URL shortening right on the Twitter website, and using a separate website like twitpic for pictures that has the ability to post to Twitter, the website works pretty good.  But other people have other needs.

On a mobile phone, the Twitter website isn't as useful.  Twitter's preference seems to be for people to use their application or to use text messages.  If you use a supported phone, the application is an option, but there's phones that only support third party applications.  If support for third party apps is removed, this will only leave text messages.  Some people love doing Twitter that way, while others don't.

I've used a bunch of different Twitter applications on my Blackberry.  Each have their pros and their cons.  I settled for two:  Seesmic for Blackberry and Twitter for Blackberry (Twitter's own client).  The main reason I don't use Twitter's client solely is that it only supports one account at a time and is difficult to switch accounts. In Seesmic, I can add as many accounts as I want and it's simple to switch which one is active.  I can also post to multiple accounts at once if I want to, which is nice, but not necessary.  Many people have both personal Twitter accounts and business accounts.  If Twitter's client supported mulitple accounts, I would probably use it exclusively, since there seems to be less connection issues with it.  The other advantage over Seesmic with Twitter's client is when it comes to lists.  While Seesmic finally allows you to add people to lists, it still doesn't allow you to manage your lists, to create or delete them.  This is the main think I use Twitter's client for.

As I said, different people have different needs.  It is impossible for one client or application to do everything that everyone wants or needs, and to do it the way each person wants.  While Twitter has come a long way with their clients, third party applications are necessary to meet this wide range of wants and needs.  Part of Twitter's current popularity is all the things you can do with it because of this wide range of applications.  If Twitter limits desktops and mobile devices to only their client, many users will no longer be able to do what they use Twitter for.  Only time will tell it Twitter has reached a critical mass where they can eliminate people's ability to do things they don't support and still maintain the momentum they currently have.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

The Future of Game Consoles

Original Nintendo.  Image
from TOFURIOUS blog,
originally from  Jen May blog.

I'm not a huge console video game player.  I played on the original Nintendo at friends' houses as a kid, and we had a Commodor with paddles and a few games we got at a garage sale growing up, but most games I played were on computers, our TRS Color Computer and Tandy 1000, and later my 286, the first computer that was mine, which is still out in the garage somewhere.

Gaming consoles have come a long way since my childhood as have all technology.  My wife owns a Sega Genesis, a Play Station, a Play Station 2, an XBox, and an XBox360.  I did end up buying a Wii for myself, the first game system that actually appealed to me enough to buy.  There has been many advances since the original Nintendo and earlier systems.

Cartridges have become disks.

Playing Kinect on XBox360.
Image from Indyposted.

Paddles and joy sticks gave way to the two-button controllers of the Nintendo.  Two button controllers have grown to many buttons with triggers and bumpers as well.  four-way control pads became thumb sticks, basically mini joy sticks.  Wired have given way to wireless.  With the Wii, Nintendo introduced controllers that used motion, not just buttons and thumb sticks.  Floor pads for dancing, and boards for balance related things have introduced exercise to gaming.  With Kinect, Microsoft has introduced using your body as the controller.  There are guitars, drums, guns, swords, all types of different "controllers" to allow different types of interactions with games.

The games with no ability to save gave way to memory cards, where you could save a game to continue it later, or even play it at a friend's house.  Memory cards lead to internal hard drives like a computer.

The original stand alone consoles added networking so more people could play than one console could support.  Networking led to online gaming, allowing you to play with people around the world and download content and even games.

Newer consoles can play DVD or Blu-Ray movies and disks, and online gaming has led to streaming video on consoles, as well as social networking like Facebook.  Video game consoles are continuously evolving as technology, innovation, ideas, and demand allow.  The modern video game console is approaching being the combination of a video game console, a computer, and a multimedia centre.  Anything that can be displayed may one day be on gaming consoles.

Where's Waldo: A look at cell phones, GPS, and MapMyRun

Get Smart shoe phone.
Image from Slice of SciFi.

