The Future of Internet - Toward a Spam-Free Future

Most of us have an unwanted habit whenever we logged onto the internet - removing a few dozens of spam emails that often clutter our mailbox. The email's popularity as one of the fundamental internet tools has produced one niggling side effect: spam.

Unsolicited commercial and non-commercial emails are spreading like plague that feed off the Internet to connect hundreds of millions of computer users around the world, at virtually no cost. Most of these nuisance and distraction come in the form of offering to help us get rich quick or shed pounds in a few days. Amazing? Not quite, more like ridiculous.

There is no doubt that spam is a drain on productivity, a frustratingly costly waste of time and resources for Internet service providers and for businesses. It clogs corporate networks, and can be a vehicle for viruses that often cause serious damage and hefty economic losses. As we continue to wage the war in attempt to sift spam out of our inboxes, valid messages are unintentionally overlooked or deleted, which makes email less reliable as a channel for communication and legitimate e-commerce. Spam is such a worrying problem that it threatens to undo much of the good that email has achieved.

Reactive measures to stop spam includes installation of spam filters. However it is not simply to block out all spam, a smart filter can be customized to suit the preferences of the individual user. Not all spam is pure junk, it is not clearly distinguishable from a broad and global criteria. Thus it is critical to have a smart filter system that learn from a user's personal preferences to create a unique anti-spam program that is tougher for spammers to break down.

Proactive measures involve going out to stop spam before it gets distributed. Provider of email services should enforce regulations against spamming, accounts that violate anti-spam policies should be terminated immediately. The government and industry must work hand-in-hand to exposed spammers' deceptive practices. They used multiple servers to hide their origins and change to new ones frequently to avoid detection.

These and many other efforts across different fronts will lead to a world where we are less troubled by spam. And as violators faced stiffer sanctions, the incentives for them will decrease and spamming will lose much of its appeal.

An Introduction to Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Friendster, MySpace. These are familiar names, you've probably have heard of at least one of these sites. And they have one thing in common - all of them are social networking sites, where users create a personal profile and create connections. People use these sites for a variety of reasons, ranging from finding dates and clients, to selling products or services, or making new friends and colleagues.

The majority of social networking sites allow users to decide how much of their information they want to share with the public. Users can hide their pages from the public so that only selected friends can view their information. Email notification is a popular feature that sends users an email whenever something changes on their profile. The email could be used to notify the user when someone posted a comment, someone sent or accepted a friend request, or a connection has an upcoming birthday.

Social networks may seem to provide opportunities for students, but they have their issues. Users often receive invitations from people they don't know. These strangers tend to try to connect with everyone they find on the network to drive up their connection numbers. Thus, the friends of a person who blindly accepts an invitation from a stranger might think that stranger is a trusted contact. Privacy is a major concern. Younger users may be unaware of the problems in revealing too much information. Thieves might use profile information for identity theft. Businesses worry about their employees giving out proprietary information or using the business brand in an inappropriate way.

But it's not all negatives though. People find jobs, bands find audiences, professionals find clients, people with shared interests make friends, friends stay connected. One site can provide a user with all the needed tools to keep a journal, manage appointments, receive customized news, and converse on hot topics. In short, social networks help users connect and share information as well as organize our lives.

Businesses with their own Web sites create profiles with links back to their sites to improve their site's search engine ranking. A user looking for a product or service might prefer to search for the product or service on a social network site rather than using a basic search engine. Or, a potential customer may stumble upon the company while browsing connections of connections.

To surmise, with so many different social networking sites out there that there is surely one for anyone inclined to go out and make a connection. Use caution, exercise common sense and the rewards of sharing information will soon be at your fingertips. Good luck!

Digital Journalism

Digital journalism refers to the production of news via digital media. With more and more newspaper publishing an internet equivalent of their daily works as well as the interactive sites on news stations' websites that offer podcasts, the shift towards getting news from the internet has adverse impacts on the traditional print media.

Digital journalism can be the work of recognized news sources, but it can also originate from individuals or small groups that have agenda or may be biased in some way or another. And since anyone with internet connection can easily publish a story, a lot of information that we obtained on the internet nowadays lack credibility, this leads to the proliferation of misinformation and conjecture. With traditional journalism "drying up", the collapse of journalism may be inevitable. We may not miss the newsprint that are inked on papers, but we may miss the writings of professional journalists.

