Adventure Ausrama Blog

Technology: Google must pay Optus to get ads on its network. Optus in Australia is planning to block ads on its network. This is a blow to companies like Google who are trying to bring down the system by banning ad blockers from its app store. Google's actions will not change anything. Many browsers are making ad blockers a built-in feature. If companies want to advertise they will have to send a popup to users to turn off their blockers to view the site. Of course, users will move on to another site. Don't be fooled though by carriers blocking ads. They will take money from adverrisers to let ads through, only to be blocked by individual users' local blockers. Power! Telcos do not have that much power. The market will not turn back now. Carriers do have power over Facebook, Google, and news organizations. They will have fork out "blackmail" money to telcos who will say no pay now show . Companies like Shine in Israel are in a new market. Shine been...

Since the email was "invented" in 1977 it has continued as the main means of sending information that is admissible in court. Though you may think that what you say is not important, the content can be used against you in a court of law.  For light social exchange people use Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter. If governments could get their hands on the data it would use that against you as well. The main problem with email is that there is so much of it. The vast majority of users cannot deal with it. Most emails are discarded without being read simply because users think it is spam, or the nearest thing to it - continuing emails from a company you have either purchased something from or downloaded supposedly for free. New email systems from Google, Amazon, IBM or WorkMail usually just provide more folders that you could create yourself. The boundary between work and home life is now blurred with a mass of emails that need ongoing, endless attention. Tryin...

The NSA has said that it targeted non-US citizens in its information grab from large Internet companies. Australian and American government agencies have secured detailed data about Australian citizens. This fact came out in a new report. In the first half of 2013 546 requests were made on Australians. Facebook provided details on 349 of these. The US demanded information on 20,000 users assumed to be Americans. Access was granted on nearly 16,000 US accounts. Which government agencies made the demands was not announced by Facebook. Internet companies seem to have been given some sort of filtering power to decide what is released. This is strange considering such companies are not elected non-government agencies. Are they entitled to be above the law? Requests to Twitter by Australia have risen 600 percent since the second half of 2012. All members of the international data oligopoly were approached. About two thirds of all requests were successful. There is a fine balanc...

Will Mankind survive the technological change? Since the year 2000 the world has changed extremely quickly. Our social lives have altered forever. At the turn of the century only a quarter of Australians were connected to the Internet. Now three quarters have Internet access with two thirds of these having broadband. Only a third of Australians had mobile phones in the year 2000. Today, just about everyone has one, including children. Verbal communication faded in favor of texting.  Even this is now declining in favour of voice and video.` We bought newspapers, magazines and books for news, general information, instruction and direction mapping. Now we do this over the Internet or by using direction indicators that speak to us. Relationships now begin on the digital information highway. We pay bills without even using a card or cash. And take our favorite music with us everywhere we go. Even ordinary emailing has been somewhat superceded by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype....

Access to the Internet prevents it from being a world levelling device. In Australia people will have to wait up to eight years to get broadband. South Africans living in "dangerous" areas will never get an Internet connection because telco companies fear theft of copper wire. India is too poor, so many regions will have to remain on dial up Internet. Those in remote places in Britain are still waiting for a method to be chosen for broadband distribution. Leading Western countries are the main source of software for all Internet users. Even Twitter and Facebook are based in the US. People also use these sites to interact with those of similar ilk. The world is segmenting into cliques and a broad world view is not materializing. This is despite more information being available for the average person than at any other time in human history. People are essentially parochial. They identify with the region and country they are in. Though international news is easily accessed, many...