Phil Bradley's weblog

2 million children with no web access at home

We're used to thinking about the "Google generation" and the "Facebook generation" and there is a common misconception that children know all about using computers and using the Internet. Of course, this isn't true; I've spoken to many school librarians and children themselves to know that while they are comfortable with using the Internet their actual use still remains quite limited, and their understanding of what can be achieved, how to find the information you require, and assessing it is not as good as one may first expect. This is the case for those children who have access to the Internet; how much more difficult is it therefore for those children that do not. A recent article in the Guardian No web access at home for 2m poor pupils, warns charity point out the quite shocking figures which go to show that too many children still don't have access to the Internet; especially from the poorest homes in the country. In the richest 10% of homes, 98% had a home computer and 97% had internet access, but in the poorest 10% of homes only 38% had a home computer and 30% an internet connection. Even in the South East which is one of the richest areas in the country, if not the richest one in four homes cannot access the Internet.

This therefore puts not only children but their parents a grave disadvantage. We are all familiar with the situation in which a child requests help with algebra homework and the parents can do no more than do a good goldfish impression, so how much more difficult is it going to be for both child and parent when it comes to accessing the Internet when neither know what they are supposed to be doing. A school can only do so much and of course a child can only access Internet computers in school when the school is open. This is surely where the library comes into play. Children who do not only need access to the Internet they need access to reading materials and educational material. The library is in a perfect position to provide both, and indeed librarians who are confident and happy with using the Internet can also provide further assistance to children and their parents on getting the information that they require.

This can of course only be done in those situations where libraries do have access to the Internet, with a fast broadband connection and machines which are up to specification. We also need to remember that just because a child is sitting in front of an Internet computer it does not necessarily follow that they know what to do with it. These figures, grim as they are, surely provide further ammunition, if ammunition should be required, that libraries needs to be well staffed, and with good access to the Internet. Reduced funds and reduced access to the Internet certainly harm the poorest in our society but they are also helping to rob the future of its digitally literate population.

Jill

[Nothing of a professional nature here - feel free to skip. It's also very personal, but I don't have problems sharing it.]

Jill loved nature more than just about anything, though Spring was her favourite time, and she got so much pleasure out of seeing buds on the trees. However, even in the Winter she really enjoyed walking, and this is one of my favourite pictures; she'd been diagnosed by this time, but my love remained cheerful and upbeat, and I think this is seen here.

I remember December 30th 2009 with complete clarity - it's burned into my mind. It was bitterly cold and there was still a huge amount of snow. Jill's best friend Gaynor was fighting her way around the M25 to see her, and her sister Anne was doing her best to get down the M1. My brother also got across to us as well. I was rushing around getting liquid morphine for her to take, once she had company. Even during the day I don't think any of us quite realised what was happening. Luckily the medication ensured that she was pain free and capable of chatting. By the time her sister arrived she was dozing in and out, but she knew that we were there. I sat with her, holding her hands, and as the clock reached 7pm I realised what was happening. I'm told, and it's something which gives me comfort, that the ability to hear is one of the last senses to go, and that morphine helps here. So the last thing that Jill would have known was that she was surrounded by people who loved her, and she would have heard me saying over and over again that I loved her. I suppose that I've achieved many things in my life - none of them matter. The only thing that I think is important, and it's something that I cling to is that I loved and was loved completely and unconditionally. In that, I am very fortunate.

I'm fortunate to also have my family and good friends and colleagues, and this is as good a time as any to thank you all for helping me. Grief is a physical pain - it does actually hurt a lot, all the time. It doesn't go away, but you learn to adjust to it, and to accomodate it. I met someone at Online this year - I have to confess that I didn't remember her, but she said that she was very sorry to hear about Jill. She told me that she'd met her at Online a few years before, and chatted to her for about 20 minutes, and was struck by just how lovely and friendly Jill was - so much so that it had remained in her memory ever since. Grief is simply another aspect of love, and it's the coin with which we pay for all of the good times, and as such, I am happy and content.

