CDrom cleaning

This is one of the more traditional questions, yet very easy to answer:

How to clean a CD-ROM without breaking it?

The CD-ROMs can be cleaned using the kits on sale at electronics stores.

You can also clean them with a clean soft lint-free cotton cloth. To do this, carefully wipe the silvery face. You have to rub slightly the CD with your cloth from the center and moving toward the edges in a straight line.

Do not turn in circles!

If a depot persists, soak your cloth with a little water or rubbing alcohol.

Get an email address

People not used to internet often wonder how they could get an email address.

There are several aspects to take into account, prior to heading to one or another solution :

• Are you linked to an internet subscription ? If so you may already have access to an email address. However you should know that when you switch to another provider, chances are you loose this email address. That’s why you may want to have a separate email address.


• Are you ready to pay for this service ? Most people are not, as many free email services exist. However free services are mainly full of advertisement, this may not be suitable if you are looking for something clean.

• How much security do you need ? When sharing a wireless connection, or at work, you may have some privacy concerns, thus needing an encrypted connection between your web browser and the email server. A few email providers offer this feature.

Runbox is a good paying email service, with no ads, mobile access, secure connection.

Gmail is a free (ads-featured) service with a nice and clean interface, providing a secure connection too.

Here are the two services I would use if I was willing to pay or not, but if you want to try others, give a try to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.

Start funding for your children scholarship

A friend of mine, who has a little baby, has told me about this sweet web site: The cute kid.

You can upload a picture of your last child and get him compete with others to be the cutest kid on the month, even the year …

Actually there is much more to earn for your baby than getting his picture on the winners wall, since the winners can receive many prizes, up to a $25,000 College Tuition Fund. This can really be useful for your child future scholarship, with hardly nothing to pay in advance (the picture is uploaded for free, and there is only a $19 subscription to the contest).

To get started, click here!

One year without a lie !

This guy has decided to spend one whole year telling the truth, this must be really hard !
What are, on your mind, the things the most difficult not to lie about ?

Make your own opinion

Todays web overwhelms us with data that floods our brain, but what is important ? All this data, on my mind, do not have much sense if I take it "as is", it has to be evaluated. That's what is the most important and difficult part of browsing the web : taking detachment from the information, to make our own opinion.

Take the time to ask yourself:

Do I agree with this ?

This is fundamental, IMHO.

My 2 cents ...

Peer to peer mode ?

The original web was what we call today "peer to peer", that is, people's computers where connected to the network and interacting directly with each other, to talk or access data for example. If anyone wanted to make a web site, he hosted it on his own computer and the person who was interested accessed to his computer directly. That was real peer to peer.

But now most of the web usage has changed, as people access to centralized servers, completely independant from the people who own the information. Blogs are hosted on blogspot.com, people talk to each other on facebook.com, send emails to hotmail.com, and even do instant messenging via MSN centralized servers on miscrosoft.com, etc. Benjamin Bayart, president of FDN (French Data Network, an associated web access provider), gave a conference on the subject [fr].

The only way to get back our data would be the use of peer to peer communication, direct communication between two computers. You can host your emails on your computer, as well as your blog, and use an alternative to MSN to communicate directly. But there are two major issues:

• You have to let your computer always switched on, which consumes a lot of energy ;

• The installation and configuration of these services is not trivial ;

• Most of web providers limit the upload bandwidth, so that if somebody wants to download anything from your computer it will be very slow compared to a download from a centralized server

I think the two first issues could be resolved in a "plug & play" box containing all this, but I haven't seen any offer, if you know of some please let us know !

The third one is quite hard to resolve, as it depends of the commercial web offer.

Presentation

Hi,
I'm creating this blog to express the way I see the web to be humanist, if this concept has any sense.
How can the web technologies help people in their common life ? Does the web bring real solutions for people or only create new artificial needs ?

Articles to come : communication means (email, social nets), publication (blogs, web sites), information (news web sites, personal web sites, blogs, encyclopedias).