TAD Consortium June 2000 Information Update 1
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CONTENTS
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NEWS/TRENDS
--- Internet Becoming an Everyday
Tool
--- Indian Govt. Approves IT/E-Com Bill
--- Internet to Reach into SA's Shacks
--- IT could come to the rescue of
Indian farmers
--- Europe - USA gap widening
PROFILED ORGANIZATIONS
--- Bushmail Network
- Central & Southern Africa
--- Development Initiatives
ONLINE RESOURCES
--- Industrial
Society survey reports increased emphasis on evaluation
--- Language Arts: Linguistics Fun
--- Lesson Plan: Education Planet's
Lesson Plan Directory
--- ERIC Clearinghouse on
Educational Management
--- Arab Social Science Research
--- Rwanda: the Search
for Security and Human Rights Abuses
--- Beginning Teacher's Tool Box
--- Web site for WELES
(Web Enhanced Learning Environment Strategies)
--- "The
Internet and the Family 2000: The View from Parents, the View from Kids"
--- Science Literacy Lesson Plans
--- Trade Secrets in a Dot-Com World
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'International NGOs: networking, information flows and learning'
ARTICLES
--- Governments Must
Lead Accessibility By Example
TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
--- Selected Technology Report Issue No 2
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NEWS/TRENDS
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Taken from Nua Internet Surveys: May 15th, 2000
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ACNielsen: Internet Becoming an Everyday Tool
Almost 2 in 3 Americans over the age of 12 have access to the Internet and half of those go online every day, according to ACNielsen. Regular users are likely to spend at least an hour online at a time.
Nearly half of US Internet users have purchased a product or service online. Email is the most used Internet application, with 86 percent of Internet users regularly sending and receiving mails.
Books continue to be the most popular item purchased as 42 percent of Internet users have bought them online. 38 percent have bought music products and 29 percent have purchased software.
Travel products and services have been bought online by 28 percent of users and clothing by 27 percent.
Other popular online purchases include speciality gift items (24 percent), computer hardware (18 percent), entertainment services (17 percent) and houseware items (16 percent).
Almost 70 percent of user go online most often at home. 17
percent connect most often in their place of work. The corresponding figures for place of
study, friend's house and library are 7 percent, 5 percent and 2 percent respectively.
http://www.acnielsen.com/news/american/us/2000/20000508.htm
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Indian Govt.
Approves IT/E-Com Bill
By Hari Menon
India Correspondent, asia.internet.com
[May 16, 2000--MUMBAI] The government has approved the long-awaited Information Technology Bill, which is expected to facilitate a regulatory structure for e-commerce activities and pave the way for a system of comprehensive cyber laws.
"All suggestions of the committee approved by the ministry of information technology have been incorporated in the bill," said IT minister Pramod Mahajan, though he didn't specify which of the recommendations had met with acceptance.
The bill provides for the establishment of a regulatory structure for the Internet. This includes the Controller of Certifying Authorities who will oversee the work of authorities authenticating digital signatures.
However, the bill retains a controversial provision that enables an officer of the rank of a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) to enter and search any premises and arrest any person without a warrant if he believes that a cyber crime is about to be committed. The bill recognizes electronic records and digital signatures, meaning that any reference to records being kept in a 'written' form will also mean that the record could be in an electronic form. Similarly, digital signatures will also be considered on par with physical signatures. Though the original bill had proposed that dissemination of 'obscene' material in electronic form be punished with two years' imprisonment, the Parliament's standing committee suggested enhancing the penalty to five years.
The committee had suggested that people hosting Web sites and portals on a server located in India should furnish details about themselves and their sites, and failure to do so will attract a one-year jail term.
In one of its less happy decisions, the committee had recommended that people visiting cyber cafes should leave their name and address with the cafe owner and indicate which Web sites they had visited.