Make no mistake, the age of digital journalism has arrived. With the emergence of gadgets like iPhone, the connection with what's happening in the world has become so much easier, everything can be stored in the pocket now. However, smart phone is only a start. Touch enabled devices like Amazon's kindle reader is redefining the future of print journalism to go digital. A touch-enabled device, with unlimited data plan that would allow users to view multimedia and video in ways that even smart phones will soon be a reality in the near future. Digital journalism gives consumers the added advantage of customization, they can decide which news feed and publications they want to subscribe to.

But that doesn't mean that the essence of journalism will be gone together with print media. An article (link provided below) written by ESPN demonstrates how the new trend of journalism can be equally, if not more interesting and engaging. The written content itself was great, but it got better when the editors did a wonderful job to lay out the paragraphs and font sizing.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=backinthewater

Does Internet and Politics match up well?

Singapore, a country famed for its "fine" laws and suffocating restrictions on a whole range of issues, from littering to speech freedom. With the increasing dominance and popularity of online media, the government has loosened its previously stringent political regulations a few years back in order to accommodate to the increasing demand and pressure from opposition parties as well as the general public. However, there are still limitations imposed on the use of internet for political purposes, as then Minister for Information and the Arts Lee Yock Suan said "the anonymity of the Internet opens a door for surreptitious elements to mislead, distract and confuse the public."

Indeed, the view of "online equals free" has put online media in a delicate situation. What needs to be put into perspective is the concern of opportunity costs. Maintaining websites are never easy, much less a political website in the climate of fear in Singapore where fundings are hard to come by. Most Singaporeans are apathetic towards politics, their indifferent attitude makes it difficult to engage them through the internet since people tend to go to sites that interest them. In addition to that, the subject of subjectivity is something that we should not overlook. No journalist can claim that his or her opinions are objective, everyone including journalists from the mainstream media will have his/her own opinions which might not necessarily be objective.

More recently in 2008, Dr James Gomez (Workers' Party) published his PhD thesis from the Monash University, Melbourne titled "Democracy and Elections: The Impact of Online Politics in Singapore". In it, he argued that the electoral system in Singapore is impervious to the impact of the internet. His analysis of voting patterns and election results over the past 3 general elections in 1997, 2001 and 2006 reflected that there was no correlation between the use of internet by various opposition parties and their performance at the polls. This despite the fact that internet penetration rate in Singapore had leaped from 14% in 1997 to 71% in 2006. His doubts are not unfounded, despite online media having great potential of gaining significant mindshare from the mainstream media. The political climate in Singapore has been very harsh towards opposition parties, even with regulation changes the hostility still exists. While the potential of online media remains promising, there remains a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of exploiting the full benefits of it.

Marvellous Technology

Microsoft Surface - More Than Just Skin Deep?

Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, allowing for interaction with digital content in a simple way. With a large, horizontal user interface, Surface offers a whole new experience when multiple users can simultaneously interact with data and each other.

Key Features

- Direct Interaction: interaction made directly with contact via touch or gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard

- Multi-user experience: large 30 inch screen display enables several people to interact simultaneously with the Microsoft Surface

- Multi-touch: responds to many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger

- Object recognition: physical objects can be placed on screen to trigger different types of digital responses

Xbox 360 Project Natal

Project Natal is a electronic installation (size of a bar) that sits above or below your TV, having close resemblance to WII's sensor bar. However instead of sensing controllers, this device has a camera, sensors and a microphone inside that enables it to get an accurate sense of your space and you in it. This lets you control games just by moving around; kicking, jumping, or whatever body motions you engage in.

Key Features

- control video games and menus using your body instead of peripheral controls

- voice and full body motion control over your on-screen avatar

iMac Holograms

Internet Passwords - Your password to internet security

Managing an arsenal of passwords is an indispensable part of the internet culture.The use of password is your first line of security defence, without which keeping data safe will be an insurmountable challenge. With the need for numerous login accounts, using the same password for each login is tempting, BUT it might not be the most sensible decision around as some websites do not have strong security. Illegal access to password information from seemingly innocent-looking websites like ecards site may lead to the same information being used to hack into payment sites like paypal. The loss of personal financial data could result in grave consequences that one would do better without. To demonstrate how easy it is to hack a Facebook account, let's take a look at the following video (i bet you'll probably starting hacking around after viewing it!)

