Free tools for working with Flash video files

Flash (.flv), probably the most common Internet video format, is used by Youtube and many other sites. If you download a video, you you might want to convert it to another format, strip off the audio as an .mp3 file, or edit it. Check out this list of free tools for processing Flash video.

Senator Lieberman objects to terrorist video on YouTube

We saw earlier that al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades were using Google Earth to site targets. Terrorist organizations also use the Internet for recruiting, logistics, propaganda, etc.

Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked Google, the parent company of the YouTube, to "immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations" from the site and prevent similar content from reappearing.

Google, refused stating “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view.”

A spokesperson for Lieberman then stated that the senator found the response unsatisfactory and was troubled that the company "does not appear willing to change its guidelines to prevent foreign terrorist organizations (as designated by the State Department) from posting videos used to radicalize followers and incite them to violence."

Evidently Lieberman feels that the Islamist organizations have a right to free speech in the US, but that Google does not have the obligation to publish their speech.

Every nation makes some attempt to control Internet content. Some ban pornography, others the sale of Nazi memorabilia, etc. Do you think Google should comply with Lieberman's request? What are the moral considerations? The practical business considerations?

User supplied content and network effects

We discuss the value of user-generated content. An early example was Amazon.com, which beat a better established competitor, Barnes and Noble, by encouraging people to submit reviews of books.

Wikipedia and Craigslist are two other well known examples. The Wikipedia Foundation, which runs one of the most visited sites on the Web, had only 14 employees as of March 2008. Craigslist had only 23 employees in October 2006 yet it was one of the ten most visited Web sites, as we see here:



This list may be exaggerated -- other companies like the BBC and Disney have diverse interests going far beyond their Web sites and revenue at Craigslist is far below the other companies on the list -- but it makes the point that providing a uniform place for users to post their content is sufficient to build a very valuable service.

Ebird provides another example. Ebird is not commercial -- it is a citizen science site, operated by the Audubon Society and Cornell University, where bird watchers can submit their observations. Ebird gives individual bird watchers a secure, handy place to store their observations, and the collected data may be analyzed for scientific purposes, as we see in this map showing the US Osprey population:



Services which, like these, grow in value as the number of users (content contributors) grow, are said to enjoy network effects.

Can you give examples of other services that rely on users for content and enjoy network effects? Can you think of such a service that might be of value to students on our campus? To students world wide?

Clearwire, Sprint, Intel and Google shoot for mobile Internet access

We discuss mobile connectivity. Today, third generation cellular is the most common means of mobile connectivity, but wireless communication using WiMAX technology is becoming available for both fixed and mobile applications.

Sprint and Clearwire have planned WiMAX deployment for some time, but they have now formed a new company and taken in strategic partners Intel and Google. The new venture, also called Clearwire, plans to be available to between 120 and 140 million people by 2010. That is only about 40 percent of the US, but it is significant.

Intel is a leading WiMAX hardware vendor. Today's laptops usually have WiFi radios for local area connectivity, and Intel wants tomorrow's laptops to also have WiMAX chips for wide area connectivity. Google is interested in mobile computing and wants their applications, Youtube videos and ads to be on every cell phone and mobile Internet access device.

If you could get high speed mobile access using a handheld device like an Apple iPhone, what would you use it for? How much would you be willing to pay for the mobile service? Would you want your phone to be separate from your Internet access device?

Clearwire hopes to be available to 40% of the US population by 2010 -- which areas will get service first?

Abilene Christian converts to Google Apps for Education

We discuss the pros and cons of using Internet services, and have seen that several universities are using Internet services for some of their IT applications.

Abilene Christian University is a recent convert to Google Apps for Education. The "easy", "no brain" decision has saved them $100,000 per year while improving service, security and reliability. The savings came from eliminating servers and one position, but rather than cutting staff, they re-assigned the position from administrative computing to development in support of instruction.