Many of these proposals are unlikely to find favor with the
industry. For instance, the provision permitting officers above the rank of DSP to enter
and search premises without a warrant has been roundly criticized by associations such as
Nasscom. In any case, it's not clear how many of these have been wholeheartedly accepted
by the government itself.
http://asia.internet.com/2000/5/1608-india.html
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Internet to Reach into SA's Shacks
[Cape Town, 18 May 2000] - Communications Minister Dr. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri announced yesterday that internet centres are to be set up by the government in former township areas, providing South Africa's shack-dwellers with access to the world wide web for the first time. Matsepe-Casaburri revealed this initiative in parliament yesterday, World Telecommunications day, saying that information and communications technology, such as the internet, ought to be available to everyone in South Africa.
The internet centres, to be known as "Dot ZA" centres, are to be established in informal settlements throughout the country, with the first such project scheduled to be launched in the Pretoria township of Tembisa. The initiative will see the Department of Communications donate computers, internet connectivity and the housing structure to the community of the area. That community will then run the Dot ZA centre based on what Matsepe-Casaburri said would be sound business principles. In addition to internet connectivity, the centres would also be used to conduct computer literacy programmes.
It is hoped that this initiative will do much towards addressing the racially defined demographics of South African internet usage. According to a study conducted last year by local web analysts, Webchek, 0,6% of 4,000 black women interviewed in the major metropolitan areas of South Africa had internet access at work, while 0,1% of these women had access at home. Of the 2,000 black men interviewed, 01,% had access at home and 1,2% had internet access while at work. While these figures are substantially lower than the comparative figures for the South African white population, it is hoped that initiatives such as the Dot ZA centres will aid in the democratisation of the medium in this country.
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IT could come to the rescue of Indian farmers
by Frederick Noronha, India Abroad News Service
Pondicherry, May 20 - Can the information technology (IT) revolution help the Indian farmer battle the vagaries of nature and the resultant drought and floods?
Yes, say computer scientists, pointing to what's already happening both in India and other pockets of the globe.
"Most soil testing and reporting in the country is still being done on a time-consuming manual basis," said Jugalkishor Agarwal, chairman of the Computer Society of India's division for IT applications.
"It's not a virtual reality. In some parts of Jammu and Kashmir, farmers are already monitoring their fields by sitting at home. We have imported sophisticated equipment from Austria for this purpose," said Dattatraya S. Vhatkar of the Chandigarh-based Central Scientific Instruments Organisation.
At a southern regional conference of computer professionals here, it was also pointed out that IT can be used for managing the farmer's timetable, crop scheduling, insect and rodent control, marketing and even water management.
Agricultural professionals using IT are expected to play an "increasingly important role" in crop production in the years ahead, it is felt. Hence, educational institutions need to "modify their curricula" to train students and professionals in inter-disciplinary approaches to precision agriculture, experts said.
India now has its own agriculture portals, including Web sites like www.ikisan.com which offers information both in English and Telugu languages. Other sites are also offering information aimed primarily at the farmer, it was pointed out at the meet of the Computer Society of India.
"We should not immediately start worrying about the cost of the technology for now," suggested Agarwal, formerly with the Jawaharlal Nehru Agricultural University of Jabalpur. "When the transistor was invented, it was costlier than gold. But once into mass production, costs fell," he pointed out.
Other examples of use of IT in farms have also been coming in from within the country, and elsewhere in the developing world.
Sandhya Shenoy of the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management in Hyderabad has created 'A Gateway to Indian Agriculture'. The site gives information on animal sciences, crop sciences, agribusiness, fisheries, home science, horticulture, natural resources and sustainable agriculture.
Links to agriculture-related organisations worldwide, programmes, publications and libraries, and pages on weather, agricultural issues and policies, gender issues, infotech and human resources enrich the site at http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/diglib/india.
Reports from Maharashtra said the state government has plans to link 40,000 villages with a specially developed software package for farmers. Farmers are being promised a unique package -- Agronet -- which aims to provide them with the latest information on agriculture, including cropping pattern.
A voluntary organisation in Rajasthan, the Ajit Foundation, some time ago announced that it had written software programmes called 'SimTanka' and 'SimTalab' that would help villagers calculate the amount of water they could expect in their tanks and ponds based on simulations and past records of the area.
The Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Mauritius set up a prototype Agricultural Information System for use by the rural community in the island nation. It tested the use of audio files in two local spoken languages on a Web site that offers advice on potato cultivation.
Information, which is usually available in print form or in technical reports, has been placed on a Web site with graphics to facilitate communication. By developing icons that farmers are familiar with, the experiment hopes to allow even unlettered agriculturists to navigate through the use of graphics and get their information from audio files.
In northwest Mexico, through the Internet, farmers can submit reports on irrigation quotas and planting activities and access important information on weather and market conditions and a host of other relevant data.
--India Abroad News Service (Credit Mandatory)
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Europe - USA gap widening by Horace Mitchell
Contrary to the views often expressed by European politicians, analysis of seven years' data from EITO reports (European IT Observatory) shows that the gap between the USA and Europe in effective use of Internet and related technologies is widening and most likely will continue to do so.
Since 1992 EITO has presented consistent annual data on levels of investment in IT. Analysis by European Telework Online shows that:
- in 1992 average US investment as a percentage of GDP was running at about 50% higher than in Europe, but by 1998 (the most recent reported year) it was almost double to European level; since USA per capita GDP is higher than in Europe, and growing more quickly, this understates both the current spending gap and the rate of increase in the gap.
- looking at investment per capita, USA spending on IT has been double that of Europe every year, with the exception of 1992 when the US spent about 50% more than in Europe.
- the USA's cumulative level of investment per head of population over the years 1992-1998 was 2.15 times that of Europe.
As a result of these differences, by the end of the period the USA had more than 50 PCs for every hundred people, while European Union countries had, on average, only 20. This suggests that dot.com investors who expect Europe's Internet results to follow USA with only a year or two lag may be in for a rude awakening.
Details of the analysis are online at
http://www.eto.org.uk/eustats/graphs/93-98.htm.
Details of the EITO 2000 report are at http://www.eto.org.uk/eito.
from European Telework Online, eto-info@eto.org.uk
http://www.eto.org.uk
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PROFILED ORGANIZATIONS
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Taken from The Drum Beat – 51, the email and web network from THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE partnership http://www.comminit.com
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Bushmail Network - Central & Southern Africa - e-mail via radio. An e-mail system and radio patches reaches clients in areas where there are no telecommunications or computer facilities. Http://www.bushmail.co.za
Contact Justice Malanot info@bushmail.co.za
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Development Initiatives
- aims to give easy access to a wide range of information and reports on poverty, aid and
development.
http://www.devinit.org
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ONLINE RESOURCES
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Taken from TrainingZONE LearningWire #101
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Industrial Society survey reports increased emphasis on evaluation
According to a survey by the Industrial Society, the need for business efficiency is driving an increase in evaluating training. The research reveals that 2 out of 3 companies responding have increased their commitment to training evaluation in the past two years. Predictably, Investors in People and senior management pressure are also credited as having an effect on the increased importance being placed on evaluation.
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=16404&d=1
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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter
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Language Arts: Linguistics Fun
http://www.yourdictionary.com/fun.html Linguistics is the study of the structure of languages and how languages are learned and used. This site includes a wide variety of topics including historical linguistics, phonology or the sounds in words, morphology, syntax (phrase structure), semantics (meaning), how we learn language and the origins of languages. In a lighter vein, there are word games, crossword puzzles, and vocabulary quizzes. Learn how to write your name in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan hieroglyphics, or Japanese Katakana. For the more information, consult the weekly word webzine "Take Our Word for It".
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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter
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Lesson Plan: Education Planet's Lesson Plan Directory http://www.educationplanet.com/lessonplanet/ Do you need a new lesson plan to help you finish out the year or are you already working on next year and need some new lesson plans? Education Planet's Lesson Plan Directory and Search Engine accesses a database of over 16,000 lesson plans with more being added all the time. Note that this Search Engine also allows you to specify the grade level for your search. If you forget this link to the Lesson Plan area, just press on the blue "Lesson" button at the top of the main Education Planet page (yes it's hidden, right in plain sight...) If you use the main Education Planet Search Engine - watch for "Lesson Plans" appearing in the table of resources found. Just click on that link to see a list of appropriate lesson plans.
