The church is founded on the belief of sharing information and holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols.  They say they do not promote or condone illegal file-sharing but are pleased that file-sharing generally has now been given “religious protection”.

In a statement the leader of the church, a 19 year old philosophy student, Isak Gerson said “For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore copying is central for the organisation and its members.”

Despite this unexpected turn of events the Swedish government said that it wouldn’t mean illegal file-sharing was about to be legalised and music analyst Mark Mulligan told the BBC ”It doesn’t mean that illegal file-sharing will become legal, any more than if ‘Jedi’ was recognised as a religion everyone would be walking around with light sabres.  In some ways these guys are looking outdated. File-sharing as a means to pirate content is becoming yesterday’s technology.”

Whatever you might think of this new religion its recognition does at least help provide encouragement for those people who believe freedom of expression and freedoms to worship are being stifled.  In this respect it has to be a good thing.

File sharing generally is a “religious ceremony” according to the church and it comes at a time when the US government’s controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is causing concern and argument across the pond.

He suggested that certain nations would take advantage of the event and some may be obliterated completely.  “The Huge dog will howl at night, when the great pontiff will change lands.”  Many believe the huge dog to be the UK and the great pontiff is the Pope, indicating that both Britain and Italy will be destroyed (in which case it’s been nice knowing you all).  Finally he suggests that some nations will take advantage of the situation, prompting a new world war.

But predictions aside, and everybody will make up their own minds about what they choose to believe (for example the destruction of European countries, if even true, could be related to the current difficulties with the Euro and the collapse of the currency), what role would technology have if the world did face a cataclysmic event, and how might it help rescue mankind afterwards?

One thing is for certain, Nostradamus never saw the rise of the information age, nor the iPad, and technology is used everywhere on Earth for monitoring natural and man-made threats that are both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial in origin (by the latter I mean comets and meteors rather than little green men).

Our computing infrastructure is much more vulnerable than we might think, due to the interconnectedness of everything.  Even satellites in orbit are connected to computers on the ground, all of which require electricity that’s controlled and regulated by more computers.  A large electromagnetic blast from a massive solar flare or some type of explosion could completely cripple large parts of this infrastructure.

Would this cause the end of mankind?  Unlikely, but it would dramatically change our way of life and put us back to being a people that rely on the land and traditional tools overnight.  Also, without technology many millions of people would suddenly find themselves being unskilled and having to learn practical farming and survival techniques just to feed themselves, which would inevitably lead to millions of deaths.

Could technology save us from all this however?  It’s become clear in recent years that world governments haven’t done enough to shield critical technologies from electromagnetic interference, nor have they done enough to defend these vital systems from cyber-attack, which will probably be the weapon of choice in future conflicts.

I don’t want to be completely dour however because what technology has given us are new ways of being able to predict disasters and communicate effectively and instantaneously worldwide.  If there was a problem the planet was facing we’d be looking to technology for a way to avoid it, and if war were to break out then picking up the phone or sending an email is much more efficient than packing someone off on a horse.  We can see how lives have been saved by early warning systems for tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes.  We may not always get it right and haven’t been able to save as many lives as we’d like, but slowly we’re getting there.

In short our reliance on technology will no doubt prove to be far more of a blessing than a curse should the apocalypse occur in 366 days time (2012 is a leap year).  Your iPad might not survive for very long without a charge, but the advances that have brought that tablet to you may yet prove invaluable in saving millions of lives.  Governments may not be building enormous arks for us like they do in the movies, but they’ll be watching the skies, listening to the earth and talking to each other, and we all have technology to thank for that.

Fortunately help appears to be at hand, quite literally, as there are new an innovative ways to interact with our computers available and in general use already.  There’s the recently introduced Siri from Apple, which while it might be a version 1 product and in need of some improvement (especially if you’re Scottish) seems to work rather well for voice interaction.

Then there’s the now venerable Kinect, coming soon to Windows to help us to all pretend to be Tom Cruise throwing his windows around Minority Report style.  Touch screens are opening new opportunities too and new types of keyboards.  Sadly a wholesale move to touch technology can only guarantee that the next worldwide health scare is a pandemic of repetitive strain injury and nobody needs any of that.

But slowly and surely we are moving away from using keyboards and mice to control our computers and to communicate with them.  This has led me to wonder exactly how we’ll be doing this in the future?  Clearly the outsider has got to be voice.  With so many languages, dialects and words to learn we’re still many years from the processing power needed to produce reliable results, and do you want to explain to your boss that you had said “brick” in that email but the software misunderstood you?

