. The General Assembly of the United Nations in New York wrapped up today [AP] with stern rhetoric regarding the need for novel, sustained action beyond rhetoric on the part of delegates. Ultimately though, failed talks on war, nuclear proliferation and the irreverent provocations of Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are in stark contrast to the only significant take-away from the assembly: reaffirmation ofanti-poverty efforts through the Millennium Development Goals.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) The United Nations convened for the Millennium Summit in September 2000 and committed to a fifteen-year deadline for combating extreme poverty and the myriad preventable health issues facing women and children across the developing world. The Millennium Development Goals are eight (8) definite milestones toward the elimination of such poverty and disease by 2015 and improving the general welfare of the global human society:
End Poverty and Hunger
Universal Education
Gender Equality
Child Health
Maternal Health
Combat HIV/AIDS
Environmental Sustainability
Global Partnership
These are lofty goals indeed, but the UN is an organization steep in such radical idealism, without which, the gloom and hopelessness of reality can not be dispelled. Ultimately though, the MDG's are a challenge to policy-makers, non-profit organizations and citizens of both the developing and the developed world to seriously tackle such monolithic problems with innovation and determination.
Fast forward to this past week, the UN summit manages to secure US $40 billion over the next five years to specifically address the portions of the MDGs regarding Women's and Children's Health. Although the pledged amount alone is not sufficient to solve any of these problems entirely, it is an encouraging reminder of the dedication of the international community to fulfill it's promises to the developing world. To find out more, visit the gateway for the efforts at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.
Now, if you're looking for other big ideas on how to improve the state of our world, look no further than the X PRIZE! The X Prizes are a distinct and widely recognizable avenue of innovation and technological development. Click here to continue reading >>
So, you have completed the first part of the exercise and your browser is now ready for the web in all its glory. Now, it is time for some real soul-searching to holistically tune your internet browsing experience to match your spirit. These last two steps will take some time, some honesty and some self-evaluation, but in the end you will certainly feel much less cluttered and hopefully much more productive.
Step 6 - Search your Soul
Evaluate the way you access information
I find that in order to get an accurate picture of my internet browsing takes about a week. Some of the things I don't do daily will most likely come about in a week. If they don't, they probably also do not affect my internet browsing enough to be significant.
So, if you have a pretty good memory, or have the appropriate settings for your browser history, you should try to identify which types of online tools you use the most and what you use the tool for:
Research
Current Events
Entertainment
Communication & Publishing
Commerce
You probably already notice that many tools fall into more than one of these categories and you possibly use some tools for more than one purpose. However, the goal is simply to help you organize them so you can get a better idea of what exactly you do online. Though my complete list is much longer, here are my major internet tools:
Research - Google search, Bing, Wikipedia, AllRecipes, Career Builder, Indeed, Google Maps
Current Events - Seesmic, Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook, iGoogle, TweetMeme
Communication & Publishing- Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogger, Gmail, Just Host, Google Docs
Commerce - Craig's List, Amazon, Google Shopping, Buy.com
Also, don't forget to include other programs on your computer that connect to the internet in one way or another or services on your smart phone do the same. Possible examples include: Sidebar for Windows, BlackBerry Maps for BB Smartphones.
Once you have your services listed, identify the services that give you the largest volume of information and that you the most difficult time getting through all the information available. I listed mine in bold font above. If your tools are anything similar to mine, you might also notice that current events are the most difficult category of information to deal with. And this seems sensible, there is a LOT happening all at once and these services try to bring them all to you at once. A lot of people may also list their e-mail service, and I would have a few weeks ago. However, it seems that priority inbox has given me a great way to handle the information overload issue in my inbox.
What I hope you have gotten from this step is that you use the internet in a lot of very specific ways and that you don't use every tool for everything it can be used for. So, the way in which you experience the internet is quite literally unique and different from any other person. Now you may feel special that your internet browsing kharma is special and unique, but it does pose one daunting problem - there is no single, sufficient method to solve your information overload.
To decide which combination of methods is best for you, continue to the final step, Nirvana awaits!
So, now that you have an idea of what you do with the internet, you're now ready to take your browsing to the next level.
Before continuing, remember that as I mentioned earlier, everyone will have a different way in which they use each different tool so it is near impossible to come up with a catch-all recipe. However, I spent a lot of time evaluating the information consumption habits of many other people and I have been able to resolve the solution down to the simple recommendations:
Improve your filters
Consolidate your sources
Integrate your access
There are many different filtering methodologies available, like the aforementioned priority inbox and others in the form of spam blockers, feed aggregators, personal filters, crowd-sourced filters, tags/labels, recommendations, ratings and many others. There are also various access models including but certainly not limited to toolbars, plugins, extensions/add-ons, personalized home pages, bookmark/favorites bars, and a slew of desktop applications.