The primary applications have been Google email, shared documents, and shared calendar. They are also pleased that the Google applications are compatible with the iPhone and iTouch Internet access devices incoming freshmen receive.

You can read more here and here or watch CIO Kevin Roberts describe their decision, the conversion process, the applications and advantages in this four minute video clip.

What are the advantages of Google's Gmail over our current campus email system? What would be the drawbacks or risks of converting to Gmail and other Google applications?

Web anniversary -- 15 years in the public domain

We discuss IT history, including that of the Web.

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the placing of the Web in the public domain -- enabling it to grow to what it is today.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He proposed that CERN develop a hypertext (link) based document management system for the Internet. You can read his proposal here.

The proposal was accepted and work began on what would become the first Web client/server.

On April 30 1993, CERN placed the Web software in the public domain, allowing anyone to build and use Web browsers and servers without paying a royalty. The BBC published several articles commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of that date, including:

• The World Wide Web turns 15 (again)
• Web in infancy, says Berners-Lee
• Luminaries look to the future web
• How the web went world wide
• Questions and answers: Tim Berners-Lee

What do you think would have happened to the Web if CERN management had decided to copyright the Web protocols and software and charge royalties for those wanting to use them?

Analyzing and improving Web site performance

We discuss the HTTP protocol and Web site timing. WebSiteOptimization is a good source of information about speeding up your Web site. The site includes:

• A free Web site analysis and optimization service, which breaks out the load time of all Web page components and makes suggestions for improving performance.
• A speed tweak of the week -- weekly tips on how to improve Web site performance.
• Data analysis like this paper showing a three time increase the average size of a Web page and doubling of the number of objects during the last five years. (The average Web page is no longer useful for those with dial up connections or those in developing nations).

Should you write a paper or create an ad hoc blog?

I just gave a presentation on computer literacy courses at a conference. People typically write papers for publication in a conference proceedings, but I decided a companion blog would be more useful.

Creating an ad hoc blog for a project, event, or, in my case, a conference presentation, takes only a few minutes, but providing the content is somewhat more time consuming than writing a paper for publication.

My ad hoc blog ended up with 2,964 words in 9 posts. Writing it took longer than writing a paper of the same length with 9 sub-headings because of the inclusion of 76 links to references and enrichment material. Some of those 76 links would have been references in a traditional paper, but I would have left most of the enrichment material out. Since I was writing for a blog, and knew the reader could easily skip a link or follow it, I left them in. Adding the links is mechanical, but discovering and reading the enrichment material was time consuming. It also meant I learned more.

The division of the blog into 9 separate posts, each of which stands alone, allows the reader to focus only on portions of interest. Category tags and full-text search also help the reader focus and make sub-sections more discoverable.

Reading a blog is different than reading a paper. The author does not specify a reading sequence, and transitions between sections (posts) are not explicit. These drawbacks could be overcome by knitting the blog posts together into a linear paper or by preparing an overview post -- an extended abstract with links to the individual posts. Writing a traditional paper or an overview post would be relatively simple once the blog was complete, but it would still take time. (I will do both when I find time).

An electronic publication like an ad hoc blog is also mutable, whereas a conference proceedings is fixed once it is published. For example, I revised the Internet Writing post twice after publishing it. The blog also allows for comments and other feedback. Of course, an online conference proceedings can also be changed and feedback can be solicited.

The blog might also continue to grow. The first nine posts of the computer literacy blog were related to my presentation, but the tenth summarized a related presentation I heard at the conference. Some ad hoc blogs may continue after the event.

A final consideration is academic credit. Even if a blog is more effective than a paper, an academic writer may be reluctant to go that route due to publication pressure. The traditional notion of academic publication is out of date.

You often write term papers for classes. Would creating an ad hoc blog be preferable? Why or why not?

Writing for the Internet: conversations, short documents and collaborative wrting

Netcraft publishes a monthly survey of the Web. Their April, 2008 survey reports 1.1 million new blogs were created using Blogger alone.

