What I would describe as curious and worrisome news out of the UK is circulating the blogosphere these days. That is because the UK government is considering a new internet model where websites would be rated (similar to how movies are already), and those which contain offensive or otherwise inappropriate material would not be shown. In other-words: censorship. I firmly believe that if no laws are being broken, that the internet should remain a free place for information to be shared.

Now that’s not to say the UK government has bad intentions, in fact, quite the opposite. They are clearly trying to protect minors from unwelcome and non-age appropriate material. However, in my opinion, the internet is not for kids, but rather adults. It should be up to the parents of web-using minors to police what their children do online, and install the necessary safeguards in order to protect them from dangerous websites. Or, you know, they could tell their children to go outside and play.

As for teenagers, somehow I think there are a lot more dangerous places for them to be hanging out than the internet. Rather than censoring everyone, why don’t we go back to teaching our kids common sense, and responsibility?

The web isn’t just changing how we live but also alters the way our brains work.

Gary Small, a neuroscientist from UCLA has discovered, by conducting research studies, that web search and text messaging has caused the brain to be more capable for filtering information and making quick decisions.

Gary Small stated that people of the next generation will ideally have a combination of technological and social skills.

The study looked at 24 adults using the Internet. They found that expert Internet users displayed twice the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as compared to Internet novices.

On the downside, Small believes that since Internet users constantly scan for new information, this can create and even damage neural pathways. While technology has been shown to accelerate learning and boost creativity it might also have the disadvantage of creating web addiction to virtual friends and there is some indication of computer use and increase in diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder. Any conclusive results are still pending.

As a webmaster, there are few things more frustrating than logging on to do some work, only to notice that one of my sites is down. Or, being involved in another project, only to be interrupted by customer emails telling me that they’re unable to access a website. Down time can mean a loss of readership, customers, and confidence in a business’ viability. It’s the online equivalent of a “closed” sign.

A lot of webmasters may not even be aware of how much downtime their website experiences, having a false sense of security by host company’s promises of up-time. We simply can’t all be at our computers twenty four seven (nor would we want to be), or afford to hire a team of people in order to enjoy around the clock coverage.

In that regard, I would recommend signing up for a free account with Internet Uptime Monitoring Server Software, as they will actively monitor your website at regular intervals and provide notification if the website is unavailable. The service is able to notify the user via text message, to ensure you’re alerted no matter where you are.

Besides the obvious advantage of knowing when your website is down, a benefit to using this software, is that you can get a better idea of how reliable your web host is, and if necessary, make the switch to a hosting company that will better deliver on their promises. Personally, I have several websites, both blogs and static sites, and need to know if they are off-line, so I use the service as a necessity.

The latest news from United Kingdom’s major retail bankers says that if your online bank account has been compromised and you didn’t use any Internet computer security software such as antivirus and antispyware (e.g. Norton 360), you solely bear the responsibility for the loss, and they won’t compensate you a dime. A clause has been added to the newly updated Banking Code to make this very clear.

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With the news of Firefox 3 Beta 1 being released, I just couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see what was in store for the Orange Carnivore from Mountain View. A short 6.4MB download and I was installing; everything went without a hitch. Here’s the good and the bad of it all.

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div>*Update* Thanks for the emails and comments that answer some of the questions posed below. Each of the questions has been updated with the latest answer (even if not all are satisfying). The product page for the Amazon Kindle provides some good information as well. Also, check out Boing Boing’s excellent review plus read here for more on the polarized responses this new technology is creating.

So the big technology news for today comes from Amazon. The company is trying to reinvent one of the forms of media which hasn’t taken off digitally: the book. Here’s what we know:

The eBook reader is called the Amazon Kindle and is priced at $399. It weighs 10.3 ounces and has a keyboard. It can hold 200 books via built-in memory and has a long battery life of approximately 30 hours (with 2 hours to recharge)

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div>I came across a site today, one that illustrates an interesting phenomenon of the Internet.

TriggerStreet bills itself as “the place to go if you wanted to find exposure and feedback for your Screenplays and Short Films online.” They also do short stories, and more recently, books. The idea is that you can upload your work and other people can critique it. And if enough people like it, maybe that will catch the eye of a filmmaker or a publisher.

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div>I must say, I love this day and age where information flows freely. I remember back (what, ten years ago?) when I took magazine and/or newspaper subscriptions seriously. There were (are) so many, and they all cost money. Which ones should I subscribe to? Which are worth the time of sifting through pages to find what I really want?

But now, finding information to stay up-to-date on your news or hobbies? Who spends time actually searching for information they used to get in a magazine or newspaper? I know I don’t. It’s almost in front of me before I’m ready for it; I’m still catching up with what’s considered olds news because it’s been a couple days. Sites like Techmeme or Google News aggregate it for me. Combine that with my favorite RSS feeds via Google Reader (all of which are free daily updates of what I used to pay for via magazines or newspapers) and I have some good, quality information that interests me.

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Check out more scenarios of how this technology works. Feel free to contact the team behind it if you have more questions.

It’s easy to spot revolutions or major events in the past. The shrinking of computer parts in the 70s, the PC revolution of the 80s that led to the Internet explosion of the 90s, etc. At the beginning of the new millennium, we had at our fingertips millions of pages of information. It wasn’t a question of ‘is it out there somewhere’, it was a question of ‘it’s out there, how do I find it?’

Enter Google. Google wasn’t the first search engine, nor was it the last, but it quickly became THE search engine because they did something different. Google created a search engine that took all of that information and made it useful and relevant. They did it not by teaching the machine to do it, but instead by teaching the machine to observe what we humans were linking to. By tapping into the social side of information, Google quickly became the best search engine for finding the information in the sea of content.

So the latest ‘big thing’ has been the socializing of the Internet. We now find sites like Digg, reddit, Del.icio.us, etc. that help us wade through all the rough to find the diamond. The buzz word surrounding all of this has been ‘Web 2.0′. This socializing has gone a long way to making sense of it all, but is there more? What is the next big thing?

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