McWifi for the masses?

In 1961, Arthur C. Clarke said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

In an age where devices with 160Gb and a colour screen can fit into the front pocket of a shirt and be taken in people's stride as regular a day to day device, wireless internet connections are (to me) the area of technology where magic still exits. The fact that on the latest iPods, I can watch videos on a screen which takes up more of my field of vision than my TV but is thin enough to fit into a suit pocket without spoiling the lines impresses me- but it's when I'm near an internet hotspot and I can instantly watch one of hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos that I'm still amazed; especially when considering that just 5 years ago, broadband internet penetration in the UK was at just 7%, and the restricted bandwidth meant that the idea of just streaming audio was difficult to take seriously- let alone streaming video.

Information Technology tools for real life

It occurred to me recently that I don't really know who taught me to use computers and the internet. I can remember being told that ctrl+z undoes whatever you've just done and immediately realising that it was going to be the most useful keyboard shortcut I would eve know, and when I was first told what the internet and what a browser was, and I know the resources that I've used the most in learning how to write HTML, CSS and PHP (W3Schools.com and php.net, in case you were wondering.) But in terms of things like how to actually browse the web, what browser to use, how to best use a search engine and so on, most of my knowledge has come incrementally, from a range of different sources, and is probably the result of spending too much time sat in front of a computer.

So for a bit of a change and to try to save you from having to slowly pick these things up by spending too much of your time in front of a computer, I thought that rather than posting news and opinions on the world of information technology, I'd try posting something of a bit more obviously practical use; some web-related tips and tools for day to day life that I've picked up over the last ten years or so, which should be useful for people other than web-obsessed geeks.

(This is mainly based on what I've set up recently, having started working in a new computer at a new job— suddenly finding myself without all the bits and pieces that I consider to be my day-to-day essentials, and found myself feeling surprisingly lost without...)

Net Neutrality and the limitations of the Web

The web as a medium, compared to television or other platforms, has its own particular set of problems. The restrictions mainly lie in the technology behind it.

Ultimately, the internet is built on a "many-to-many" principle; instead of one pathway between any two points on the network, there are many alternatives. Where many pathways converge at a single point, there can be problems.

Server Strain

A site like YouTube can certainly provide television-like content, and the distinction between online video like YouTube and television broadcasts are being blurred; devices such as the Apple TV, which send YouTube videos directly to a television set, while IPTV provides television broadcasts over the internet.

However, even YouTube would probably struggle to provide a single live, nationwide or global event in the way that television can.

The most watched YouTube videos have yet (at the time of writing) to break the 60 million views mark- that's the total number of people across the world who have watched it over the course of 18 months. Compare that to record breaking TV broadcasts, such as the Eastenders Christmas 1986 episode when 30.15 million viewers simultaneously watched Den Watts divorce Angie in the highest rated soap in British TV history, or when 32 million households watched the 1966 world cup final. (Although even these figures pale in comparison with the most watched film, with an estimated 2 billion views worldwide.)