There was a time that the idea of people talking over long distances was the stuff of fantasy, science fiction, or even witchcraft.  Who would have imagined a telephone in every house?  But science fiction became reality.  Later, a telephone was something confined to one place, connected to a wall.  The idea of a portable phone, one you could take with you, was still the realm of fiction, like Agent Smart's "shoe phone".  Who would imagine the world of today, where almost everyone has a cell phone, even children?

First Motorola mobile phone.
Image from TechPin.

The first cell phones were bulky affairs, not that portable by today's standards.  And it was just a phone.  It didn't have today's staples of text messaging and a camera.  This things were long off.

Cell phones have evolved a long way since those early days.  Who would imagined Internet on a phone, let alone Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr?  The cell phones of today, especially the smart phones, are way more powerful than the desktop computers when I was a kid.  They are faster, have more memory, have more storage, and have many features unheard of or dreamed of then.

iPhone browsing the Web.
Image from last100.

Today, people use cell phones more for apps, text (email and SMS text messaging), and as a camera than for talking.  In fact, I'm currently writing this post as an email on my phone and my wife us looking up information on the game she's playing on the computer using the web browser on her phone.

GPS satellite in space.
Image from howstuffworks.

When GPS (Global Positioning System) was first created, it was a purely military project (as was DARPA net which became ARPA net, which, together with other networks, became the Internet) to allow ships, planes, and personnel to be able to locate themselves and their destinations and targets without calculations and estimates.  Eventually, the military released it to the public, but with limited accuracy.  Since then, they have released more and more accurate algorithms.

Cell tower.
Image from eHow.

When GPS was first released, you had to buy a specific devise to use it.  Integration came later.  When cell phones first started using location services, they used cell tower locations to triangulate an estimated location.  In areas with lots of towers, this was pretty accurate, but in Wyoming with only one tower within reach most places, it was far off.  My old pre-GPS Blackberry had accuracy of 500 feet down in Colorado, but 9000 here in Laramie.  But now many cell phones have GPS using the newest, most accurate algorithm, and 911 centres can use it to find someone who makes a call.

Route for a 15K race mapped
using a GPS device.
Image from South Shore
High School.

GPS can be used for more than just locating you on an X,Y axis, longitude and latitude.  It can place in you in four dimensions.  Because it uses multiple satellites at different angles from where you are, it can pinpoint your elevation, giving X,Y,Z coordinates.  It also gives a timestamp, synced from the GPS satellite network.  A series of X,Y,Z,T coordinate points give you the route you took and the direction you went, and the distance between the points combined with the time gives you your speed.

MapMyRun running on a
Blackberry.  Image from
Cythi Construction.

My Blackberry Storm 2 has a built-in GPS and there are many apps out there that take advantage of it.  One such app that I tried out is MapMyRun.  It's simple to use.  You just press start and it starts recording your workout.  Press stop and it asks you if you want to save it.

I got my dog, Juneau, all hooked up for canicross, with my belt, the towline, and gee harness and we headed out.  I pressed start on the app.

Juneau intent on the
trail ahead.

It was a nice walk, not too cold and definitely not too hot.  She did good most of the walk, pulling nicely, though she did get distracted.  I think it was a fairly normal walk and represented our daily walk pretty well.  The program seemed to record my average speed, current speed, distance, and elapsed time pretty accurately.

Juneau carrying a stick.

I got back and pressed stop and saved it.  I got my husky and myself disconnected, then took my phone back out to look at it.  I went to the workout screen where it's supposed to show the last twenty recorded workouts, but the list was empty.  No matter what I did, even rebooting the phone, nothing shows.  I don't know if the app failed to save it or if there's an issue with the program.

I tried viewing my workouts on the website instead, but it uses something the Blackberry Browser in Blackberry OS 5 doesn't support, so I couldn't see if it was saved.  When I get on a computer, I will check and then finish this post.

---

I'm now on my computer and the walk was saved to their servers, but it's saved as a "Run" not a "Work Out".  There's no way to view "Runs" on the Blackberry after you press stop.  You have to go to the website and see it there.

