Software and Technology
Information
Dictionaries
of Computing Terms
The Free Dictionary by Farlex
Computing dictionary of over 28,000 computer-related terms. It has good links to Google, as well as phonetic matches.
http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com
Microsoft's Global Development and Computing Glossary
Microsoft Corporation's computing dictionary.
www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/glossary.mspx
Security
& Privacy
Australian
Internet Safety Advisory Body (NetAlert)
Practical advice on Internet safety, parental control and Internet filters
for the protection of children, students and families. (An Australian
Federal Government site).
www.netalert.net.au
Australian
High Tech Crime Centre
Australia's national centre to coordinate the efforts of Australian law
enforcement in combating serious crime involving complex technology. Its
"Advisory" section helps individuals and organisations better
prepare and respond to high tech crime incidents.
www.ahtcc.gov.au/advisors.htm
Microsoft's
Security Sites and Advice
Most of us use firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware software to help
protect computer systems, but a simple, preventative measure is to remove
the vulnerabilities which many attackers exploit. For most systems, this
can be done by keeping Microsoft software up to date:
www.microsoft.com/security
Visit Microsoft's security page regularly to get free security-related
software updates to Windows and Microsoft Office products, or add yourself
to their "security notifications" email alerts: www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/alerts.mspx
Microsoft
also has a security guidance centre which offers detailed advice aimed
at developers and IT professionals:
www.microsoft.com/security/guidance/default.mspx
Microsoft
Windows Anti-spyware ("Defender")
www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware
Microsoft
Windows XP "One Care" Beta
Antivirus, Firewall, Backup, and tune-up tools.
http://beta.windowsonecare.com
DoubleClick and DART
Somewhat "Web 1.0", but some
of the most popular services used by online advertisers to manage, deliver,
analyse and optimise campaigns are provided by DoubleClick,
including it's DART range of web advertising and email services.
DoubleClick was taken-over by Google in March 2008.
Amongst
other things, DoubleClick uses cookies keep track of some of your online
activity ("online profiling") and interacts with online avertising
servers to select what seem to be the most relevant adverts to your interests
("online preference marketing").
Most
commentators regard DoubleClick's services as reputable, but for individuals
wishing to opt out of DoubleClick providing any information about your
activity or preferences to its customers (advertisers), DoubleClick offers
an opt-out capability at:
www.doubleclick.com/us/about_doubleclick/privacy/ad-cookie/
The
NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) is a cooperative group of online
network advertisers. It offers consumers the ability to register themselves
as opting out of online profiling / Online Preference Marketing (OPM)
by its members. Details at:
www.networkadvertising.org/
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Personal
and Group Productivity Software
Google Calendar
Run your calendar online, and share with friends and colleagues, or run a calendar for a group for everyone to share and see. Can synchronise with Outlook and other desktop calendar applications.
www.google.com/calendar
Google Pack
Download a collection of free software for your PC, including Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk (IM application), Picasa (photo organiser), an anti-spyware utilitity, and Norton Antivirus (including a 6 month subcription to antivirus updates).
http://pack.google.com
Microsoft
Office
Lots of resources, downloads, tutorials, demonstrations and information
can be obtained at Microsoft's Office website. See also how Microsoft
Office is being expanded to help people collaborate and to get better
access to other applications and information:
http://office.microsoft.com
Microsoft
Office - Free tutorials and "how to" instruction
Microsoft Office has a huge amount of functionality and some of its products
can be a bit overwhelming to the occasional user. This site is one of
Microsoft's best kept secrets. It has a wide range of very helpful guides.
Includes free play on-demand multimedia courses and webcasts.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/training/default.aspx
StarOffice Office Suite
Compatible with Microsoft Office files. From Sun MicroSystems. Runs on
Windows, Linux and Sun's Solaris operating system. Package includes wordprocessor,
spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database software as well as graphics,
photo editing and Web publishing components. Usual price is about US$70,
but is sometimes discounted.
wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice
Review
of alternatives to Microsoft Office in the Financial
Times
OpenOffice
This free office application suite is based on the same source
code as StarOffice. Sun released the code into the public domain four
years ago and it is now maintained as an open source community project.
