Net-enabled Hand Speak

FOR THE wise, silence is golden and speech is silver. Though all of us are `wise', we seldom practise this adage. Most of us are so used to verbal communication that we fail to notice other methods that fall in the realm of non-verbal communication.

Of course we do use non-verbal communication techniques such as facial statements and body language but we invoke these in a routine manner. Consequently, at times it may not evoke proper response, especially if the parties involved are of different cultural backgrounds.

One of the non-verbal methods of communication is the sign language that has been developed to communicate with people with hearing disabilities. Do not think that you need the sign language only if you have a deaf friend/relative. There are moments in your life when talking may not be or feasible: Imagine you have some trouble in your throat and your doctor advises you to keep silence for a few days, how will you then communicate? If you are away from a person at a visible distance but not reachable through voice, how do you communicate? We can identify many such situations where knowledge of sign language is quite useful.

Yes, I know I have spoken more than enough on sign language and you may be wondering why all this rhetoric ! Don't get impatient. Would you like to learn the sign language in an easy and lively way? Want to undergo an excellent on-line crash-course on sign language? If yes, go ahead and access the site www.handspeak.com, which is an on-line sign language dictionary and has more than 3,000 signs in its database. Here you will learn almost everything on sign languages and the site presents animated (through GIF animations) descriptions on many signs that may be useful in most every day situations. One of the pages that I liked in the site is the section that features three cute stories using the sign language (especially the stories on the moving mind and on the pride lamp) Since the signs shown in this site are of ASL (American Sign Language), all of them may not be universal. Still learning some signs will definitely enhance your total communication abilities and will make the communication process more effective and complete.

Real-time e-book creator

Would you like to turn your favourite web pages into an e-book that can be navigated like turning the pages of a book? (Not familiar with e-books? Go back to an earlier NetSpeak edition that featured this wonderful IT phenomenon - appeared in The Hindu Dt. March 22).

`FlipBrowser Gold', the software developed by E-book Systems, helps you organise and convert web pages you currently visit into an independent e-book with real-book like format with pages that can be turned with a mouse-click.

This helps you organise related pages in the form of a book, re- arranges them and makes your re-visiting the sites rather easy. The service allows you to upload the created e-book to its site where you can keep the e-book for others to read it later. The software helps you build the e-book (also called FlipBook) not only from HTML files.

Other acceptable contents include multimedia resources such as, image files (like JPG, PNG), sound files (MID, WAV) and video files. This facility can be used to create e-photo albums that can be preserved and circulated among members of a family/social- circle etc.

To try out the service, download the 30-day trial version of the program from the site: www.flipbrowser.com. The software (4MB) can be used only if you have IE5.01 or greater installed in your machine.

Update

From now on you will be seeing this section occasionally in this column. This is meant to keep the readers uptodate on subjects discussed earlier in NetSpeak. As things appear/disappear or develop/thrive within a short span in the cyber-world, the need for such a section is obvious. I would like to thank a reader of NetSpeak for this idea.

A few weeks ago we featured an article on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology, which helps Net users connect each other and share resources without a central server. One of the major hindrances of this technology (apart from the legal problems faced by P2P companies such as copyright infringements caused by illegal swapping of licensed music files and other resources) is the bandwidth constraint faced by major Net users. But p2p's certain unique features attracted major players like Intel and what will happen to this technology which is supposed to empower the common users, is being watched keenly by analysts and other interest groups.

If you want to know more about recent developments in this area check the site: www.canada.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-3248711- 1.html. Do not forget to read the interview with Mr. Ian Clarke of FreeNet and note his observations on media establishment.

In this connection I think it is appropriate to introduce, BearShare, a P2P-based file sharing program that lets you share files with everybody linked to the Net and also download files from others, who are willing to share their files with you.

The program functions like the Gnutella program but in a much more user-friendly and effective manner. The free program (800- KB) can be downloaded from www.bearshare.com. After it is installed successfully (and you are linked to the Net), it automatically connects you to the network with the help of a Gnutella service provider (this process is completely transparent to the user).

Once connected to the network properly, move to the `Search' page, type in the name of the file you like to download from the network. Another major highlight of this program is the excellent documentation that comes with the package.

J. Murali

(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)

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