SimilarPages

I'm not usually a great fan of browser add on tools, since you're limited not only by the browser itself, but also the machine that you're using. However, I do use a few of them, but they have to be really top notch. I was introduced to SimilarPages today, and as it required installing onto Firefox (and doesn't yet work on any other browser, though an IE version is in the works) I wasn't overly keen on it. However, I had time available, so thought I'd give it a go.

The concept of SimilarPages is pretty obvious - the clue is in the name. It's a tool that finds pages that are similar to the one that you're looking at. There are plenty of ways of getting data like this - Google has several, including the Related: function, and there's a very nice search engine that I've written about before called Web Insuggest - if you haven't tried it I would most certainly recommend it. The disadvantage of both approaches however is that it's necessary to go to the page/resource to find others. SimilarPages works rather differently, and this is where the download and integration into the browser is important. There are three ways that you can find similar pages:

Simply click on the icon and get a sidemenu display. You get a lot of alternatives, and I was very impressed with the choice for my CILIP example; you get given up to 300 options. I recognised a lot of the sites (and would have listed them myself as related sites if asked) but many I didn't, and a disadvantage is that I'd need to click on the link to go and have a look. A mouseover of more than the URL (which I can already see) would help. The menu bar stays open when you go from tab to tab, and it's lightening fast however - very impressive.

Alternatively you can right click on a page and get an inscreen menu option:

Finally you can run a search (unfortunately only in Google) and click on the icon to see related sites:

(The icon is the tri-colour pawnbroker symbol in case you're wondering.)

Overall, I like the service. It integrates very nicely into the browser, it appears to be very accurate and it's quick. I'd like a clearer indication of where the links go however, as discovery by click isn't ideal. I think it's worth trying, if you use Firefox and one computer.

Flickredit

Given the recent fiasco over Delicious I thought it might be a good idea to back up my collection of images from Flickr, in case the mad Yahoo monkeys decide to do something with that as well. I've only got a few images on Flickr - about 1,500 and I've got them on a hard drive as well as backups, but it's as well to have more backups rather than less. Consequently I decided to try out Flickredit from sunkencity.org and it's very impressive. It's really easy to use - you don't have to download anything, just click on the launch option, log yourself into your Flickr account and give it permission to do the same, and then you can choose what to backup and where. This includes all photographs, sets, favourites, contacts, recent and so on. You can view the images and you can also do some basic editing. It's very fast, simple and a delight to use.

If you've got photographs on Flickr I would absolutely suggest that you back 'em all up, and this tool seems to do the job well.

"Picture of a" search engine

I'm always on the lookout for good image search engines, particularly those which allow me to use images that are in the public domain or CC enabled. Unfortunately, while 'Picture of a' attempts the latter, it fails on the first. It doesn't have many photographs available - library? No. Librarian? No. Snowman? No. Even when I can find images, I've got no way of knowing where they come from, or who the creator was. Even if I can use images for nothing, it's nice to credit the photographer. There are 8 categories available, and it's just basic stuff. The thing that I found which was of most note was the 'related' option. As the graphic shows, related to puppy are pictures of roads and pies? We talking roadkill here or what? Strange...

Can't really recommend it, sorry!

Musikki

Musikki. This is a nice search engine for musicians and bands. Nicely laid out, with comprehensive biographies, concert lists, map, Twitter references, similar/related artists, discography, photographs. Slightly odd not to see any MySpace references though - has that fallen so far? No links to individual songs or lyrics either, and no ITunes links either, which I thought was odd. Also no links to official sites or fanclubs. So it's ok, but not by any stretch of the imagination comprehensive.

Tweetstream

Tweetstream. Back up your digital life. Now. Tweetstream synchs daily, making sure your tweets, contacts, lists, followers, followees and everything else are preserved forever. With unbelievably detailed metrics, trends and useable data, this is your Twitter life given back.Free, but commercial version is available.