It appears we walked 3.9 kilometers, hence 2.4 miles.  I can't seem to get any other data except the route, though.  I found a place where it is supposed to "Time Series / Graphs" which I hoped would show them, but it just says "Loading Time Series Data" and never loads it.  I tried it on several browsers.  What I remember was averaging about 20 minutes per mile, so three miles per hour, and that the trip took about 50 minutes.  Calculating it, I get about 48 minutes.

A tired dog is almost home.

After the messing around I had done on the website, the app on the phone now shows the trip in the Workout screen.  It doesn't give average speed, but does say that it took 59:59 minutes and was 2.4 miles long.  I think the last time I had checked the duration was back a bit before finishing the walk.  I'm guessing the difference between the reported time and my calculated time above is that the average speed probably doesn't incorporate when we were stopped, but that these periods were included in the recorded duration.

My end analysis?  The app is a good idea and does what it intends to.  It shows what you can do with the GPS in your phone, records what it needs to, and saves it correctly, online where you can access it anywhere, ie, cloud based.  However, you can't just use the phone.  You have to go to the website and edit things before it will show up on the phone.  Also, the website isn't very intuitive if you recorded your trip using the phone and takes a bit to figure out.  I'm not sure I could repeat what I did except by trial and error again.  Also, the Time Series page on the website needs to be fixed.

Good concept, but the implementation post-save needs some work.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

The Art of Socialization: Blogging to Twitter, Part 2

So you know the value of publishing your blog posts to Twitter.  Now how do you do it?  Some blog platforms have this ability built-in (LiveJournal, for instance), while others require a plug-in or a third-party product.  Whether you use a built-in feature, a plug-in, or third-party product, there are pluses and minuses for each solution.

My experience with blogging is with LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr, and Twitter.  One of the most popular blogging platforms is WordPress.  I haven't used it, so my knowledge of it is limited.  My mother in law uses WordPress and seems very happy with it.  Her blog is called Designin' with Judy and is hosted on her company web site, TechPalette Design.  The CleverWP blog has an article about using the plug-in WP to Twitter to publish your blog entries to Twitter.  I haven't tried the technique since I haven't used WordPress, but it seems to be a workable solution.

One third-party solution that will work for any blog (or website for that matter) that has an RSS or Atom feed is FeedBurner, which is currently owned by Google.  Blogger, also a Google product (though not originally as with FeedBurner), doesn't contain any built in ability to do this, so a third-party product is necessary.  If you have a Google account, you can use the same account to log into both.

The Future of Delicious

One problem with the Internet has always been to keep track of the sites you like.  This was true twenty years ago, and, with the constant expansion of the Internet, it is even more true now.

Back in the 90s when I was first on the Internet, I used the bookmarks in my web browser.  This worked to a point, but it causes problems if you need to access your sites when you're on another computer or if your computer dies and you don't have them backed up somewhere.

Later, when I was hosting my own website, thyme.net, on my own FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and then Slackware Linux server, I wrote a program in PERL, a scripting language.  I entered my links into a text file, then ran the script and it created a web page that I could then access remotely.  This worked pretty good, but I was limited on where I could add links from.

Then I stumbled on a website, early in its history called Delicious.  They got a clever domain name of del.icio.us. It was catchy and easy to remember and it took off quickly.  You can save your links on their website and access them from anywhere.  You can make your links public or private.  You can send links to friends on the site from within it.  You can search or browse other people's links.  It is basically social networking for links.  It solved my problems.

Later on, Delicious was sold to Yahoo!.  Yahoo! kept it in tact.  The only change I know of during the time they've owned it was allowing people to create accounts on it using their Yahoo! ID, so they didn't need a separate account with a separate password.  But my existing account still works without being linked to my Yahoo! account.

Over the last month or so, there's been a rumor that Yahoo! is looking as selling Delicious.  Today, I received the following email:

Delicious has a new owner -- what this means for you

Dear Delicious User,

Yahoo! is excited to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, Hurley and Chen have firsthand expertise enabling millions of consumers to share their experiences with the world. Delicious will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS.

To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to AVOS. After a transition period and after your bookmarks are transferred, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.

So, AVOS now owns Delicious.  They claim it will stay free and that they will develop it.  They did do amazing with YouTube before Google bought it, so I don't doubt their abilities.  We'll see where it goes from here.