Then comes touch.  RSI issues aside we can still use them to read natural handwriting.  This technology has now been around and working reliably for a decade, the postal services around the world have invested huge sums in computers that can read the words we write.  Alas this is a slow process and writing out a long email instead of typing it in under half the time just isn’t suitable for the demands of modern life.  This brings us then to the Kinect which is great for throwing things around but pretty useless the first time you actually try and do precise work with it.

This means there there’s a gap, sitting somewhere between what he have and what we don’t and I thought I’d throw this out for you to see what you think will be the control methods of tomorrow?  Will we will use keyboards and mice so much, or will the mouse go in favour of gestures and will basic keyboard controls be taken on by voice control instead?  In short, will be resort to using all of these technologies simultaneously to control our devices?

I bring this up because this has all really taken off just this year.  2011 has been a tremendous year for new ways to control computers with some of the most amazing technologies put into practical and widespread use for the first time.  2012 looks to be even more exciting with swipe gesture control coming to Windows 8.  We may not want this though.  For many a keyboard and mouse are just fine and they’ll want to keep things like that.  What do you think?  Do you think there will be an outright winner and do you even think that ten years form now we’ll have any choice in what we use?  Why not tell us here.

Sam is an IT Project Manager who has purchased a large batch of Windows 7 Enterprise licenses without consulting her bosses. They don’t want to move from XP and now her job’s at threat! She needs your help as an IT Professional to convince the board that Windows 7 is worth deploying.

To enter you need to create a video, or series of videos across the whole competition justifying Sam’s Windows 7 purchase on a series of different criteria.  Fir the first entry period it’s productivity.

The prizes in this competition are really excellent and include…

Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB W500 Windows 7 Tablet
Sony 32″ LCT TV with Samsung BluRay Player
Lenovo IdeaCentre B320 21.5″ Multi-Touch All-in-One Desktop PC
Seagate 4Tb NAS drive with Sonos Play:5 and Sonos Bridge
Dell Inspiron Q15R Laptop
HTC Titan Windows Phone

In addition, the first 250 entrants will receive a limited edition mug.  Then there are two final prizes for the most watched videos over the whole period.

Samsung 32″ 3D TV
Panasonic SD90 HD 3D Ready Camcorder with 3D conversion lens

The entry periods for the competiton are…

- Entry Period 1 (19 September 2011 – 03 October 2011)
- Entry Period 2 (03 October 2011 – 17 October 2011)
- Entry Period 3 (17 October 2011 – 31 October 2011)
- Entry Period 4 (31 October 2011 – 14 November 2011)
- Entry Period 5 (14 November 2011 – 28 November 2011)
- Entry Period 6 (28 November 2011 – 12 December 2011)

You can enter in each of the six entry periods but only once each time and, if you have a webcam and can record a video, up to three minutes long direct to YouTube, or if you have more professional video editing kit these prizes will make entering well worthwhile.  It’s important to note here that professionalism isn’t necessarily a guarantee to success.  What you say in your video is just as important, but don’t forget the already Excellent Windows Live Movie Maker can be downloaded completely free as part of Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials Suite 2011.  This software contains some great and simple to use tools for snazzing up your entries.  As for your entries for the very first entry period, Microsoft say…

All you have to do is share your tips on the features of Windows 7 that make it easy to use. Sam says the board are worried that users will have trouble adapting to Windows 7 and that they’ll see a drop in productivity. She needs to know, what features and improvements are included in Windows 7 that will help the business’ users to be more productive?

The competition is only open to UK residents and full terms and conditions and links of where you can enter can be found HERE.  You can see my first entry on this link with the promise that if this wins the first round, I’ll be giving away the prize, an Acer Windows 7 Tablet PC worth around £600, in a free prize-draw to a lucky follower.

Pointing out that no single device had taken over, instead we were seeing a number of devices based on the “socially-mediated innovation” that has been developed in the last few years.  The IBM 5150 was launched on August 12th 1981.  In his post, Dean said ”When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline.”  He noted with some sadness that his own primary computer was now a tablet.

It’s amazing to me to think that August 12 marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. The announcement helped launch a phenomenon that changed the way we work, play and communicate.  Little did we expect to create an industry that ultimately peaked at more than 300 million unit sales per year. I’m proud that I was one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s.