Package includes Writer, a document creation program; Calc, a powerful
spreadsheet; Impress, a multimedia presentation tool; and Draw.
www.openoffice.org
Thunderbird - Open Source email client
Fully-featured email application, with security, anti-spam, anti-phishing, RSS, filtering, and as you type spell checking.
www.mozilla.com/thunderbird
Search
Tools
Google
Desktop
Google's free software which enable you to google your own hard drive
and search the contents of many types of files. NB there are security
concerns if the PC which you install this on is used by more than one
person. As a minimum, deselect the option to record "https"
pages (the secure sites you visit for things like banking).
Can tell Google Desktop not to include specific websites or local folders
in its searches (but unsure if this excludes them from being indexed and
monitored, versus included in search results). Originally mainly searched / indexed your Microsoft
documents, but now includes Acrobat documents (pdfs), ZIP files, MP3 and most types of email and IM files.
http://desktop.google.com/
Picasa
- Software for organising the image and photo files on your computer.
Owned by Google. Free download available. NB there are security concerns
if the PC on which you install Picasa is used by more than one person.
www.picasa.com
Review
of alternatives to Google for Desktop Search (Graeme
Philipson in Sydney Morning Herald)
Microsoft's
Web and Desktop Search Tools
Microsoft has released a beta version of its response to Google's online
and desktop search engines: MSN Search. It offers users more choices on
how results are sorted and presented, has "safe search" options
for parents wishing to restrict searching on potentially offensive subjects,
and other new functionality. The Search functions are packaged into (ie
part of) the MSN Toolbar Suite beta:
http://beta.search.msn.com (MSN Tool Suite home page)
http://privacy.msn.com/#MSNTOOL
(Microsoft's privacy policy regarding this tool. Note the use of cookies
to pass search details back to MSN. The home page suggests the search
function will work if cookies are disabled).
Windows Live
Customisable search-oriented portal, introduced during early 2006 by Microsoft (in Beta).
www.live.com
Copernica
Desktop Search
Free software which allows you to run searches on the contents of your
PC's hard drive.
http://copernic.com
Chinese
Search Engine
Baido is the leading Chinese language search engine, primarily serving
internet users in the People's Republic of China.
www.baidu.com
Mooter
Search engine which presents results as clusters, using basic visualisation techniques.
www.mooter.com
Accoona
Search engine with onscreen filters in results pages. Seems to use some type of clustering technology to categorise results and construct filters unique to each search.
www.accoona.com
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Browsers
Comments
on alternatives to Microsoft Explorer (Graeme Philipson in Sydney Morning
Herald)
www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/16/1092508351226.html
Alternatives
for Apple users
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/
0,7204,10518442%5E15309%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
Download
Sites:
Opera
For Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, and SmartPhone/PDA
http://www.opera.com/
Mozilla
/ Firefox
For Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Netscape
For Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp
http://www.netscape.com/
Safari
Apple's browser for Mac OS X and (since mid-2007) for Windows.
www.apple.com/safari
OmniWeb
Browser for Mac OS X only (arguably even better than Safari!)
www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/
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Podcasting
and RSS Feeds
RSS
(really simple syndication) is a way of "feeding" files to your
computer off the internet. RSS usually involves headlines and text, but
in 2005 this was extended to movement of MP3 audio files which will run
on Apple's iPod devices, on MP3 players, and on some mobile phones (video
files movement is a future development). Reflecting the popularity of
the Apple iPod, such audio feeds are commonly referred to as "podcasts".
Podcasts
are audio broadcasts, accessible over the internet. They are usually stored
recordings, rather than live, though a growing number of radio stations
(particularly public service and news stations) are making their RSS feeds
available shortly after the actual broadcast. (Live broadcast is "streamed"
audio - another technology).
Programs
which allow you to receive podcasts are media aggregators - software which
allows you to download many different audio files from many different
sources onto your desktop. You either synchronize (usually if you are
not always connected to the internet), or if you are "always on"
through broadband connections the feeds are usually automatic and continuous.
