Afterword

ThimphuTech was the first technology blog in Bhutan. We started writing it in 2009, just as broadband and mobile internet started to take off. (Although internet in Bhutan was launched in 1999, it was either super-slow or super-expensive, and was only used by a selected few).

In the blog, we wrote about technology and food, but also about plenty of other stuff. The blog became popular and influential in Bhutan. A companion bi-weekly column -- Ask Boaz -- was published for many years in the Kuensel, Bhutan's national newspaper. (The complete Kuensel columns are available as an ebook, Blogging with Dragons).

We stopped updating the blog when we left Bhutan in 2014, but the information within the posts can still prove useful, and thus we decided to keep it online.

We thank all our readers.
Tashi Delek,
Boaz & Galit.

Friday, August 24, 2012

How does all this techie stuff work? Free online course

A new free online course is being offered next month by a Princeton professor using Coursera. The course name is a bit mysterious: Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes. So what is it about? Here are the 20 questions that the course is intended to answer -- this list is actually the course syllabus:
  1. What makes CDMA work for my smartphone? 
  2. How does Google sell its ad spaces? 
  3. How does Google rank webpages? 
  4. How does Netflix recommend movies? 
  5. When can I trust an average rating on Amazon? 
  6. Why does Wikipedia even work? 
  7. How do I viralize a YouTube video and tip a Groupon deal? 
  8. How do I influence people on Facebook and Twitter? 
  9. Can I really reach anyone in 6 steps? 
  10. Does the Internet have an Achilles' heel? 
  11. Why do AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge me $10 a GB? 
  12. How can I pay less for my Internet connection? 
  13. How does traffic get through the Internet? 
  14. Why doesn't the Internet collapse under congestion? 
  15. How can Skype and BitTorrent be free? 
  16. What's inside the cloud of iCloud? 
  17. IPTV and Netflix: how can the Internet support video? 
  18. Why is WiFi faster at home than at a hotspot? 
  19. Why am I only getting a few percent of advertised 4G speed?
  20. Is it really fair that my neighbor's iPad downloads faster?
My question #21 is "Why not take this course?"


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