Ideas For Teaching Senior Citizens To Access The Internet

December 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Computers and internet access are becoming common fixtures in senior citizen centers around the world. Organizations that provide services to the elderly are aware of the need for seniors to become familiar with modern technology and to learn the basics of this mode of communication. Many of these people will have little or no experience with the internet, but do have the desire to get on board and explore this new world. The following are the most popular tasks that senior citizens want to learn:

Email
Many seniors want to stay in touch with grandchildren, relatives and friends who live far away. Teaching senior citizens the basics of how to compose, send and save emails can help them maintain these relationships and feel less isolated.

Chat And Instant Messaging
Using instant messaging services can help seniors converse with loved ones without worrying about long-distance phone bills. Elderly people remember when long-distance calls were very expensive, and they maintain the habit of keeping calls short. Instant messaging can help seniors carry on meaningful and detailed conversations without the pressure of phone bills and timed calls.

Pictures
Grandparents are often separated from their grandchildren by geography, and they miss the milestones like school plays and graduations. Teaching seniors how to open, save and print pictures can help them feel more connected. Seniors can also benefit from learning how to use photo-hosting websites, where they can upload and share their own pictures.

Internet Searches
Senior citizens may want to research health issues, news and policies that affect them but may not know where to start. Computer classes should teach seniors the basics using search engines and how to determine if a website is reliable.

Internet lessons for people of any age should include warnings about scams, traps and the dangers of sharing too much information in order to keep their experience safe and enjoyable.

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Hacker Takes Down Houston ISD

November 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Most students will usually jump at any chance to get a free day from work. The usual culprits for this are snow days, inclement weather, or teacher’s in-service days, but students at Houston ISD can now add hacker days. A recent hacking attempt knocked out the school district’s computer system, cutting students and staff off from the Internet.
While the attack didn’t stop school from being in session, it did halt online classes and cause minor inconveniences. Some students had to delay their projects because they couldn’t access the Internet for multi-media elements. Teachers had to take attendance using paper and pen, and they could not enter or update student grades until the network came back up.

Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S., and Houston ISD is one of the area’s largest employers. It keeps electronic files on over 200,000 students and 30,000 employees. These files contain everything from personal contact information to payroll data to grades. School officials reported there was no evidence of tampering with any of these accounts, but the district and area police will continue to work with the FBI in regards to the cyber-attack.

The Internet crash occurred on Sunday, October 24, 2010 and lasted until Tuesday. The school district noticed the problem when it tried to launch a new website. At this time, authorities do not suspect the new website contributed to the problem.

As soon as the district realized there was a problem, it shut down its network to prevent hackers from accessing any information. This prevented Houston ISD employees from access email and other Internet-based applications. Once the district completed its security procedures, it restored the network, which included the new website.

While authorities may have more information into the attack, they will not release the information until they close the investigation.

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Cyber Warfare and You

October 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Cyber Warfare and the Cyber Citizen

How would you react if your country was attacked, not by an invasion, an ICBM, or terrorist bombings, but a cyber attack. Cyber warfare is a new concept, and one that the average citizen isn’t familiar with. Cyber warfare is the attempt to infiltrate, disrupt, or destroy the computer networks and cyber infrastructure of its enemies. Cyber war can be conducted by individuals, non-state terrorists, countries, or all of the above. Cyberspace has been declared as the fifth dimension of warfare (the others being land, sea, air, and space.) With integrated networks so critical to the defense, commerce, and day-to-day life of a country, it’s essential that the average person knows what to expect and how to react if their country comes under a full-scale cyber attack.

Know How You’re Affected

If your nation’s computer networks are under full-scale assault by a cyber attack, as in full-blown cyber warfare, here’s what will happen: Your enemies infiltrate the computer networks of national defense, commerce, and telecommunications. They will then try to steal as much information from top-secret databases as they can, while simultaneously shutting down any attempts to counter this effort. If your country’s techs cannot defeat this attack, they may have to counter by ‘pulling the plug.’ Since in most cases, the nation’s telecommunications systems run both civilian and military networks at the same time, you might lose the ability to use the Internet, or even place a phone call, while your country is under attack, due to denial-of-service assaults. Don’t panic, and don’t try to complicate the issue by making phone calls or tying up net traffic. Instead, use a radio to get broadcasted information. Many people forget that the radio signals are not limited by the Internet, since so many people use the Internet to get stations! But the radio is still critical in the cyber warfare age.

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Laptops, Fire, and You

October 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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Reminder: Hot Laptops can Burn You

It’s almost embarrassing to say it, but many people in the United States and Europe are being burned by their laptops. No, the computers aren’t exploding in their users’ face, or spontaneously combusting and catching people on fire. The laptops are burning people because they leave hot laptops on their thighs for so long that the heat can redden, dry, and irritate the skin. Doctors have had to publish their cases of ‘toasted skin syndrome’ and expose the danger that most people would think common sense could avoid. After all, if your laptop is hot – move it, right? Not so fast, say experts, who advise that warning labels be put on laptops to advise their users on how not to burn themselves with a hot computer. Laptops have a microprocessor in them that gets to over 110 degrees. If the laptop’s vents are clogged or blocked because they’re on someone’s leg, the temp can get to over 125.