Most programs also include scheduling options.
Often
these programs are stand-alone, or add-ons (e.g. to Palm hand-helds),
but RSS capability is being built in to common desktop software. For example,
Apple's iTunes
desktop software (version 4.9 onwards) supports podcasts.
RSS
is an implementation of the XML standard for information-exchange and
interworking. The 
and  buttons
on websites both indicate that an RSS feed is available (usually a text
feed - audio Podcasts are usually separately identified).
"Traditional"
RSS text feeds (particularly headlines, displayed scrolling across news
bars) are supported in several browsers such as
Opera, Firefox, and Netscape (the current version, which is based on Firefox).
Apple has integrated full support for accessing RSS feeds in its Safari
browser.
RSS
feeds are also supported in numerous portals, such
as My Yahoo!, and by some blog site hosts. Stand-alone programs which
can display RSS feeds are called "Newsreaders" (or "RSS
readers").
RSS
2.0 Website
Full explanation and technical details. An Open Source-like community.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
RSS
information on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
How
To Publish a Podcast on the iTunes Music Store
Explanation (with sample code) of how to set up an RSS feed so links to
your Podcast can be included on Apple's iTunes music store, which is fast
becoming the focal point for publishing Podcasts.
http://phobos.apple.com/static/iTunesRSS.html
Apple
iTunes
www.apple.com/itunes/
Podcasting
News
Large news, information, and directory for the podcast community.
www.podcastingnews.com
iPodder
Popular podcast receiver software for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
http://ipodder.sourceforge.net
AvantGo
Enables users of PDAs (eg Palm Pilot) and smartphones to select from thousands
of online channels and download feeds onto their handheld device. Correctly
formats text and image feeds for particular devices. Puts current news,
weather, sports, stock quotes, maps, movie listings, and more on your
handheld. Works with wireless and Wi-Fi enabled devices. For others, desktop
software accesses internet and updates channels on the handheld each time
the handheld is synchronised with your desktop personal information manager
(eg Outlook or Palm Desktop).
www.avantgo.com
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Portals
NineMSN
Australia's MSN site. A 50:50 joint-venture between Microsoft and Australia's
leading media company, Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL), which
owns Australia's highest rating commercial TV network (Nine Network),
and the country's largest magazine publisher (Australian Consolidated
Press).
http://portal.ninemsn.com.au
Yahoo!
Going crazy trying to find out how to delete your old Yahoo! account?
If you want to, here's where you do it:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/edit/edit-23.html
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IT
Tools and Education
IBM Redbooks
Published by IBM, these publications and newsletters address product, platform, and solution perspectives. They explore integration, implementation, and operation of realistic customer scenarios that include PeopleSoft, Linux, Windows, SAP, Oracle, and others. Most are focused on IBM products and technologies, but the Redbooks also include very useful, in-depth primers on vendor-neutral technologies, software, application-creation, and integration topics.
www.redbooks.ibm.com
MIT
Open Course Ware - Introduction to IT Principles
15.564
Information Technology I
ITIL
(IT Infrastructure Library)
The most widely accepted approach to IT Service Management in the world
- a standards-based process.
"official
site"
ITIL
Best Practices Guides - from British Standards Institute
SourceForge
The world's largest Open Source software development website, with the
largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the
Internet. SourceForge.net provides free services to Open Source developers.
http://sourceforge.net
Systems
Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU)
Advice from experienced System Administrators and the resources that they
have accumulated to help you make decisions and better handle your computing
needs.
www.sage-au.org.au
Windows
2000
How to backup and restore registry and other critical system data:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240363
How
to backup, edit and restore the registry in Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322755
How
to create and Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) in Windows 2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/231777
Windows
File Extensions
Website providing explanation of different file types on your Windows
computer, which you can look up by entering the three letter file extension.
http://filext.com/
Internet
Assigned Names Authority (IANA)
www.iana.org
InterNIC
Information about domain names registrations.
www.internic.net
What's
my IP address?
To find out the IP address of your Windows computer:
- Click on the "Start" button
- Select "Run"
- Type "Command" (this causes a DOS window to appear)
- At the DOS prompt (">") type "ipconfig"
The IP address and any sub network info appears in the DOS window.