I'm sure all of you have hear of the saying that goes "to err is human", perhaps they should complete it by adding "to slack is normal". We all have the tendency to get lazy and complacent, that is only human nature. How many times have we heard of passwords being set as "password" and other outrageously simple and easy-to-guess security codes. There's a chinese saying that goes, the more dangerous the place is, the safer you are. So it seems like people have been putting that into practice. But they're WRONG! Numerous ingenious programs have been written to crack passwords at high volume, some by hackers while others are created by legitimate security testing tools. Most of these programs use a variety of dictionary based attacks to combine common words and word variations to try thousands of passwords as fast as the targeted system will permit. Some begin by guessing a whole bunch of common passwords. Outsmarting these intelligent attacks is not as easy as we think.

Strong passwords are essential in providing important protections to your online transactions. A password should be sufficiently long and complicated to make it difficult to guess. One trick is to use mneumonics. Instead of using a common word, the first letters of each word of a phrase is used to make the password. Adding numerals or symbols to a password makes it harder to crack. A password cracker has to guess the correct string and may try to use all possible combinations. By using numerals or symbols, this will increase the number of possibilities and cause the process to take longer.

In addition, short passwords should be avoided as they can be guessed in an reasonable amount of time by a motivated individual and offers little resistance against software hackers. In Roger A Grimes' 2006 article, Password Size Does Matter, he recommended using a password of at least 15 characters to keep it from being cracked. Other common password pitfalls include creating passwords using dictionary words in any language, words spelled backwards, sequences or repeated characters as well as personal information (birthday, passport number etc).

Passwords should be known only by the computer user and the applicable service provider. They should not be written down since they may be viewed by someone else. Writing down a password makes it simple for another person to pretend to be another user. If, say, login information is written on a Post-it stuck underneath a keyboard, another employee can use that to gain unauthorized access to files.

Since there are so many computers attached to the Internet, performing online transactions carries the risk of being seen by another person. To minimize this risk, when making an online purchase, a secure site should be used. The beginning of the website address may read “https:” which Eric Lawrence explains in his 2006 article HTTPS Security Improvements in Internet Explorer 7, this indicates a site that will use encryption to hide information being sent over the Internet so that no one can read it along the way.

It is important to use unique passwords for services that store personal financial data such as banking and payment sites. This reduces the risk that a password stolen from another site list could be used to access the confidential data. Shopping and travel sites may keep credit card information so those should be unique as well.

Is Atlantis Found On Google Earth?

Internet giants Google's revised version of the Google Earth (5th edition), which allows users to access undersea data sparked a mass debate when British aeronautical engineer noticed something queer off the coast of Africa , about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands. The area is approximately the size of Wales, resembles the pattern of a street grid. Many believed that this could be the mythical sunken city of Atlantis, since it lies awfully close to one of the spots that Plato had pinpointed as a possible resting place of Atlantis. However, Google has moved swiftly to deny the rumor, stating that the lines are remnants of sonar traces left by boat as they surveyed the area. The following are two video clips that compiled the information gathered from youtube that offers a quick lowdown on what was seen on Google Earth

Skeptics have a point, why is it that prestigious marine research institutes, armed by sophisticated technology & equipments have not been able to locate Atlantis all these years, yet a software by Google can detect the location (even with the exact coordinates!) seemingly without much effort?

Yet, the evidence is compelling. The grid of crisscrossing lines don't quite seem to be the work of mother nature, remember, mother nature doesn't make straight lines, intelligent beings do. The site seem to be too vast and organized to be caused naturally. And while Google had claimed how did the lines originate, they were unable to explain why the blank spots within those lines.

Is it really Atlantis that is seen on Google Earth? And if it's not, do you still believe that Atlantis had actually existed? I'll leave the decision up to you :)

Internet & Alleviating Poverty

Poverty, a perennial phenomenon that afflicts thousands of people worldwide, has been a compelling presence amidst the focus on issues like political turmoils and natural disasters. According to figures from the United Nations, an astonishing 25, 000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. In reality, shortage of food is never the source of the problem, the problem is that many of these hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. Without money to buy food, these people become malnourished, this makes them weaker and often sick. With their ability to work reduced, their plight is worsen as they become hungrier and poorer, until the vicious cycle ends in death. Alleviating poverty thus becomes a point of paramount significance, one of which aspects that we'll be exploring for today is the use of internet.




