theTechi'sDiary

20 years since inception of internet, what progress have we made?

I was barely able to utter a coherent word back in 1991 but I believe that’s when we had the turning point in the IT sector – the internet was born and 20 years later, it’s unbelievable what it has done in such a short time.

The Internet has touched on everything tech related - the way we work, the way we shop, the way we get news and information, the way we learn, the ways we chill out and the way we communicate with family, friends and coworkers. There’s hardly a thing that people didn’t do 20 years ago that isn’t today done differently because of this single invention that allowed a PC on someone’s desk or in someone’s home to be connected to millions of other PCs and servers all across the globe.

If you’re guzzling bandwidth over a high-speed DSL connection, spare a though for those browsing the web in 1991, the year when 14.4 kbps modems were introduced. How fast (slow) is that? Well, going full blast, a 14.4 kbps modem would take 9 minutes 15 seconds to download a 1MB file. A 1GB .ISO file would take a whopping 154 hours, 19 minutes and 15 seconds!

Back in 1991 the first web site was built at the CERN labs and put online on August 6. 1991 was also the year when Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced its AMD 386 microprocessor which was developed to offer direct competition to Intel’s 386 chips, rather than a secondary source of x86 processors. This paved the way for long-term competition in the CPU market, which was good for consumers! Notebooks - we take them for granted nowadays, but back in 1991 they were big, heavy and very expensive. But despite these limitations, business users (and tech enthusiasts) still went out and invested in them. In fact, notebooks were getting so popular that by 1991 most of the hardware OEMs of the time had notebooks in their lineup.

Back in Kenya,

IBM’s Traffic Prediction Tool

Traffic alerts on GPS devices have been with us for a while now but the traffic menace still persists. There’s obviously need for something to be done, and IBM now say they have managed to do just that with the new “Smarter Traveler” traffic prediction tool. Developed by IBM’s Watson Research Laboratories, the Traffic Prediction Tool is a patent-pending technology for predicting traffic flows and speeds on road segments. The technology relies on predictive analytics software, GPS monitoring and sensors already on the roads to not only offer alerts, but build a model for each person’s usual commuter route. Once it’s trained a bit, commuters are able to check out what’s effectively a forecast of their entire route before they even leave their offices or homes. By integrating all this information, it can be analyzed and used in new ways to build a smarter transportation system and less traffic congestion on our roads.

The benefits of such a tool are over-whelming, for instance, provide traffic operators with a view into the likely near-term traffic flow, and assist traffic operators in pro-active signal setting and ramp metering, amongst other pros.

The technology makes use of adaptive statistical techniques in conjunction with automated error correction for multiple time horizons. It has been tested in Singapore, where the Land Transport Authority is working with IBM and others to develop technology that will provide one-hour traffic predictions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-EyM7uj0Kpc is a video on how it works.

Do you think this will sort out our traffic menace?

the Nexus S

The Nexus S is here. It’s a superb smart-phone and as you would expect with Samsung, the device design is sexy. It makes the highly anticipated debut of running the latest Android v2.3, Gingerbread, operating system. It is also the first handset in the world to support NFC (Near Field Communication) in both hardware and software. It is a cool, innovative device with an eye to snatch Apple’s smart phone crown. Here is an overview of its fat specs sheet:

Display

4.0 inch WVGA 480 x 800 pixel resolution SUPER AMOLED touch screen

Contour display with curved glass screen

Anti-fingerprint display coating

Connectivity

Quad-band GSM

Tri-band HSPA/HSUPA (7.2 Mbps)

Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g

Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

Near Field Communicatin (NFC)

A-GPS

MicroUSB 2.0

Processor and memory

1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird

16GB iNAND flash memory

Camera

5 megapixel with autofocus and flash.

H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording

Software

Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Android Market

Google Maps, Google Voice, Google Talk, Google Earth, Gmail

YouTube

…and more.

why you need a website

What is web hosting? Where can I host my site? These are some of the questions people ask themselves when they want to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Why do I need a website? Every individual, company and country has to market themselves – people must know you exist and for what reason you exist. You need awareness whether you are selling goods or providing some sort of service. Refusing to market yourself is like blinking to a girl in the dark and expecting her to notice you. The internet has totally revolutionized how we do business and marketing in the 21^st century. It’s cheap, convenient and the target is wide – social sites like Facebook and Twitter are enough proof. People are spending billions of seconds online and they could as well spent some on your website.

So, now I hope I have convinced you enough on the need to have a website. To host it, you will need a Web host – a company that provides space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients. The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, to complex dynamic websites. The host provides an interface or control panel for managing the webserver and installing scripts and other services like e-mail. Hosts usually tell you that your website will be accessible via the internet 99.9% of time but there may be server restarts and (un)planned maintenance always arise but you need not worry cause you may actually never notice such blips.

Where to be hosted?