Some of those 1.1 million are just tests, and they will be abandoned. Others are ad hoc blogs, set up for a single event or project. Others will go on for years. Regardless, it is clear that a lot of people are writing for blogs -- professionally and personally.

We should examine our writing curriculum with this in mind. What sorts of things will our students be writing after graduation? Much of what they write will be for the Internet or intranet. That means they will be participating in electronic conversations, writing short documents like blog posts or Web pages, and doing collaborative writing.

You can read more on this topic in a post on the impact of the Internet on the writing curriculum.

A student recently wrote "I will write 42 pages for class this semester ... and over 500 pages of email". How many pages will you write for your classes this semester? How many emails, blog posts, instant messages, twitters, FaceBook pages, etc. will you write for the Internet?

Does being open pay off?

In spite of setbacks and roadblocks, there is an overall trend toward increased Internet and telecommunication openness and standards. (The ball started rolling with the 1956 Hush-A-Phone Case which forced AT&T to allow us to attach devices to their network).

We talk about openness and transparency in various contexts. We talk about the end-to-end, dumb Internet where anyone can run any application and connect any device. We talk about the cellular providers trying to keep control over their networks, but gradually begining to loosen up. We have seen record companies first try to control music copying, then starting to sell unprotected .mp3 songs. YouTube is open to all comers as are FaceBook, MySpace and thousands of other sites. I came across a different sort of openness while ordering a book at Amazon.com.



As you see here, Amazon sold new copies of the book I wanted for $18.25 plus shipping. They also listed offers to sell the same book from 36 of their competitors. One competitor, FeelGoodReaders, was selling the book new for $14.55 and another had a used copy that was "like new" for only $12.75. In fact Amazon listed 12 competitors who were selling new copies of the book for less than their price of $18.25 and many others selling cheaper used copies. Amazon also told me that FeelGoodReaders had an excellent reputation -- 99% of their customers gave them positive reviews.

Based on this, I bought the book from FeelGoodReaders. Was Amazon hurt or helped by their openness? What did the decision to show the competitor's prices and customer ratings cost Amazon? Did it benefit them at all? Did it benefit the economy?

Soon we will have Internet video cameras in our pockets

Video is now a common Internet data type and mobile Internet access devices are becoming available. You can see the convergence of these trends in this video of a test drive of a Tesla electric car:



The audio and video quality is poor, but it was shot using a Nokia N95 cell phone camera and streamed on the Internet as it was being recorded.

(The video is worth watching in its own right -- Tesla's founder discusses their technology and plans for the future while taking a joy ride).

We saw the Apple iPhone this year, and large phone vendors are now demonstrating their own mobile Internet access devices. Soon portable video cameras will be ubiquitous.

Ubiquitous, Internet-connected video cameras will be used for many business and personal applications. Will they also affect politics and government? Would it have mattered if the students at Tienanmen Square or the recent Tibetan demonstrators had been online? How many athletes and spectators will be online in China during the upcoming Olympic Games? How many people will be online in Iraq next year?

Today's students take the Internet for granted and want to use it in school

We have seen that today's students have been raised with information technology (see
Beloit College Mindset list and Characteristics of today's students).

In a recent three part column, Robert Cringley noted that schools are now full of computers, but, increasingly, technical resources are devoted to keeping students from using their information technology -- defending against instant messaging, blogging, Web surfing, reading and writing email, twittering, playing games, etc. during class and exams as well as against plagiarism.

Cringley thinks we will be forced to accept student's use of technology, stating

We've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools (my emphasis).

That is a strong statement -- do you feel it is over the top?

You can read Cringley's three columns for yourself Column 1, Column 2, and Column 3.

Intel RCP -- a packaged rural wireless solution

We discuss wireless communication, and an earlier class used WiFi wireless technology to connect our campus dorms to the Internet. They used 802.11A for the links between the dorm buildings and 802.11G to connect to student's computers in their dorm rooms inside the building.

