A word to those technological laggards who have yet to seriously consider joining the broadband revolution, or have thought about it and decided against it.
Connection speed is on my mind again after over a year of not thinking about it, my surfing borne along on the swift wings of Telecom's JetStream.
A recent spell in hospital took me back in time with a vengeance. My friend Don McAllister, the High Geek, arrived with my 800MHZ desktop and, in a minor miracle of making do with a low-end modem and a good deal of Kiwi ingenuity, managed to install the most important parts of my system in a room containing the only usable jack in the place.
We were off, but certainly not with a hiss and a roar.
I had completely forgotten the longueurs of surfing over a dial-up connection. Once again I found myself stumbling along paths that I had lately skimmed over. Information had to be of real importance to make it worth the effort of retrieval. The worldwide wait, that numb pause between the desire to get wherever it is you are going and the ability of your modem to carry you there, again became frightful reality. Once more I was a victim of those 56Kbps blues ...
I realise that probably 75 per cent of you reading WebWalk are in exactly the same position. This dreamlike pause between desire and fulfilment every time you want to do something simple like check a sports score is routine.
It has often been said that broadband surfing - that is, the ability to access the net at high speeds - is the way the web was meant to be. It's true, and now I'm home again and back on JetStream, I want you to promise me you will revisit an urge you have probably experienced already and put aside on grounds of cost.
After two weeks of the modem's sluggish tyranny, I want to see the whole world speeding through cyberspace at multi-megabytes a second, the original dream of the internet's founders.
Three principal options are available, offered by ihug, Xtra and Saturn - check them out at Consumer Online under Internet Providers/High-speed Options - Telecom's JetStream uses ADSL, based on ordinary copper telephone lines; ihug's Ultra is a one-way satellite service; and Saturn now offers the cable modem alternative through Paradise Broadband.
They boast download speeds 10 to 100 times faster than an ordinary dial-up connection.
None is cheap: they range in price from $99 a month, plus installation and hardware costs.
But there is a time for recklessness. I urge you to cast caution to the winds and just do it. You won't regret it.
LIES, DAMNED LIES
M-Entertainment: entertainment beamed to mobile phones ('m-entertainment') will generate more revenue than traditional voice traffic by 2005, according to DataMonitor. It predicts revenues from m-content will go from $2.4 billion this year to $31 billion in 2005.
E-mail at 32,000ft: Singapore Airlines has become the first airline to let passengers plug their laptops into in-seat telephone jacks to handle e-mail and browse 30 websites. Available as yet on only a single Boeing 747 on the Singapore-LA route, 24 passengers can log on simultaneously at around 33kb/s.
Korea Wins: Britain lags behind everyone except China in broadband access, according to net measurement company NetValue. Its report says South Korea leads the world, with over half its households having broadband connections; the US has 11 per cent, France 6 per cent, and Britain just 3 per cent. Denmark has the most households with net access: 54 per cent.
BOOKMARKS
BEST OF BRITISH: A-Zfind
Just when you thought there couldn't be room for another search-engine, here comes a new and targeted UK directory.
The goal of A-Zfind is "to make life easier for people who want to locate high-value content online." A-Z's team of reviewers have grouped website content into a family of sites: A-Zleisure.com, A-Zliving.com, A-Zmoney.com and A-Znewsfile.com. I'm afraid they have a way to go before they'll be give Yahoo! a run for its money.
Advisory: not quite ready for prime-time.
COOLEST: Jabber
Instant messaging looks like becoming the venue for the next knock-down, drag-out cyber-war as Microsoft and AOL circle each other warily. But wait - here's a new contender armoured with all the best buzz-words: free, open-source, extensible, scalable ... with heavyweight developers and an enthusiastic band of inspired amateurs giving their all.
Advisory: download and tell me what you think.
MOST INEXPLICABLE: Whowouldbuythat
The latest craze - a website illustrative of the blind folly which moves those seeking to turn other people's junk into their junk. Auction oddities from all over the web - but I'm afraid you've missed the Tiki Mug-God of Oral Sex, snapped up at $US50 ...
Advisory: the adjective 'weird' doesn't really convey the full effect ...
* petersinclair@email.com
Links
Telecom's JetStream
Consumer Online
High-speed options
DataMonitor
NetValue
A-Zfind
Jabber
Whowouldbuythat
<i>Peter Sinclair:</i> Fading out in cyberspace's slow lane
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