ONEWEBDAY 2012: Participation & reaction on Twitter

On September 22, Intel celebrated OneWebDay 2012 along with thousands of other active Internet users from around the world. Intel awarded the most active Internet users from Spain, Russia, South Africa and Germany with Intel Ultrabooks.

The aim of this OneWebDay Ultrabook giveaway was to surprise highly active Internet users in each country by rewarding them with newly developed technology to ensure they get the most of their beloved World Wide Web.

The new Intel Ultrabooks were given to the following internet users:

• @davegreenway - South Africa
• @david_arraez – Spain
• @casi – Germany
• @ekozlov- Russia

Congrats to these lucky Internet users!

The campaign also triggered a lot of buzz amongst Twitter users in different countries and was supported by Intel’s local Twitter pages. Technology fans might be interested to know that Intel has its own local Twitter pages in many countries and interacts with its followers several times a day (including weekends).

Intel Africa

To find out more about Intel’s social media activities in South Africa as well as how participation and Twitter reactions regarding OneWebDay 2012 went, be sure to check out the following: Intel Africa: @Intel_Africa

Let us know if you participated in OneWebDay 2012 and what you think if this global campaign that supports fair and open use of the Internet.

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INTEL GIVEAWAY: For the love of the web and technology

OneWebDay is the day to celebrate a wonderful thing we all love and cherish. Something most of us would be lost without – the Internet. OneWebDay is a global event held every September 22 (since 2006) to celebrate the Internet and also to raise awareness of the importance of open networking principles that have made it the success that it is.

Intel are celebrating OneWebDay by giving away Intel Ultrabooks in Spain, Russia, South Africa and Germany. How did they get selected? For their love of the Internet! They’ve been highly engaged and active online and Intel wanted to reward them by giving them an Ultrabook to ensure they get the most of the online world with a proper Ultrabook.

The suggested theme for this year’s events is to emphasize local content as a way of making the Internet available and useful for our communities. Earlier in the year a joint report of the Internet Society, UNESCO, and the OECD – The Relationship Between Local Content, Internet Development, and Access Prices – revealed just how important local content is to building a connected society.

Mr Markus Kummer from the Internet Society stated:

“This study confirms the strong relationship between local content and Internet infrastructure. Keeping the traffic local and building up local content is key for improving access to the Internet. As the volume of local content increases around the world, the Internet becomes more relevant and has a greater impact on improving the lives of local communities.”

The coming rollout of many more Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in many non-western scripts can only serve to accelerate this process.

So how can you participate in OneWebDay?

• On September 22, celebrate OneWebDay on Twitter by singing praise to the benefits of an Open Internet by using the hashtag #OneWebDay
• Add the OneWebDay badge to your website/blog. Organize and participate in local events. Check what groups are in your area and collaborate!
• At local events, and in social media, feature local content makers, bloggers, wikipedians, webcasters, websites, etc.
• Contribute a story to the OneWebDay stories blog. Tell us what your favorite local content sites are and why, and comment on other people’s stories. There are some great stories and videos on here already from previous years. Be sure to check them out.

Susan Crawford, the founder of OneWebDay, offers some more background as well as other ways we can get involved with OneWebDay in this video interview with Rocketboom.

Susan Crawford of OneWebDay

I was interested to learn how OneWebDay was inspired by Earth Day. A view of our fragile Earth from the perspective of space makes us understand that we have something important to protect. Like the web, and issues of censorship, lack of access and not enough personal input, we need to work together to protect it and steer it in the right direction for the future. Let's get involved!

Useful Links:

• The Internet Society – started in 1992 by the founders of the Internet as an organizational home to the Internet Engineering Task Force. The Internet Society now has more than 100 organisational and more than 28 000 individual members in over 80 chapters around the world - all working to ensure best practices, policies and development of the web.
• At-Large – the community of individual Internet users who participate in the policy development work of ICANN. Currently, more than 100 groups represent the views of individual Internet users throughout the world, participating in building the future of the worldwide Domain Name System (DNS).

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APPLE TECH: The Leap Motion Sensor coming soon...