He went on to comment that ”It’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact, it is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.”

IBM itself moved away from the desktop PC market some years ago after losing out to companies such as HP and Dell.  It eventually sold it’s laptop business to the Chinese and now concentrates on the server market.  The company still maintains revenues higher than Microsoft for the server hardware that it sells.

It is amazing when you think about it, that PCs are still with us.  The colours might have changed, but the traditional box and keyboard haven’t changed much at all in the last 30 years.  I personally remember using one of the original IBM PCs extensively in my youth, though I preferred the Apple II for it’s compactness (it weighed nearly 30 by 45 by 12 cm and weighed 11.5 lbs).  Eventually my father bought me a second hand Olivetti XT machine from his work with a copy of WordPerfect 5.1 and this was my first proper PC.

Around 400 million PCs are sold each year and it may be that Dean’s prediction is premature.  Business is still the largest users of PCs worldwide and businesses have a long-earned reputation for moving very slowly with new technologies.  Given the additional software development costs they face it’s very likely that the traditional desktop PC will still be a feature of offices around the globe for two decades to come.

That said, consumers are now moving towards tablets and other devices including smartphones and netbooks as their main computer.  Only serious content creators and hard core gamers still evangelise about the PC in the way we used to last decade.

So who knows at this point what the future holds for the humble desktop PC.  Certainly we will see them commonly morph into all-in-one machines but battery technology still isn’t good enough to convince the masses to switch to portable and mobile devices.  While tablets such as the iPad can boast impressive battery lives of up to 16 hours on a single charge, most devices will still run out of power after four.

So, happy 30th birthday to the IBM 5150, you started a revolution that has impacted positively on mankind, generated incalculable numbers of jobs in all manner of industries, and that has even created hundreds of new industries in the process.

It might be worth noting though, all things considered, that I’m writing this article on a Google Chromebook.

What they’ve done is built a prosthetic chip that uses electrodes to expand and enhance the rat’s memory abilities. After studying chemical interactions that allow short-term learning and memorization they believed they had an idea how to make it work, and they’ve done it. The chip can receive and store neural signals. This allows rats to store what they learn in the devices and as a result, allows them to learn more and to remember it forever.

Dr. Bergers’s description of their success is exciting and, to be frank, maybe a little terrifying:
“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget [...] These integrated experimental modeling studies show for the first time that with sufficient information about the neural coding of memories, a neural prosthesis capable of real-time identification and manipulation of the encoding process can restore and even enhance cognitive mnemonic processes.”

The implication of such technology is simply staggering. Imagine what this could mean for people with learning disabilities. Think of what it would mean for people affected by Alzheimer’s. The series of experiments being conducted by Dr. Berger’s team are, in a paper, being called “A Cortical Neural Prosthesis for Restoring and Enhancing Memory”. Currently the trials are working on the next step of development, reproducing the same results in monkeys.

It can’t be emphasized enough the astounding positive applications of technology such as this. On the other hand, humanity has a history of twisting profound discoveries into malicious applications (hello, Atom Bomb). If the potential in this technology could be realized for positive applications, the same must be said for its potential for abuse. Think about it, turn it on and it works, turn it off and they forget. I can see it now! Military applications alone would be a frightening thing.

Still, in a world where we see so much suffering, this development by Dr. Berger and his diligent team is surely something worth getting excited about. Treatments for malicious, memory fogging diseases, cognitive issues and more could be possible.
With refinement, it might even change the very face of education. Need to learn a language? No more DVD’s and headphones, folks, you can just download the Portuguese app and be on your way! Ah yes, the possibilities are endless and we’ve got stars in our eyes, waiting to see how this development progresses. You can read more at the source, or download the research paper until July 17 from here.

The online music streaming company stock opened at an impressive $20 per share, shooting up as high as $25 soon after trading began before quickly settling back down below open at $17.42. Pandora’s respectable $20 initial offering was much higher than expected in the months following the company’s announcement that it would begin trading on the stock exchange in February. Prices were initially set a paltry $9 per share, but increased last week to $10 to $12 each. The company priced its initial public offering at $16 per share the day before trading began.

As has been the case with other tech stocks, impressive early gains made by Pandora were quickly followed by decline to levels not far from opening prices. By the time of print, only one day after release, Pandora’s stocks were trading well below opening value at around $14.50 per share.

