Bandwidth (data speed and capacity) is not quite the gold dust of the internet era, but when a webpage takes five minutes to unfold in front of you, it can seem as scarce. So brush up on your electronic geology and discover how to get the best from your connection.
Go to www.InternetTrafficReport. com for a real-time state-of-the-net report, showing exactly how fast and efficiently the net as a whole is running. It carries an index between 0 and 100, indicating the global status of the net. It can help you in determining whether the problems you’re experiencing in reaching particular websites are your problems only, or everyone’s problems.
A similar report can be found at www.InternetWeather.com, with the addition of animated interpretations of internet traffic data.
If you’re having problems accessing a particular website, try opening your MS-DOS window and typing in tracert “www.whateverthesiteis.com”. You’ll get a stream of numbers and net addresses, which you can interpret to find out what’s happening to your net requests. Or download NeoTrace, from www.neoworx.com/ neotrace, which provides a more user-friendly way of doing the same job. Mac users can try IPNetMonitor or WhatRoute, from mac.org/internet/ monitor. At computingcentral.msn.com/ topics/bandwidth, you can find a bandwidth speed test, which will assess the real speed at which information is passing out of your machine into the great big black net beyond.
The annual webby awards presentation in San Francisco last week was over in two hours thanks to the strict limit on speeches – five words or less. There were two sets of winners: sites nominated by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, and sites picked by 134 000 webizens. The big winners included Napster, the MP3 music site; Google, the best search engine; and Slashdot, the Linux community site. Six of the best webby winners:
News: www.poynter.org/medianews
Personal: www.cockybastard.com
Print and Zines: www.nerve.com
Radio: www.lostandfoundsound.com
Science: www.culture.fr/culture/ arcnat/lascaux/fr
Weird: www.stileproject.com
Warner Bros new Battlefield Earth is generating huge interest because of the Scientology connection: it stars Scientologist John Travolta and is based on a book by the cult’s founder, science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard. The official website seems no better than the film, so try Factnet, which is covering allegations that the movie includes subliminal messages promoting Scientology.
ENDS