Downloading Goods and Services

A lot of goods and  services that were once physical items are now moving to the internet, such as entertainment and with the rise of online services such as iTunes, Netflix and Steam, there is very little media that can not be bought and consumed without having to leave your computer screen.

There are many reasons why these services are so popular, the first being convenience, as it takes very little effort to buy things, as once your credit card details are stored, you are often able to make purchases with a single click, a lot faster than going out and buying a physical copy.

A second reason is pricing, as all digital sales are a lot cheaper, because all manufacturing costs are reduced to zero, and some of the savings are given to the customer

Finally, impulse buying is a lot of easier to do through the internet, as you can want something and buy it immediately with the internet and be listening, playing or watching it immediately, as it takes just a single click once setup.

Online Entertainment

The internet can be used for a number of things, as well as being an educational haven and a social hub, the internet also has a massive amount of entertainment on it. This is because. as websites have increased in complexity from simple HTML Pages consisting of just Text, images and hyperlinks, to stylish pages using a variety of programing languages and tools.

One of these tools websites have started adopting is adobe flash, a program originally intended for animation which is now used for online videos and video games. One from of online entertainment  now commonly used is youtube, which provides millions of videos to be watched at any time, by anyone.

 

as well as yiutube and other videos sites, there are also websites devoted to games, such as:
Runescape
Kongregate
Newgrounds
with the latter two also incorporating social elements. As well as both these massive used of flash, there are also many other forms of entertainment on the internet, as the internet enters mainstream and more and more people use it as a source of entertainment, more innovative ways to make websites are being found.

Life in the Informatioo Age - Education

over the course of the last 30 years, the way we can consume information has vastly changed. Where traditionally we would have needed to use physical information sources such as books and people with the knowledge, both being incredibly subjective piecs of information. Since the start of the information age, and the birth of the internet a plethora of new sources of information are available, and the vast majority of information can be available with just a few key strokes.

In addition to the internet being full of information, learning in schools and colleges is slowly being done through computers, with vertual learning enviroments. This allows students to be taught without the assistance of a teacher, and may lead to a decline in teaching and education instituitions as computers can fill their roles for a far lower cost.

Apple

Apple as a company are renowned for their odd practices, and their highly desired, highly priced products. In addition to having high prices, apple also have excessive profit margins, leading to them being the most valuable business in the world, in terms of share prices and cash reserves. Part of having these high profit margins, however comes from minimizing production costs by basing production in China, with Foxconn.

Foxconn, although able to produce the parts at low cost, raise serious ethical issues in the manner in which they deal with their employees, such as an employee who was seriously brain damaged doing his job, is being refused payment of his medical costs for not showing up to the factory, even though he is seriously brain damaged and unable to speak.

Apple have been very bad at dealing with these issues, as even though they have the profit levels to allow them to pay costs which ensure ethical staff treatment, they do not. This may eventually lead to their reputation being tarnished, leading to them being unable to charge the same prices.

Catalogues

Catalogues were once the preferred method of letting your customers know about the products you had on offer. They came with high costs and were impossible to update, but were a way of increasing sales by letting products check your range of products without entering your store, resulting in higher sales. However, with the rise of the internet, popular catalogues, such as Argos, Next and Littlewoods all now have online catalogs, which have all the benefit of a catalogue with far lower costs.

After these popular catalogues started realising this, many turned online, here is a list of catalogues which are now online, and either have moved away from physical catalogues or intend be moving away from them soon:

Argos
Next
Littlewoods
Very
JD Williams
Simply Be

The Purpose of Ebay

Today I visited Ebay to discover the purpose of it and other online auction and shopping websites. The purpose of ebay is to provide an online auction service which will allow buyers and sellers to connect to buy and sell goods. The difference between ebay and a retail store is that anyone can sell their goods, resulting in a massive selection of choice for the end user The target audience is anyone interested in buying or selling things they own or need, and are willing to use the internet for convenience. in the process.

Communication Over IM and VoIP

Communication over the internet has become a vital part of the internet, allowing people to stay in touch and send messages from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. However, Email itself is not enough for this, as the delay between emails can slow down the communication process. This is where two relatively new forms of internet communication come in.

Instant Messaging, or IM is a service which transfers messages between you and another person using the same service in real time. It is an effective way of having a conversation as opposed to a series of delayed messages, and is often used in place of actual conversations, or phone calls because of its 0 cost and extreme convenience.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP, or Voice over IP) is a service which allows for the transfer of voice over the internet, in a manner which creates a conversation very similar to a phone call. The difference between a phone call and VoIP is the way it is transmitted. Mobile Phones typically use radio waves to send the phone call from device to device, whereas a VoIP call uses the internet, resulting in less problems of bad signal if both participants have reasonable internet connections.

Although IM and VoIP are both great systems of holding a conversation, there can be problems to using the internet for communication:
Latency -If Either recipient has a slow connection, there is a big delay (latency) between a message being sent and a message being recieved, which can defeat the purpose of a real time conversation if the latency is too high
Reliance on internet connection - internet connections are not stable in all parts of the world (or even all parts of the country) presenting serious issues for some people as internet becomes more and more frequently used for communication.

Using Mobile Phones in Public Places

Mobile phones are a fairly new tool, having only entered main stream use over the past 20 years, and as such a vital parr of everyones life, the societal norms to fit this new tool have to be slowly created. For instance answering your phone in a public place, talking on your phone in a quiet enviroment, turning of your phone in sensitrive areas, or in a particualrly strong case using your mobile phone while attempting to be served at a store. In the case of one store, they have decided to completely ignore any customers talking on their mobile phones, an interesting new way to encourage human interaction.

4G Networks (i've stopped numbering these)

4G is the fourth generation of mobile data networks, being the succesor to 3G, and is used to transmit fast internet connections to devices on the move, through a phones data service, which are able to rival speeds of broadband and wifi hotspots (with download speeds up to 100Mbps)

The need to have broadband like speeds on the move stems from watching high definition (HD) videos, downlo0ad large files and more heavy duty internet activities. 4G is currently only roled out in a select number of countries, sich as the US and Canada. For the majority of the world, howerver 4G is still in it's early stages and offered by very few networks at very high prices. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the only Mobile Operator that offers 4G coverage is Everything Everywhere, at plans which start at prices far above the normal, and only covering 70% of the UK. This makes 4G an incredibly niche product in its current state, but in future with 100% adoption and competitive pricing, 4G can do incredibly things for our mobile phones, as we will be able to use our phones fdr more and more of our internet needs.