2nd PROJECT - ICT AND MULTIMEDIA FUNDAMENTALS II

INTERNET

The Internet is a global network connecting millions of computers. More than 100 countries are linked into exchanges of data, news and opinions. According to Internet World Stats, as of December 31, 2011 there was an estimated 2,267,233,742 Internet users worldwide. This represents 32.7% of the world's population.

Unlike online services, which are centrally controlled, the Internet is decentralized by design. Each Internet computer, called a host, is independent. Its operators can choose which Internet services to use and which local services to make available to the global Internet community. Remarkably, this anarchy by design works exceedingly well. There are a variety of ways to access the Internet. Most online services offer access to some Internet services. It is also possible to gain access through a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP).

WORLD WIBE WEB

A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well asgraphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.

There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy toaccess the World Wide Web; Two of the most popular being Firefox andMicrosoft's Internet Explorer.

INTERNET SERVICES

• ELECTRONIC MAIL

Short for electronic mail, the transmission of messages over communications networks. The messages can be notes entered from the keyboard or electronic files stored on disk. Most mainframes, minicomputers, and computer networks have an e-mail system. Some electronic-mail systems are confined to a single computer system or network, but others have gateways to other computer systems, enabling users to send electronic mail anywhere in the world. Companies that are fully computerized make extensive use of e-mail because it is fast, flexible, and reliable.

Most e-mail systems include a rudimentary text editor for composing messages, but many allow you to edit your messages using any editor you want. You then send the message to the recipient by specifying the recipient's address. You can also send the same message to several users at once. This is called broadcasting.

Sent messages are stored in electronic mailboxes until the recipient fetches them. To see if you have any mail, you may have to check your electronic mailbox periodically, although many systems alert you when mail is received. After reading your mail, you can store it in a text file, forward it to other users, or delete it. Copies of memos can be printed out on a printer if you want a paper copy.

All online services and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer e-mail, and most also support gateways so that you can exchange mail with users of other systems. Usually, it takes only a few seconds or minutes for mail to arrive at its destination. This is a particularly effective way to communicate with a group because you can broadcast a message or document to everyone in the group at once.

Although different e-mail systems use different formats, there are some emerging standards that are making it possible for users on all systems to exchange messages. In the PC world, an important e-mail standard is MAPI. The CCITT standards organization has developed the X.400 standard, which attempts to provide a universal way of addressing messages. To date, though, the de facto addressing standard is the one used by theInternetsystem because almost all e-mail systems have an Internet gateway.


                                                     

• VIDEO CONFERENCING 

Conducting a conference between two or more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data. For example, a point-to-point (two-person) video conferencing system works much like a video telephone. Each participant has a video camera, microphone, and speakers mounted on his or her computer. As the two participants speak to one another, their voices are carried over the network and delivered to the other's speakers, and whatever images appear in front of the video camera appear in a window on the other participant's monitor.

 Multipoint video conferencing allows three or more participants to sit in a virtual conference room and communicate             as if they were sitting right next to each other. Until the mid 90 s, the hardware costs made video conferencing    prohibitively expensive for most organizations, but that situation is changing rapidly. Many analysts believe that video conferencing will be one of the fastest-growing segments of the computer industry in the latter half of the decade.

• SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK

Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Examples :

Facebook

Facebook is an online social networking service, whose name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. 

  


 Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking service and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".

                                            

     

  KEEK      

 Keek is a free online social networking service that allows its users to upload video status updates, which are called "keeks". Users can post keeks to the keek website using a webcam or via the Keek mobile apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone.

  

                               

Youtube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006, on which users can upload, view and share videos.

                                 

• BLOG

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic – there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies – blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

                                            

• INTERNET RELAY CHAT

Internet Relay Chat or IRC has become very popular as more people get connected to the Internet because it enables people connected anywhere on the Internet to join in live discussions. Unlike older chat systems, IRC is not limited to just two participants.

To join an IRC discussion, you need an IRC client and Internet access. The IRC client is a program that runs on your computer and sends and receives messages to and from an IRC server. The IRC server, in turn, is responsible for making sure that all messages are broadcast to everyone participating in a discussion. There can be many discussions going on at once; each one is assigned a unique channel.

                               

• ONLINE SHOPPING

Online shopping or online retailing is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Alternative names are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, and virtual store.

   

• SEARCH ENGINE

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keyword sand returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

            

                             

• NEWSGROUP

A newsgroup is an Internet-based discussion about a particular topic. These topics range from sports, cars, investing, teen problems, and some stuff you probably don't want to know about. Users post messages to a news server which then sends them to a bunch of other participating servers. Then other users can access the newsgroup and read the postings. The groups can be either "moderated," where a person or group decides which postings will become part of the discussion, or "unmoderated," where everything posted is included in the discussion.

                                             

• MAILING LIST

A mailing list is a list of people who subscribe to a periodic mailing distribution on a particular topic. On the Internet, mailing lists include each person's e-mail address rather than a postal address. Mailing lists have become a popular way for Internet users to keep up with topics they're interested in. Many software producers and other vendors are now using them as a way to keep in touch with customers.

                                             

         REFERENCES

• whatis.techtarget.com
• www.webopedia.com
• en.wikipedia.org 
• www.harley.com