Hello John,

 

As always it is good to hear from you. The peace of the Lord Jesus be with you and yours.

 

"Internet in a can" is a name I coined to describe a simple but effective method for transferring files between computers. It isn't anything new and everyone knows about it. What I hope to convey with the name is a new way to look at this very common practice, to open peoples eyes in other words. So, based on the above, here is a description of "Internet In A Can":

 

The internet is built very much like a water system except it carries data instead of water. And just like a water system, the Internet has different size pipes. It has great big "pipes" that carry the data between countries and cities down to little "pipes" the size of telephone lines that bring the data to the user. But as you are aware, water can be poured from a pipe into a container and carried to a different location, even one without piping. The water in the pipe is the same water that is in the bucket. The difference between the systems is only the AMOUNT of water that can be transported, not the type or the quality.

       "Internet in a Can" works the same way except we are talking about data, not water.  The "bucket" is any one of a multitude of storage medium such as floppy discs, CDs, portable hard drives, and the new USB keys. Each "bucket" holds different amounts of data. Which size you need depends on your intended use and the equipment you have available. For small file transfers the data can be saved to a floppy at a cybercafe, for instance, and carried to your offline computer. For larger files you might want to find a computer with a faster Internet download speed AND a Cd burner. One CD can hold 700 mb. One page might be only 50 or 60 kb, just a "drop" in the bucket. And then there are portable hard drives that can just plug into a computer without the user needing any technical knowledge. These would let you store and transfer huge amounts of data.  Now if you plan to download and move a lot of data you might want to get a USB remote hard drive loader. (see examples at http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=31389&Sku=ULT31310 and http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1162561&Sku=M501-1052. The second item lacks its own power supply which can cause problems. If you can get a semi-permanent location to download from you might prefer the device at http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=394846&CatId=285. This one involves installing part of it, a receptacle,  in the computers ahead of time and you will need two of them (one for your home machine). The harddrive is in a case and the case is inserted into the receptacle. This style is not "hot swappable" which means you need to shut the computer down to insert it and start up again with the hard drive in it. Then it will show up as "drive d" in your computer. Using our water analogy again, a hard drive full of data would be like a water truck. It contains many days supply so that even though it isn't flowing like a pipe there is such tremendous volume that there is a long-term supply.

   

Internet In A Can, Computer Labs, and Moodle

  I've included an article which is step by step instruction about how to build a very inexpensive computer lab that utilizes old computers. I've been able to get Moodle (remember that teaching software that I keep talking about) installed on it so the lab would be self contained and wouldn't necessarily need to be connected to the Internet. That is where "Internet In A Can" fits in. By us agreeing to use the common interface "Moodle", courses made and created on one Moodle can be saved and installed on another Moodle. So a teacher (or more accurately a teacher's aide) here in this country could make a course, download all the study material for the course, save it to a CD, and mail it to you (i.e. Internet In A Can). When you receive the CD you follow a few simple steps and the course is now installed on your computer lab server. This enables even those ministries that are cut off to still reap major benefit from the Internet. The software that the lab comes with includes many, many programs for education.

     Just so you know, if you can get just the motherboards of old computers we might be able to get you set up with a computer lab. Read the article for a description of everything you need, but what I am saying is that the "thin clients" (the individual workstations of the lab) don't need harddrives, nor cd drives, and probably not even power supplies (with a little bit of electrical knowledge to bypass them). If all those items are missing most people would consider the computer inoperable and junk. If you can find something like that go ahead and grab them and we could start building it. I'll be looking for computer donations next week but even if I find them shipping costs will still need to be addressed. Some of the weight, and thus shipping costs, can be reduced when we remove excess parts.

Again, it is great hearing from you. Please be praying for this work. There are those trying to stop it from happening.

 

Your brother in Christ,

Robert