Intel has taken a similar approach with their Rural Connectivity Program (RCP). (Watch the short video). They have combined the components we used in the dorm into a single, commercial package. An Intel RCP node puts two radios (one using 802.11A for a long distance link and a second using 802.11G for user connectivity) in a weatherproof box along with antennae for local access and a high-gain, focused antenna for the longstance link. They also modify the modulation method to improve communication speed and reliability.

Our dorm buildings are only 100 or so meters apart, whereas Intel intends RCP links to be as much as 60 miles apart. Their goal is to provide a link from a rural village or farm back to an ISP for Internet connectivity. Their target market is developing nations, but many rural areas in the US also lack connectivity.

Can you think of a place where Internet access is not available in the US? Would Intel RCP offer a solution?

Synchronous collaboration -- working in different places at the same time

Several years ago -- before the Web was invented -- I was at the home of a Russian networking pioneer. I noticed that he had a computer in his living room that was connected over dial-up phone line to the Internet connection at his office. He told me he had called the office six months earlier, and, since there was no charge for local calls within Moscow, he never hung up the phone.

The cost of Internet connectivity is fixed -- you pay a flat fee for the month. That fee structure encourages same-time collaboration. Consider the way this programmer describes his work day.

He works with a colleague in a different state, but they remain in constant communication -- as if they were in the same room. Like my colleague in Russia, they open the connection between them when they arrive at work, and leave it open all day. He mentions using several networked applications -- Skype (VOIP), IRC (chat), Wiki (for documentation), and VNC (screen sharing) -- to facilitate collaboration.

(The recorded comment was made by an audience member at a panel discussion on attention).

But, can we have rich, emotional communication over the Internet? In 1980, artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz connected larger-than-life video displays in Los Angeles and New York using a satellite link. They called the event "Hole in Space," and it was The Mother of all Video Chats. They demonstrated that, with sufficient bandwidth, emotion and presence could surely be communicated. Here are some video excerpts from their experiment followed by a short public-policy rant.

Characteristics of today's students

We have discussed the Beloit College Mindset List, which characterizes today's incoming freshman class.

Michael Wesch's video Vision of Students Today is similar, but perhaps a bit darker. The video shows students in a large lecture hall holding up signs stating their characteristics.



Many of the characteristics it portrays have to do with the Internet and its implications and applications. For example:

• I spend 3 1/2 hours a day online.
• I will write 42 pages for class this semester ... and over 500 pages of email
• I will read 8 books this year ... and 2,300 Web pages and 1,281 FaceBook profiles.
• I buy $100 textbooks that I never open.
• I bring my laptop to class, but I'm not working on class stuff.
• I FaceBook through most of my classes.
• This laptop costs more than some people in the world make in a year.

The video was produced by Wesch and his cultural anthropology students at Kansas State University. Visit their Web site for more information.

Last, but not least, check out this Doonesbury cartoon.

Television video is becoming economically feasible

We discuss the notion that new data types become economically feasible as technology improves. A New York Times article indicates that television quality video may soon be common on the Internet.

As shown here, over 100 million videos were streamed from four network Web sites during December, 2007.



The Times also reported that 2.7 million people watched the season four premier of The Office on the Internet and 9.7 watched it on television. (The Office is a dialog-heavy program, better suited to the computer screen than an action program). The article also mentions a survey conducted last October by Nielsen Media Research which found that one in four Internet users had streamed full-length television episodes online during the previous three months.

Note that these surveys were taken in the United States, where connectivity is mediocre by the standards of developed nations.

Have you watched a television episode on the Internet? If not, why not? If so, how was the experience? These surveys refer to television quality video. Would high-definition TV programs or movies be as common on the Internet?