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The ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management (ERIC/EA) has redesigned its Web site. The new home page contains substantially more content than the old, making it easier for visitors to quickly identify and locate resources deeper in the site.
In addition, the home page now doubles as a "What's New" section, complete with short descriptions of, and links to, new documents and other resources.
Explore the redesigned ERIC/EA Web site today at http://eric.uoregon.edu
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Taken from The Scout Report for Social
Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000.
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
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The Website of Arab Social Science Research (ASSR) features a virtual library of Web resources devoted to numerous branches of research in Arab Social Science. The library may be searched by country, resource, or topic and provides both annotated and unannotated listings to Websites, government reports, academic research, libraries, online journals, research centers, NGOs, related media, and much more. ASSR also posts here information about upcoming events in the field, including conferences and calls for papers. ASSR is a major program of the Arab Institute for Studies and Communication (AISC), an independent, nonprofit institution currently active in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine founded in 1998 by a group of senior social scientists from the region. [DC]
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Taken from The Scout Report for Social Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000.
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Rwanda: the Search for Security and Human Rights Abuses
http://www.hrw.org/reports98/publctns.htm
This new report from Human Rights Watch details continued cases within Rwanda of "assassination, murder, arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses perpetrated chiefly by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and by members of a government-backed citizens' militia called the Local Defense Force." According to the report, the Local Defense Force, while supposedly acting under the auspices of local authorities, commits abuses without fear of reprisal since these authorities are often either allied with or afraid of the government-supported militia. [DC]
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I would like to tell you about a great site for New Teachers.
http://www.inspiringteachers.com
Designed by teachers for teachers, Beginning Teacher's Tool Box is one of the top rated Internet sites for educators. New teachers can access an online mentor to answer their questions. It also includes message boards, monthly tips and inspirations for new teachers as well as many other great resources!
Best wishes,
Gisele Glosser
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Check the web site for WELES (Web Enhanced Learning Environment Strategies)
http://www.ed.psu.edu/nasa/weletxt.html
This is a very practicable conceptualization for planning to include the web in instruction. It was developed by Barbara Grabowski and Tiffany Koszalka of Penn State University.
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Taken from The Scout Report for Social Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000.
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"The
Internet and the Family 2000: The View from Parents, the View from Kids" [.pdf]
http://appcpenn.org/finalrepor_fam.pdf
Press Release [.pdf]
http://appcpenn.org/final_release_fam.pdf
Annenberg Public Policy Center of the
University of Pennsylvania
http://appcpenn.org/
Released on May 16 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, this report finds that many younger users are willing to divulge private information about their families in exchange for free gifts. Based on a survey of 1,000 parents and children with online access at home, the report reveals that 45 percent of ten- to seventeen-year-olds, as opposed to 29 percent of adults, were willing to exchange information such as their names, addresses, and various preferences in exchange for a free gift. Last month, the Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act went into effect, barring sites from collecting information from users under age thirteen without their parents's consent, but online marketers are free to collect this information from teenage users. The authors of the report recommend, among other things, the establishment of some sort of "limited Federal regulation" to protect the privacy of these users and their families. The full text of the report and the accompanying press release are available in .pdf format at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg site. [MD]
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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter
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I hope the science teachers out there (from Grade 1 on up) find this new site (1999) as interesting and involving as I did.
CLN's page "Instructional Materials in General Science" http://www.cln.org/subjects/gensci_inst.html lists almost fifty sets of science lesson plans -- an embarrassment of riches! But today's Nugget, "Science Netlinks" http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/index.html, is unlike the rest in at least two ways:
1. Science Netlinks is the most thoroughly and simply indexed set of science lessons I have yet seen. Every strand has lessons from kindergarten through Grade 12, with no holes. It is hard to lose your focus among these lessons.
2. Science Netlinks rigourously follows the Project 2061 theories from its hosting agency, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as to what really constitutes valid science teaching these days. (They claim to have invented the concept 'science literacy'.) I won't go into those theories, but if for example you teach your students how to falsify a hypothesis, then you probably know what those theories are -- the idea is to teach 'em how to act like scientists, more than to memorize what other scientists have discovered.
