The invisible Internet pioneer

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

A museum has opened in Mons, Belgium, with an exhibit to internet pioneer Paul Otlet.

No, I haven’t heard of him, either.

Although, after reading about him, he seems like one of the most brilliant minds of the past 100 years – and one of the nuttiest.

In short, he proposed the Internet as we know it – and Wikipedia – and begun to develop his ideas into a feasible system. Except he started work in 1934 – a damn site earlier than Tim Berners-Lee and his pals started putting together the modern Internet.

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Get orf moi broadband!

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Michael Phillips, the Product Director at ConsumerChoices.co.uk, has today called for Government action to redress the balance between townies and rural users when it comes broadband. He says that “recent analysis has shown that we have a distinct first and second class society in the UK when it comes to Broadband speeds. Rural areas are getting a raw deal when it comes to their home broadband service and coupled with the ‘out of area’ service charges many broadband providers apply, they are suffering a double whammy.”

Well, I am a rural broadband user and while it did, I have to admit, take a couple of years longer to arrive in my village than in the nearest market town a few miles away, it is here now and working well. I get an average speed of between 3000 and 3500kbps, which is not stellar by any means but god damn if it isn’t fast enough for sending my email, browsing the web and even streaming the (very) odd bit of video when the wife is out.

My ISP, Zen, do not apply any additional ‘out of area’ service charges just because I chew straw and eat with my hands, and I do not feel like a second class netizen it has to be said.

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For sale: Barry’s excess data

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

At a time when most ISPs are tightening their data caps, Zen Internet has just announced that it’s increasing the monthly allowance for its subscribers by 5GB, at no extra cost.

That means customers like me who are on the Zen 8000 Active Broadband service will now receive an allowance of 25GB per month.

That’s all smashing and lovely, but the odd bout of Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360 aside, I rarely do any significant damage to my data allowance (as you can see from the graph below, click to enlarge). In fact, this morning, midway through the month, I’ve only used 3.8% of my existing 20GB allowance.

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Keep your bloody phone lines, I’m off to cable

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I moved house a couple of weeks ago. Very spacious actually, although the garden could do with a trim, thanks for asking. Being an IT nerd, the first thing I did when I’d finished unloading boxes was to get the phone line and Internet set up – how hard can it be, right?

The answer, according to those lovely folks over at BT and TalkTalk, appears to be “as difficult as we can possibly make it without sticking two fingers up and suggesting yoghurt pots and a piece of string”.

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