They likened the debate around the Australian National Broadband Network to the installation of electric power lines. It was quite interesting. Their comment was that when electric power lines were being installed, no-one was asked how much electricity they wanted to use. The commentator said something to the effect, “They didn’t say ‘so you only want one light globe, so we hook you up to just that amount of power. You have a washing machine AND a light globe so you get just that amount of power. No. What they did was give everyone the same ability and then charge them for what they wanted to use. If they changed their mind later, they just USED more.’”

This makes perfect sense and is now my standard line position in the debate.

If we install NOW the capacity we may wish to use in the future, then we don’t have to do it all over again. Fibre has greater capacity than copper telephone wires. More so, wireless doesn’t work everyone and is far more expensive and less secure.

Those people (and I have some in my family) who say they don’t want to ‘do that much’ also didn’t want to do as much as they do now when they first started.

Some people may see the Internet as a means by which to ‘send e-mail’. So many other see the potential for greater capacity and greater purpose.

If we aim for the best we can buy, optical fiber is the way to go. The ability to increase the load is far greater and it will not be superceded for a very long time.

$40 billion – quite likely true. However, the greater number of users will be paying more and this will eventually reduce the overall cost. Never mind the increased range of options available for the public and business.

End of soapboxing

Though I have only tried it using Firefox, it claims to be able to synchronise your bookmarks between various browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer.

Once you install the plug-in, you create an account. You then sync your bookmarks with the server and the install the plug-in in your other browsers, this includes on other machines.

After doing that you log in to your account directly from the application within your browser and ‘hey presto’ all you bookmarks (including the ones in your toolbar) are synched.

Quite neat really and very easy.

There’s a company called Yuuguu (seriously awful name) which provides a cross-platform remote desktop and presentation applications (hmmm, I think this should be the post title )

Though I have no idea if it will work with Android, it is promoted as working with Linux, Mac and Windows. I’ve tried it with Linux and Windows machines and it works well.  I’m curious about how it performs with the Mac OS and so am interested in your feedback.

Though it is not open source, it is free (in the money sense) for a limited number of users. However, that’s fine if you’re providing remote support for a limited number of people

There are some limitations, the most important of which is that if the person you are helping has a slow ‘up’ speed, then you will have a slow ‘down’ speed and thus your access to their desktop will be slow.

I’ve not tried this with anyone using dial-up, but I think we all know how well that would work.

I’ve yet to try it with anyone with a 128k up limit but will let you know when I do.

So, again, thanks Irma for the referral in the first instance.

If you have relatives or friends who are frequently asking for assistance but they live a distance away, you can either:

1. Refer them to US!

or

2. Install Yuuguu, get them to install Yuuguu and you can help them without leaving your home

The site is provided by Zamzar.

For example, you can convert an image or text file to PDF.

Neat, no?

Did  you know that with OpenOffice you can convert your text documents, spreadsheets etc to PDF straight out of OpenOffice itself? OpenOffice has been able to do this for a few years.

PDFs are better documents to send to people as opposed to a text document:

• They keep the format you give them – as opposed to document written in a text editor which may not reproduce (display on the page) exactly how you wish if the other person does not use the version or type of text editor that you used to create it.
• The document can’t be inadvertently changed
• They can be read by a variety of different readers (free or non-free)
• PDF is an international standard and widely used. Even if Adobe were to crash and burn, you will still be able to legally access your own documents. There is no fear of someone buying the ‘rights’ to PDF and charging everyone to use PDF reading software.

So, check out the link and try out some of your own documents.

In summary, many of the issues being argued today, such as Internet security, inappropriate social behaviour (getting married ‘over’ the Internet, having ‘virtual’ relationships), fraud and  deceit, are pretty much the same form of complaints which were raised against and about the telegraph.

As the book outlines the scandals and outrages attributed to and blamed on the introduction of the telegraph system, one can easily and clearly see correlations with the current Über-telegraph we know as Internet.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Internet and who really wants to understand its place within a socio-historical context to buy or borrow this book.

Introduction

The 2010 Education Exposition was held at Rosehill racecourse between 26 and 27 June 2010.

Linux Australia and OLPC Australia funded a booth at the expo which was staffed by volunteers from Sydney Linux Users Group and OLPC Australia.

Volunteers

The following persons were volunteers on the day:

SLUG
Mel Thomas
Robert Smit
Brett Coady
John Jeremy
Patrick Elliott-Brennan (author of report)

OLPC
Sridhar Dhanapalan

On the first day we had a three to four volunteers each hour. On the second day we had four volunteers during the whole day.

