2010 is grinding to the end...at dial up speed...

With a day and a half left to the year, I've been given a reminder of what "slow" means. With all the uploading and downloading that we've been doing this month, our quota has been maxed out and the internet is now crawling along at dial up speed.

Maybe someone up there might have read my previous two posts and is trying to help me slow time down a little. Everyone knows that the internet is one of the biggest time sinks around. Its taking me so long to get anywhere that I have no desire to spend anymore time on here than whats needed to get this post out.

All the time waiting for pages to load got me thinking of my very fist encounters with the internet.

The absolute first time was in the year I started university and was assigned my first email account. Do you all remember the black screens with green fonts? I did nothing with it until I made a friend on a flight and he gave me his email address. That was 19 years ago and we're still friends. (LB, if you're reading this, you need to email me more!)

After the email account was the discovery of IRC - the original IM vehicle. Still in green font on a black background. I think my nick was "Endlessly" and I used to chat with some stranger called "Forever".

So the emailing and IRC-ing only happened on campus until a friend gave me 14.4kbps external dial-up modem as a present. It wasn't because I was ungrateful or anything but I remember having a daily wish for a 28.8kbps modem :D

Once I got internet at home, my addiction really took off and must have made my brain less efficient because I can't remember precisely when I started using my multiple email and IM-ing accounts. Emails got out of control sometime in my second year of working when I was responding to what seemed like hundreds of useless emails a day. My weekends were spent clearing my Inbox because I had to see ZERO new emails there before I could ever shut down my laptop.

These days, I spend most of the weekday daylight hours offline and usually only come online for my internet fix after both boys are in bed. And thats how I waste my nights away :D

Except for tonight of course. Instead, I'll go spend some more sociable time with my family - watching TV.

Who isn't on Facebook?

Apart from my parents, it seems like everybody else I know has a Facebook account. Many of my friends are active Facebook-ers. (Is there a name for people who actively publish on Facebook?) I'm one of those late adopters and only signed up sometime last year, and, I'm definitely not active.

When I first joined, I was very enthusiastic about finding my friends. That died down after a day or two. Since then, I get another surge of enthusiasm every couple of months when I find one friend that opens the links to a bunch of other friends. We spend a few days exchanging messages. Then, it dies down again. Some weeks, I only login to the Facebook page if I get a notification of a new message there.

I never update the "Whats on your mind?" box and often wonder why some people feel the need to tell all their friends that they are about to go to sleep. I'm not saying that all the thoughts and updates are useless. There are plenty of tidbits out there that I liked reading. I guess everyone is free to write whatever they like in their own space. Although these days, with the new Facebook, there seems to be so much additional clutter that its hard to actually find a genuine "thought" from my friends.

I can see why Facebook would appeal to many but I don't quite understand the addiction that many of its 200million users feel. I'll use it as a tool to find my old friends but once I find them, I'll either meet up with them in the real world or just drop back to the occasional "Hi How are you?" email. Of course, I sticky beak into people's photos and get that warm, fuzzy feeling "seeing" them again but I am always reluctant (maybe lazy) to upload new photos of my family. Maybe its because I do enough of that on this blog! Then again, sharing one's life, in an unrestricted way, with friends and strangers alike is a whole other story that I don't think I want to get into.

Internet all the time!

In 1995, I fell in love with the internet. I still remember sometimes using a UNIX based computer at the university that had the black background with bright green text for old style IM-ing. At home, web surfing was slow and painful on a 14.4kbps Modem but I didn't notice it back then. When we were making the decision to move here to Palembang, the first thing I asked was "Do they have Broadband?". If they didn't, I wouldn't have moved.

I came across an interesting article yesterday about the Mobile Web. Its all about accessing the internet via mobile phones like the iPhone or just pure mobile internet devices like the Nokia N810.

Now I'm definitely not one of those people who likes to stay up to date with the latest mobile phone. In fact, I haven't purchased any with my own money. They have either been company phones or hand-me-downs from family members who have upgraded.

BUT, I would buy myself an iPhone or whatever equivalent there is when we move back to a place where I can sign up for mobile internet services. (No, I won't become like one of those constant SMS-ers....I'll have it under control). Just a few weeks ago I thought that the only thing Fitness First (with 10,000 TVs and personalised volume control) was lacking was internet access. There are so many instances in our lives where access to the internet would make the time much more interesting. The mobile web (or accessing the internet from mobile devices) is probably still not mature enough now but I'll be here for another year. Thats plenty of time in the Telecommunications industry! Right now, accessing the internet from a mobile phone is still not a mainstream activity yet.

Its interesting to think about the new businesses just waiting to reap the rewards when this does get mainstream. Companies will need Mobile Websites that are customized for use on a mobile phone's browser. I think its called a wap site. I'm a bit behind in my technology news these days and only recently read about SMS marketing but I imagine Mobile marketing will be the next up and coming thing too.

*sigh* The world is so exciting! So many cool gadgets and technologies out there. I can't wait to share it all with Aaron but not quite yet. His undivided attention on me is limited and I'm not going to share it with the internet or computer games any time soon. There are only so many years that I can be the sole influencer on my son's values and attitudes.