At a central hotel near Athens (30 October - 2 November), a very important meeting for the future of Internet's regulation is going to take place. I am referring to the "Internet Governance Forum", a conference organized by the Ministry of Transportations and Telecommunications of Greece, on behalf of United Nations. This is the 1st forum that takes place on such a large scale and it is the result of the very successful World Summit on the Information Society that took place in Geneva (2003) and in Tunisia, last year. The IGF is going to be a critical point in Internet's history, as hundreds of issues that have political, social, economical and of course legal dimensions will be discussed. I am so sad that I won't have the chance to attend it, but I am so happy that have oriented my studies at these fields of high importance and value for our future society. For any further information, visit the official IGF website, or the global IGF website. If you can't find the program of the conference, use this direct link.
You can also watch in real time the IGF using the relavant links. The quality is excellent, any connection faster than 512K should be fine for buffering and streaming the content.

A feature which I wanted long time ago to implement to the web site is the RSS/ATOM feeds listing. This little plugin/module fetches feeds from the indicated sites and displays them all together, or categorized, by web site. I also added a block in the front page, so the most recent ones would be displayed there to, as short headlines. This feature is really useful and makes the web site more interesting and personalized, according to the selected feeds of course. This is another way of external linking, but the main purpose is not to recommend the web site, but to display the information provided. Of course all the feeds are licensed and can be used freely in any website or software that supports this feature. For the present I have selected to add the BBC news front page and the feeds from the University's LLM courses and program. Of course I intend to add more feeds that i find interesting or remarkable.

After 4 years or so, Microsoft has released the new version of the windows' browsing software, well known as Internet Explorer. The software is relatively moving away from MS habits of creating awful unstable software, it is really faster than its ancestors and offers many goodies, such as tabbed browsing, RSS feeds compatibility, anti-fishing technology, and others. I must admit that I am not a Microsoft fanatic, nor an enemy of every single product that is released by Bill and and his programmers. But it is true that the reality well known to all of us is coming from an operating system, Windows, with so many flaws, that sometimes it drives you crazy!! Waiting for the Vista releases in early December, IE 7 was a positive sample of some progress done by MS developers. Hopefully we will see a better and more stable environment, otherwise I think we are going to ask our selves, "why don't we Ubuntu" ?? So, it is true that for most users, a browser is the software that is active the most of the time, so its stability and quality is a need of an extremely high importance. So, I will never abandon Opera, I think it's the very best browsing software around, but at least, from now on, I have another reliable browser in Windows, Microsoft's IE 7.

After searching the web I found a very interesting plugin, viewed in many web pages so far. Clustrmaps plugin is a really nice counter (you can see it in action right, beneath the counter) that locates the visitor on a world map, according to the IP of the ISP. It is not of a great importance and I actually thought that it would spoil the design of the site, but still I decided to use it. If they could provide a transparent sticker, it would have been much better. This service is absolutely free at this basic "counter-locator" indicator, but you one can still pay a symbolic price for getting some extra features, like zooming. The only problem is that I cannot synchronize it with the built-in counter i use in the website... I would recommend to take a look at their website here, and why not try it on your website. I think that it reminds us that no-one is absolutely anonymous in the internet, a fact that can prevent users from unauthorized use of the services provided by a web site, but also an important limitation of our rights in the digital millennium...

Look what I have found! A skype status icon... Doh, it surely existed for years now, available for every user to use, but I felt the joy of exploring the service just a few minutes ago! Of course the next step was to integrate it to the web page, without turning the design into a real mess, placing a huge skype icon in the middle of nowhere. So I integrated it at the footer, it looks pretty neat and descent. So by clicking it you can call me directly, and of course according to its color you can see my skype status. Rubbish, I know, but sometimes these little snippets are fascinating!
So, take a look at the footer...

After completing the last obligation in Greece, taking part in the oath ceremony, the new academic year is really starting for me here in Edinburgh. Next time I am going to speed that cute green Citroen will be in Christmas... The courses here have began for good and hundreds of pages are emerging from the reading lists that are assigned to us. I thought of uploading some guides or relevant documents to this website, but I considered the IP issues that could emerge, so I should first take a permission for it. Anyway, I think that slowly I will be able to write some thoughts down and make a proper use of the sections creating a little blog or something like this. But this will will happen only if I have enough time... The other thing that has really changed since I got back here is the weather. It is getting cold up here, reminding me that the winter is coming and it won't be a "greek" one...

The oath ceremony for the graduates of June 2006 is going to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, in Athens' University main building. The "show" is going on in the UOA, every year has its own highlights... How can it be possible that students are having exams without having the results of the previous exam period? Really, is there going to be any hope for any improvements in this university? No one doubts the university's academic quality, but shouldn't be more things to be proud of? So, heading back home for a while, after spending 22 days here in Edinburgh...

On Wednesday 27th September in the Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh, the freshers' events took place. The events were organized by the athletics' society of Edinburgh's University. It was a nice day, with enough time to try some events, like 400m, 100m, 800m, long jump, shot put and medicine ball throw. All the athletes who took part had a nice time, and we also had some relatively good results for this period of the year. Next appointment is on the 1st of November for the official freshers' races, between the main Scottish universities. Hopefully we will have improved till then and be able to show some nice performance to the spectators.

I am deeply sorry but I had to restrict the access to the guestbook. I had so many SPAM messages, that I find it better not to have a guestbook, than deleting messages all day. People are not using the internet, are abusing it. And still, I remember some "high class" students in the Athens' University claiming that internet is "free and open to everyone and anything, and so it should stay...". Freedom does not mean anarchy, it is a really complex legal term. So, God help the poor ones who think that internet is "a free playground"...

I have already spent ten days here in Edinburgh. The university is perfect, the facilities even better and it seems that I am going to have a very interesting year in this town. Unfortunately I haven't got enough online time, due to this phone's line problem I am experiencing, but I can still use the university's wifi access network. I want to write lots of things down about the city, the university, the shock that I am experiencing after five years in the university of Athens... There is plenty of time these days, but no internet connection!! So I will have to use the wifi access more frequently, even if I don't feel very comfortable carrying this 4kg laptop around Edinburgh!! So, I will try to keep in contact and publish some articles about what's happening here within the next few days. Next week I hope I'll have the broadband installed!
ps: someone keeps spamming my guestbook, I would advise him to stop...