Topic: The Internet and the World Wide Web
What does it mean to have a deeper, more geographic understanding of our changing world? Tamarat Belayneh says the answer can be found at the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). Its missions is to organize and analyze geographic data to help land planners and resource managers make better use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The importance of such systems is increasingly recognized. ESRI's role is to train people to gather and apply GIS information in new ways.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with author Howard Rheingold about how to prosper in the post-internet world and his new book, NetSmart: How to Thrive Online.
Last year the internet ran out of 32-bit IP addresses. Sharing IP addresses, as in the standard IPv4, has its problems, but who would volunteer to be the first to switch to the 128-bit standard, IPv6? Thus, June 8, 2011 became World IPv6 Day, in which thousands of big sites switched to IPv6, with a dual stack fall-back to IPv4. In this talk, Ian Flint, Architect at Yahoo!, tells the story of how Yahoo geared up and tested for the switch, and what they learned.
No infrastructure, no electricity. No electricity, no cable lines. No cable lines, no coaxial Internet connection. No coaxial Internet connection, no problem, because this is how, on the continent of Africa, Android and cell phones become the solution, according to Claire Hunsaker. Her mission is to cultivate consumer market within poverty-stricken areas of Kenya by focusing on access to practical data, developing payment systems, and efficient networking utilizing Google's Android operating system.
Do you remember hearing about the massive opposition to SOPA and ACTA? It was a surprising show of unity, and helped temporarily defeat these efforts. Joe Karaganis has been studying global copyright infringement. In a recent report, Joe explains why "piracy" is too easy to stop. He also describes a global problem where less developed countries are prohibited from gaining access to information. In response, he recommends establishing "shadow libraries" to help students everywhere.
In the early years of the Internet, many of the leading companies were startups. Now they employ thousands of people, but as they've grown, they've become less risky. With growing demands to meet expectations, companies must remain innovative. Two common strategies are: (a) buying a startup with innovative products and people; (b) establishing organizational structures that replicate the culture and attitudes of a technology startup. In this panel discussion, executives from AOL discuss their experiences keeping the startup spirit alive.
Broadband is still relatively cost-prohibitive, and New America Foundation's Sascha Meinrath has a solution. Rather than having carriers provide all bandwidth for customers, the online market is heading towards a model where apps and data are based on free delivery concepts with pre-loaded bandwidth paid for by the advertiser. Describing the hypothetical and, he says, probably inevitable future of apps, Meinrath discusses the possibilities of content providers paying for select bandwidth in order to ensure large-scale access.
With the vision of making it a center for research in a variety of areas, MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte founded the MIT Media Lab in 1985. Joichi Ito, the new director at the MIT Media Lab, spoke during the recently held Web 2.0 Expo. Ito discusses how 'The power of Pull' is changing the internet world and talks about the diverse set of innovations coming out of the Media Lab.
The number of calling minutes in the world is growing since it was created in 2003, but their shift towards Skype is growing faster. Sten Tamkivi, chief spokesperson for Skype, looks behind this trend, sharing what Skype has learned about simultaneously serving both the most and less developed markets in the world and why this is important. Skype handles one-third of all call minutes, is the only quality video conversation provider with a global footprint and sees increased growth due to video cameras on mobile phones and notebook computers.
From 40 million users in 2007 to more than 500 million today, Facebook's growth has thrown up enormous challenges in scaling of its computing infrastructure. Jonathan Heiliger, the Vice President of Technical Operations at Facebook, discusses web performance, operations and the evolution of Facebook's computing architecture over the last several years. Amidst various other topics, he focuses on the company's transition from PHP to HipHop for PHP (HPHP) and the Open Compute Project.
