Daily Bits

Internet

Have You Got Flock Yet?

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Social networks left and right – that’s what you’re bound to see and experience if you go online even for a few minutes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these social networks, if you think about it. It’s just sometimes, some people go overboard – both users and the brains behind the networks.

Anyway, if you can’t get enough of social networking, here’s something for you: Flock. It’s nothing new, really. This social network browser has been around for some time now, but there are new developments that will make its fan base happy.

It used to be that Mozilla Firefox was the browser of choice for a lot of people, but when Google came out with Chrome, some loyalties changed. And now, Flock has switched loyalties as well!

The new Flock is now using Chromium, the open source platform that is found under all the layers of Chrome. This is a milestone is many respects, one being the fact that Flock is the first non-Google browser to implement such a thing. For the end-user, this means S-P-E-E-D!

They say that this new “super fast” Flock beats Firefox by a factor of two when it comes to certain tasks. Some features that social network addicts will find very useful include integration with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and RSS feeds. There is also a new thing called “What Friends Are Saying,” which is basically going to let you know what your contacts are doing across various platforms.

Download Flock for Windows if you’re into this kind of thing. Mac users, you have to wait a little bit longer for summer to come around.

How to find deleted Internet content

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This morning I was watching a politics programme on TV which mentioned a particular website and how information had seemingly been removed.

It made me wonder why they didn’t use a couple of basic tools to find an older version of that site.

Here’s a very basic guide to finding “deleted” content on the Internet.

Search Engine Cache

The big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) – and probably some others – all store cached versions of pages.

It’s very easy to see if a cached page is available. Just look below the individual search result for either the “Cached” or Cached page” link.

google-yahoo-bing-cached-page

This is most useful when you know the page has changed in the past few days (or even hours).

It’s not easy to determine exactly when the last copy of the page was stored, as search engine spiders vary in their frequency of visit to any web site, but it’s good to use when content has been static for a while and is then removed.

It’s also worth noting that generally only the text is cached. Images are pulled directly from the web page, if still available, otherwise simply show as blank.

If an image is changed but its name remains the same, you will likely see the replacement image, therefore this method can’t be relied upon to view older images.

To search for the latest cached copy of pages in a web site (any pages):

In Google, Yahoo and Bing use the site: prefix (e.g. site:domain.com)

To search for the latest cached copy of a specific URL, you can simply paste that URL into the search box (e.g. domain.com/somepage.htm)

Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine at archive.org lets you view various snapshots of web sites that are at least six months to a year old.

This is a great resource to use when you are interested in seeing how a web page used to look, even if the site no longer exists.

wayback-machine

There are a lot of advanced options, but often it’s enough just to enter the URL of a web site into the search box and see what dates come up.

The web site is a little flaky sometimes, and doesn’t always return results, but it’s a great way of seeing old pages that either no longer exist, or have had a makeover.

So there you go. Two ways to find content that’s tried to shuffle off the web.

What’s your biggest Internet time waster?

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bejeweled-blitz-facebookHi there! Firstly, let me introduce myself. I’m Andy and I’ve been near-addicted to the Internet for 15 years. I met my wife online and I spend a lot of time at both work and play on the net.

You really don’t want to see me when my broadband connection goes down!

Anyway, while I get into the swing of things here at DailyBits, I thought I’d throw out a question to get you all commenting (so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself.)

What’s your biggest Internet time waster?

What is it that saps time that you could have better spent being productive on or offline?

Is it one of those pesky Facebook apps? Is it Twitter? WoW? Flash games?

I’ll start. My two current time sinks are Bejeweled Blitz and Scrabble, both on Facebook.

Scrabble is easy — I’ve loved the board game since I was a kid, and now I can play against anyone even when there’s no-one locally who wants a game.

Bejeweled Blitz — well I guess the download figures for the Bejeweled empire speak for themselves when it comes to its popularity, but add the ability to play “just one more one minute game” against your Facebook friends and it has the ability to be extremely addictive.

Honestly, I’m trying to kick the habit.

(PS If anyone has found any decent tactics for playing Bejeweled Blitz as well on a trackpad as when using a mouse, do let me know.)

What keeps you online? Share in the comments below.

Internet Scams Hit Record High

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As the new users get used to how the Internet works one would expect that the scammers’ profits would go down, right? Apparently that is not true. The reason, perhaps, is the fact that the number of new users that enter the web every year is larger that the number of users that get a clue of what is going on….

Here is a quote from Click on Detroit:

Money lost in Internet crimes hit a new high last year, topping about $240 million, according to a government report showing increases in scams involving pets, check-cashing schemes and online dating.

The report also mentions that men were scammed more often then women. Hmmm, I guess it is due to all those Viagra and “instrument” enlargement offers around the web.

Ad-hoc Mesh Networks as the Future of the Internet

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The FCC spectrum auction recently took place this year. The big boys (AT & T and Verizon ) were competing with the new boys in town (Google). There is a great article at ZDnet throwing light on the inefficient manner in which spectrum has come to be treated.

A quote from the ZDnet article:

The bottom line is that thanks to one clever grad student, and one small charity, Houston’s poorest will soon have better broadband than you and I, free. This is due to the magic of WiFi, of unlicensed wireless broadband.

Yet instead of expanding that miracle we have chosen to treat spectrum as property, first as government property and then as the private property of the Telecom Trust.

The research by the Rice university student is indeed worth pondering upon. The internet is no more a luxury but the superhighway to information. There is much that the internet can do that books and libraries may not have accomplished in all ages.

From this perspective the developments at a firm – Meraki Networks are worth noting. An offshoot of the MIT Rooftnet project, the company that empowers users to collectively host wireless networks.

Mesh networks work on a peer-to-peer model with the data hopping from one node to another till it reaches its destination. It is this model to internet connectivity that Meraki Network seeks to create. The project has immense potential with even city-wide span being planned.

An excerpt from Ars Technica

In a nutshell, MIT’s Roofnet allows people in and around Central Square in Cambridge to gang together their wireless access points into a kind of wireless cloud that anyone with a WiFi device can access if they’re in range. There are some specifics I’m leaving out—you have to use a particular model of router, and you have to sign up for the program—but you get the general idea.

The project allows for a simple plug and play solution to enable sharing of bandwidth over Wi-Fi. There are several technical and legal challenges in the adoption of such a model on a wide scale. Nevertheless it presents one great avenue for the network to indeed become ubiquitous.

A switch-over between technologies could perhaps be the future direction of such networks. Based on the strength of available network options in the vicinity, the device could automatically configure access to internet ( such as switch from WiFi to UWB or WiMAX).
And yes, the firm has received backing from Google and several investors including Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital. Its a great way to spread broadband access among the masses.