The release of Pandora stock into the market closely follows professional social marketing website LinkedIn’s initial public offering in May. Like Pandora, LinkedIn enjoyed considerable gains in early trading. Their stocks began with at an initial price of $45 per share before opening at a sky-high $86, closing the first day up 80% and wowing investors. Since then, however, prices have cooled considerably, falling to their current levels around $70 each.

Understanding what these numbers mean for the tech industry as a whole is a little more difficult. Rumblings have been growing pretty loud from technology news agencies and financial reporters alike about the possibility of a new tech bubble. The rapid incline of LinkedIn followed by gradual decline might be pointed to as evidence of such a bubble. Of course, others will simply brush such worries aside, labeling them as usual market fluctuations. Yet inflated valuations from Groupon and Twitter, both of which may be in the tens of billions, suggest that things may already be getting out of control.

What is clear, however, is that stock offerings are not a sure way for online companies to raise their valuation quickly. While larger, more powerful web-based companies have done extremely well in past years through such offerings, these latest releases show that such constant growth can no longer be taken for granted.

These events all ultimately build up to a hotly anticipated public release of Facebook stock… eventually. While the company has been expected to begin selling to the public sometime around April of 2012, when they will be forced to release financial information that makes an IPO more appealing, confusing showings from tech companies like Pandora may cause them to rethink any such plans. Additionally, new legislation may push back Facebook’s deadline to release those financial numbers, easing any pressure to preemptively offer public stock.

As more web companies enter the ring the viability of many tech companies may become more clear. If a bubble has indeed begun to grow, the attitudes of other companies will likely reflect the confidence of Pandora and Groupon in their public trading habits.

IBM has had a huge impact on the world of computing and the company continues to be a big player, in fact it currently makes more money than Microsoft.

To mark their centenary, IBM have commissioned a special 30 minute documentary, which you can see on their YouTube channel.  The music is by acclaimed musician Philip Glass.

The documentary covers IBM’s culture, some of it’s achievements and company highlights and talks about the technological future of the company.

The reason the bank gave for refusing to handle payments from the controversial website was that “Wikileaks may be engaged in activities that are… inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”  Which could mean anything.

Wikileaks hit back by asking supporters to stop using bank of America, though this is a tougher sell given the difficulties people face in moving their accounts from one bank to another these days.

The bank of America, based in North Carolina also said that they will ”not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks” but left the statement at that without providing clarification about what types of transaction this could cover.

The war of words between Wikileaks and businesses that have withdrawn services from it is set to rumble on into the new year and it will be interesting to see what companies, if any, will be the next to line up against the website.

It’s entirely possible that this could throttle Wikileaks to a point where they simply have to close their doors and shut up shop.  Fear not though because the scandal has inspired whole generations of people to take up arms and Wikileaks in 2011 will be only one of a great number of whistle-blowing websites out on the world wide web.

First of all, let’s have a look at the ways you can make more time for yourself using the internet. If you have important writing to do, sure you could do it the old fashioned way and sit down next to the fireplace with a pad and pen and start making notes. Or, you could go to the internet and do a search for virtual assistants and then outsource your writing work to someone else. Think about it, your time is valuable. Even if you are a professional writer, a fast writer, and you really know your stuff, chances are that you can find someone more qualified than you to do the writing for you. While they are doing your writing you can be focusing on the next project, catching up on family time, or even writing something else. Time is money, after all and your time is probably worth more than the money you will spend to hire someone else to do your work for you.

By the same token, you can easily use the internet to find someone to do all the other things that take up your time. Need someone to take your clothes to the cleaners? Need someone to wash your car? need someone to figure out the menu for your daughters wedding reception? No problem. The internet is filled with experts who are ready to help you solve all of your problems. A simple search on Craigslist or Fiverr will find you plenty of people willing to do anything for $5 or less.

So that’s one way. Another is to think outside of the box. When you have to go somewhere, what is it that you spend the most time on? If you are like most people, the chances are that you spend the most time on commuting or going from place to place. Things like traffic and weather can cause huge delays that not only time but also money since your motor is running and your meter on life is running too. By using the internet or a web enabled device, you will be able to find the quickest route, see where the traffic is snagged, and probably you can even find a store or business closer to where you are so that you don’t have to spend so much time and money to get there.