I backed up my bookmarks just in case and agreed to the new terms.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

Education Revolution: Online Education

Image from MBA for Better Future

Since earliest university-like schools were founded by the Roman Catholic Church in the 600s, education has been identified with a classroom setting.  Students go to a building or room and a teacher, lecturer, or professor stands up and teaches them.  But in the Information Age and the age of the Internet, this is changing.  Online classes in various forms and at various levels are growing in popularity.  Technology is changing the way learning is done.

For many years now, my father-in-law has been teaching real estate classes online.  He is able to teach far larger classes and still give the students the interaction and attention they need.  These classes have been very successful, and have allowed students at universities that don't offer the subject matter he provides the opportunity to take the classes.

This is just one of the areas that online education is opening up.

The Art of Socialization: Blogging to Twitter, Part 1

Why do you write a blog?  Whether you write as a place to share your thoughts or activities, a place to share your art or the things you love, a place to promote your business, are a step in changing the world, chances are, you write to be read.  A blog with no readers is just a personal diary.

One of the big hot things on the web right now is social networking.  What used to be done in clubs and bars, conferences and conventions has moved to the web as social networks.  Everyone's heard of them, Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter.  People build their social network by finding people they know in real life, finding people with shared interests, finding friends of their friends.  The more people you know, the faster your network grows.

People use social networks for many things.  Some just want to know people, read about other people's lives.  During the Great Depression, cinema took off.  People were looking to escape their daily lives and their own troubles.  In a movie, you could watch other people's lives and forget about your own.  Centuries before that, novels became popular for the same reason.  While people still go to watch movies and read books, TV has really filled this escapism void.  And know On-Demand and Netflix, TiVo and DVR, Youtube and IceFilms, have made it so we can watch what we want when we want.  We can escape from reality any time we want with whatever we want.

Social networks and blogs fill this same need for people.  They give people a window into other people's lives.  But with these things, it is real people, real stories, not the fiction of movies and television.  Well, presuming everyone is honest.

No matter what you blog about, there is an audience.  There is someone out there somewhere that is interested in what you want to talk about.  The Internet is world wide (hence the name World Wide Web).  There are 6.91 billion people in the world, and, though obviously not every one of them is connected to the web, there is bound to be someone out there that shares your interests.

So, you want to write to be read, and there's someone out there that wants to read what you have to write.  How do you find each other?  The reader of course could do a search in Google or Yahoo! or whatever search engine they like and hope they find you.  But how high in the search will your blog be?  While the terms your reader searches for be the ones that find you blog?  There's no guaranty.

The goal of the blogger is to connect with people who share her interests who want to read what she has to say.  Isn't this what social networks are designed for?  One good way to get readers is connect with people through your social network that share the interests you write about, then share your blog with your social network.  Posting links to your blog entry to a social network is called socialization.

I talked in my last entry about Twitter.  Twitter is one of the larger social network, and there are applications set up that make it easy to share your Twitter Tweets with most other social networks.  If you can get it to Twitter, you can spread it to the rest easily.

In the next series of posts, I'm going to talk about ways to get your blog seen on Twitter.  From there, you can share it with the world.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

Twitter: The Epitome of the Information Age

I started using Twitter January 11, 2009, three and a half years after the company started.  For those people not aware, Twitter is a service where you can follow other people and post short, 140 character "microblogs" called Tweets that your friends, or whoever, can read.  The idea of Twitter was born from a desire to have a text-based dispatch service, so people could text on their phone and the service would let their friends know what they were doing.  The character limit was 140 characters based on limits on cell phone SMS (text) messages, however, the first version was entirely web-based and SMS service was added later.  In the five years Twiiter has been around, it has grown from zero to over 200 million users, though it's estimated only 100 million of these users actually use it regularly.  But even 100 million is a huge number.

During the events in Egypt and the early days of this newest conflict in Libya, I learned most of what I knew directly from Twitter and from links posted to Twitter.  Minute by minute news (and rumour of course) spread quickly through the Twitter network as people posted what they knew and everybody retweeted it.  Even some news sites were posted details that came from Tweets from their readers.  The Twitter phenomenon is like nothing ever seen before.  It is the epitome of the Information Age.

