The world is constantly on the move, changing, competing, melting, warming, shrinking, shifting and connected. This is an interesting time to be alive when the history of our planet and its future seem to be hinged on some of the choices we make on a daily basis. Questions such as global warming, disarmament war and poverty that stare down the face of humanity are as complex, interconnected and interdependent as the various threads of humanity scattered across the world. There is little doubt about the ability of human intelligence and ingenuity, but in our will and capacity to collaborate.
Collaboration is an equally daunting challenge even when it comes to much more trivial groups of people who are trying to tackle much more trivial issues. Governments, scientists, the military, business, artists, athletes and even students are called upon to collaborate with each other regularly.
Collaboration is about bringing together the collective resources of a group for a common purpose, to achieve something more than the sum total of what each individual may have achieved alone.
The Internet is perhaps the greatest monument in human history, not simply because the very essences of human creation that it embodies.
It is the single most significant achievement of humanity that is the resulted of collaboration of people from all nations that has the potential to benefit each one equally.
Moreover, it enables people to collaborate, regardless of whom, what or where they are.
Mass media was appealing in its ability to bring the world to an individual.
The new communication revolution is fuelled not merely because it could take individuals out to the world but rather because it is bringing individuals together from across the world.
Despite its potential being open to constructive as well as destructive use, it may be humanity's biggest reason for hope yet.
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Techy news
- Record companies are scrambling to find new ways to distribute music in the face of declining music sales. The latest is slotMusic, a microSD card containing music in MP3 format without DRM (digital rights management), playable on pocket devices such as mobile phones. EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music have joined forces with memory card maker SanDisk, which is developing the technology behind slotMusic. The cards will hold 1G byte of data and will ship with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) adapter so that users can add their own content using a PC.
- Meanwhile I am scrambling to find a new communication tool after reading a report published this week by some researchers in Ohio USA, that the radio-frequency energy released by cellphones decreases sperm quality in men. It warned against keeping cellphones in a man's pocket or on his belt saying it may affect sperm quality if they're turned on – and I am not sure whether they were referring to men or cellphones!
- Microsoft had bigger problems last week when it was uncovered that some of the images from their recent ad campaign boasting how great PCs are and blasting MACs to never-after have in fact been edited on MACs! Computerworld said that the originating software stamps on four images posted on a Microsoft Web site are shown as "Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh" in their file properties. Meanwhile, the war up north continues – but it had nothing to do with any of this.
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Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an open, XML-based protocol for server-to-server near-real-time extensible instant messaging and presence. XMPP also is known as the Jabber protocol because Jabber is based on XMPP. Jabber is not, however, the only instant messaging application that relies on XMPP which is a rival protocol to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions(SIMPLE). SIMPLE is an application of the SIP protocol for server-to-server and client-to-server interoperability in instant messaging. |
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