Here's a taste: part three of the Website carries the subtitle "General Principles of Technology and Engineering". And sure enough, they have engaging ways to teach Engineering in both Grade 12 and Grade One!
Science Netlinks is suitable for both teacher education and student education in science and engineering from the early grades as far as Grade 10. It is also very useful for Science and Technology 11, or other science general courses in the senior grades. Most of the technology it discusses is American.
Its senior lessons address several of the prescribed learning outcomes in upper-year Biology and Physics, and a few of those in Chemistry. On the whole, the Grade 11/12 curriculum fit is not as good, because the purpose of Science Netlinks (science literacy) differs from the purpose of most upper year science courses (preparation for specific post-secondary disciplines).
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Trade Secrets in a Dot-Com World
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/grossman-2000-05c-p1.html
If you have a dot-com start-up, your trade secrets are as closely tied to your success as a multi-million dollar valuation. So, it's very important to identify and protect your trade secrets. A new article on GigaLaw.com helps explain how.
Here's an excerpt:
"While there can be no doubt that it's always a good idea to have a good agreement in place, sometimes trade secrets may be revealed without an agreement in place. That's bad. Although it's always bad, it's not necessarily a complete disaster.
"In some circumstances, the law will protect a trade secret that's revealed without the benefit of a written agreement in place.
"One situation would be where there was an express promise of confidentiality before disclosure. The problem here is likely to be a proof problem. You don't want your trade secret to depend on one person's word against another."
To read the full opinion, go to
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/grossman-2000-05c-p1.html
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IDPM at the University of Manchester has a
new online paper just loaded, by Shirin Madon: 'International
NGOs: networking, information flows and learning' at:
http://www.man.ac.uk/idpm/idpm_dp.htm#devinf_wp
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ARTICLES
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Taken from E-Access Bulletin - May 2000
Copyright 2000 Headstar Ltd
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GOVERNMENTS MUST LEAD ACCESSIBILITY BY EXAMPLE
Governments and intergovernmental bodies have a key role to play in ensuring the design of technology products is accessible to all parts of society, according to the newly-published report of the global online think-tank Boosting the Net Economy 2000.
However a direct legislative approach is not the best way forward, according to think-tank member Professor Elsa Rosenblad of the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. "I don't think it is successful to force any kind of technical development", Professor Rosenblad said. "But I can see two ways of reaching the same goal. One is enforcement using standards, the other is research to create new knowledge of the user's situation.
"International Standards Organisation standards, especially ISO 9241 and ISO 9355 regarding ergonomic requirements, could be used for control, criteria and evaluation of products at governmental and other greater purchases. That would bring forward a development of measurable accessibility. Only products that would meet these criteria could then be considered for large-scale purchases.
"But probably a more successful way of achieving products that are accessible to all would be governmental investment in new research into the user's situation. Lack of knowledge on the part of the designer of the cognitive and physical abilities of the individual user is a severe problem.
"Accessibility problems do not exist because companies don't want to solve them, but because they have not got the knowledge to do it. They are used to working with their customers - the purchasers - but not with the individual end-users. Accessibility is determined by a knowledge of the users' goals and handling capacities, their values and benefits of the use and the context of use. If this knowledge was available, much better products would reach the market."
Yong-Suk Lee of the National Computerization Agency, Republic of Korea, said there was a need for governments to distinguish the citizen from the consumer. "We all wear different hats. one as a citizen, one as a consumer. Appropriate policies for the citizen may be different from appropriate policies for the consumer, and citizens' rights may be different from consumers' rights.
"When governments are making policies, it is important to make this distinction. For example, when we want companies to make products for the disabled, the logic for the policy would not come from the consumer area but from the citizen area. In other words, this probably has little to do with consumer protection but involves protecting the quality of life for all citizens, or the basic rights of citizens - thereby justifying the strongest of government interventions."