Improve Filters
Depending on where you get your information, the filtering methods may be easy to control. For example, most e-mail services will allow you to moderate spam-blocking by black-listing or white-listing messages depending on the origin or content of the message. Others will further allow you to classify messages for labeling or distribution in your inbox beyond just spam blocking. Another example is in facebook where you can view the 'Top News' by default or switch to 'Most Recent' as an unfiltered alternative. On Twitter, you can set up lists of users feeds or save searches in order to aggregate the most-likely relevant information for you.
Finding out if the particular tool you're looking at has these features should not take very long. Setting them up and tuning them so that they get you exactly what you want, however, will take time and a lot of trial and error. A possible strategy for doing this may be:
Using whichever method(s) available in your service, filter out nearly everything such that only the MOST relevant information to you at a particular point in time gets through
Relax some of the restraints on the filters you set up to allow some more information through
Add some new constraints as necessary when you see more junk start to slip through
Iterate by relaxing and replacing to you reach a balance where NONE of the information you care about is being blocked and very little junk is coming through.
With the right filters set in place, you should already feel a significant decrease in the total amount of information that is streaming through your services. If you still see a lot of stuff you don't want, you may have to sacrifice some of the things you might care about and apply stricter filters as necessary.
Consolidate Sources
This is another point where having a written list of your online services would be really helpful. On this list, you should already be able to identify some of the services that are similar just by thinking of them or looking at how they are categorized. Now you should make an important decision:
Trim the fat, or
Bring them together
The advantages of cutting off the excess or repetitive services are that it will save you time and reduce the total amount of information you need to deal with.
You may not feel comfortable cutting off other services as they may have their peculiarities which you don't want to give up. In these cases, you will probably benefit from using a content aggregator that brings the information from various sites into one service. Examples include:
Swift River - Dedicated and intelligent feed aggregator and filter client
You should also consider customizable home pages which are available from many sources online. These will greatly reduce the time it takes you to get to the information you want by placing the most recent updates right on your home page and let you decide how much or little you want. Examples:
Finally, note that some services will also allow you to couple not just the feeds but also your updates as well. An example of this is that Twitter will allow you to update your status through Facebook, and vise versa (although in a different way). So explore the services you do have and see what sort of APIs and connectivity that they offer. Third-party services that enable tethered publishing include:
To maximize your overall experience, you should take these simple steps to integrate all these tools so that they flow well with your browser itself and your other points of access. You may have just completed the first of these as part of the last exercise:
Customize your homepage
Customize your favorites/bookmark bar
Add extensions and toolbars
Install desktop clients
Update your smartphone apps and mobile browser bookmarks
The majority of these will not take more than just a few minutes if you spent the time evaluating your services and consolidating as much as possible. I would like to stress the importance of utilizing the appropriate toolbars and extensions at this point in time.
First, I would advice against using more than one toolbar. This will require greater resources from your computer which is generally undesirable. Also, and possibly more importantly, is that a toolbar may be used to store your bookmarks and your favorites so that you can access them from other computers. If you use more than one, you might accidentally store these favorites in a location that you might not have access to from another computer.
Second, don't get too crazy with extensions. Extensions and add-ons will allow your browser to do a lot of impressive, interesting and useful shenanigans, but be careful what you get. Some extensions may be malicious and crash your browser, or even mine your browser for information about you. Most sources for browser extensions feature reliable filtering and rating system which should help in identifying the unhealthy extensions. Also, having unnecessary extensions will undoubtedly require additional resources from your computer when you use its features. For this reason, you may want to limit the number of active extensions in your browser by deactivating or deleting those you do not need or want.
Finally, get on your smartphone and point your mobile browser to some of the sources that you use the most. You will find that a majority of these sites will feature either a mobile version of the site or a downloadable application dependent on your device. These will allow you to access the information you want on the go which will make you a very happy panda!
And there you have it, the secrets to unlocking Nirvana revealed to you, basically:
Improve your computer and your browser
Look at the services you use online
Filter out the stuff you don't want and combine the stuff that you do
Make it easy to get to your new refined pools of information
Not at all difficult, just takes some initiative and time for you to feel lighter, happier and more effective as you browse through the vast and infinite reaches of the net. Thanks for reading! Welcome to Nirvana!
