What is Speedtest.net? Use Speedtest.net to test the speed of your Internet connection. See if you are getting what you pay for or share your results with others!

This one's good news!

In the past, only one server in the Philippines, which is sponsored by Bayantel, is available for speed testing. Now there are three.

If you are from the Philippines and you go to www.speedtest.net, you will be brought to the Philippine map where these servers are located. If you are located anywhere in the world, you will be brought to the test location near your location.

First, the one in golden yellow is the server recommended by speedtest.net. It is located in Quezon City, Philippines. Sponsored by Bayantel, this server gives me a latency between 310-360.

The second server is sponsored by PLDT. Homed in Makati City, Philippines, this server says that I have a latency of 75-100.

The third server is located in the south, specifically in Cagayan De Oro City, Philippines. It is sponsored by Philcom Corporation. It reveals my latency of 300-320.

At least now, we have a choice on what server to test our connection with.

The distance between user location and the server plays an important role in determining exact connection speed. The farther a user is to the server, there's more probability that he gets inaccurate results.

Factors like latency, weather, internet traffic and many others can affect the results of speed tests.

So there you go. Enjoy speed testing. http://coolbusteratyourservice.blogspot.com/2008/07/3-speed-test-servers-now-available-in.html

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Computer literacy empowers OFWs

Technology has now become the means of empowerment for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) as it gives them the opportunity to build knowledge.

The Microsoft Tulay Program is the brainchild of the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and funded by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and Microsoft. It aims to expand knowledge and build a new foundation for OFWs through computer literacy.
Last week, Filipina household service workers graduated from Microsoft's Tulay program in Hong kong.

In less than three months, they learned how to use various computer applications; from surfing the internet, to using social networking sites; blogging and using a webcam to communicate with their families back home.

Ople Center president, Susan Ople described the program as a tool of empowering OFWs.
"Being computer literate opens the doors to learning beyond the ordinary,” Ople said.
Ople was a guest at ANC’s Crossing Borders hosted by Immigration Lawyer, Mike Templo.
“Without the internet, your networking opportunities are limited. But once you get to know how to communicate and build social networks with the internet then you are empowered and that's what we want for our domestic helpers here--to be empowered,” Ople added.

Tulay graduate Gloria Magbuhos said the program is a big help to OFWs like herself.
"Malaki ang tulong ng internet kasi nga dati kapag cellphone ang gamit namin malaki ang expenses di ba? Malaki ng charges. Pero kung internet libre na," said Magbuhos

Another graduate, Rowena Concepcion uses the webcam when communicating with her loved ones back home. The web cam bridged the distance for Concepcion who was able to see and follow the health condition of her child born with cerebral palsy while in Hong Kong. Her child died last year.
More than personal connection, Ople said the program also gives OFWs an edge to be globally competitive as people, not just as workers.

"My advice to them is not to be afraid, but enjoy themselves because cyber information, the digital age is here. There is no way to avoid it. It's either you are part of the cyber mainstream or you are in the dark ages," Ople said. http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/pinoy-migration/10/09/09/computer-literacy-empowers-ofws-hk

Philippine DOLE to hire 3,565 youth mentors for IT project

Starting this month until December, the Department of Labor and Employment will be hiring 3,565 youth mentors for its Kabataan ITo special project to jumpstart a nationwide familiarization and appreciation sessions on information technology for Filipinos in the disadvantaged sectors.

Labor and Employment Secretary Marianito D. Roque announced this yesterday after he received the reports of the National Reintegration Program for OFWs, the Bureau of Rural Workers and the Bureau of Women and Young Workers -- all DOLE offices -- about their preparation for the launching of the special project in the third week of October.

"Our regional offices have committed to hire 3,565 information technology youth mentors who will conduct familiarization and appreciation sessions until December. At a ratio of one mentor to two students, about 27,240 young people from the disadvantaged and informal sectors will benefit from these sessions," Roque said.