The Beloit College Mindset List -- Technology changes the experience of young people

We cover the implications of technology for individuals. For ten years, Beloit College has published its Mindset List of characteristics of the incoming freshman class. The list for each year has about 70 items, and some of them are relevant to our course. For example, the lists for the classes of 2010 and 2011 include these statements about incoming freshmen:

• They are wireless, yet always connected.
• “Google" has always been a verb.
• Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.
• They have rarely mailed anything using a stamp.
• Being techno-savvy has always been inversely proportional to age.
• Music has always been “unplugged.”
• Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
• Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
• They’re always texting 1 n other.

(Click here for more student characteristics).

Do these and other items on the list accurately describe you? In what ways should our class change to reflect these changes?

37Signals -- excellence in Internet customer relations

We discuss progress in storage, electronics and communication, and it is common knowledge that all three technologies are improving exponentially. Everyone speaks of "Moore's Law." (But few read the short article that gave rise to the term).

What do companies do when better technology cuts their costs? Most grin and watch their profit margin rise. But, another alternative is to create good will by passing some of the savings on to customers.

When I logged on to my 37Signals Basecamp site yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see this message:

More storage space for the same price!

Last night we increased file storage space for Personal through Premium plans. Personal plans now get 1 GB (up from 250 MB), Basic plans now get 3GB (up from 500 MB), Plus plans now get 10 GB (up from 3 GB), and Premium plans now get 20 GB (up from 10 GB). Max plans remain at 50 GB for now, but if enough people start to hit that limit we will increase that limit as well. We hope you find the increased storage space useful and thanks again for being our customers!

That, combined with their forthright handling of a recent service interruption, is a case study in good customer relations!

Which do you feel has done a better job of passing technology improvements along to the consumer -- PC companies or telephone companies?

164 terabit per second communication

We discuss exponential improvements in electronic, storage and communication technology and backbone networks.

The first NSFNet backbone links had a speed of 64 kilobits per second. Today, links with speeds of 10 gigabits per second are common. That is considerable improvement, but researchers have recently achieved 164 terabits per second over a distance of 2,500 kilometers, an indication that we will one day see much faster backbone links.

The researchers reported using "164 wavelength-division multiplexed channels modulated at 100 Gbps in the effort." In plain English, what is that saying?

How many times faster is 164 terabits per second than 10 gigabits per second? How many times faster is 10 gigabits per second than 64 kilobits per second?

Mobile Internet access is looking up

We have discussed mobile device form factors. We still don't know what form factor the public will choose, but we just got an indication. Apple's iPhone is a better Internet access device than any previous cell phone, and, since it was introduced, Google has seen 50 times more searches on the iPhone than any other mobile handset.

Virtually all phone manufacturers are working on touchscreen devices similar to the iPhone, and many of them will use Google's Android operating system and application bundle.

Phone manufacturer Nokia is convinced the public will want mobile Internet access. They recently purchased NAVTEQ, the street mapping company used by Google Maps and others. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia president and CEO, believes GPS chips will be as common in mobile phones as cameras. He says "navigation is one of the foundations of the context-aware mobile phone. We believe it will be as important as voice capability was 20 years ago."

IPhone users like to access the Internet, but that does not prove the billions of simple cell phone users will feel the need to convert. Is mobile Internet access important to you or are you satisfied with your current cell phone? If you had a mobile Internet device, what would stop you from running Skype or another VOIP program instead of using cell call minutes? Check these hypothetical auto navigation videos from NAVTEQ -- would you use these applications?

Mega data centers and electric power

As we have seen, there are data centers and Internet exchange points in many cities. These are very large, but they pale in comparison to the data centers being built around the world by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other large organizations which hope to provide the utility infrastructure for the era of network-based applications.

Consider Google's data center in The Dalles Oregon, which is described in an article on "Information Factories" by George Gilder. The data center at The Dalles is the latest and most advanced of about two dozen Google data centers and is estimated to house at least 450,000 servers.