Keewl Search Engine

"Only for Kewl People". I really hate that tag line. My immediate thought is 'Well, I'm not, so I'm not wanted here, bye bye.' It's a social search engine. It has a trending option, searches the web, photos, video, news, social web, blogs and shopping. I don't like the layout - it looks very cheap and unhelpful. 'About us' doesn't work. No help screens. I've no idea what resources it actually searches on, or how it gets its data.

On the plus side, it's fast and gives good current data, especially with news and social media, with information that's only a few seconds old. However, the basic approach doesn't attract me. But that might just be me. :)

British Government wants to block porn

I will do my best to ensure that my sarcasm doesn't entirely take over this post, but I can't promise it. The insanity, fear and hatred of the internet as shown by this shower of imbeciles continues unabated. Claire Perry, a Tory (it would have to be really wouldn't it) wants to block all UK access to pornography. Now, I'm not going to get into a debate about the merits or otherwise of pornography itself - it's a worthy debate to have, but I'm coming at this from a different tack. Perry is reported to have said to the Sunday Times “We are not coming at this from an anti-porn perspective. We just want to make sure our children aren’t stumbling across things we don’t want them to see.” So once again, we're back to the 'we must protect children' approach. Shouldn't the government rather be encouraging parents to take responsibility for their own offspring? She has also proposed that all internet service providers (ISPs) should block porn universally - and adults should ask for blocks to be lifted if they want to look at it.

Now, the first issue here is 'what exactly is pornography?' We don't have a definition in the UK other than 'material likely to deprave or corrupt' which puts the onus on the ISP to decide for themselves, moving the job off the Government and putting the responsibility into the hands of ISPs who no doubt will be dragged before a court if they get it wrong. If the Government can define pornography on the net, they'll end up defining it for print material as well, unless they take the view that it's what children can see. To be honest, I'd rather block access to violent and racist material first, or actually, I'd rather not block access to anything based on what may or may not affect a child. And what is the age of this child that we're supposedly protecting? How is that supposed to work? Can we see the evidence that children are viewing pornography all of the time, and the extent to which it has damaged them? Can we also take into account the fact that children take part in 'sexting' images of themselves around the net as well? Is the Government going to take into account people who move this material around the net via mobile phone?

Even if we get this sorted out, what next? Is Ms Perry suggesting that we have a banned list of sites? Because once we go down that route, Wikileaks is going to be right at the top of any list. The problem with a banned list is that material simply goes underground - any list is going to be impossible to maintain. Furthermore - and here's a worrying thought, suppose that we get some sicko who wants to take photographs of young teenagers I can just hear the line 'Look, I can access the material online that I've taken previously - this must be ok, because it's not been banned by the Government'. This does not help children, it doesn't protect children, it is actively going to be putting children in harms way.

So, if a list isn't going to work, are we to expect that the ISPs are going to have to institute some 'skin processing software' which is able to intercept images on their way to a computer, work out a percentage of skin on show, and block it? What about perfectly innocent and legal pictures of people on beaches? Or even on nudist beaches? Naked does not equal pornographic. Are we going to see the ridiculous Facebook breastfeeding saga writ large across the UK? What about videos that show women how to breast feed? If we can't stop those, does that mean that the whole of YouTube is going to be banned, or access to Flickr?

Next, is the government seriously expecting people to add their names to a list of people who want to view pornography? Given the lack of any kind of coherent structure to looking after our personal data can we expect that to be safe? The confusion continues - if the government is saying that viewing pornograpy IS legal, but you have to register for it, the government is tacitly agreeing to the existence and free flow of material. Are we going to have a Minister for Pornography to decide what can be viewed and what's still regarded as hard core and not allowed? Ignoring all of that, once the populace has to register in order to take part in a legal activity - where will that end? Are the government then going to introduce a bill to say that all smokers need to register in order to buy cigarettes - because that would help 'protect the children' as well, wouldn't it.