I would like thank everyone who volunteered over the two days. They worked together extremely well and the expo stand would not have been the success it was without their participation.

Equipment on Display

Day one
One desktop (X86 3Ghz P4, 2G RAM), one laptop and five OLPC XOs

Day two
Two desktops (X86 3Ghz P4, 2G RAM), one laptop, one netbook and five OLPC XOs.

The none-XOs ran a mixture of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Fedora.

Additionally two of the volunteers had Android powered mobile phones and these were also shown to people attending our booth..

Handouts Available

500 OpenEducation disks

500 flyers

Handouts Distributed

Approximately 300 flyers and disks were handed out.

Summary of Activities

During the two days we:

●    Explained the history and philosophy of FOSS (such as providing quality software which is open source, providing equity of access to software)

●    Discussed the advantages of FOSS (such as the ability to upgrade free of financial impost)

●    Demonstrated FOSS applications

●    Provided attendees with hands-on access to applications

●    Explained which applications were similar to ones the may already be using which were not FOSS

●    Gave live CD demonstrations and installation demonstrations

●    Gave out flyers and OpenEducation disks

●    Explained which companies and organisations around the world used FOSS

Promoting the Booth

Volunteers walked around the expo, handing out flyers and disks, providing information to people about the booth and directions to where it was located. By not putting the location of the booth on the flyer we had to explain where we were located. However, this also meant that the unused flyers can be recycled for future events.

As people often feel uncomfortable approaching a booth when there are no other persons showing an interest, it was important to help people overcome this inhibition.

Volunteers were asked to break into pairs. One was to stand facing the booth, slightly distant and the other to face them at an angle, standing closer to the booth. This would give the impression one person was working at the booth and the other was engaging in a discussion about its product. This proved highly effective.

Another tactic was to engage people directly as they were walking past. This was done by approaching them in a friendly manner and asking that they have a look at the booth.

Simple discussion points focused on explaining that the booth related to:

• education software for children and adults,
• home software for children and adults.
• office software for adults

We also explained that the software was free. Further that we didn’t expect them to just believe us, but that if they came over to the booth we could prove it was true.

Saying that we could see them looking at the booth and wondering what it was about and then taking one of the netbooks or OLPC XOs over to them. This was a very good tactic as it allowed people to be engaged without them having to come over to the booth. Each person approached in this manner then came over to the booth to have a look and engage in conversation.

On the desktops we ran videos of how some programs work, such as Blender (a video from Youtube of how to create 3D text) and applications such as Celestia (with the earth or Saturn spinning). In both instances, the eye-candy drew people to the booth who were curious as to what was being shown. Again, this appeared to be very successful.

Installed on the desktop machines were applications such as:

●    Tuxpaint
●    Gcompris
●    Gimp
●    Blender
●    Celestia
●    Various typing games
●    Tuxmath
●    Tuxtype

as well as OpenOffice, Scribus and Inkscape.

As my daughter (aged nine) had recently used Scribus to create a three-fold flyer for school project (for which she got an A+) we used the flyer to show expo attendees what was achievable in desktop publishing for children. Attendees were also able to compare the output from Scribus (very favourably) with flyers being handed advertising other expo booths. The utility of Scribus when then further described by explaining that the flyers for our booth were created using Scribus, Gimp and Inkscape. These drew favourable comments.

In both instances attendees could see the applications in action on the desktop and what the printed version would look like.

The advantage of having the desktop machines was that they had similar specifications (if not more powerful) that the computers used by many of the people who came to the booth. The speed and responsiveness allowed people to access and view the software without hardware limitations coming into play.

During the day we also gave LiveCD demonstrations and installation demonstrations. These were well received.

Summary of Recommendations

1.    At least four volunteers.

2.    Plan for record keeping and information gather. Simple statistics would be good (sheet for each volunteer or something similar).

3.    A questionnaire for those attending the booth could have been useful. This would take some planning to ensure it was purposeful and capable of providing useful information.

4.    More netbooks, laptops.

5.    At least two desktops, preferablly with large screens

6.    Large generic banners – which can be used for various exhibitions, expos etc.

7.    Install Wine and virtual machines on the computers on display. This would allow people to see how that ‘one application I really need’ may well also be accessible on a Linux desktop.

Prepared by
Patrick Elliott-Brennan
28 July 2010