There's something very satisfying about touchscreen technology. I suppose it's that you are the input as oppose to a keyboard or keypad. Using natural hand movements and gestures in just intuitive. If you are used to using a phone with a touchscreen, try playing on one that is not 'touch' and see how frustrating it is.

Desktop PCs are starting to take the leap forward toward becoming fully touchable too. Techsperts at Apple have developed the Leap Motion Sensor, which takes things even further than touch. Rather, the Leap makes your Apple fully responsive to nature hand motions and gestures without the need the leave grubby fingerprints on your screen.

Introducing the Leap Motion Sensor

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6KuiuteIA[/youtube]

Here's the Leap Motion Sensor splurb off YouTube:

"Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It's more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements."

The Leap Motion Sensor is scheduled to be released next year for just $70 and can be pre-ordered at Leap Motion.

TECHNO TALK: Hair today, gone tomorrow

SINCE I was a child I’ve had this fantasy of dressing up in a medieval suit of armour and having an all-out sword fight with someone also clad in medieval metal. The only problem is that people were a lot shorter 1 000 years ago.

The human race has evolved to be a lot taller than our flail-wielding ancestors. Squeezing oneself into a genuine suit of knight’s armour would be near impossible now — especially if you’re a beer drinker. This may make one wonder if we are still evolving today.

Most evolutionary biologists would argue that if we haven’t stopped evolving, our evolution has at least slowed down to a glacial pace. The main argument is that we have created and adapted our urban environments to best suit our current shape and form.

We have taken to sitting down a lot — whether behind a desk, on a sofa or in a car seat. When it’s too cold we take comfort behind our walls and cover ourselves with blankets. And now that things are heating up, we may blast air conditioners to keep comfortable. Human evolution doesn’t stand a chance.

Fortunately, evolution is technology’s best trait. Air conditioners have become more efficient and eco-friendly and can now be used to heat and cool a building thanks to a variety called a heat pump. Heat pumps are typically used to pull heat from the air or ground into a building to raise the temperature, but can also be put into reverse to cool a building.

How heat pumps work

Liquid refrigerant is pumped through the outside coils of an air-source heat pump. A fan pulls outside air over the coils, which absorbs the heat in the air and expands it into hot vapour. The vapour enters a compressor, which increases the temperature and pressure of the gas. The vapour then flows to indoor coils. The refrigerant condenses the vapour back into a liquid as it cools and flows outside to gather more heat. Meanwhile, the heat is pumped through the air ducts of your home and distributed throughout. This process can be reversed to cool the air inside your home. (Diagram: howstuffworks.com)

Heat pumps operate in a very similar manner to standard heating and air-conditioning units but without the need to install separate systems. They are also far more efficient than their ancestors as they do not burn fuel to condition the air but rather transfer it from one place to another. Heat pumps can also be used to heat swimming pools and can even fire up a hot tub.

I’m proud to inform that heat pumps are widely available in South Africa. A couple of good places to start perusing these are www.itssolar.co.za and www.heatpumpssouthafrica.co.za By providing your name, contact details­ and nearest city, a heat pump specialist will contact you within 24 hours. Prices for domestic heat pumps range from R10 000 to R15 000.

Heat pumps should of course be used in conjunction with other energy-saving techniques. Using fluorescent light bulbs and turning appliances off when not in use are the obvious ones, but it is also a great time to utilise the spring sunshine. Phantom loads are the less obvious energy drainers. When something like a cellphone charger is plugged into a live socket, but not into a cellphone, this actually drains more energy than would be used if a phone was charging.

So let’s all do our bit this sunny season to help the planet fend off global warming by being energy savvy and by using green devices such as heat pumps. I really don’t want to have hairy grandchildren.

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ALAN TURING: Inventor of the world's first digital computer

THE modern world as we know it is run on computers. Your world and mine would be very different without them. It’s interesting to know that just 70 years ago computers didn’t exist. What’s more interesting is to consider that some of humankind’s most significant and most innovative inventions, such as the computer, emerged from the horrors of warfare. They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. This couldn’t have been truer at the time of Second World War.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was the founder of computer science, a brilliant mathematician, a philosopher, code-breaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time, whose unique contribution helped turn the tide of war. Turing was also known as the “brain” man and was the genius of Britain’s wartime code-breaking headquarters in Bletchley Park — the most secret place in Britain during WW2. Here, Turing created a code-breaking machine which formed the basis of all computer technology.