"We plan a simultaneous launching of the project on October 21 and during the launching, we will already hire 1,507 IT youth mentors across the regions so they can start imparting IT knowledge and skills to 11,666 beneficiaries," he added.

The Kabataan ITo is a DOLE special project designed to teach young Filipinos knowledge and skills in basic information technology without joining the formal education system. The "teachers" or mentors in the project will be youth volunteers who are "IT-enabled".

The mentors will teach an IT module consisting of a preparatory lesson on computer hardware familiarization, computer operation and MS Word processing application, and a final lesson on the use of the Internet for search and communication. The IT sessions will be for 22 hours.

The labor and employment chief said that the mentors, who will render "part-time" service of less than eight hours a day or less than five days a wekk depending on the mentors' availability, will be paid a stipend of P25.00 per mentoring hour. He explained that the budget of P15.02 million will come from the available budgets of the DOLE regional offices.

The DOLE has already identified the venues for the familiarization and appreciation sessions. These will be held in the DOLE regional and field offices, regional offices of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, some computer centers, and Public Employment Service Offices, or PESOs which the DOLE and its social partners have earlier furnished with computers.

DOLE regional offices, in cooperation with the PESOs and working youth organizations will recruit the IT mentors who must be results-oriented, computer-adept, and friendly to the disadvantaged youth. They must also be meticulous keeping tab of the progress of the learners, as well as patient in mentoring.

"There is a bright future for the knowledgeable and skilled in information technology, and we would like our disadvantaged young people to have a share of this bright future through Kabataan ITo," Roque said. Read the original article here http://www.dole.gov.ph/news/details.asp?id=N000002380

Google Offers Advice on Secure Passwords

It's National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and Google wants to remind you of a basic tenet of online security: passwords. Considering that October started off with a security breach that struck more than 10,000 Hotmail accounts, a security review may not be such a bad idea. Michael Santerre, Google's Consumer Operations Associate detailed Google's password advice in a recent blog post.

Some of Santerre's precautions are things you've likely heard many times before: don't use personal information like your name or birth date, and don't use simple passwords like "password" or "letmein." Instead, Santerre says you should use a unique password for every site, one that includes a mixture of numbers, letters, and symbols. This will help protect you from dictionary attacks, where a hacker uses a program that tries millions of word and letter combinations to guess your password. But keeping track of so many passwords can be tough; Santerre advises you to write your secret codes down or keep them in a computer file, just don't give your file an obvious name like 'paswords.doc.' or 'Fort Knox.txt.'

Finally, keep your password recovery options up to date so that a hacker can't take over an abandoned e-mail account. Let's say your ilovegmail@gmail.com account uses ilovehotmail@hotmail.com as the secondary e-mail address for the password recovery option. If you've forgotten about that account, a hacker could sign up for ilovehotmail@hotmail.com and end up hacking into your Gmail account. This is exactly how a French hacker gained access to Twitter's company files earlier this year.

If you're worried about your password security, here are a few more tips:

1) Use a combination where you substitute letters for numbers, words for numbers and include random capitalization. For example, 19 Peach Place becomes 0ne9peacHpl!--note the random exclamation mark at the end.

2) Create a sentence and then pull the first letter from each word, substituting numbers or even symbols were possible. Turning a sentence like, "Zachary Taylor was the twelfth president of the United States," into ZTwt12potUS.

3) Use a random password generator. You can find several online like Strong Password Generator, and others are available in PC World's Downloads Section.

4) If you've chosen your own number, letter, and symbol combination, but aren't sure how strong it is, run it through Microsoft's Password Checker.

5) So now you've got a strong password for all your important e-mail and banking accounts, but how are you going to keep track of all of these endless codes? Consider using a password manager, or just keep them on a piece of paper in the physical world--just don't attach the list to your computer.

If you want more online security than just smart passwords, check out PC World's article on "Super-safe Web Browsing."REad the orginal article http://www.pcworld.com/article/173350/google_offers_advice_on_secure_passwords.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

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