The Internet is commonly made available to poor communities in the form of community-based telecentres. These telecentres provide shared access to the Internet and are the only realistic means of doing this for poor communities. One such example is the "Village Internet Program" spearheaded by Grameen Communications and Grameen Foundation in Bangladesh. In it, village computer centers will make it possible for people to access the Internet in search of income-generating activities and to provide education and computer-based employment.

One major benefit of this is increased access to agricultural and market information. Farmerscan learn about the current market price of their product through the Internet, resulting in increased economic efficiency. Consequently, accurate and timely information will reduce exploitation of poor rural producers by allowing them direct access to the market rather than go through middlemen who can control prices at both ends when they control information and transport.

Cyber Kiosks also bring employment opportunities to the community at large. With training, young people will be able to perform data entry and provide transcription services for any company in the world, a better alternative (in monetary terms) than migration to urban slums in search of employment. These educated youths can then become a resource for teaching others, providing educational opportunities beginning with the most basic primary education, before moving to distance learning and to remote classroom facilities in villages that until now had not even a schoolteacher.




Having arrived at an age dominated by science and technology, many of us are finding that science and technology act as aids to help us perform more efficiently. For the more affluent, science and technology have improved, but not revolutionized, their lives. For the poor, however, science and technology are likely to have a far greater impact as they promise to provide new, important, and sometimes even life-saving economic opportunities.

Porter 5 Forces - Analysis

Created by Michael Porter, the Porter's 5 Forces is a simple yet powerful tool that models an industry being influenced by five forces which aids in the understanding of where power lies in a business situation. This allows a strategic business manager to take advantage of a situation by using his strengths to create opportunities as well as to know his weaknesses in order to blunt potential threats, avoiding the sticky situation of making a wrong move. Typically used to identify whether new businesses or products have the potential to be profitable, it can also be used to understand the balance of power in order for businesses to re-strategize. Let's take a quick look @ the following video for a brief understanding of the model.

1.) Competitive Rivalry

In a market with perfect competition, profits are driven to zero. However in most instances, competition is far from perfect and firms are not unsophisticated passive price takers. The degree of rivalry can be measured by indicators of industry concentration. High concentration indicates a large proportion of the market share is held by the largest firms, while low concentration translates into a market teeming with many rival firms, none of which holds a significant market share. The degree of rivalry is often influenced by the following characteristics:

- larger number of firms

- slow market growth

- high fixed cost

- highly perishable products

- low levels of product differentiation

- high exit barriers

2.) Threat of Substitution

A product's demand is often closely related to the price change of a substitute (or similar) product. The more substitutes are available, the customers will have more alternatives, subsequently it weakens your power to manipulate the price freely. Take note that substitutes may not necessarily be rival products, for example plastic containers versus glass containers.

3.) Buyer Power

This refers to the consumers' ability to dictate prices, the stronger the buying power, the easier it is for consumer's to dictate prices. Buyers are typically strong when: they are concentrated and/or purchase a significant proportion of the output. And they are weak when: they are fragmented and/or when there is significant buyer switching cost.

4.) Supplier Power

Typically, the fewer supplier choices there are, the more we'll need to rely on them, and the more powerful they are. Suppliers are strong when: suppliers are concentrated and there is significant cost incurred when switching suppliers. They are weak if: there are many competitive suppliers, customers are weak (no power to dictate price) and concentrated buyers.

5.) Barriers to Entry

These are characteristics industries possess to protect their profit levels and prevent new rivals from entering the market as that will corrode their profit margins. There are a few ways in which barriers to entry are created: government creates barriers to regulate industry, patent knowledge serves as restriction for entry into an industry and economies of scale.

Battle of the Browsers - IE vs Firefox vs Safari vs Chrome

Providing the vehicle to navigate the web, web browsers are indispensable to our internet experience. With the decline of Netscape, one would not be blamed for thinking that it was the end of the browser wars, and it didn't in fact. With internet browsers being the most important piece of computer software used on daily basis, it didn't take long for new browsers to stake their claim on the market. As the battle heats up, traditional leader microsoft's IE looked to be the biggest loser, but it could get worse if not for the fact that many netizens already had a web browser installed and couldn't care to change it. For those who're keen to see what the various browsers have to offer, let's take a quick look at some of the big players.