Cynthia Waddell of the City Manager's Department, City of San Jose, US, said that unless accessibility components are built into the design of web sites and networks, significant populations may be locked out as the web rapidly advances from a text-based communication format to a graphical format embracing audio and video clip tools.
"Yet, we have learned that the benefits of accessible web design extend beyond the community of people with disabilities. Consumers operating cell phones, personal digital assistants and information appliances can readily reach the content of the web because accessible web design separates the content from the presentation. Most importantly, however, accessible web design enables low technology to access high technology. Consumers with slow modems and low bandwidth can access the web even if they do not have state-of-the-art technology.
"The past month has brought significant breakthroughs in the area of industry consensus in accessibility. For example, the over 400 members of the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3c.org) have reached consensus on not only web authoring tool accessibility features but also user agent accessibility features.
"Governments must also adopt accessible web design policies and implementation steps. From August all US federal government web sites and higher education institutions will have to incorporate accessible web design by law. In fact, US federal contracting officers for web design sites and services will be personally liable if they do not procure products or services that have accessibility components.
"This new federal law also requires that a business losing a bid for a federal contract can challenge the awarding of that contract if the business can demonstrate that their product or service exceeds the accessibility features of the business that won the contract. The business incentive seeks to reward those businesses who have devoted research and development on accessibility."
The online debate spanned more than 40
nations in all continents and was hosted by the publisher of E-Access Bulletin, Headstar,
with backing from Bull Information Systems. The full report of the debate is on the web
at:
www.netecon2000.com/report.html
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TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
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by Paul West
Issue No 2
EBusiness
The traditional method of publishing books involves a great deal of effort and expertise from publishers and their staff, who have to assist the author to make a book as viable as possible. Before investing money in a book, the publisher must make as sure as possible that the book will be profitable. If you have been affected by the problem of trying to get a book published and being unable to get it onto the shelves, maybe iUniverse's online self-publishing is the answer. They will allow you to publish you book online. For US$99 it will print one copy of your book and for US$299, it'll showcase your book on its website. The place to go is: http://www.iuniverse.com/. eBusiness models that base their income revenue stream entirely on advertising are reportedly coming under increasing pressure. Many people now believe that users quickly become oblivious to online advertising and there are some software packages available that help users eliminate advertising from their view. The Newspaper Association of America says their surveys show that Internet users show a higher rate of response when confronted by print advertisements, that they do to Internet advertisements. Robert Murdoch does not believe in any doom and gloom stories about the future of print newspapers either. He feels that if newspapers continue to price themselves competitively, they have an excellent chance of survival against their online competitors.
Many parts of the world are not yet ready for even micro-payments because of poverty and the lack of financial instruments, such as credit cards to effect the payment. If, however one begins to build the eEconomy on sponsorships and other revenue streams, one may be able to convert to micro-payments in later years; once more people gain access to the Internet and gain access to more sophisticated financial instruments. It's strange though, that there is a dearth of online banks willing to accept credit transfers from clients, and offer and online debit card. This for now, remains a possible market niche banks are overlooking. It's interesting that so many managers still in positions of authority resist having tele-commuting staff work for them. It'' reported by the International Telework Association that 20 million people are now successfully tele-working. They figure that this is up from just 4 million 10 years ago. There's little reason for many office workers such as education authors and translators, to travel long distances to do exactly what they could do at a home office or small shared office near home. The impact on increasing tele-working is that labour laws will have to accommodate this as just another "normal" way of working. An interesting quirk showed up recently, when a US State wanted to bring in a law requiring the employer to ensure that the tele-worker's home office building standards were "up to standard". One of the main motivators for a company to allow tele-working is that is can reduce its building requirements - laws like this can only negatively impact on progress and the flexibility of work environments. Just imaging what tele-working could do for our over-congested freeways! If you're not "in" the computer industry, you may have missed some of the hype about "virtual private networks" (VPNs). These will help those tele-workers who work on-the-move or just from a single office away from the main company head office. By linking via the Internet and using VPN software, a user can still have the "feel" of being on a LAN or WAN while only using a dial-up link to the Internet (not a dedicated data line). You can expect various forms of this to emerge to support telework. E-mail systems are frequently used very differently to papers methods of communications. The New York Times Company recently fired 23 employees for improper use of the company's email system. Offices like this could include circulation of emails containing offensive or disruptive messages which might include audio, photographic and other media. This is the kind of practice that would be less likely to happen via the internal postal system but seems OK to many when done via e-mail. Companies are starting to say "NO!".
