If you’ve noted that there seems to have been some sort of email silence coming from your Indian or Mid Eastern counterpart, don’t be angry. They’re not under some tight government censorship of any kind. They’re having a small problem: they have been disconnected from the World Wide Web because of two damaged undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage.
Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.
International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Not to worry though as the repair team are on their way to make the internet service available to the affected parties.

Source

To most people, the Internet is simple a wide area of space given by technology which can do no harm. Wrong! It can also be a disastrous way of losing your earnings and sanity. You just have to be aware of the scams going on in the web.

Meeting people on the Internet is fine. But the thing is, you have to be wise when dealing with them. Internet strangers should be treated in the same way that we do to people in real life. Refrain from being too close and divulging personal information temporarily. Give it time and then re-evaluate if you can really trust your cyber mate.

(Source) Boston Globe

Thanks to gamers from all over and l33t-speak (that�s hacker language for the laymen out there) shout — “w00t!” — has just been named as the “Word of the Year” by the Merriam-Webster Online Web Site. According to the Merriam-Webster Web site, the word �w00t!� (spelled with two zero�s instead of two letter O�s) is an acronym for �We owned the other team,� but is mainly used as an interjection to express joy, most especially in the case of triumph.

Such as other coded languages, l33t-speak was developed for exclusivity so as to make it harder to detect hackers� online conversations. And as the nature of speakers of coded languages, despite the popularity of “w00t!,� I�m sure that these guys have moved on and have coined another term to substitute for it. But I�m sure that whatever that new term is, it would eventually get out of its exclusivity and may even be the next catch phrase of 2008.

Source: Yahoo! News

Yep, those bloody pirates have struck again! But the British police were right to save the day as they conducted a dawn raid in Cardiff, Welsh and arrested three people suspected of involvement in Internet-based music and film piracy rings. Two men (one of which is the ring leader) and a woman were said to be part of the biggest suppliers of pirated music and films in Britain, earning about 3,000 pounds (6,173 $) a month. Now I understand how these cyber thieves find the piracy business a lucrative one. Too bad it�s considered illegal and unethical. But piracy is not going to end unless people stop buying from them. Just some food for thought, folks.

Source: Reuters

As far as the Internet technology is concerned, it is not as easy as it would be for most people today. The matter of trying to cope up with the advanced ways of gathering information and checking out what you can do on the web is still complicated to most and without the guidance of kids or Internet savvy people, chances are it will be limited to the young ones today.

But if these old folks would discover the beauty and secrets of the web, they will be surprised for sure. They can get a lot from the web. They just have to take it one step at a time.

I don�t think this post can cover a lot of the improvements made on Firefox 3 Beta 1. I guess the delays are sure worth it. Now let�s get down to the good stuff:

Fixes of 11,000 plus bugs
Change of 2 million lines of code
One-click info button to get site (ownership and identity) info
Automatically disables older insecure versions of plug-ins
Workability on Microsoft Windows Vista parental controls
Resumption of downloads
Ability to save tabs
Places bookmarking engine with Smart Places Folder for further organization of bookmarks
Browser speed increases
XPCOM Tool that reduces memory leakage
And more!

Source: Internetnews.com

As far as web development is concerned, you have to determine and set your purpose for putting up your own site to administer. One of the greatest advancements in the technology was made when the concept of internet came into being.

With the advent of internet almost everything in this world changed. Further internet has brought several changes in the way people carry out their business. Internet has changed almost everything. It changed the way people used their computers and it has become so widespread that it is present in almost each and every home. Internet facilitated the human race with lot of things.

Poor old television has just lost to the Internet according to a survey released by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). Apparently, a majority of the 7,000 survey participants in 10 European go online between five and seven days a week. Only 77 percent watch television just as often with 48 percent saying that their TV consumption has been reduced because of the Internet. A European teen spends an average of 11.9 hours of Internet time every week. 32 percent of the respondents cite the e-mail as particularly indispensable. Participating countries were Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

I wonder what the results will be like in the rest of the world. I guess it must be the same. I myself don�t even watch TV anymore. And if I do access my TV, it�s to watch DVD�s. Ask me about the recent TV commercials and I won�t be able to answer you. I even get my news over the Internet.

Source: Yahoo! News