Internet Explorer 8

Having triumphed in its mighty battle against Netscape, IE has maintained a commanding market share over the years, but it's all about to change with plenty of new players entering the market. Features include: "favourites" bar for one-click access, "accelerators" to facilitate quick search and being available in 25(!) languages.

Pros -> compatibility view helps see older websites easier, handy time-saving tools

Cons -> security loopholes, being the market leader made it more susceptible to attacks, faster than previous editions of IE BUT still agonizingly slow compared to other browsers

Mozilla Firefox 3.5

A serious challenger to IE, Mozilla's Firefox has consistently emerged as runner-up in the web browser wars. Fast gaining in popularity, it offers new features like "tear off tabs" to drag/drop tabs into separate browser windows, private browsing option and the cool "location-aware browsing" to serve you better.

Pros -> roughly 3x faster than its predecessor, passionate development community

Cons -> patching required for some bugs and security issues, crash potential

Apple Safari 4

The browser of choice for Apple computer users, the elegant looking Safari has won over many Windows users too. A speedy web browser with smooth and reliable performance, its attractive "cover-flow"-like horizontal image gliding has resemblance to iTunes feature and make website browsing a pleasing visual experience.

Pros -> quick & reliable with minimal fuss

Cons -> not all plug-ins supported, limited functionality of the mouse

Google Chrome

The newest player in the competitive browser market offered by internet giant Google, Chrome packs plenty of speed backed by the world's biggest search engine to make your web surfing experience a lasting (positively) one. Offering "stealth" privacy options for anonymous browsing, its one-click bookmark has proven to be a hit among fans as well.

Pros -> load/surf fast with simple & clean web designs, available in 50(!!!) languages

Cons -> lack of add-ons, limited customization options

Verdict: While Firefox remains the best browser on the whole with its impressive array of features & add-ons, Google's focus on Chrome will take away some of its previous focus on Firefox, thus how long a key player Firefox will stay in the browser wars remain to be seen. Early indications also reflected that Chrome's taking away more of Firefox's userbase than IE's. Despite being the new kid on the block, Chrome has proven its credentials to be the one to look out for in the coming months. With IE holding onto 3/4 of the browsing market due to its default status in Windows machines, it still remains the one to be beaten although it's been under plenty of critics recently, prompting them to get their act together. Primarily geared for Apple computer users, Safari is gathering pace for its assault on the web browser market, but requiring some time to get use to makes it an underdog in the Windows world at the moment.

Internet - More To Connectivity Than Meets The Eye

Internet, often dubbed the information super highway, has become such an integral element of our culture that some believe that it is already a hallmark of human civilization *wow!* Well...Close, but not quite there, yet! We all marvelled at the astonishing rate at which internet infiltrate our lives since its inception, to the extent that we assumed that it is the norm and without which, one is in danger of being left behind by the masses. That's when our ignorance got the better of us!

No wonder they say to assume is to make an ass out of both you and me. Catch the drift? The above statistics was calculated based on a world population of 6, 767, 805, 208 with an estimated 1, 733, 993, 741 internet users (Sept 30, 2009). Seems like there is still an awful lot of potential that can be harnessed, it comes as a surprise that the penetration rate for Asia only tops that of Africa, given that most will be inclined to belive that Asia probably should be right behind North America & Europe. Of course this is not to say that internet access is fairly difficult to get hold of in Asia, it's just that many Asian countries have large sections of their population not 'wired up'. Singapore (of course!), Japan & Hong Kong are a few of the "exceptions" in Asia, having penetration rates of up to 70%.

Putting things into perspective, internet growth has stalled and the explosive growth we've seen in the past decade is replaced by evolution of the composition and utility of the medium. With the increasing influx of younger internet users (due to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc), a lot remains to be seen if we can make their browsing experience safe and secure.

Food for thought >>> Amidst the belief of fading internet boom and the frenzy to develop internet and its relevant uses laterally, one cannot overlook the fact that the world is not as connected as we all thought it is. While we lavish obscene amounts of money on making the internet better (mainly for current users), one can't help but wonder if we should also make this necessity accessible to those who have yet to become part of our cyberworld?