Do you want to unleash the latent capabilities of your computer and yourself? Do you want to be able to access and sort through information at lightning speeds without the pain and annoyance of slow, inefficient browsing? If so, get on the path to trouble-free, effective access to the internet through this guide to enlightenment.
The concepts are fairly simple:
Remove unnecessary software from your computer
Update your browser
Install plugins
Test your browser
Fine-tune browser settings
Evaluate your tools
Improve, consolidate, integrate!
I have split the process into two parts. Steps 1-5 will comprise the first part. If you have a typical computer and just need to tune up your browsing experience, this first part shouldn't take longer than 15-30 minutes. However, it is meant to be a generic resource so you may come across a lot of information that does not apply to you.
Step 0 - Identify the Cause Test Connection Speed [Skip this step if you just want to get straight to the fun part]
Before, we get started tweaking, it might help to find out why you're so dissatisfied with your internet. There may be many reasons that explain your crippled internet experience. I narrow them down to these three reasons:
Your internet connection may be awful
Latent software on your computer may be unnecessarily bogging down your device
Your computer hardware may just not be sufficient for your needs
The easiest way to find this out is to run an internet speed test which will give you an idea of your true internet connection speed. The sites listed below will basically return a value for your download speed, your upload speed and your latency (or lag). If the latency is too high, the server may be too far away and the results may not be representative of your actual connection speed. Try a closer server or search for another internet speed test for your region.
http://www.pingtest.net/ - This information will likely not be important to you. It is from the makers of the speedtest
You may want to compare your average value with what you're actually paying your internet service provider (ISP).
Next, open up 2 or 3 of the most graphic- and computing-intensive applications that you have on your device. I opened Solid Works, DivX Plus Player and BlackBerry Desktop Software all at once. While these are loading, run the test again. You will notice one of three scenarios:
Everything remains the same: This likely means that your computer hardware is fine and you should consider purchasing greater bandwidth. Otherwise, it may mean the applications you opened were not sufficiently stressful; however opening an HD movie in DivX Plus should do the trick for most computers.
Download speed alone drops: This likely means that your computer is struggling either because of hardware, software of both. This guide will help you quickly alleviate the discomfort.
Download speed and upload speed drop: This likely means that your computer has some serious hardware short-comings and this guide will only help some of that. Consider upgrading your memory or in seriously debilitating cases, replace your operating system.
Some other combination: This is difficult to diagnose without further information as there may be several scenarios involved.
Step 1 - Get rid of the Old! Remove unnecessary software
Delete unused or out-of-date software from your computer as these can keep you from experiencing Nirvana. To find these on a PC:
Open the Control Panel
Select 'Programs and Features', 'Uninstall a Program' or 'Add or Remove Programs'
At the top of the column of the list of programs, right click and select 'More...'
Find and select the checkbox next to 'Used' and click 'Ok'
Click on the header for the new column such that the list is now sorted from 'Rarely' to 'Frequently'. NOTE: The first few items may be small APIs that are listed as 'Frequently' but are separated from the full programs on the list.
Remove the software that you use rarely and/or feel you will not need in the future.
Delete unnecessary toolbars, plug-ins, and extensions in your current browser
Try to remove these using an option within your browser if possible. In addition, you may need to follow the steps described for uninstalling unused software to remove these toolbars and plug-ins. If this does not work to remove a toolbar, you may need to carefully read through the list of installed software or make advanced edits to your registry. In rare cases, you may need to uninstall your browser entirely. REMINDER: Be wary of the terms you agree to when you download software!
Replace your Operating System (Helpful in Extreme Cases ONLY!) If you're dealing with a seriously troublesome computer that all you try to do with it is browse the internet, consider removing your entire operating system (OS) and replacing it with a lighter OS. This may seem an extreme measure for internet browsing, but the honest truth these days, is that most computer are simply hubs for internet connectivity. If this is the case for you, consider a stripped-down and light-weight operating system that will let you do just that. Examples:
Step 2 - In with the New Update your internet browser software.
If you're not using a stripped down Web OS, you will need to use a stand-alone web browser. Pretty simple, go to the site and follow instructions to download or update your browser.
I will refrain from taking any sides as of right now regarding which browser you should use. You need to experience them for yourself and decide which is in tune with your energy. What I recommend that you NOT do, however, is simply go with the same browser because you have always used it and think it is the best. Try something new for long enough, and you may be pleasantly surprised. I personally have Firefox, Explorer and Chrome installed on my computer and use all three depending on the situation. I have not tried the Beta for Explorer 9 that was released today, but I did find a seemingly reliable download source and listed it anyway.
