AATP Interactive

Shifting Trends in Internet Use by Americans

About 126 million Americans--or 63 percent of adults--use the Internet regularly, a number that has leveled off in the past two years, according to the latest study fom the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, more people today than ever before use the Web for serious business, such as shopping, paying bills, banking, conducting other transactions, and interacting with government agencies.

Some of the interesting findings include:

Online activity has consistently grown over the course of our research. Internet users discover more things to do online as they gain experience and as new applications become available. This momentum often fuels increasing reliance on the Internet in everyday life and higher expectations about the way the Internet can be used in matters both mundane and mighty.

Despite this growth in activity, the growth of the online population itself has slowed. There was almost no growth over the course of 2002 and there has been only a small uptick in recent months to leave the size of the online U.S. adult population at 63% of all those 18 and over. More than three-quarters of those between the ages of 12 and 17 use the Internet.

Different people use the Internet in different ways. Within the online population, specific demographic groups have comparatively high incidence levels for certain online activities.

- Close to two-thirds of Americans now go online to access the Internet.
- Internet use still differs significantly across some demographic groups
- Email continues to trump all as the most popular use of the Internet.
- Information-seeking activities have grown across the board since 2000 — most by 50% or more.
- As the online marketplace has matured; financial and transaction-based activities have grown more than any other type of online pursuit.
- Online Americans continue to explore new hobby and entertainment activities on the Internet

Download is the complete report as a PDF

Free Hospital Information System

Software that was developed to care for Vietnam war vets is being adapted to make affordable healthcare information technology available worldwide.
A non-profit corporation called WorldVista plans on adapting the program called Vista (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) beyond the borders of the US to developing countries. Having a complete unified hospital information system has clear advantages when you are looking to computerize medical information but the implementation will not be without difficulty. This is certainly an ambitious and worthwhile project.

The Vista program is an open source system that was created by the US Department of Veterans Affairs and is being used in 170 hospitals and 600 clinics to keep track of thousands of Vietnam vets. The Indian health service and several other medical centers outside the US also use it. According to a BBC news report, one of the features of the software is its medication management capability which has reduced errors by 90%.

The WorldVista group is hoping to foster an international community of doctors and programmers who will work on the software and adapt it to their local needs.

Biometrics - Sooner Than We Thought

Biometrics: High-tech security systems that rely on detailed measurements of the human body, known as biometrics, are taking off. But should they be?

An article in the Science Technology Quarterly in the Economist offers an interesting review of the pros and cons of biometric testing. It is inevitable that we will be using more of this kind of security and there are new incentives on a global level to implement biometrics. For example, "America will begin using biometrics at its airports and seaports on January 5th. Under the new US-VISIT programme, all foreigners entering on visas will have their hands and faces digitally scanned. This will create what Tom Ridge, America's homeland-security supremo, calls 'an electronic check-in and check-out system for foreign nationals'. American citizens will also be affected, as new passports with a chip that contains biometric data are issued from next year. And the new rules specify that by October 26th 2004, all countries whose nationals can enter America without a visa'including western European countries, Japan and Australia'must begin issuing passports that contain biometric data too. Moves to create a European standard for biometric passports are already under way, and many other countries are following suit: Oman and the United Arab Emirates, among others, will begin issuing national identity cards containing biometrics next year. Britain's planned new national identity card will also include biometrics."

But the article points out "it is not clear that these identity-verification systems are worth the cost and trouble of introducing them. All 19 of the September 11th hijackers entered the United States using valid visas, on their own passports, for example. Verifying their identities using biometric visas would have made no difference." Recent reports from groups such as the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of America's Congress, and America's National Academy of Science (NAS), point out that, while the political environment has changed, the technology has not. Biometrics still do not work well enough to be effective for many of the applications in which they are now being deployed.

Here is a chart of the current technologies implemented.

The article ends with a discussion of privacy - "in the long term, biometrics, by their very nature, will compromise privacy in a deep and thorough fashion." Spurred by the misplaced enthusiasm of governments around the world, biometrics seem headed for dramatic growth in the next few years. But calm, public discussion of their benefits and drawbacks has been lamentably lacking. Such discussion is necessary both to prevent the waste of public money in the short term' for the most part, the private sector has been wiser in its adoption of biometrics'but also to regulate what will eventually have the potential to become a powerful mechanism for social control.

A Map of the Internet

In case you were wondering just what the Internet looks like, the folks at the Opte Project have generated static and dynamic 2D JPG/PNG images and 3D VRML maps of the Internet. They produce maps 'using over 5 million edges and has an estimated 50 million hop count.'

The mapping uses color and other graphing logic. RFC1918 addresses have been hashed into a unique checksum so they do not incorrectly overlap with other routers or hosts. The checksums resolve to the same host each time to be sure that all routes connect correctly. Another bit of code also removed the routing loops that made a rather large mess out of previous maps. The colors were based on Class A allocation of IP space too different registrars in the world. The color system is very basic now. There are plans to enhance the color to be more descriptive.

Legend of colors:
Asia Pacific - Red
Europe/Middle East/Central Asia/Africa - Green
North America - Blue
Latin American and Caribbean - Yellow
RFC1918 IP Addresses - Cyan
Unknown - White

The maps can be viewed at various resolutions 400x400 (png, 288 K), 700x700 (png, 867 K) or 4096x4096 (png, 2,810 K). They plan on producing more complex maps on a daily basis as they refine the algorithm. They also plan on making the software available for anyone to create their own maps.

The history and process of this projet is quite interesting.