How to Build a Better Internet

DARPA wants to build a better Internet - Engadget

From the looks of it, DARPA thinks there's plenty of room for improvement, stating the goal of the program as nothing less than to "improve transfer speeds, network routing efficiency, reliability, simplify network configuration, and reduce cost," adding that it's also interested in new addressing schemes to supplement the current IP scheme.

# If you want to build a better interent...let's work on everyone having 100 MB upload and download per second.

Everything else can come second.

# I agree. Crazy-fast speeds are step one. It's not even out of reach; take a look at the high speed connections in Asia, for example. Puts the American ISPs to shame. Making old technology seem new needs to stop (i.e. making slow-ish connections sound cutting edge to the average consumer), as does severely throttling upload speeds. I wonder how long it'll be before that stuff really happens.

# I got one word for you Darpa....WIRELESS
Make all internet connections WIRELESS and you'll have your better internet.
I'm talking City Wide, State Wide WiFi.
I'm Talking cellular modems built into computers waiting to be activated.
I'm talking country side signal REPEATERS hooked to data-Satellite dish transmitters.
complete wireless is the way to go.
Wires aint never helped nobudy!

# Some suggestions -
1.EVERYTHING porn should be at XXX instead of www - makes it easier than using adult verification like net nanny - turning off xxx web pages would be easier for parents and employers - I'm not saying stop porn - just make it easier to prevent people who don't have administrator rights on your PC from going there. Is it art or is it porn - pretty sure if a girl is taking two guys at the same time it isn't art - impressive but not art.
2. Block any web page that uses the house fly flash animation for advertising.
3. Find a way to block any SMTP transmissions originating from Nigeria as an option
4. Make it easier to track all e-mail origination so that spammers can be hung by their appendages.
5. Take the RIAA out back and put them out of our misery.

# To build the better internet...get rid of spam.

Really, a lowly 1Mbps connection downstream 256k upstream is more than enough for the average user. Others will of course go for faster connections such as those offered by some DSL providers that are in the area of 5-8Mbps downstream 1Mbps upstream. Coming soon are higher speed Cable as well as FIOS services for the power hungry. Basically for the majority of folks who want and can afford it, they will get their higher speeds.

But let's get back to Let's make it harder to successfully spam email. Let's make Internet 2.0 require a new authenticated form of email that also addresses DDOS attacks. Most phishing and other scams are sent through email. What we call spam. Get rid of that and the internet world will be a much more improved place. I'm not hoping for 100% removal of spam but if we can reduce it to sporadic attacks or about only 25% of legitimate email then I will have considered the battle won.

# Umm... IPv6 solves all of those listed problems.

Making a Background Image Visible in Firefox

I have had a frequent and regular problem with making my background images show up in Firefox. I do a search for "background image won't display in Firefox" and find that others too have the problem. Oddly enough this search has not yielded information that actually helped me to fix the problem. So I had to scratch and think.

After much trial and error, I have figured it out. Here is what I did. I made the following change.

This did not work:

#siteName{
background-color: transparent;
background-image: url(http://www.sitename.com/images/logo.png);
background-attachment: fixed;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
height: 120px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 10px 160px;
}
This however, did:
#siteName{
background-color: transparent;
background-image: url(http://www.sitename.com/images/logo.png);
background-attachment: fixed;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 0% 2%;
height: 120px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 10px 160px;
}

I was aided in my search by simply studying the CSS requirements for background positioning. For some reason, the image position in Firefox was outside the containing element, unless I specifically established the position. This information and some nifty positioning tools can be found at: http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-position.asp

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

It is interesting to think of how, 10 years ago, using the Internet was a novelty. I remember how most people were saying that people just wouldn't buy anything on the Net. I first heard of Amazon.com by means of a radio interview of Jeff Bezos, and him talking about people's reluctance to use their credit cards on the Internet. Now Amazon.com is a household name and people are VERY comfortable using their credit cards online.

My point is that, in fact, we are emerging out of the horse and buggy stage, or maybe we're still in it, with respect to the Internet and it's usability. We have a very short time studying how people navigate around, clicking, scanning, and reading the web.

Jakob Nielsen has made a name for himself as the master of usability. Every year he releases his "Top Ten Mistakes..." and I find them quite enlightening. There are some great links in the article as well.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

Summary:
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

Since my first attempt in 1996, I have compiled many top-10 lists of the biggest mistakes in Web design. See links to all these lists at the bottom of this article. This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design. (Updated 2007.)

Search 2.0 - Whats Next?

This is an amazing blog about the next innovations in search trends.

You may feel relatively satisfied with the current search offerings of Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Search today is undoubtedly much better than what it was in the second half of the 1990's. But Internet search is still in its infancy and there's much room for improvement. Moreover, the super high valuation of Google on NASDAQ pushes investors and researchers to find better search solutions - to be The Next Big Thing. And these wannabes are not only working on discovering better indexing techniques, they're exploring new horizons like vertical engines, meaning-based search, intent-driven search, new clustering methods, and much more. In this post, we look into latest trends in the search industry.

My Favorite Firefox Extension

Its difficult for me to say that its my favorite since there are so many that have become vital to my online experience. Its just that I have lost so many bookmark files. With this extension, you not only eliminate the danger of losing your bookmarks, but you can synch all of your computers to have the same up to date bookmarks.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer by Foxmarks LLC

Foxmarks keeps your bookmarks automatically synchronized between two or more computers. A simple wizard guides you through the startup process. Foxmarks works silently in the background. As a bonus feature, you can access your bookmarks from anywhere via my.foxcloud.com. It's simple and solid.