Alan Turing lived a short but significant life. At public school he fell in love with a boy who sadly died of tuberculosis, leaving Alan distraught, but contemplative. It was at this moment in his life that Alan Turing began to think about the relationship between the body and mind — between mind and matter. He wondered if the mind of the boy he had loved could have somehow survived his death. He became obsessed with the nature of thought and how the mind worked and became fascinated with the idea of building a thinking machine.

Whilst going for a run outside of Cambridge, Turing had one of the greatest mathematical insights of all time. He began to contemplate how an imaginary machine, operating with a very simple set of rules or instructions, but with an infinite amount of time, could solve any and all conceivable, mathematical problems. This was the first logical concept of the programmable computer, which became known as the Turing Machine. But then war broke out.

Turing was known for his code-breaking and mathematical skills and was soon assigned a post at Bletchley Park. Turing and his colleagues were tasked with cracking the Enigma — the sophisticated German coding device that was used to encode messages during the war. The Enigma was believed to be unbreakable and nearly all German u-boat missions used it. If it hadn’t been cracked by the code-breakers, it would have certainly changed the outcome of the war.

Thousands had been tasked with cracking the Enigma system, but it was Turing’s genius that allowed them to figure it out. It was also Turing’s chance to finally implement his idea of building a mechanical brain.

The Enigma device used a simple rotary system but was able to encode messages in literally millions of different ways. Not only that, but messages were encoded differently each day, and to crack it required more than thousands of human eyeballs.

Alan Turing and his colleagues constructed a mechanical machine called The Bombe, which was able to churn out thousands of possible answers to the encoded German messages. It involved a lot of guesswork, but without Turing and his code-breaking machine, Britain may very well have not survived the battle of the Atlantic.

The Bombe was not the world’s first computer, but after the war Alan Turing and his colleagues went on to build Colossus. This mechanical, “thinking” machine was labeled as the word’s very first digital computer and is what all modern computer technology is based on.

Alan Turing died young under mysterious circumstances. He was found dead in his room by his housekeeper and it was reported that he died of cyanide poising. There is a bit of a conspiracy theory here as some believe that Turing’s death was by accident, others thought it was suicide and another group believe that he was assassinated. The assassination theory certainly has something going for it, as Turing was not only a homosexual at a time when it was illegal, but he also held some of the most important secrets of WW2 and may have been considered as a security risk.

However his life ended, Alan Turing will certainly be remembered and appreciated for the rest of mine.

• Footnote: A personal statement of apology was given by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on September 10, 2009, for Alan Turing’s inhumane treatment.

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SMART DUST: People and computers living in perfect harmony?

COMPUTERS have advanced so splendidly in the past few years that electricians are now able to make micro-computers the size of pinheads. The proposed applications for computers of this size range from modifying the weather to controlling the electrical infrastructure of large cities. Of course, it is wise to be wary of anything that is powerful and to analyse critically the potential of such technology before it involuntarily becomes an integral part of our lives.

Smart dust is one particular brand of microcomputers that has been hailed as a society-changing element that will greatly improve and change the way we live our daily lives. Devised by Dr Kristofer Pister from the University of California in 2001, smart dust is able to gather information from its surrounding environment and send this to people or other computers.

Pictured right: Dr Kristofer Pister demonstrating the size of smart dust particles (Images: newilluminati.blog-city.com)

A smart dust particle or mote is a wireless sensor that has four basic functions — sensing, computation, communication and power — all built into one tiny package. With smart dust being so low powered and inexpensive, the idea is to spread it everywhere — in every building, on every street, in every electrical device and ultimately, in or on every human being.

What smart dust is able to do is create a large invisible network that, in theory, would be able to manage the infrastructure of even the largest city in the world. Streets and buildings would be able to recognise people and respond accordingly. Workplaces would recognise employees and buzz you into the building. Smart dust could even send a lift to your floor and boot up your PC.

