Category: Jon’s Articles

By Jon: First published in Online Currents – 20(8) October 2005

Internet telephony, also known as Voice Over Internet (VOI), is the transmission of voice communications in real time using the Internet rather than a proprietary telephone system.  It has two advantages over conventional telephony (known as ‘Plain Old Telephone System’ or POTS); firstly, the cost of calls is lower – sometimes much lower – and secondly, the introduction of a computer into the process allows powerful software to be used for making, monitoring, timing and recording calls. read more

By Jon. For Online Currents 17 (9/10), 18 (1) 2002-2003

By Jon: First published in Online Currents – 20 (7) September 2005

Many years ago, at university, I overheard a snippet of conversation between two female students: “I’ve heard of garlic bread,” said one, “but I’ve never tried it.”

Many people feel the same way about macros.  They know that it’s possible to automate repetitive processes on the computer by creating macros, but it all seems too complicated.  There are too many decisions.  Local or global?  Relative or absolute?  Keystroke or toolbar button?  Also, how to create a macro that involves two or more programs?   read more

By Jon. For Online Currents

Online Currents 2004 – 19(8) 25-27

When the World Wide Web appeared in the early 1990’s, many users, myself included, assumed that most people would soon do their reading on-screen and that printed documents would slowly become a thing of the past. We soon learnt how wrong we were. Despite continuing improvements in screen displays, many users continue to print documents for marking up, for reference, and simply for reading. It is in order to serve this group that Adobe developed their Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1993. Since then PDF has gone through several versions, but it retains the same fundamental goal: to provide a way of electronically distributing documents that look the same and print the same. read more

By Jon: First published in Online Currents 2005 – 20(3) 6-7

Metabrowser Authoring Tool (also known as Tag Tool) is a program, for viewing and editing metadata on websites. It comes with support for twelve standard metadata schemas, including DC, the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS), the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NGLS) and the Australian Justice Sector schema. New schemas can also be developed and saved by the user.

Metabrowser is an Australian product and is available for download fromhttp://metabrowser.spirit.net.au. The current version is 1.8101. There is a thirty-day trial period after which the application can be registered online for $AU162.82 (discounts for multiple installations). The authors also support a metadata server which facilitates website searching, and provides consultancy and other assistance in establishing metadata. read more

By Jon. For Online Currents

By Jon. For Online Currents

By Jon: First published in Online Currents 2003 – 18(4): 10-12

In this series of 3 articles I first summarise the current state of the e-book market in general and then look at the situation for non-fiction e-books. I give some reasons why non-fiction books are not sharing in the rapid growth of fiction titles and examine several models for non-fiction e-book distribution: free downloads; paid downloads; paid distribution on CD or other media; and ‘library’ systems which sell access to texts but not the texts themselves. read more