Summary of TTCS meetings held in 2007

We hold two types of meetings : Pizza Limes and Tech Meetings. A Pizza Lime is the name given to our monthly discussion forum which is usually held at Pizza Hut, Roxy Roundabout, Port of Spain on the second Wednesday of the month. The tech meeting is when we have computers on site to demonstrate a particular type of hardware or software.

Contents

Wednesday January 10th, 2007 at F1 Connect (“Pizzalime”)

Consumer Electronics Show 2007

Macworld 2007

Microsoft Vista

ICANN

  • Further discussion about ICANN and recent MOU signed at Sao Paulo Brazil to create LACRALO

Other stuff

Future ideas for meetings/projects:

  • Freedom Toaster – should we build one?
  • TTCS website – WordPress 2.1 being released this month
  • TTCS logo
  • Session on identity protection/social engineering/phishing/scams/Internet con schemes

Saturday January 20th, 2007 at Hand-Arnold – MS Windows Vista

Microsoft Vista

Tips/useful links

Thursday Feb 15th 2007 – TTCS Pizzalime

Topics discussed :

The revamped Trinidad and Tobago Government Portal

  • Uses standard based web design (doesn’t use tables for presentation)
  • Relatively lightweight, no seemingly extraneous Flash animation
  • The navigation into the three portal sections (labeled services for citizens, services for businesses, services for visitors) is confusing. The design of these sections could be improved for better ease of use
  • Links aren’t underlined by default . The underline appears only after you mouse over the link making navigation a guessing game. Links should be more prominent.
  • Need to evaluate accessibility of site.
  • Forms from various ministries are in RTF, Word DOC, PDF – should be PDF.

The launch of Trinihits.com which allows you to purchase and download calypso/soca songs for 99cents US

Noted :

Republic Bank offering online banking

  • Banks requires IE to accessing banking facilities,  a retrograde step given the popularity of browsers like Firefox and Opera and also locks out non-Windows users.

The launch of Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007

Saturday March 10th 2007 – A look at the Nintendo Wii console

All attendees had fun with the Nintendo Wii console with its unique Wii’s unique wireless controllers which detect motion and rotation in three

dimensions. Games played :

  • Wii Sports – bundled with the Wii – comprises five sports games : tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing.
  • Wii Play – another set of small mini games including a shooting game reminiscient of Duck Hunt, fishing, pool, hockey, and cow racing.
  • Rayman Raving Rabbids – fun, bizarre minigames that had everyone taking turns and saying “just one more time…..” to beat the minigames.
  • Legend of Zelda – guide Link in the latest quest – fun swordplay.
  • Mario World – the classic game purchased from the Wii shopping channel – requires the classic controller .

Saturday 24th March 2007 – Recording TTCS podcast #11

Some notes are available at:  Saturday-24th-March-2007-Podcast-Notes.

Saturday April 21st, 2007 – Discussing issues currently before ICANN

At this meeting, we discussed how to keep up to date with the LACRALO mailing lists and how to position ourselves to better submit opinions/comments on various issues before ICANN.

Two wikipages were created :

  • ICANN-LACRALO – this gives general background info about ICANN, ALAC and At-Large Structures and has related links
  • LACRALO-upcoming-issues – this page will be to track LACRALO-related issues that TTCS should be responding to.

Also, a separate email list for persons to receive emails from the LAC mailing list will be created. (Note 2017 : wiki pages have been removed)

Wednesday April 25th, 2007 – TTCS Pizzalime

 

Saturday May 19th, 2007 – Using RSS feeds

This meeting looked at using RSS to keep track of website content and saving time. We started by looking at how the Mozilla Firefox browser

handles RSS feeds (Firefox calls them Live Bookmarks) as well as Internet Explorer 7.0 ( IE 7 calls them feeds and stored them under the Favorites folder).

Next we looked at Sage RSS reader, a Firefox extension which offers better capabilites of handling RSS feeds. Also, we looked at Mozilla Thunderbird email client.

The problem with such applications is that reading RSS feeds is not portable – you can’t browse your feeds at work and at home. You can use online

RSS aggregators such as Google Reader which offer several features (e.g categories, keyboard shortcuts, to ability to create a public feed to share with others) to keep track of dozens of websites quickly and easily. The Google Reader’s ability to view the history of a RSS feed (you can view the RSS feed contents several days ago) was noted.