Of course the major concern involves privacy. If all of this information about you is available and gathered by smart dust, who else has access to it? Smart dust would also allow certain people to know exactly where you are at all times and could quite easily turn on you and deny you freedom of movement and access. It may sound like something from a movie, but the amount of control that powerful people could have on the masses via smart dust is certainly something to be cautious of.

What is a good idea is having smart dust monitor our roadways and transport systems. Smart dust scattered on the roads would be able to report potholes and traffic jams to commuters, and smart dust on the railways would be able to accurately report late trains in an instant. Bridges coated in smart dust would be able to report stress fractures, helping to avoid collapse and prevent disaster.

The first smart dust particles created in 2001, which were about the size of a deck of playing cards.

But do we want such fabric dispersed everywhere? Smart dust may be evolving to the microscopic level, but it is by no means undeniably safe. Several news reports were released in the past decade about a similar substance known as global environmental sensors (GEMS) that had been released into the atmosphere to monitor weather conditions. There was very little thought given to these electrical particles being inhaled once they descended to Earth, nor any given to the fact that several micro-organisms could ingest smart dust and die as a result.

It almost seems worth having to boot up your work PC manually and save a termite population in the process.

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3D PRINTING: Producing abundance with technology

MANY fantasize about designing and building their dream home. If achieved, the feeling must be one of great pride and involvement. The sad reality is that building a house from scratch requires a whole team, and a group of wholesalers. For starters you would need an architect, electrician, a plumber, mechanical engineer and a surveyor, not to mention all the chain stores you would have to visit to furnish your new home. In the end, it may not feel like you were involved at all - apart from having dished out all the necessary funding.

But what if you could play a bigger and cheaper role in your home’s creation? Of course it would be wise to get the professionals to assess the ground and foundations, but when it comes to furnishing and decorating, the power lies in 3D printing. Most homes are, after all, built from the inside-out.

As jaw-dropping as it may sound, 3D printing is essentially the creation of solid three dimensional objects using a large oven-sized printer. Objects are “printed” by laying down successive layers of material. The “ink” generally consists of molten plastics, but the more hi-tech 3D printers are able to use workable metals such as nickel, bronze, titanium and stainless steel.

Most 3D printing methods use melting or softening material to produce the layers. Others lay liquid materials that are then cured with other technologies. Some 3D printers can even reproduce themselves entirely.

3D Printers work by being fed digitised files or schematics. The design for a particular object is created using 3D modeling software and then sent to the printer for creation. Wikipedia explains the process thusly: “A 3D printer works by taking a 3D computer file and using and making a series of cross-sectional slices. Each slice is then printed one on top of the other to create the 3D object.”

Since 2003 there has been large growth in the sale of 3D printers for industrial use, but they are now finding their way into consumers’ homes (at around R100 000). The technology is generally used in the fields of industrial design, engineering, construction, auto mechanics, and the dental and medical industries, and is also known as the “architect’s dream tool”. 3D printing is even used for creating jewellery and footwear prototypes before they are mass produced.

One fantastic application is the use of 3D printing for reconstructing fossils in paleontology. Ancient and priceless artifacts can be replicated with flawless precision. As exciting, is the reconstruction of bones and body parts in the field of forensic pathology as well as the reconstruction of heavily damaged evidence acquired from crime scene investigations.

Meanwhile in the biology department, 3D printing technology is currently being studied by biotechnology firms and academia for possible use in tissue engineering. Its applications are to build living organs and body parts. Layers of living cells are deposited onto a gel medium which slowly builds up to form three dimensional structures. This field of research has been termed as organ printing, bio-printing or computer-aided tissue engineering. I’m surprised that no one has called it “playing God”.

The thought that 3D printing could be the means for producing abundance, excites me. High quality metal parts or tools could be mass produced and then donated to relief efforts or developing communities. Taps, tools, light fixtures, cutlery, hip replacements, 3D models, cogs, prosthetics and nuts and bolts could all be mass printed. Gone are the dreary days of the assembly line; 3D printers could even run overnight while the goods cook in the oven.

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