The National Foundation for Women Business Owners say women who own their own business are more likely to shop online that women employees. According to their survey 60% of women who shop online are entrepreneurs against 40% who are employees. These entrepreneurs are more likely to shop from catalogues and the Internet than shopping malls. Businesswomen comprise 2/3 of household decision-makers. Some indication for online shopping malls? Of those people who have become used to online shopping, one in four say they will hold back on future online purchases due to poor customer service. A problem that seems to be recurring is that after the order has been placed, the product is not delivered as promised even though the customer's credit card has already been billed. Products such as software and eBooks that can be delivered via the Internet do not present these difficulties, but those that require sourcing and physical delivery are at risk of these delays. It's important for eCompanies to clearly state what their delivery times and destinations.
Productivity Aids
In the past there were fears about CD ROMs taking over the market from printed books. This did not happen. CDs are frequently bundled with printed books but the books still remain the core item purchased. Now there are digital books and eBooks. Some have said the publication of books on the Internet can increase sales of the printed version. Until display screens that are more "human friendly" become commercially available and affordable, it's unlikely people will be reading complete books in digital format.
The online resource called the African Digital Library (reserved for exclusive use by residents of Africa) now has about 7000 full-text eBooks in stock. Users can do full-text searches and be taken directly to the page where the search string appears. The resource is most useful to learners, academics and anyone looking for specific items. Once again, there's far less likelihood that anyone would read an entire eBook online! The library can be accessed at http://AfricaEducation.org/adl/
The online world provides a new medium for all the problems of crime, fraud and the like. When buying goods online, do make quite sure who you are working with (does the URL at the top of your browser window say the name of the shop you think you are buying from - and is there a symbol of a lock or key in gold at the bottom of your screen?).
The trick is to learn to live in the new environment and make it work for you just like we have had to with all other changes that have taken place throughout our lives. The old "in tray" has been replaced by our e-mail inbox. The biggest difference is there's a lot more there now, and everyone expects a response a lot faster! Gone are the days of a leisurely 3 to 5 day turnaround time for mail - its now 24 hours and less if you want to be credible. Once you get the hang of things, it's not so difficult and you can travel without a PC and all the connection hassles if you are prepared to do your work in hotel business centres, internet cafés and other people's offices. For example, you can store all your files you may need on a "Internet hard drive". These files will then be stored under password protection so that only you can see them, but they'll be available from any Internet-enabled PC in the world. You can access information on this at http://africaeducation.org/xdrive/ - and it's free! Your diary may change while you travel and updating a diary by telephone can cost a lot in international calls. One answer to this is to use Visto, an online diary system (that will synchronise with your Microsoft Outlook via the Internet too) and e-mail. It has many other features. You can take a look at it at: http://AfricaEducation.org/visto/ .
New Technology
Flexible electronics are on their way, say developers. This is going to open the way to creating electronic devices that can be designed into clothing or other items that can be worn on the body. With reducing costs of production over time, this will lead to a wider range of "wearable computers". Something that is no longer quite so new but the majority of Internet users still have to catch-up with, is Internet access via satellite. If you have not come across this concept yet it's worth looking into for those who are avid surfers. In many countries, including South Africa, it is illegal to uplink to satellites. To reach an amicable solution to satisfy legal requirements of countries like this, the solution is to connect to the Internet via telephone line and satellite simultaneously - you just have a satellite dish and computer card as a decoder which also plugs into the telephone. The "request path" i.e. the signal that is sent up to the Internet when you click on something is sent out via the telephone line. The web pages come back to your computer via the satellite dish - VERY fast. The cost of running this is under SAR300.00 per month plus the telephone line costs and the installation costs, which are comparable to installing DSTV. See: http://www.siyanda.co.za/ .
