Labels: fun, Internet

As population density drops outside of metropolitan areas, it's impossible for telecommunications companies or cable service providers to justify the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile it can cost to bring fiber to every rural community, let alone every home. The result: Today, just 17% of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service, according to the Government Accountability Office. And a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says the U.S. dropped from fourth in the world in broadband penetration in 2001 to 15th place in 2006. Communications infrastructure is widely seen as the biggest driver of economic growth, yet 21% of Americans — the nearly 60 million people who live in rural areas — are often underserved. [More]

Working together with Intel, Motorola and Samsung, Sprint Nextel will develop a nationwide network infrastructure as well as mobile WiMAX-enabled chipsets that will support advanced wireless broadband services for computing, portable multimedia, interactive and other consumer electronic devices. These efforts are intended to allow Sprint Nextel customers to experience a nationwide mobile data network that is designed to offer faster speeds, lower cost, and greater convenience and enhanced multimedia quality.

The Sprint Nextel 4G mobility network will use the company's extensive 2.5GHz spectrum holdings, which cover 85 percent of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets - the most of any wireless carrier in any single spectrum band. To access that network, Sprint Nextel will work with Intel, Motorola and Samsung to incorporate WiMAX technology for advanced wireless communications and help make chipsets widely available for new consumer electronics devices, connecting consumers to the Internet and to each other while providing them with the flexibility to do what they want or need to do regardless of time or place. [More]

Labels: computer, Internet, rural life

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $268.32. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2007, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.

1. It's almost all land.
2. The meager amount of cash is guarded by people who know how I write my name, spend my money, and sound like on the phone. Heck, I took square-dancing lessons with the bank president. (Very funny - HER name is Connie).

Labels: Internet, money

Labels: computer, Internet, technology

DirecTV said it would bundle broadband-over-powerline high-speed Internet and VoIP with its digital TV services to about 1.8 million homes in the Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas region by early 2008. Benefits of broadband-over-powerline include faster upload and download speeds compared to many cable and DSL broadband services: up to 10Mb versus 8Mb, according to Current. The broadband service is symmetric, which means upload speeds are as fast as download speeds. Moreover, broadband-over-powerline works via a go-anywhere, installation-free modem that's about the size of a regular power adapter and plugs into any electrical outlet. It is Ethernet and WiFi enabled, which means it can fill in wireless coverage gaps created by cable or DSL, said Current VP of corporate development and strategy Brendan Herron. [More]

• No satellite dishes
• VoIP (Internet phone service)
• No TV dish
• No meter reader
• More reliable electric service.

Labels: Internet, rural life, technology

It also published a series called Prairie Farmer's Reliable Directory of Farmers and Breeders including this one for Champaign County from 1917. We'll be digitizing many of these directories for counties all over Illinois from the collection of the Illinois Historical Survey and Lincoln Room. These are great genealogy resources as they provide a complete listing of all members of a farmer's family and the exact location of their farm. [More]

Labels: history, Internet

• While it may seem a hassle to reset stuff like toolbars the way you are used to, reloading software like MS Office, for example gives you the choice of a clean start. It reminds me of the first week of every quarter of college - when your grade point was unblemished by actual results. Sometimes a clean start is just what you need.
• Because the new monitor is 16 x 9 aspect - like new TV's you have room at the edges for stuff on the desktop. I think we are just beginning to see freebie "Gadgets" to load into those spots. I'm using the clock, calendar, notepad, and calculator on my Sidebar. Pretty handy.
• After the first few start-ups, the UAP (previous post) becomes slightly less annoying. I may still shut it down. I use Live One Care for security - it works well and I can load it on three computers for one price.
• The speakers I chose (Dell 525 30 watt 2.1 with subwoofer) sound good but they are hard-wired into components so I can't fish the wires through a raceway I built behind my desktop to hide clutter. Also the volume control is a thumbwheel (like in the center of newer mice) that is less handy than my old set.
• Wait - I just talked myself into keeping my old speakers. The computer doesn't care what is plugged into the orange jack.
• Be sure and check the websites of your old software to see if there are reports of Vista incompatibility. This is especially true of software that "calls home" for upgrades automatically. You may want to shut that feature off and just do it manually from time to time. (Adobe Acrobat is a prime example)
• The hard drive and vent fan on this computer (Dell XPS 210) are very quiet. In fact, I sometimes think nothing is happening and end up double-loading a program because I can't hear the hard drive working.
• Wired keyboards/mice are sooo yesterday. I just moved my old wireless set to Gilgamesh (my new computer's name) and it picked added them without a hitch.
• My wireless network took zero configuring. I just plugged into the router.
• I'm gradually reducing the number of separate programs I use, so each new installation is a chance to lose something. I am dropping my Palm Pilot and moving everything to Outlook and my phone, for example.
• Having trouble getting my weather station to find the old file I copied across.
  
