The Online World resources handbook

Gazing into the future http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/17.html
on a small PC by the fireplace in my living room. The computer is not much larger or
heavier than a book.
(Sources for monitoring notebook trends: Newsbytes' IBM and Apple reports, Ziff
Davis' ZD Net).
An update of MIT Media Lab's thinking on "News in the Future" can be found at
http://nif.www.media.mit.edu/.
Electronic news by radio
Radio technology is being used to deliver Usenet newsgroup to bulletin boards
(example: PageSat Inc. in the US). Also, consider this:
Businesses need a constant flow of news to remain competitive. NewsEdge
markets a real time news service called NewsEdge Live. They call it "live news
processing." It continuously collects news from hundreds of news wires, including
sources like PR Newswire, Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, Dow Jones News
Service, Dow Jones Professional Investor Report, Reuters Financial News.
The stories are "packaged" and immediately feed to customers' personal
computers, workstations and intranets by FM, satellite, X.25 broadcast, or the Internet:
All news stories are integrated in a live news stream all day long,
The software manages the simultaneous receipt of news from multiple services,
and alerts users to stories that match their individual interest profiles. It also
maintains a full text database of the most recent 250,000 stories on the user's
server for quick searching.
Packet radio
Global amateur radio networks allow users to modem around the world, and even in
outer space. Its users never get a telephone bill. They are specifically designed for email,
and cannot be used to access interactive Internet services.
There are hundreds of packet radio based bulletin boards (PBBS). They are
interconnected by short wave radio, VHF, UHF, and satellite links. See
http://www.wallycom.com/~wally/packet.html for information. Technology aside, they
look and feel just like standard bulletin boards, and some of them also support TCP/IP,
and have web pages.
Once you have the equipment, can afford the electricity to power it up, and the
time it takes to get a radio amateur license, communication itself is free. Typically, you'll
need a radio (VHR tranceiver), antenna, cable for connecting the antenna to the radio,
and a controller (TNC Terminal Node Controller).
Most PBBS systems are connected to a network of packet radio based boards.
Some amateurs use 1200 bps, but speeds of up to 56,000 bps are being used on higher
frequencies.
Hams are working on real time digitized voice communications, still frame (and
even moving) graphics, and live multiplayer games. In some countries, there are
gateways available to terrestrial public and commercial networks, such as Internet, and
Usenet. Packet radio is proved as a possible technology for wireless extension of the
Internet.
Radio and satellites are being used to help countries in the Third World.
Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit organization, is one of
those concerned with technology transfers in humanitarian aid to these countries.
VITA's portable packet radio system was used for global email after a volcanic
eruption in the Philippines in 1991. Today, the emphasis is on Africa.
VITA's "space mailbox" passes over each single point of the earth twice every 25
hours at an altitude of 800 kilometers. When the satellite is over a ground station, the
station sends files and messages for storage in the satellite's computer memory and
receives incoming mail. The cost of ground station operation is based on solar energy
batteries, and therefore relatively cheap.
To learn more about Vita's projects, subscribe to their mailing list by email to
3 of 8 23.11.2009 15:49