Online Services

Online services and Communication

In this blog today I will be talking about the use of online services. Ever since people have had easy and instant access to the internet, people have used the internet to communicate, share and store information. The internet now is so vast that online services are now a common thing and cover such variety. People use social networking sites to communicate and see where their mates are. People can also use msn/Skype to instantly message people for free!

The rise of online services means that people can connect different services together. When I signed up for Blogger, they enabled me to connect to Google+. This shows that online services are now joining together. Having the ability to connect all online services means usage of the internet has become a lot easier.

Blog

Web logs (early forms of blogs) started appearing around 1997, these blogs were probably paid for because people would have to pay for their own website to be able to start blogging. The first free blogs started roughly in 1999and since then its estimated over 180 million blogs have been created and more are made each day.

Blog websites are a way of keeping an online journal. People are able to write whatever they choose, giving their views on certain topics and making it able for anyone/ everyone to view their work. Blogging has a lot of advantages and enables people to start their writing career for free. People from all over the world can see the blogs and give their own views on the piece of writing. However being able to write anything they choose could cause serious offence to anyone reading the blog. People could choose to write racist or even sexist views on a blog and this could result in discrimination. Blogging may also have an impact in people’s lives by allowing people to see their opinions. People who work in the government may see people’s opinions and then may want to change something in the government due to people’s blogs they saw.

E-mail:

 E-mail (short for electronic mail) is a form of communication through the internet and was created in 1971 and enables messaging from one computer to another.

 E-mails aren’t the quickest form of communication, but they are faster than some forms. Not only are you able to send messages but photos and other attachments such as work documents and power points can be sent with the email to the recipient.

One of the best things about E-mail is that they can be accessed from just about anything. So long as they are connected to the internet or SMS. They also filter out any unwanted messages (spam) and are able to provide

E-mails are sent using a SMTP server and the received at the recipient’s server through an IMAP or POP3 server.

Although there are so many benefits for E-mails people can easily create viruses and transfer them onto E-mails where they can be used to retrieve information from the victim’s computer.

When e-mails first came out writing letters was the only way of contacting people around the world and they would take a long time to be sent and then just as long to wait for a reply. Now a-days emails are a quick, simple and effective way of communicating with anyone on a computer around the world. This advantage over letters meant emails were cheaper, quicker and could hold multiple attachments. This change in communication had a massive impact on people’s lives.

SMS:

Texting is one of the most common ways of communication and is one of the easiest now. SMS has been around since the start of the mobile phone. It is one of the best forms of communication excluding face to face.  People using texting are able to text friends whenever and wherever without internet connection and now those mobile phones are so popular signal for phones have become so much stronger and more widely available. However the usage of texts costs a lot more per message than it does for other messaging services. The mass of people who use mobile phones means that communication has become a lot easier and has had a massive impact on people’s lives and how they talk to people.

Internet Pages:

 The internet is a way of accessing pages that people have created on a network. The internet can be accessed from any household that pays for broadband and has a working computer. It has the biggest source of information in the world and is now a way of making a living. The internet enables quick access to information about almost anything, saving time when it comes to research on certain subjects. It helps people keep in contact with friends who are in another place. Although there are so many positives about internet pages there are a lot if disadvantages too. Unlike information in a book, an internet page cannot be opened anytime without internet connection.  This is a main factor to when using the internet as people can read it only when there’s an internet connection.

Instant messaging and social networks:

Instant messaging such as Skype and MSN are forms of communication via the internet. Social networks also use messaging to talk between profiles. Instant messaging has allowed people to talk to whomever, whenever so long as both profiles are online (connected to the internet).  People are now able communicate instantly and if they are using social networks also know where they are and what they are doing as well .However having this form of communicating means people can easily find information about yourself and know stuff people may want to keep private. A main factor though is that they all need access to the internet and without internet they all wouldn’t work.  Instant messaging has had an impact on people’s lives by changing the way people talk to each other.

Forums:

Forums are websites designed to discussions and answering of questions. People who are registered with the website may post questions or discussions and other people may reply to them. These websites may help people with queries they have or help them with views or opinions of certain things. These websites allow people to have huge discussions about views of people or about the world. Anyone can join and this means forum posts can get really detailed. However having these discussions could mean people who read the posts could get seriously offended by what is written and want to report them for their views. These posts could have impacts on people’s lives by what they see in the post. People may want to change views or in extreme cases maybe religions because of all the discussions posted on the website.