• The Windows Media Center is, at first glance, totally lame. It's like picking up a first grade book. I use Musicmatch Jukebox to manage all my music, especially all the choir demo tracks I burn for my choir. WMC looks like it was designed to be used on an iPod with no keyboard. Nearly useless, IMHO. MMJ is working fine though, and the tracks transferred OK.
• I haven't tried WMC with my pictures - I will continue with Picasa. It's free, bulletproof and superbly easy to use. In fact, it may be the best piece of software I've ever used.

Labels: computer, Internet

Google intends to scan every book ever published, and to make the full texts searchable, in the same way that Web sites can be searched on the company’s engine at google.com. At the books site, which is up and running in a beta (or testing) version, at books.google.com, you can enter a word or phrase—say, Ahab and whale—and the search returns a list of works in which the terms appear, in this case nearly eight hundred titles, including numerous editions of Herman Melville’s novel. Clicking on “Moby-Dick, or The Whale” calls up Chapter 28, in which Ahab is introduced. You can scroll through the chapter, search for other terms that appear in the book, and compare it with other editions. Google won’t say how many books are in its database, but the site’s value as a research tool is apparent; on it you can find a history of Urdu newspapers, an 1892 edition of Jane Austen’s letters, several guides to writing haiku, and a Harvard alumni directory from 1919.

No one really knows how many books there are. The most volumes listed in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat, a database of titles from more than twenty-five thousand libraries around the world. Google aims to scan at least that many. “We think that we can do it all inside of ten years,” Marissa Mayer, a vice-president at Google who is in charge of the books project, said recently, at the company’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California. “It’s mind-boggling to me, how close it is. I think of Google Books as our moon shot.”

• A decrease in duplicative work, as well as plagiarism. Like grad students looking for a topic for their research thesis, authors will be challenged come up with something that has not been done to death already.
• Periodic revivals in the popularity of old authors. When long-out-of print volumes are not hard to access, everyone can rediscover great writing from the past.
• More difficulty in public lying. As candidates are now aware, every utterance can be recorded, and researched for the slightest variance from the truth, opening them to vitriolic attacks from opponents.
  
• A new appreciation for true creativity. Innovative thinking will be provable, not just apparent, since a search for the same concept can be done rapidly.

Labels: computer, Internet, literature

Labels: Internet

Lots of people can now watch themselves on sort-of TV, which is pretty fun in itself. The bonus is that others want to watch them, too. Third-millennium humanity has demonstrated an interest in sifting through millions of pieces of crap produced by total strangers to discover a few gems – some accidentally entertaining ("Boom Goes the Dynamite"), some breakout performances from the previously obscure ("Treadmill Dance"), and some explorations of a new art form crackling with genius (Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, and the guys behind Loneygirl15.)

Throw in the uploaded TV commercials, such as Nike's Ronaldinho spot showing the Brazilian soccer star miraculously volleying against the crossbar. Add to that some professional content either stolen from or surrendered by Hollywood. Altogether, this stuff constitutes a bottomless reservoir of short-form video content for others to siphon off if they choose. Which they do, millions of times a day, from pages all over the Internet. That's the demand side of the equation – monkey see, monkey use – foreshadowing the future of media, already in progress.

Forget "exploding TV." The name for this thing is Monkeyvision. [More - and be sure to watch the clip of the young sports announcer]

TV advertising has been losing its impact for years: McKinsey projects that by 2010 it will be barely one-third as effective as it was in 1990, thanks to rising costs, falling viewership, ever-proliferating ad clutter, and viewers' TiVo-fueled power to zip through commercials. Big national advertisers like General Motors, which has an annual TV ad budget of $2.9 billion – only Procter & Gamble's is bigger – are demanding something different, and the rise of Web video offers just that. Internet advertising of any sort promises powers that marketers have long lusted after: the ability to target people who might actually be interested in what they're selling and to engage those people in conversation. Web video can be as emotionally involving as TV, and when used in consumer-generated campaigns, as crowdsourcing efforts like Chevy's have come to be known, online clips come with a bonus – people see them less as advertising than as peer recommendation, which countless studies have shown to be far more influential. [More]

Labels: Internet, TV