I originally got joined Twitter for an easy way to post messages to my Facebook profile, but quickly Twitter took on a life of its own in my life.  You can do many things with Twitter.  My LiveJournal and Blogger blogs post to Twitter, LiveJournal using its built-in connection and Blogger using twitterfeed.com.  I use Seesmic on my Blackberry to read Twitter and also to post to it.  Websites like bit.ly can be used to shorten URLs (the web address used to get to webpages) so they don't use up as many characters in Twitter.  Both Seesmic and twitterfeed.com integrate with bit.ly as well as similar services.  I also use a bit.ly plug-in in the Google Chrome browser to shorten URLs right on the Twitter home page.  Seesmic and other clients integrate with other services like twitpic.com to embed pictures into Tweets, so they aren't only text anymore.  There are literally thousands of applications and websites that integrate with Twitter.  I even have a gadget on this blog that shows my latest Tweets.

Earlier today, I read the following article from CNN Tech:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/04/15/twitter.status.taylor/index.html

The article talked both about the origins and history of Twitter and its future.  Many people are predicting the end of Twitter, based on a plateau in use of the website.  However, as the article points out, this is misleading.  This only counts direct web hits, not the plethora of applications that are used to access it, the websites like Facebook and LiveJournal that Tweets can be sent to, widgets and gadgets on websites, and the people who subscribe, send, and reply to Tweets from their regular cell phone with SMS.

Twitter isn't going anywhere, but with new applications, widgets, gadgets, and services coming out to increase its functionality, who knows what it will be like in two years, let alone ten.

Those of you who haven't heard of Twitter before now or haven't used Twitter, I suggest giving it a try.  You might just like it.

Feel free to follow me.  My Twitter account is kethar  (http://twitter.com/kethar).  Comment on this blog if you do follow me, and I'll be sure to follow you back.

Bethany Kennedy
IT Professional

Enforcing Laws on the Internet

Last night, I was reading an article on the Ars Technica blog on my Kindle.  The article was entitled "Consumer groups skeptical about new Kerry-McCain privacy bill".  It started me thinking about enforcement on the Internet.  You can read it here:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/consumer-groups-skeptical-about-new-kerry-mccain-privacy-bill.ars

Privacy of your information and who shares what with who is a good thing, though there are obvious issues with the bill as pointed out in the article.  But how much good will the bill actually do, even if the issues mentioned are taken care of?

The issue to think about here is that the Internet is international, not just in the United States.  Obviously US laws cannot be enforced in other countries.  So what happens if the website is run by a company in, say, the United Kingdom?  Or if the website is a US website but the advertising company whose content on the US website is over seas?  How about the situation with Facebook.  They have servers at a data center in California, but they also have a data center in Ireland.  Is the law enforcible purely because they are a US company, even if they were to put the information tracking and sharing part of their website exclusively in Ireland?

This has always been the issue with the Internet since the US part was connected to international networks.  This is the issue with SPAM laws and child porn laws.  This is the issue with music and video sharing.  Do you try to regulate what international content can be accessed within the country?  Do you try to get cooperation with other countries?  Do you completely cut off connection to other countries?  Do you go after the people viewing illegal content (not relevant to the privacy bill, but definitely to some of the others)?

Different countries have taken different tacts.  China blocks a lot of content, and monitors what passes through their borders.  Some Islamic countries have completely shut down private citizen access to other countries or allow no computer networking for citizens at all.  Some countries don't worry about international content at all.  And the US has tried different tacts at different points.

So how will the choose to deal with this issue with this new bill?  Or has anyone thought about or mentioned it to McCain or Kerry?

Bethany Kennedy

IT Professional

The beginning of a journey...

I have been working in the Information Technology industry for over fourteen years and have seen many changes, innovations, mistakes, and leaps.  In this blog, I would like to explore different issues, technologies, ideas, and trends int he computer world.  I would like to share my opinions and unique perspectives with whoever wants to read it.  Please join me in this journey to the edge of technology.

Bethany Kennedy

IT Professional