Another factor to consider is telecommuting. Why should you spend your time and money to go to your job when you can just as easily do your work from your home? This is a god send in the increasingly expensive and inflationary world since it means you no longer need to spend your hard earned cash paying the baby sitter or nanny to watch your kids while you go to the office for a virtual meeting. A net meeting is a much better idea.

In fact, I use the internet to make myself a better person all the time. I’ve used it to figure out the best diet for my lifestyle and blood type and to plan a regular workout that takes into account my age, body mass index, and work experience. At the moment, I am working with a life coach to learn what is really important to me. We meet three times a week on Skype and have long video conferences about my past, my present, and my future. She has referred me to a number of websites that have told me my personality type, what kinds of things I like, and how I should be spending my time.

Furthermore, last year, I actually used the internet to launch myself into a new career. I got on the job boards at Monster. and I paid someone to revamp my resume using oDesk. There was a resume and a sample writing necessity for getting the job, so I outsourced the writing to an Indian in Mumbai and then I submitted the completed application using a Skype phone number. the interview was a breeze since I had a silent keyboard in front of me and could look up the answers to each question the interviewer asked. By the way, she was from a call center in Bangladesh. Once they had made certain I knew what I was doing, I was offered the job. Since then my virtual assistant in Mumbai handles all the correspondence and another source in the Philippines does all the actual work. I simply collect the check and distribute shares to everyone. It’s a win for everyone.

Whenever I need to buy something online, I always find the product and then I look for a coupon or discount code. By simply typing the name and the words ‘coupon’ and ‘discount’ code in Google, I can usually find reductions of anywhere from 35-60% on just about anything. The one exception is gas, but I actually use an application on my iPhone to find where the cheapest gas is so that I don’t needlessly spend money on more expensive gas. It’s a small savings, but over time, things like this really add up.

Would you believe that I actually had groceries delivered to my house last week from a website and it ended up costing me less than if I had gone to the shops myself. I don’t know how they do it, but I think I’ll be using that service again.

Some people say that the internet can’t provide love, but I met both of my last girlfriends online and I’ve used sites like PlentyOfFish to meet single women that just need some male companionship with no strings attached. Not to mention, I’ve found more than a few ways to ‘up my game’ in the real world and my track record with women has, as a result, gone from zero to hero.

So, as you can see, the internet makes me feel better, gives me love, does my work for me, and overall improves my life in ways that I would have never imagined. Thank God for the internet.

As for me, I plan to save money in a lot of ways in the coming new year. I don’t want to make a bunch of resolutions that are only going to get broken, but I can tell you for certain that I’m going to be spending more money next year and I’m probably going to be getting less for it. That means I need to start planning my budget cuts right now.

First to go is going to be golfing. What a waste of money and time. If I were to count all the hours I’ve wasted chasing that little white ball around the big green fields, it would probably be more of my life than I’ve spent working. Not only that but the greens fees average out to about $60 per round and when you play three times a week that adds up to about $750 a month. Way too much. Then you add in the lunches, the beers afterwards, and the cost of new irons, drivers, and putters and it is just ridiculous.

Next, I’m going to get rid of my SUV. Gas is just too expensive and as much as I love driving my vintage hummer around town, I’ve started to feel a little guilty about burning all that oil. It’s not the environment so much as the fact that I’ve started having dreams where I am filling up the tank with the blood of Iraqi kids and American troops. Damn liberal media has finally gotten to me. Besides $3 a gallon is just too much. I’m getting a Harley instead. The way I look at it, I can spend the time I used to go golfing riding my hog around on poker runs.

No more gym membership either. I’m tired of seeing all those spandex clad hotties making eyes at the guys who don’t have a pot belly and a back covered in hair. Instead of the gym, I’m going to start running and I’ve bought a yoga mat for stretching and exercise at home. The truth is the gym hasn’t been as successful for me as I expected. From my original 435 pounds I’ve barely shrunk at all and now I’m weighing in at just 430. That’s over ten years. Maintenance isn’t the solution. I want to be the 160 pound guy I was back in college.

And that brings me to the biggest place I’m going to save money. Food. I’ve decided that the reason I’m so big is because I eat so much. It’s not that I don’t exercise. Plain and simple it’s that I eat six meals a day and each of them are enough for three people. I’m going to limit myself to just four meals a day. Breakfast can be regular size. Lunch will be half a sandwich and a bowl of soup. Dinner will be just a salad. And I’ll allow myself one late night snack. That’s it. No more soda or beer with meals either.