Internet
Frog
Tools for Testing Broadband Speed & other details about your internet
connection - and shows you what others can see from your IP address about
your location on the internet.
www.internetfrog.com
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Business Applications Software
Australian Business Software Directory
Aims to list every software package which is available to the Australian market. The directory was launched on 1st July, 2006 by Software Choice.
www.softwarechoice.com.au
Ziff Davies Web Buyers Guide
A vertical search directory of enterprise technology solutions, including whitepapers, research, reviews, and editorial articles.
www.webbuyersguide.com
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Developments
in IT
Gartner
A leading provider of research and analysis on the global information
technology industry. In-depth analysis and actionable advice aimed at
enabling clients to make more informed business and technology decisions.
While most Gartner information is published on a subscription basis, there
is a substantial amount available to visitors on the Gartner website:
www.gartner.com
Meta
Group
Another leading analyst and consulting company focused on the global IT
industry. Aims to provide more in-depth analysis and more personalised
service than rival firms. www.metagroup.com
Forrester
An information technology research company.
www.forrester.com
MIT
Technology Review
MIT's online magazine (and newsletter) reporting the latest technology
advances across a wide range of science.
www.technologyreview.com
Google Labs
http://labs.google.com/
IBM
Research Labs
www.research.ibm.com
Microsoft
Research Labs
http://research.microsoft.com
NASA
Ames Research Centre
Ames Research Center, located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley,
is a leader in information technology research with a focus on supercomputing,
networking and intelligent systems. Ames conducts the critical R&D and
develops the enabling technologies that make NASA missions possible. Ames
also is a leader in nanotechnology, fundamental space biology, biotechnology,
aerospace and thermal protection systems, and human factors research.
www.arc.nasa.gov
Red
Herring
The publication of record during the dot com era is still providing insight
and critique in the business of information technology.
www.redherring.com
C|Net
News
US-based IT news site, highly regarded by journalists and other IT watchers.
http://news.com.com
Demo
A conference held every 6 months at which companies launch their latest gadgets and gizmos. This site lets you view the short "pitches" that each company makes to demo the latest and greatest.
http://www.demo.com/
eServer Magazines
IBM-sponsored
publications specialising in IT news and education for users of IBM servers
(all types/families)
www.eservercomputing.com
.NET
Developer's Journal
Publication specialising in IT news and education for the Microsoft .NET
community.
www.sys-con.com/dotnet/
Open
Source Technology Group (OSTG)
A network of technology sites for IT managers and development professionals.
Good links to Open Source communities and publications.
www.ostg.com
Business
Process Management
Large community website focused on BPM:
www.bpmg.org
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Computer History:
The Beginnings of Computing, The First Computer and ICL
For those who would like to know how the IT revolution started, you may be interested to know that the world's first "proper" computer was built in Manchester, England and first successfully ran on 21st June 1948. (The first computer was not the Eniac machine built at Chicago University, as Silicon Valley would have us believe).
Details can be reviewed at:
50th Anniversary of the Manchester Baby Computer, the first computer
Alan Turing Scrapbook
Many of the computer scientists who developed the first computer in Manchester went on to join companies which commercialised the work (some stayed and continuted to do excellent work at the University of Manchester School of Computer Science).
Eventually these companies merged and became ICL (International Computers Limited), centred around ICL's West Gorton R&D facility in Manchester. This became what was arguably the largest IT R&D operation in Europe. The team at ICL created the VME operating system and developed many innovations in computer science.
If you follow the links about ICL and VME, you will also see that current "innovations" such as virtualisation of computing resources, search engine appliances, and massively parallel computers were in fact first achieved and commercialised by ICL in the 1980's. Their creators came from the same intellectual "gene pool" in Manchester that created the first computer.
Unfortunately ICL's commercial acumen was not as great as it's technical talent. ICL was absorbed into the Japanese giant Fujitsu and is no more. During the 70s and 80s, however, ICL was among the top three computer vendors in many countries around the world.