Google located the data center at The Dalles because electric power was plentiful and cheap. A study published in 2007 estimated that in 2005 servers, cooling and auxiliary infrastructure consumed 1.2% of US power, an amount comparable to that for color televisions. The 2005 electric bill was about $2.7 B in the US and $7.2 B for the world. Network World estimated the 2006 US bill at $4.5 B -- about 1.5% of US electricity for the year -- and expects that to double by 2011. Given these costs, Intel, AMD, SUN and others are working very hard to produce low power electronics and servers, but the number of servers is rising rapidly.

Harper's Magazine took a somewhat critical look at the politics involved in bringing Google to The Dalles.

The Economist has also had an article on the global growth and consolidation of data centers.

For ongoing discussion of power and the environmental impact of this topic, see Bill St.Arnaud's blog Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure.

This article in the New York Times Magazine talks about data center power and other characteristics -- from the point of view of society and organizations.

Google's data center in The Dalles is also discussed in Slashdot and in The New York Times

Our communication infrastructure, data centers, and personal computers consume a lot of electric power. Do they save power as well?

Finding, then filtering blogs

We discuss blog applications and platforms. But, out of the millions of blogs, how do you find one you want? This post gives tips on searching for blogs on a given topic.

Once you find a good blog, you can subscribe to its RSS feed. But, instead of getting notification of every post, you might want to filter the feed, only receiving notification of the better ones. Aiderss.com offers one approach to feed filtering. They compute a postrank score, and only include high-scoring posts in the feed.

Try Aiderss pagerank pagerank filtering on a blog that you read, and see whether you agree with its selection of the best posts. Aidrss is an attempt to cut down on information overload -- do you feel overwhelmed by a flood of information?

Real time location tracking

We discuss location-based applications, and the US Federal Communication Commission has mandated that all cell phones be location-aware for emergency 911 service. Carriers are working toward that goal, and eventually, all cell phones will be equipped with a GPS (global positioning system) receiver or use other technology to record their locations, enabling real time monitoring.



Tim Hibbard illustrates real-time monitoring by carrying a GPS-equipped phone in his car. His location is recorded every 15 seconds, and plotted on Google Maps and Google Earth. His travel routes are also stored on a server so one can see where he has been in the past. For example, on August 12, 2006, Tim traveled around his old college town, Lawrence, Kansas:



Real time GPS could be used to monitor fleets of delivery vehicles or taxis, children, pets, criminals under house arrest, etc. Does this capability raise concern over privacy?

Undersea cables

We discuss backbone connectivity, including udersea cables. The first undersea cable carried telegraph traffic between New York and London in 1858.



Today, undersea cables have a combined capacity of over 7 terabits per second, as shown in this map:



The map also shows the site of a recent cable cut off the Egyptian coast. The cut was attributed to a ship dragging its anchor, and repairs are underway, but some wonder if it may have been cut intentionally.

Undersea cables are high-capacity components of a rapidly growing global nervous system. (You might think of the connected people and computers as being like neurons). You can read the story of the construction of the FLAG cable in an epic article from Wired Magazine entitled Mother Earth Mother Board.

You can get an idea of the history and importance of undersea cables in Arthur C. Clarke's "How the World was One" or check this Web site on the history of Atlantic and other cables.

Satellite links also carry intercontinental traffic -- how does their speed, capacity, latency, and ease of deployment compare with undersea cables?

Maplight.org and other public data mashups

We discuss mashups, and public data is becoming available for mashing up on the Internet.

Consider Maplight.org. Using Maplight, one can correlate voting on a bill with contributions. For example, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007 requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. As we see below, interests wanting this bill to pass contributed more to legislators voting yes than to those voting no.



Maplight currently has data for the Federal and California legislatures, with other states under construction. For more on their capability, see this video tour.

Prominent blogger Jon Udell has a strong interest in the availability of public data on the Internet. You can see what he is finding and learning by tracking his public data bookmarks.

Who are your representative and senators? Which special interests are supporting them? How are they voting on issues of concern to you? What data does your local government publish on the Internet? Do they make it easy for users to access it and create mashups?