These aren’t so much resolutions as they are things that have to be done in order to keep me happy. I considered slashing my internet access too, but when I though about it, it’s probably the best value of anything I spend money on. After all, I use it to communicate via email and phone, I send faxes, I download music and movies, I shop, I watch the news, television, and more on it. I even keep a daily journal of my progress towards my goals.

If I were to cut the internet, I think my life would actually suffer since I use it to keep in touch with friends, do business, and entertain myself. Instead, I think a nice thing to get rid of is cable television. What a waste. I don’t even watch it any longer. In fact, the last time I watched it was when Friends was still a new show. Yeah, that’s definitely going to go. I’ve got no time for television these days anyway.

In fact, when I imagine cutting the internet, it makes me shiver since I think that would mean severing my connection with my friends and colleagues on Facebook. In addition, I would lose access to the website I am planning on using to get my diet in shape. I wouldn’t be able to shop for the best deal on my new Harley or to list my Hummer on Ebay auto auctions so that I can get the best possible price for it. i would have to give up playing cyber golf (which I admit is more addictive than the real game) and my online journal would no longer be available for the world to read it. Okay, I have another admission, the whole world doesn’t read my journal but it usually gets five or six visits a day. I would have to give up watching Ugly Betty, downloading Shakira songs, and watching Youtube Star Wars parodies.

Nope, I’m not giving up my high speed connection. That’s my resolution for 2011. I resolve to remain connected to the internet, no matter what. Never mind the rest of the resolutions, those are really just a way of giving myself good advice, this is the necessity I need to remain focused on. The internet is my friend and life. I will not give it up.

There are also a couple of links to articles about the problems Africa faces getting broadband infrastructure installed and allowing their population to get online.

Sure, you might be saying, watching cartoons on holidays is a real quaint tradition and YouTube has taken some of the specialness out of it, but what about real change? Well, certainly no one gathers around the television on Thursday night to watch holiday cartoons as a family any longer. Nor do most people even bother to send Christmas cards. Instead, a group email or more likely a Facebook page update or a Twitter status change is what you should expect from most people. It used to be that long distance was pretty expensive when you called another town, state, city, or country, but these days we can call anyone anytime we like and it only costs airtime, not the distance. How did this change the holidays? Well, it used to be that we would call the people we loved on the holidays and because it was rare and expensive, we would treasure the moment. No more. Scarcity is gone. We can call anytime, even for free if we use Skype or Gtalk. And those holiday greeting cards? Chances are the only ones you get will be from your 97 year old great aunt or from some company that mass produces them and sends them out in bulk because they hope to capitalize on the good feelings that such cards used to generate.

I can’t really say that the internet has empowered or brought about new holiday traditions. Sure, you can have a Skype conference call with the whole family now, but who really does that? Maybe the closest thing would be posting our holiday photos on Facebook. Of course, maybe I’m just bitter and jaded and remembering things from a rosy past at the expense of the present moment’s technological achievements.

After all, it didn’t use to be that you could follow Santa’s progress on the NORAD site or have Santa send your kid from the North Pole using Fiverr or some other site. And then there are the great ways you can shop without leaving home now. No need to go to the mall and see the fancy animatronic displays any more or even to go to the next town to see the Christmas displays. We don’t need to leave home anymore to do everything. I’m not so sure things are better, in fact, I would say they are worse.

When I was a kid people used to complain that Christmas had become too commercial but if they could have seen what it has become today they would have sighed with relief and kept all their complaints to themselves. Those simple commercial traditions of yesteryear seem incredibly quaint now.

Hanging the Christmas lights, going out to drive through the neighborhoods to see other people’s lights, fighting the crowds at the big department stores, buying and sending the Christmas cards – not to mention writing with a pen inside of each one a personalized and thoughtful message- these seem so innocent now.

via http://xkcd.com/361/

Imagine that we complained that Christmas started on the heels of Thanksgiving but these days, my email inbox has been filled with holiday specials since July. We used to head down to the local mall to meet some old drunk Santa and maybe to tell some elf our secret Christmas wishes, but now, the internet lists hundreds of places and somehow knowing that Santa is simultaneously in hundreds or thousands of spots at the same time makes it completely impossible for me to suspend my disbelief for even a second.