Manchester University remains a leader in information technology, however. Significan work has been commercialised by a number of Manchester University computer scientists, including those who formed Transitive. Transitive is an a award-winning company whose customers include Apple, Intel, IBM, and SGI. While for commercial reasons it has an HQ in Silicon Valley, the heart of the company - and it's R&D - is in Manchester.
Transitive is pioneering a new generation of virtualisation technology used by companies such as Apple on their latest Intel based OS X computers (forming part of Apple's Rosetta software). Transitive’s QuickTransit hardware virtualization software is used throughout the electronics industry to eliminate the hardware/software dependency by enabling software transportability between virtually any operating system/processor pair.
VisiCalc
If you want to read about the first personal computer software program which started the whole microcomputer (personal computer) industry, then read the history of VisiCalc (the first widely-used spreadsheet program), written by the marketing guy who introduced it and developed the market:
http://www.edesber.com/companies/vis_history.shtml
Apple Macintosh
Apple Macintosh Launch Video
In 1977 Apple revolutionised the world's computer market by introducing the Apple II, the world's first personal computer. (IBM followed and announced the IBM PC in 1981.
The first computer to popularise the graphical user interface and make personal computers easy to use was the Apple Macintosh, introduced in January 1984. Historic video of the Apple Macintosh launch event featuring a very young Steve Jobs demonstrating the Apple Macintosh for the first time has been preserved for posterity!
The First Apple Macintosh marketing campaign in 1984 has been documented and preserved for computer history by the University of Stanford.
The "teaser" announcement of the Apple Macintosh was a few months earlier at Apple's Fall 1983 conference. An even younger looking Steve Jobs gives one of the IT industry's best-ever podium performances, culminating in the first showing of the Apple Macintosh 1984 video, proclaiming an industry transformation. Watch it to catch the excitement of a time when the computer industry was perhaps the most exciting business on earth!
(If you are young: Nineteen Eighty-Four was a book written by George Orwell and published in 1949. It described a nightmare world far in the future - 1984 - when individualism is crushed by authoritarian government and "thought control" is the order of the day. It was taught to every school English class during the 1960s and 1970s, so the video had great poignancy to Steve Jobs' audience at the time.
More Computer History Resources
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California is the premier historical archive for Silicon Valley. It has both online and real exhibits. If you plan to visit their building in Mountain View, check out the visiting times first. It is only open for walk-in admission on certain days of the week.
www.computerhistory.org
IBM Archives
IBM's own archive of historical information about IBM's history.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/index.html
IBM Advertising
Some of the first adverts for computers by IBM were in the 1950s.
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/ads/ibm-50s/index.html
DigiBarn Computer Museum
The DigiBarn Computer Museum reflects the informal nature of the personal computing explosion that started in 1975. DigiBarn is a repository of vintage computers, manuals, videos, stories and interviews. It can be visited either on-line or in person about 90 minutes out of San Francisco. Unlike other museums, if you go there you can use the exhibits.
www.digibarn.com
Max Burnet's private computer museum (Australia)
Arguably the largest private collection of historic computers in Australia. Max Burnet's collection emphasises minicomputers - as befits the owner, who was the last MD of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Australia, prior to it's take-over by Compaq (which in turn was absorbed by of HP).
Based in Sydney, there is a photographic tour and description of of the museum at CIO magazine.
Startup Gallery and the MITS Altair
The first personal computer was made by Albuquerque-based Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), who created the Altair 8800 in 1975. The MITS Altair and Alberquerque's claim-to-fame in the personal computer revolution is documented at the Startup Gallery.
www.startupgallery.org/
Vintage Computer Festival
The Vintage Computer Festival is an annual gathering in Silicon Valley focused on computer history. Their website includes a huge list of links to other historical computer resources.
www.vintage.org/links.php
Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Lab)
Founded in 1970, the researchers at Xerox PARC came up with many break through concepts and technical capabilities which other companies (notably Apple Computer and Microsoft) have incorporated into what are now commonplace technology. These include the Graphical User Interface, Windows, the computer mouse, and print servers.
www.parc.com/about/history/
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