On the Web : February 2004
If you enjoy reading 'On
the Web', your ham radio
club can publish this
column on an exchange
basis with SJRA. Contact
Ted,
, for the
exchange details.
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Our contributions to the South Jersey Radio Association club bulletin "Harmonics" includes lengthy Web addresses. As the URL's can be difficult or a nuisance to type into your Web browser, the postings here should make it easier to get to the Web sites SJRA members are interested in. Look for the posting at w2xq.com at the time "Harmonics" is scheduled for delivery in the south Jersey area. Questions, suggestions or contributions are always welcome. |
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Many SJRA member use the AOL Instant Messenger Program. A few weeks ago Lance
Ulanoff, a senior executive producer for Ziff-Davis' PC-Mag.com Web site,
wrote a provocative article titled "Why AIM Will Eventually Fail". Ulanoff opens
the piece thusly: "I give America Online's Instant Messenger client another
five years before it's relegated to the file cabinet marked "once popular" because
virtually everyone has stopped using it. I cannot imagine how a service that's
run in such a cavalier, pushy, and unwise manner can continue to thrive in a
competitive marketplace." The writer describes unusual, strange occurrences
that seem to take over the computer each time there is a minor upgrade to the
software, and predicts that users will leave the service rather then be subject
to the multimedia popup windows launched by third-party advertisers. Rather
than use Trillian, he
suggested he may migrate onto just one IM service in the future. You can read
the article by clicking
here.
Ziff-Davis has a discussion
forum for its articles. More than three dozen replies were generated with 10
days of posting this message.
Frankly, no application lasts five years with undergoing significant changes.
Some changes are driven by technology as hardware and communications become
cheaper, faster and more efficient. Other changes are driven by the business
world, and America Online is suffering with the best of the also-rans in the
Internet community. Most recently, the stock nom-de-plume changed its stock
exchange name and brand back to Time-Warner and TWX after the crash and burn
of the AOL-TWX merger.
Admittedly the comments were few in number but I thought it was interesting
that more than a few forum contributors thought that Yahoo!
Messenger was a reasonable IM. It seems to walk the sword edge balance between
the kiddie pop art of AOL IM and ICQ
(owned by AOL) and the seemingly harassment and rigidity imposed by Microsoft's
Passport/Wallet registration system for Messenger.
I offered comments that included: "Depending upon the intended use of the IM app -- I use it for instant feedback on client's Web pages and updates, alerts to what is on international media at the moment and newly discovered Web sites -- the size of the installed user base is probably the primary decision criteria. If you want/need to be found, ICQ, AOL and MSN are better choices than iPage, Jabber, Odigo, Paltalk and Quickdot."
Further, "From my personal experience, if I think a client needs to be on IM and isn't already on an IM service, I recommend Yahoo's Messenger that runs on virtally all OS's. In my personal opinion, Messenger is less obstrusive than most, doesn't have the "kiddie" appearance of AOL, and doesn't seem to annoy the user with ads like MSN's silly registration process and wallet." And I concluded with a suggestion to shift the ongoing conversation to a private Internet Relay Chat room, as discussed last month, if the constrictions of the IRC client application are a problem.
Click to read the message
thread. If you opt to register, you can reply to the group as a whole or
send e-mail to an individual. No subscription to PC
Magazine is required, and the registration is blessedly simple. If you participate
in a discussion one option is automatic e-mail notification when a new message
is posted in the discussion thread. It is a nice touch, as the supplied link
takes you right to the appropriate page.
Alternatives to AOL IM
Ted, W2TAG, and I were discussing the PC magazine article and I mentioned
alternative IM programs that are not so intrusive as AOL IM. Ted thought club
members might be interested in my findings other than the well-known MSN and
Yahoo! Messenger. Take a look: Bantu
(for corporate); eXcite
Messenger; Gaim;
Jabber; Kopete;
Odigo; PalTalk;
and PeopleLink.
There are programs that "talk" to more than one IM client at a time. It's a
great idea, as less screen real estate is taken up. I recommend Trillian
for Windows and Fire
for Mac OS X.
For your next game of trivial pursuit, these IM clients have disappeared in
the last year: Acuity's ichat; Activerse's Ding!; iChat's iPage; and Quickdot.
Guess where the iChat and iPage names went to? Windows users running iTunes
for Windows and Mac users need not answer the question. :-)
Who Owns The Web Site?
With the change of the registration system from the single system to the distributed,
shared, system model, the person seeking a domain's registration data must query
the registrar that holds the current or last registration. In the past, the
InterNIC maintained the full WHOIS data for .com, .net and .org domain names.
In the current system, InterNIC simply contains information on which registrar
is authoritative for a given domain.
One of the best explanations of the distributed
registration process, in my opinion, is posted at the Tucows site and it
well worth the read.
These links are those I find most useful for tracing ownership information:
Internic - http://www.internic.net/whois.html
eNom - http://www.enom.com
Joker - http://www.joker.com
Melbourne - IT http://whois.melbourneit.com.au
Network Solutions - http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois
Tucows (OpenSRS) - http://resellers.tucows.com/opensrs/whois/
Powers of Ten
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through
space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a
tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field
Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual
size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell
nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons
and protons. See it happen at by clicking
here -- and show your math student a wonderful example of the applying powers
of 10.
Google
Do you use this popular search Internet search engine? There are easy two
easy tricks to make searches more efficient. Dial up "Google
Desknotes" and have a read. Pass the URL on to your friends if you
think it helps.
Spyware
A interesting article on spyware on CNET stirred up quite a bit of discussion
on the drive home one night, and I forwarded this to N1RK and a host of others.
The bottom line: some anti-spyware programs are as bad or worse than the spyware
itself. I suggest reading the CNET
news story and passing it on to others.
In closing, a reminder. Current and back editions of "On the Web" are available
online. Enter and bookmark http://w2xq.com/links_hr01.html#sjraontheweb
to avoid the need to type in tedious URLs.
TRS Consultants - Keep up to date with breaking news during the month! Newsfeed help.
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External links open in a new browser window.
Revised 8 February 2004
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Addedum
DIN connectors were one of the subjects of the February 16 SJRA net. WA2DUE needed a 7-pin connector. N3RG suggested a source being Universal Radio in OH. The catalog page shows a photograph and diagram of each pin in stock, including the hard-to-find 13-pin DIN that fits the accessory-2 jack of many Kenwood HF transceivers. Here's the URL:
http://universal-radio.com/catalog/parts/dinconn.html
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Revised 16 February 2004
Read the previous month's column or the next month's column.
