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Interesting interactive chart showing the number of Internet users in different countries from 1998 until 2008. Notice the discrepancies between developed and underdeveloped countries. Still skeptical of the digital divide?

Useful graphic created by the BBC which shows the spread of the internet from 1998-2008 across the world. Interesting to note the speed with which China and parts of South American grew. From 2001-2008 they moved from 0-5% usage - 26-30% usage.

This is my final blog entry on the digital divide. It basically sums up my thoughts about the topic and looks at a recent initiative by the UN that will hopefully speed up the process of achieving the goal of global internet access by 2015.

South Korea is the country with the fastest internet connection. The reasons for this can be found in the existence of a competitve market, the encouragement of the use of computers propelled by the government, the "shared" telecommunications insfraestructure, the density of the population and the broadband policy existing for more than 10 years now

Attacking a person's reputation via the Internet has become a very quick and easy process through sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, the author argues (and hopes) that maybe in time, since bashing of a person's online reputation is evolving into common behavior, it wont really matter anymore - that incriminating photos on Facebook wont have that much of an impact in a few years.

This article discusses the different ways to access content that is blocked, down etc on the Internet. I'm not 100% sure if this would work around the Mandatory Internet filter in Australia though! But interesting read. 10. Skip Past Annoying User/Pass Requests 9. Read Articles That Rupert Murdoch Wants You Paying For 8. Change User Agents to Get Around Browser Blocks 7. Get to Gmail When It's Down 6. Get Actually Usable BitTorrent Speeds 5. Get To Sites Taken Down by Traffic 4. Control Computers At Home 3. Download YouTube and Other Flash Videos 2. Access Country-Blocked Streaming TV 1. Roll Your Own Proxy to Access Blocked Sites

-US to aim for internet speeds of 100Mbps -Same as the Rudd Government's network -Congress will be asked to provide billions THE US is set to follow Australia in a bid to introduce superfast broadband to millions of homes within the next ten years. A new internet policy to be unveiled this week includes the goal of boosting domestic broadband speeds to 100Mbps - more than 25 times the current average.

Google Australia says here that the mandatory internet filtering is too wide and they believe that the filtering not only would slow user access speeds, but also questions the legitimacy of the measure because of the associated restrictions on access to information

Following customer complaints, CommSec recently fined $55K for not providing customers an Opt out option when sending out e-marketing. As a response, CommSec have appointed an independant auditer to assess their e-marketing activity and provide training. I do question a lot of marketing departments... does it take a fine from ACMA before they get up to speed with how to conduct their communications and campaigns?

Their ad agency should know what they're doing! It's not hard to put an unsubscribe link in an email. Wacky.

Hmmm makes one think whether someone in marketing was too lazy in their job or whether CommSec knowlingly defied spamming laws. Australian spamming laws can be found at http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/spam.html#acts

Video conferencing and telecommunications could soon be instantaneous thanks to research being carried out by University of Sydney postgraduate student, Trung Duc Vo.

Google wants to install Google Fiber in some small US cities. These Googlevilles, although experimental and in a small scale, could foreshadow some potential repercussions of the digital divide. Would you like to live in Googleville?