Who is going to pay for this? If it's the ISP, they are going to pass the cost onto the consumer, which means that your bills are going to go up. Do you really want to be charged extra to allow someone else to watch pornography, because that's what it's essentially going to mean.

I can see so many ways to get around this it's ridiculous. The use of proxy servers will go up, someone will create software that turns skin green in the transition from server via ISP to monitor where it magically goes back to skin colour again. And of course, we mustn't forget the fact, as we're constantly being told - children are very good at using the internet, and the first people who can work out how to get around the ban are going to be... children. Not because they particularly want to look at porn, but because getting around any kind of block is going to be a badge of honour 'I'm clever enough to have worked out software and defeated the Government' is going to be a cool thing to say. Besides, if it's banned, children will want to view it. Does banning smoking stop children smoking? Of course it doesn't. Does banning under age sex mean that young teenagers are not going to get pregnant? Of course it doesn't.

The Government has absolutely NO clue when it comes to the next. Absolutely none. And I'd suggest that you email Ms Perry and tell her so, though when I tried to visit her site this morning this is what I was shown:

Yes folks, she's so clueless, so inept and so incapable, she can't even keep her own website up and running.

28 delicious alternatives to Delicious

Well, we've all seen the news that the single most insane idea of the year award can go to Yahoo who are apparently going to be closing Delicious. Quite why they're not prepared to ask people to pay for access, or even to offer it to someone like the Library of Congress to take over defeats me, but clearly straightforward thinking isn't their forte else they wouldn't be taking this stupid step in the first place. So, if you want to choose a different bookmarking resource, what options are available to you? The good news is that there's quite a lot.

A1 Webmarks. I don't personally like the look and feel of this service, but that might just be me.

Bibsonomy does what you'd expect from a social bookmarking service. It has an RSS option, tagging, share bookmarks and see what others have saved.

Blinklist is nice looking, but you can't import stuff, so is of limited value to refugees.

Bookmarks2 is a 'simple and not social bookmarking service' according to the site. Save a link with a mouse click, access from any computer, register for free, tag bookmarks, but it doesn't look like you can share what you've found.

Brainify is academic social bookmarking and networking for college and university students. The emphasis is on academia, so is probably of little use for many of us, but if you're in that area, take a quick look.

Buddymarks stores your bookmarks online, imports current bookmarks, easily add new ones, share them, use tags and categories.

Connotea has been around for a very long time now and is designed for the academic community. I'd be inclined to use this over Brainify if I was an academic.

Diigo If you're going to be going anywhere, it's probably here. It's got a good reputation, took over FURL, allows you to save tweeted links, has a groups feature, works with smartphones, lets you highlight parts of pages, sends you emails to see what your groups are up to. It's the obvious post Delicious choice for most.

Evernote is a general cut, paste and save tool, and you may already use it. If you do, consider it as an option to Delicious

Faves seems reasonably complete. Save your bookmarks with the toolbar, follow groups of people and topics, let others follow you.

Favilous has reasonable functionality - you can choose your own categories, see what pages are being bookmarked, use a bookmarklet, see who has bookmarked pages and when, see how popular a bookmark is, follow specific people, tweets the link to your twitter account, and creating pending bookmarks. It's also free. If you're looking for a slightly off the wall alternative to Delicious this would be a good bet.

Google Bookmarks. If you've got a Google account you've probably used this without realising it. Just click on the link and see. But - do you want to give Google even more power over your life than it already has?

Historio.us is free for 300 sites and about $20 per year after that. That will probably turn a lot of people off, but it's got some good functionality, so take a quick look before instantly turning it down.

Lincut is very basic, supports most browsers except IE (doh!), has a bookmarklet, but no RSS feeds or easy sharing option. I'm not encouraged by the poorly worded content and I wouldn't personally consider using it.