Saturday May 26th, 2007 – Recycling old PCs

We talked what can be done with older PCs ; can one be made usable as a general purpose PC?

Distros tested :

Wednesday 30th May 2007 – TTCS pizzalime

This was held at Pizza Hut, La Romain from 12noon to 2pm.

Saturday June 16th, 2007 – Discussions for ICANN Meeting in Puerto Rico

At this meeting, the focus was the upcoming ICANN San Juan, Puerto Rico meeting to be held from June 23rd to 29th, 2007.

Wednesday July 11th, 2007 – TTCS pizzalime

Dev Anand Teelucksingh along with Jacqueline Morris discussed the recent ICANN San Juan, Puerto Rico meeting from June 23rd to the 29th. Several wiki pages on key ICANN related issues were created on IPv6, DomainTasting, WHOIS, IDN.

Saturday July 14th, 2007 – Planning session for future TTCS activities

The marketing of TTCS was discussed. Anil R and Richard J showed off the social networking site, Facebook, and various content management systems for the TTCS website was discussed. After the Saturday 14th July meeting, the TTCS decided and implemented the following :

  • A new TTCS site based on WordPress hosted at wordpress.com. The site is live at http://ttcsweb.org/blog/ (redirects to https://www.ttcs.tt/).In the future, our local .tt SLD will redirect to this site in August 2007, in time for TTCS’s 10th anniversary.
  • To subscribe to the TTCS RSS feed using your RSS reader, http://ttcsweb.org/feed/ (redirects to Feedburner)
  • A TTCS group has been created on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/).
  • The TTCS also registered itself at the Software Freedom Day website.

Thursday July 19th, 2007 – Meeting with Guyana ccTLD (.gy) administrator

Held at Pizza Hut, Roxy Roundabout. The TTCS met Mr. Rayman Khan, the Guyana ccTLD administrator for .gy domains. Mr. Khan discussed the background of the .gy domain and how it is being run at present. There was a related discussion on how the .tt ccTLD should be managed.

Wednesday August 8th, 2007 – TTCS pizzalime

Held at Pizza Hut, Valsayn, we discussed :

Wednesday August 22nd 2007 – Meeting with Flow Trinidad Ltd

This meeting took place from 6:30pm at Flow’s offices located near Victoria Square, Port of Spain. At this meeting, we met with

Mr. Ian Serrao, the Director of Network Services at Columbus Communications Trinidad (parent company of Flow Trinidad), Mr. Prescod and Mr. John Reid who answered several questions on our questions_for_flow wiki page and demonstrated various aspects of Flow’s operations.

Saturday September 8th, 2007 – Preparations for Software Freedom Day

Wednesday September 12th, 2007 – Preparations for Software Freedom Day

The regularly scheduled pizza lime was deferred to prepare for Software Freedom Day. This meeting was held at Engineering Consultants.

Saturday September 15th, 2007 – Software Freedom Day 2007

Held at Handarnold. A full report of activities for Software Freedom Day 2007 including photos and videos from this event can be found at
https://www.ttcs.tt/articles/software-freedom-day-2007-report/

The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society’s entry for its meeting on Software Freedom Day (September 15th, 2007) received a “highly commended” award from the Software Freedom Day organisation!

* Read the SFD 2007 results at

http://softwarefreedomday.org/Competition2007/Winners

* Read the TTCS Software Freedom Day 2007 report submitted to SFD

https://www.ttcs.tt/articles/software-freedom-day-2007-report/

* 18 minute video of TTCS SFD 2007 :

 

* Photos from SFD 2007 on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttcs/sets/72157602189102284/

* BitDepth #595 – ‘A slow march to freedom’

http://www.lyndersaydigital.com/writing/bd07/sep/files/BitDepth595.html

Additional photos of SFD 2007 from Mike Tikasingh and Anil Ramnanan.

Saturday September 29th, 2007 – Software Freedom Day Redux

A repeat of some of the key presentations from Software Freedom Day 2007 for persons who could not attend on the 15th.