The days of chestnuts roasting by the open fire, families gathered around a TV with an antenna to watch Frosty the Snowman, or even getting a card from someone you thought had forgotten all about you are dead and gone. It’s a shame really. Cyber Christmas just doesn’t feel the same. Not that I liked getting elbows in my ribs as I fought for Christmas bargains at the five and dime, but there was something real about it that just doesn’t seem the same when we spend time on Amazon shopping and then have the gift shipped to the recipient without ever actually touching it.

Sure, those Amazon elves do a nice job wrapping things, but I sort of miss the fingerprints on the scotch tape. The convenience is there, that’s for sure, but something important has really died and gone away forever. I guess it must be the same way my grandparents felt when they watched us kids watching color cartoons on the television and they thought of going caroling with friends or attending a church mass on Christmas Eve. Maybe I’m just becoming an old fuddy duddy.

I can’t help wondering though what the future will hold for the holidays. Will it be a matter of having automated holiday greetings that get sent to people at the right time. Maybe we can have our shopping done for us so that not only do we not touch the gifts but we never even see them. Or instead, maybe we will all just plug in to the internet and our cyber selves will pretend to go caroling and watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on an old television with an antenna.

Little Katie said about the bullying “The first grade boys are teasing me at lunch because I have a Star Wars water bottle.  They say it’s only for boys.  Every day they make fun of me for drinking out of it.  I want them to stop, so I’ll just bring a pink water bottle.”

ChigacoNow first reported the story last week as part of an anti-bullying awareness week but since then the story has gone viral with over 1,700 comments and over 11,000 Facebook likes.  Users of Twitter then picked up the story using the hashtag #MayTheForceBeWithKatie and now the story has spread internationally.

A new Facebook event “Support Star Wars and Geek Pride for Katie” is urging attendees, of which there are currently almost 1,200, to “wear a Star Wars tee shirt or any other piece of paraphernalia to show that you support Katie” (at gHacks we’re happy to oblige with this photo of some very fetching lady Stormtroopers, click the image for the photo credit.)

While this story is light-hearted, it also makes an important statement about the web today and the power it can wield.  While thousands of people supporting Katie online will probably have little or no actual effect on the children bullying her in the playground, it’s a wonderful example of the public rallying around a story to raise awareness of a serious issue.  Bullying can have very unpleasant consequences at any age.

Katie is now carrying her Star Wars drinks bottle to school with pride though I can only wonder what would have happened should she open her lunch box to find one of these.

His appeal against his conviction failed today and the 27-year old accountant is now the first person in the UK to be convicted of an offensive Tweet.

The verdict has caused a great deal of anger on Twitter with the hashtags #twitterjoketrial and #Iamspartacus (a reference to the 1960′s movie where slaves all stood up to claim they were Spartacus to protect him) and people are re-tweeting his original message.

I was appearing on BBC Radio Sheffield today, literally just down the road from Doncaster and Robin Hood Airport and was asked about the verdict.  I believe that Paul Chambers, the man convicted, exercised poor judgement because, as I said on the radio, anything that’s written text has no context, i.e. you can’t look at their face to see if they’re being serious or not, and as such the context will always be assumed by the reader.  If you’re interested the radio interview is available here http://www.thelongclimb.com/audio-video/BBC_Radio_Sheffield_12.11.2010.mp3.

Free speech advocates have called this censorship and have said the UK judiciary is “out of step” with social networking.  The BBC reported The verdict demonstrates that the UK’s legal system has little respect for free expression, and has no understanding of how people communicate in the 21st Century,” said the organisation’s news editor Padraig Reidy.  Though this is probably a exaggerating the facts a bit.

The plain truth in this is that UK law, and most other laws around the world, treat an offensive online message the same way they would a treat a threatening telephone call, and thus a man has been prosecuted.

Does UK law need to be amended to take into account social networking and communications in the 21st Century?  That’s not for me to say, but it’s clear that a great many people don’t understand what the Internet really is and how it works.  This poor man’s life and future career prospects are now threatened because something posted online can prove impossible to remove.

These two hashtags are still trending topics on Twitter tonight in the UK and it is clear that a debate needs to be had to clarify for the public exactly where the law intends to stand in the future.

Lets take a closer look first. Google has redesigned their direct up to the point search engine. The major theme of those changes were additions to the search pages, be it a sidebar with additional search options, instant search results, instant previews, more advertisements and mashups with other Google services like image, news and video search.

The Mozilla team is about to change some fundamental Firefox designs, from moving the link hover information to the address bar to the tab management feature Panorama and tabs on top.