We may see lower-priced computers emerging in 2000 through collaboration between some of the larger companies. Oracle, Linux, Intel and Netscape hope to bring out a computer for around US$200.00 through a collaboration venture between them. The likelihood is also that we'll continue increasing the number of small, specialised devices that take some of the pressure off the present "PC". Early examples of these are palmtops, pocket computers, internet-enabled cellular telephones and a host of other computerised devices. Many of these use wireless technology (for tasks such as constantly updating share prices) and the increasing levels of bandwidth that are becoming available. Higher levels of encryption are becoming available for anyone now. There have been restrictions placed on the export of encryption technology by countries like the USA. Companies like Verisign (http://www.verisign.com/) are upping their level of encryption for e-mail purposes. Remember, normal e-mail is like an open postcard. If you e-mail contains anything more that information about the day's weather, you should be using encrypted e-mail! And at US$14.95 per year, it's reasonable.
The word is out now: "Hijack and go to jail". More and more hackers are being tracked down and are having to face criminal charges. One young 17 year-old hacker changed a URL on the homepage on the NASA web site when the site administrators took no steps to improve security after they had been warned. Companies are emerging, that employ hackers in a attempt to keep ahead of the constantly improving abilities of hackers. Remember that hacking software is constantly under improvement, just like all regular software. The software security industry has to keep up with these improvements and help users of computers to avoid losing data and programs on their computers. It's still very important to protect yourself against hackers by constantly running good virus detection software (with daily updates) and if you can, also install "hacker detection" or a personal firewall. You can find examples of these at http://www.mcafee.com/. The one sure way to avoid all computer viruses and hackers is of course to sell/give your computer away and not use one! This is an unworkable as deciding to not leave your home ever again in fear of criminal elements in society.
Many people who have been using the Internet for many years now make use of more sophisticated e-mail programmes that include diary facilities, journals and other features that are frequently not used. If you are tired of the overload of features and want to retrun to basics, some very well tried and stable products are available (free!) like Eudora Mail (http://www.eudora.com/) and Pegasus Mail (http://www.pmail.com/). This is one place where suppliers believe the advertising-supported business model can still really work. As a matter of interest, amongst the systems targeted at corporate users in the world, the main players remain Lotus Notes (around 37,3%), Microsoft Exchange (mainly for Outlook and Microsoft mail) (around 30,8%) and Novell Groupwise (around 15,9%). If you thought large computers was a thing of the past and the only "in thing" is tiny, consider the next super-computer under development by IBM. Its going to have one million microprocessors, stand six feet high (1,82m) and take up a floor area of 40 X 40 feet (12 X 12m). This new machine, planned for completion in a few years time, is expected to be around 500 time faster than the present super computers.
Education
Education is really becoming a "big" e-commerce commodity with lots of expansion still to come. Continuing education needs in companies are leading to more corporate universities being formed. On-the-job training, which used to take the employee away from their work for days or even weeks is slowly converting to study-at-the-desk and discuss via the chat room on the Internet. Chat may be live or via simple and reliable e-mail lists that enable people in different time zones and different work-shifts to sensibly communicate with each other.
We still hear reports from around the world of how teachers do not have the necessary skills to use computers in their teaching. Some report that schools that have had PCs donated to them that are not in use - this frequently due a combination of to lack of training and sometimes, interest. A child leaving school now without computer skills has to carry a serious lack in his/her training that will have to be met in some other way. The digital divide is "fed" not only by lack of electricity and telephone lines but also by learners not being given the basic skills they need to compete in the world of work. Projects like WorldLinks (http://www.worldbank.org/worldlinks/) and SchoolNet (http://www.schoolnet.org.za/) give one hope of an improvement in this situation.
Feedback
If you have a comment, request or suggestion on this report, please contact Paul West via the website at: http://pgw.org/str .
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Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814
neilshel@icon.co.za
www.saide.org.za
* To view an archive of previous updates
visit:
www.saide.org.za/tad/archive.htm
* For resources on distance education and
technology use in Southern Africa visit:
www.saide.org.za/worldbank/Default.htm
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