Linkagogo is another social bookmarking product. It is quite feature rich - syncs with the browser, has a turbo mode, reminds you of bookmarks it's time to visit again, lets you create folders, import/export, verify if bookmarks are still valid, de-dupes and so on. It's a really nice looking tool.

Mr Wong has over 7 million monthly users. Make bookmarks publically available or keep them private. Search for subjects on tags. It's designed as a social bookmarking system and it's free.

Mybookmarks is a resource that I've used myself. Import bookmarks, export them, make them public, but poor on help and FAQ material. It has however been around for a long time.

Netvibes isn't a bookmarking resource, but you can make it into one. It has a very useful bookmark option that allows you to import bookmarks, and you can tag them and make them quickly available. If you're using the public pages you can also let other people see them. It's not one click addition though, and does need a bit of cut and paste. However, if you're into home/start pages, it might be worth while considering moving everything across to Netvibes.

Oneview calls itself a social bookmarking resource but is currently 'unavailable for a few minutes', and this is so not the time to be unavailable we can give this one a miss as well.

Online Favourites is a basic service which allows you to store your bookmarks online and access from anywhere. If you're not after much, this may well be all that you need.

Pinboard is a paid option, costing more depending how many users it has. Currently it costs just over $8 but this will increase I'm sure. There is a good 'buzz' about it so it's worth poking around in.

Skloog is primarily a basic home/start page option, but you can add bookmarks to different sites and create different tabs. It's not close to a direct replacement to Delicious, but if you've only got a few bookmarks (limit is 2,000), and you're not bothered about sharing them, this would work.

Startaid does what you expect by now. Share favourites with friends, post comments about sites.

Squidoo allows you to create pages of content, with appropriate subsections and using their bookmarklet tool add content in as you need to. I like this and use it myself. You can see any example with my Twitter for librarians page. You can share content and have an RSS feed set up. It's more of a published page to which you add your own content, but it's an interesting alternative.

Wozaik is 'the new generation of bookmarks' and allows you to cut portions of websites to visualise them all in the same space. It does have a bookmarklet that you can use, but I can't see any way of sharing bookmarks or creating RSS feeds.

XMarks used to be called Foxmarks and until recently was slated for closure, but has been saved. You load it into your browser, and it cross syncs for you. I find it great for keeping bookmarks synced across machines, browsers and laptops. It's not a Delicious tool though as it's not cloud based.

Zootool is getting good coverage but they've been badly hit by the Delicious news and are currently offline, which is very unfortunate for them. I've not played around with it myself, so can't give much of an opinion. The emphasis however is apparently on saving visual content.

If you want more options, try the social bookmark option at Delicious to see what other people have saved. Ironic and rather sad, but useful. For even more, there's a listing of 115 social news and bookmark sites that have been reviewed at Social Media Trader, but this is a list that's 3 years old, so you'll find a few of them don't work any more.

How do you save your existing Delicious bookmarks? It's actually very easy, but rather than explain it myself, Lifehacker has done an excellent job, so I'll point you to 'How to export your bookmarks and import them into your favourite browser'.

So, in summary, where do you go from here? It's an idea to back up what you've got. It's also worth crossing your fingers and hoping that someone takes the service over, but it's got to be tempting for someone to do this. However, look at what else you're using. If you use Netvibes, Evernote, or Diigo, just transfer everything across. If you're keen on the social aspect, choose one of those tools. If you're not bothered, any of the above will probably do it for you - just find one that you like. If pushed to point you in one direction though, it would be Diigo.

Edited to add: Well, it would appear now that Delicious isn't part of Yahoo's burnt earth plans and they're looking to offload it somewhere. They're currently whining on about how the press caused problems when all of the problems were of their own making. Danny Sullivan has written a great piece that totally destroys the Yahoo Monkeys in charge. It's worth reading if for no other reason than to show that even companies you might expect to work well with social media are painfully clueless and inept.