How to Prevent Laptop Burns

The toasted skin syndrome was first documented in 1994, when laptops first came out, but not until the recent expansion in the use of laptops have people started burning themselves in vast numbers. Usually toasted skin syndrome turns the skin brown and gives it a mottled appearance, and it goes away after awhile, healing like a sunburn. The processor on a laptop has vents at the bottom of the computer. These vents have to be able to have good access to fresh air. There are laptop spacers you can purchase for a few bucks that you put your laptop into, and it always keeps that air gap even if you’re using the laptop on a pillow. If your laptop becomes uncomfortable, make sure you get it away from your skin, even if you’re in the middle of a serious fight on a video game.

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The Birth of the Internet

October 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The internet, originally devised for communications in military and scientific circles, would soon give birth to a whole new mode of communication between entire groups of people for no other purposes than commerce and social interaction. It all started in the 1960s when some bright individuals realized the importance of discussion between different military operations and different scientific institutions. These people had an idea for a future where somebody could sit in one geographical location, and communicate with ease with another person in a completely different geographical location. They likewise had a vision for hampering the possible effects of an enemy strike on the nation, that if machines were unable to be connected they would not have been able to cope with simultaneously updated data in multiple hot spots.

These people worked fast. Less than a few years after the initial suggestion, a computer at MIT was connected over the regularly used telephone lines to another computer on the other side of the country in sunny California. Though the achievement was a great hallmark for these visionaries, they realized that line’s just weren’t quite good enough as they were typically used. This realization led to the development of what would soon be called the internet, ARPANet.

This development in 1969 led to the successful connection of multiple machines in the United States. This was a breakthrough for the defense department as it meant that several machines would remain operational even in the case of a nuclear strike, a great fear during the Cold War era. The system was not particularly user friendly. Today’s gamers and typical business computer users wouldn’t have been able to grasp the extensively complex system that had originally been generated – nor would it have been profitable for them to do so at the time as the cost of the learning curve simply couldn’t outweigh the actual benefits to these fields. In spite of that, these humble origins would be the basis for all that would follow – including that which we’ve taken for granted today.

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Wireless Industry Proves Itself Recession Proof

September 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Despite what many economists call the worst recession since the Great Depression, the wireless industry continues to grow. One of the key factors for this anomaly of growth is that a large majority of the US population are using mobile devices.

The results of a 2010 survey of wireless carriers shows that there are 285 million Americans that have a mobile contract of some sort. In 2009, the total number of subscribers was 270 million. The number of mobile device connections is equal to three quarters of the number of individuals in the United States. Despite the increase of 15 million, some in the industry are complaining that industry growth has slowed because saturation in the market.  The numbers show that talk time increased by 3.4 percent from the last half of 2009 to the middle of 2008. The survey’s findings also reveal that Americans spend an average of 21 minutes per day talking on a mobile phone. Mobile phones are capable of more than for simple voice communication. Data commonly transmitted by cell phones include ring tones, wallpaper, videos, and games. The growth in the industry, in part, accounts for the proliferation of niche services and marketing promotions such as free ringtones.

Wireless services generated approximately $150 billion in revenue for the 2009 calendar year and those familiar with the industry is forecasting a growth in revenues for 2010. As it turns out, much of the growth is coming not from minutes spent talking on a phone by from wireless data services. These services include the mobile web, text messages and other services that do not involve voice. For the last part of 2009, wireless data and related services generated more than $22 billion in revenue for the mobile industry. The data transferred on the wireless networks includes business applications, web surfing and even free ringtones.

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Baby Phat and Hooking up Euro Style

August 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

While a lot of people think of “the internet” as a massive, invisible force that connects everything and exists as one singular persona. But while there are a number of different companies, governments and universities which own their own server networks, these networks are connected to “back bone” servers which function all over the world. Because of the sheer volume of servers involved in the Internet’s processes, the system seems like just a huge, conglomerated mass that could be thought of as a single entity. But it isn’t.

For instance, there are specific grids in different countries and on different continents. While you may be shopping on the Baby Phat web site with a fairly direct connection in the United States or Canada, there is a whole daisy chain of different servers hooking up a person in Europe with the clothing label’s site. In much the same way, you might enjoy looking up the work of your favorite manga artist (who just happens to be based in Japan or Korea), which forces the servers to utilize some very interesting connections in order to transfer the data you want from those distant computers to your own.

Does it ever amaze you, that any person on the internet can look at just about any site there is, no matter where it is physically hosted? Other than censorship and firewalls, the internet gives us no limits; we can find anything, see anything, and learn anything that anybody else has ever bothered to post up somewhere. The concept is truly mind boggling, when you think about it. And all of this has come about, despite having a very large number of independent contributors to its cause. It is a truly exciting time, and a little optimism is very wise.

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