What do most of these changes have in common? The companies do not offer options to disable or undo them. In the case of Firefox, most of the changes can be undone with extensions. Some, like Panorama on the other hand cannot be disabled at all.

The same is true for Google’s changes. Can you turn off Instant Previews? No you cannot, unless you install a third party solution or use one of the other workarounds. Can you remove the sidebar or the inclusion of mashups in the search results? No you cannot do that in the options, you once again need to rely on third party workarounds to do that.

Don’t get me wrong. Every company has the right to modify their products the way they want. But some changes alienate part of their user base to the point were some of the disgruntled ones switch to other products.

Would it be that hard to offer options to disable new features? Why is there no option to disable Instant Previews or Panorama? Is it really that complicated to add that option to the application? And even if it would be, would not the benefits of offering users an option outweigh that?

Google and Mozilla are just two companies that seem to have lost some of their mojo in the last years.

What is your take on this? Let me know in the comments.

Now one of the fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, has said there’s a chance the switch to the new system could cause several years of “instability” as each country takes its time to make the switch.

In a report by the BBC, Cerf admitted that the change “has to happen or the Internet will stop growing or will not be growable.” as the IPv4 system only allows for about 4.3 billion addresses.

It’s slow work though, search giant Google admitted it took three years to get its own IPv6 network online.  ”The business community needs to understand that this is an infrastructure they are relying on and it needs to change for them to continue to grow and to rely on it,” Mr Cerf said.

The puts the predicted instabilities down to the fact that the two systems are not compatible with one another and that, essentially, the whole world must be ready to make a simultaneous switch if problems are to be avoided.

Some countries including China have made great strides already in their infrastructure switch to IPv6 though some other countries have barely or even not started at all.  Currently only 1% of all Internet traffic is sent via IPv6 and time is running out to get the remaining 99% online.

The title has gone to the country’s Tianhe-1A supercomputer according to a report by the BBC, that is capable of more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second.  It contains a massive 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips.

The computer, known as Milky Way, has taken the top spot from the US-based XT5 Jaguar in Tennessee which is capable of 1.75 petaflops per second, equivalent to 1,000 trillion calculations per second.  The new winner now stands some way out in front.

Milky Way is a reported 47% faster than the XT5 and does this by uniting its thousands of Intel chips with graphics processors made by rival firm Nvidia.

The supercomputer, based in the Chinese city of Tianjin,  houses its vast array of processors in more than 100 fridge-sized cabinets and weighs in at over 155 tonnes.

The research, for which 50,000 people in 46 countries were interviewed showed that Japan, probably the most tech-savvy country on the planet, is also the one where people have, on average, the least number of friends online.

The figures showed that Japanese people had an average of only 29 online friends compared to the top-rated country Malaysia where Internet users have an average of 233.  Elsewhere in the far east, the Chinese have an average of 68 friends. 

Some of the greatest numbers are, in second place, Brazil with 231 and Norway with 217.

The research, which is extremely detailed, found that people are now using social networking websites to communicate more than email and that access via mobile devices is increasing rapidly.

In the United States, 76% of people are online with up to 66% of those people accessing the Internet from a mobile device.  Of those people online 17% said social networking was important to them.

Compare this to the UK where 83% of people are online and, while the number accessing the Internet from mobile devices is broadly the same as the UK, 24% said social networking was important to them.

Now the co-creator of T9, Martin King has passed away after a long battle with cancer.  T9 was the premier product of start-up company Tegic.  King hadn’t been involved with Tegic for some time because of illness but was there at the very beginning and saw his creation picked up by the likes of Morotola at first, and then every mobile manufacturer on the planet.

“It leaves a big hole in the Seattle tech community because Martin was known as a real innovator,” said Bill Valenti, the former chief executive of Tegic. “Martin was a very, very rare and unusual person. He combined the brilliance and curiosity of an Einstein with the heart and compassion of a Mother Teresa.” Valenti added that he’s never before met anyone with that “breadth of character.”

Tegic communications was founded in Seattle in 1995 by King and Cliff Kushler.  It was later sold to AOL for $350 Million and is now a part of Nuance Communications.

King served with the US Army in Vietnam as an air traffic controller and later attend Cornell University to study physics.  His career began developing technologies to help people with disabilities.

There can be no doubt that his most famous creation has been used by over three-quarters of all the people on Earth.  A full obituary of Martin King can be found at TechFlash.