Wednesday October 10th, 2007 – TTCS pizzalime

What was discussed :

There was a lively side discussion about crime in Trinidad ; how mobile phone technology could be used to track cars ; how Trinidadians has relatively low computer usage but high mobile phone usage ; a discussion about software development on Windows and on Linux.

Thursday 18th October 2007 – Meeting with TSTT

The meeting was held at TSTT’s offices at 116 Edward Street, Port of Spain to discuss TSTT’s new broadband service Blink Broadband.

TSTT staff, including the head of broadband sales, Mr. Joseph P. Herde, answered questions from the TTCS wiki page :

http://ttcsweb.pbwiki.com/questions-for-blink-broadband (archived as a PDF)

– You can get Blink without a one, two or three year contract at the advertised rates for the various speeds and pay month to month.

If you choose this option, you will have to pay the full cost of the modem upfront which is about $600.

– You will have a choice of different modems including ones with built in wireless routing capability.

– The TSTT firewall which was on and included for subscribers of the previous ADSL package is NOT on by default.

You can request TSTT to turn it on.

– TSTT is aiming for all exchanges in Trinidad and Tobago to be Blink-ready. The range for Blink service from the exchanges is around 18,000 feet.

– No plans to offer IPTV over Blink.

– Blink does not support IPv6 as yet. TSTT is looking into doing so and predicted that the hardware should support IPv6.

– There are no plans to change pricing for dialup users. However, if Blink broadband isn’t available in your area and dialup is the only option, then the dialup fees will be reduced.

– Blink helpdesk will be available 24/7.

– The current HSIA services will evetually be discontinued and the customers who are still on will be switched to the equivalent speed

Blink package. No timeframe was given for this switchover.

Unfortunately, there was no actual demonstration of Blink because the area was not “Blink-ready” or “Blink-capable”.

Monday November 12th, 2007 – TTCS Pizzalime

Held at Pizza Hut, Roxy Roundabout.

Topics discussed :

– The price drop of broadband access from Flow Trinidad [http://ttcsweb.pbwiki.com/Cable_modems_in_Trinidad]

and other broadband news. [https://www.ttcs.tt/blog/2007/10/23/tatt-auction-of-radio-spectrum-for-broadband-wireless-access-services/]

– The recent concluded 30th ICANN Los Angeles Meeting.

[https://www.ttcs.tt/2007/10/30/icann-los-angeles-2007-meeting-from-october-27th-november-2nd-2007-how-you-can-participate/]

– The Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) [http://www.ttbs.org.tt/] becoming a participatory voting member of the ISO Technical Committee, JTC 1 – Information Technology [http://www.jtc1.org/].

See related blog post “ISO votes against fast tracking of MS Office Open XML format” [http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ttcs/message/15801]

– The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society was invited to the TTBS IT committee created to work on ISO/IEC JTC 1 matters (see

https://www.ttcs.tt/blog/2007/11/14/ttcs-ttbs-isoiec-jtc-1/ for more details.

– A person from Microsoft on this TTBS IT committee was present to discuss some of the happenings and about OpenXML.

Saturday November 17th, 2007 – Drupal, look at One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop

Shivan Jaikaran (http://drupal.org/user/23901), a Drupal developer for nearly three years who has contributed several modules to this content management system gave a informative presentation on Drupal (http://drupal.org/), one of the leading open source content management systems for websites.

His presentation can be found online at http://www.shivanjaikaran.com/blog/?p=56

We were able to obtain an example of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop. Attendees were able to view and use the laptop after the Drupal presentation. Mike Tikasingh took several

photos and posted them to his site at http://web.mac.com/miketikasingh/iWeb/Site/Photos.html

Also, discussed was the TTBS IT committee which met on Thursday November 15th, 2007 (which the TTCS attended) and how to evaluate Microsoft Open XML format which is being discussed by the TTBS IT committee (PDF of wiki page).

Saturday 8th December 2007 – recording TTCS podcast

Recorded not one, not two, but three podcasts! Let’s hope they are edited in time.

Saturday December 15th, 2007 – Nintendo Wii ,OLPC, Asus EEEpc

Attendees played several games on the Nintendo Wii ranging from Wii Sports for the newcomers to Resident Evil 4. At the meeting, a Asus EEEpc (a $399/$499 US laptop) was available for use as well as the OLPC laptop the TTCS has obtained.

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