Category: Blog

Latest social networking sensation, Twitter, has been in the news lately as everybody signs up to the microblogging site – joining the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Bebo as a popular place to meet friends and send updates on what is happening in your life.

Despite the growth of Twitter (some reports state a 1000 percent increase in some countries in the past few weeks), a recent Neilsen Online study says a massive 60 percent of users hang around for about a month before ditching the service. And I’m one of them.

Why? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I would suggest that some of the reasons I signed up then stopped are similar to why others are dropping off.

For a start, I already have enough ways of connecting to people – whether it be email, land line, mobile phone and on a rare occasion Facebook. Then there is the Twitter service itself – some of the tweets I get are just stuff I don’t need to know. Sure I like my friends, but do I really need to know that at 8.45 on a Monday they went to the local cafe to buy their morning cappuccino? Or that the alarm didn’t go off? Then of course there is fact I have a business to run and a young family, so my time is precious.

I initially began using Twitter because I knew I was going to be asked to explain it and discuss the benefits as a social networking tool. Being in the tech industry, I love this kind of stuff, but now that I have done that and we all know about it the daily benefit of using it is disapearing. There are also just too many social networking sites around and I can do without it. I’m not saying it isn’t useful, because there are too many people who use it. But I think these days, most people are now being more picky about how much interaction they have with people online, and the means by which they do so.

Have you ditched any of the social networks? What are your favourite forms of communicating with friends and family?

This morning on the Today Show we discussed a new product that has been released by Symantec called OnlineFamily.Norton, which basically allows parents to know what their kids are up to when the kids are surfing the Internet.

What I like about OnlineFamily.Norton is that parents can supervise and communicate with their kids about their internet access. Once the software is installed on the kids PC, the number of internet hours accessed in a month, the sites that are visited, the searches that are made and more, can all be set by the parent from their own PC. Monitoring of the access of their kids machine can also be viewed through the parents computer and this can be done wherever that PCis used, anywhere in the world!

When I was growing up there was no Internet or email and therefore the kinds of risks that are available online were not evident. Sure there were predators out there in the real world, and bullies, too, but they were not prevalent in my life, or most peoples. These days this is not the case. A predator, or a bully, or some unseemly sight that should no child should ever see are now only a few keystrokes away from possibly doing something hurtful to your kids.

There are many programs out there at the moment that can help parents keep their kids safe when they are surfing the net. This new one from Symantec is great. It allows parents to supervise their kids while they are online, and helps them to take an active interest in what they are doing while they are in cyberspace.

These types of issues are bound to cause friction – especially amongst the teenage set – but that is the way of the world these days. Parents need to supervise their kids when they are online and kids need to be supervised when there.

Let me know any questions you have from the segment or about this topic. I look forward to your comments.

Just after WWI one of the world’s worst pandemics in modern history spread throughout the globe. By the time it had run its course the Spanish Flu had killed, by some estimates, up to 100 million people worldwide.

With the current outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, we are lucky we live in an age where technology can keep up with the spread of such outbreaks. In 1918, news slowly leaked to the rest of the world via telegram and cable, but nobody knew the true nature of the disease until it was too late.

The Avian flu outbreak a few years ago had people in a panic, and rightly so. It was a highly virulent strain of the disease with a high mortality rate. Yet it didn’t spread as lethally as previous pandemics for a number of reasons, one being the ability in this modern age to get information out quickly.

Some of the main information distribution points include the Internet, emails, television and SMS’s. Once a story breaks, within a day, anybody in the world who is connected to any of these information outlets knows what is going on.

The Mexico City outbreak of swine flu is said to have started on April 13, however it did not hit the mainstream media until a week ago, which I would put down more to a 3rd party (such as the Mexican government) attempting to put a lid on the outbreak, as opposed to it not being reported.

Not only is the information out there, but it comes in many interesting forms, especially over the net. Google maps for example, can show me what parts of the world has the flu. It is updated regularly and tells me where those infected are living, their current health, and adds those who have come down with the disease as soon as they get the information.

To get an official take on the disease I can then zip onto the World Health Organisation’s homepage and get the latest on what they are doing to battle the disease and what precautions to take.

Finally, if it is a local perspective I want, I can hop onto the Australian Government’s health department website to get updates they are receiving.

While medical technology will assist in fighting the disease, communications technology has a part in helping stop its spread and educating to maintain awareness.

What do you think? Does technology have a part to play in containing swine flu? Let me know your thoughts.