Step 3 - Get the Basics Install basic plugins
Plug-ins give your browser access to software that require greater control over your computer. These plugins will let you do things like play games online, view videos, and even use online word processors. Note that some of these tools may be phased out fairly soon with the increasing adoption of new internet standards and popularity of tablet and mobile devices.
Step 4 - Time for a Joy Ride! Test Browser Performance
First, follow the instructions outlined in Step 0 to test your connection speed.
Next, the following tests will look at how your browser renders pages and if it meets standards: Acid3 Test Sputnik HTML5 Test
After testing the connection speed/bandwidth and browser compliance, check out the following resources that will push your browser to the very pinnacle of web browsing requirements today:
DO NOT be alarmed if your computer wheezes and coughs while trying to run some of these scripts, you will not come across very many of these kinds of websites anytime soon anyway. They are just meant to give you an idea of what will be possible and how your computer and browser measure up.
Step 5 - Tweak the Knobs Modify Browser Settings
Based on the test from the previous step(s), you may need to make some additional tweaks to optimize your browser. The following pages may help tremendously:
eHow - A general guide to optimizing the four major web browsers
After you have dusted, cleaned and tuned your browser into shape, you are now ready to tune yourself. The next two steps will help you match your online tools with browser extensions and your overall aura so that the World Wide Web will feel feel like it extends from your fingertips - perfect harmony.
I will cover steps 6 and 7 in Part 2 of this series. These are the tips that will really help boost your browsing experience by removing the clutter from your web presence and streamlining your information consumption. Have any questions about these first steps, drop a comment below and I will be sure to get back to you soon.
Mechanical Bike
I've been doing a lot of work on my sister's bike recently and pretty much merged the parts of my older bike into it. After replacing a few parts and several failed attempts to tune the brakes, I finished today and went on a much anticipated victory lap around our neighborhood. Now, I put a lot of effort into this Frankenstein of a bike just to get it moving (and stopping) well, so I have much respect for a guy that can make a bike run on the sun. That's right, a solar bike!
Solar Electric Bike
Hama Zero's Fujin is an electric bike which can charge it's batteries using sunlight. It runs up to 45mph, which is suitable for most roads and should be able to complete a 30-mi trip with just a 9-hour bath in the sun. In the video below, the creator of the bike, Mr. Yamawaki, discusses the bike and the inspiration for reducing it's rolling friction.
The reason such technology is so interesting to me is more than just amazement at the workmanship that it takes, but also it's influence on and statement about the current industry of solar energy: On The Go!
Mobile Energy Sparks Imagination
It seems that everywhere you look, solar energy is taking to the streets, the skies, and even in space! There seems to be a general shift in the design paradigm at the fringes of engineering and technology. While the production industry is focused on improved efficiency and lowering costs, the design side is looking to meet non-traditional needs to renew excitement about the technology. Sure when we hear news about full scale photovoltaic plants being built, concentrating solar power generators and even government rebates for home installations, we get excited. But what really ignites the imagination is news about solar briefcases for third-world healthcare and stuff like this: Solar power on a bike. Wow!
Solar On The Move
I don't know why such technology strikes a deep harmonious tune with me. Maybe it's the stark contrast to oil spills, atmospheric pollution and exploding oil rigs. It could also be the faint dream of perpetually available, free energy - a beautiful, though fanciful dream indeed. Nontheless, I chose to put together a quick mock-up of solar vehicles that I have heard about recently in the news:
Solar car's are not brand new, but a nod from the White House gives the impression that these achievements are nothing to be sneezed at.
Solar Plane - Solar Impulse
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10550430 [+VIDEO]
Heard about this guy, Bertrand Piccard, and his plan to fly without fuel sometime last year, so it was almost surreal when I heard his plane completed a 26-hour flight! Flying through day and night without a single drop of fuel is the amazing brand of inspiration that can effect a true paradigm shift regarding solar power.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/solar-sail-spacecraft-100902.html
Solar panels have indeed been used in space for decades now, but never has the power of the sun been harnessed to provide thrust anywhere. IKAROS, a Japanese probe, recently demonstrated that it has actually gained thrust from the incidence of light from the sun alone. That, is AWESOME! So, not only can you utilize sunlight in photovoltaics and solar thermal applications, you can also propel a craft with sunlight using a solar sail.
It seems that though it is difficult to predict the realistic potential for solar energy to expand in the energy market without financial incentives (carbon tax, etc), the imaginative potential for it's use is vast and seemingly limitless.
-- I'm sorry if the collection of articles seems somewhat incongruent. I did not go hunting for these articles, I just ran across them through my regular news consumption (various blogs and podcast references).
