The Internet's Impact on Journalism

New communication technology, including accessible online publishing software and evolving mobile device technology, means that citizens have the potential to observe and report more immediately than traditional media outlets do. Swarms of amateur online journalists are putting this technology to use, on open publishing sites such as Indymedia and on countless weblogs, adding a grassroots dimension to the media landscape. Bloggers and other amateur journalists are scooping mainstream news outlets as well as pointing out errors in mainstream articles, while people who’ve been made subjects of news articles are responding online, posting supplementary information to provide context and counterpoints. Increasingly, the public is turning to online sources for news, reflecting growing trust in alternative media.

While some traditional news outlets are reacting with fear and uncertainty, many are adopting open publishing features to their own online versions. The Guardian and other mainstream media outlets have added blogs to their sites. The BBC’s web site posts reader’s photos, and other sites solicit and use reader-contributed content. Mainstream news outlets are increasingly scanning blogs and other online sources for leads on news items, and some are hiring journalists from the blogging ranks. Journalists are blogging live from courtrooms, from Baghdad, and elsewhere, allowing them to post frequent updates in near real-time.

As the public turns toward participatory forms of online journalism, and as mainstream news outlets adopt more of those interactive features in their online versions, the media environment is shifting, slowly and incrementally, away from the broadcast model where the few communicate to the many, toward a more inclusive model in which publics and audiences also have voices.

Political Campaigning on the Internet

More and more organizations and corporations across the country are using the Internet for campaigns about issues rather than about individual candidates. The next phase in the Internet political revolution is an always on and always available online campaign.

Issue-advocacy campaigns are moving online in greater and greater numbers. Having an online web site for your campaign offers major advantages over traditional media, including cost, availability (24X7), control of content and the ability to focus your issue(s).

Granted many corporate websites spend enormous amounts of money on their websites but using the web for politics can be relatively inexpensive, just ask Governor Howard Dean. Even the web newbie can use many of the drag and drop website design tools (many of which are free) to build a respectable website in a matter of a few hours. A professional website usually costs just a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, or next to nothing if skilled volunteers are available. Hosting can be your least expensive outlay ranging from just a few dollars a month up to about twenty five dollars a month.

With traditional printed media a brochure used in a direct mailing can cost thousands for the design alone, plus tens-of-thousands of dollars for printing and postage. Television ads start in the tens-of-thousands range for a single 30 second ad.

On the other hand, email campaigns are nearly free. By use of the website volunteers' or supporters' addresses can be gathered, they then can be turned into a mailing list for regular issue notification and for overnight mobilization. A beneficial side effect is that recipients will often forward email newsletters to friends, family who would otherwise not have heard about your campaign.

Multimedia Marketing

Many marketing campaigns for products hook a potential customer in with a catchy advertisement. The hook may come in the form of a slogan or picture. While snappy text and pictorial design might make a customer take a second look, it does not always convert a customer lead into a sale. What Internet marketing tools can you utilize to convert more sales leads into actual customers?

The answer is multimedia marketing. What is multimedia marketing? Let's define “multimedia”. Multimedia is media that involves an advertisement that “talks and moves”. For example, multimedia contains more than just text and/or pictures. Multimedia advertisements contain audio and video elements. By adding audio and video ingredients to your marketing campaign you will see your sales conversion rates soar.

What exactly are audio and video multimedia marketing elements? Audio elements include voice-overs, sound effects, and music. For example, when a potential customer visits your web page the first thing that catches their eye is the beautiful graphics and text information. At this point your customer needs to feel an emotional connection with your company, products, and services. This is where audio elements play a role. Video elements are another tool you can employ in your marketing campaign. You can create your own Internet commercial. You can demonstrate how to use your product through a video. You could even video testimonials from happy customers. A video will allow potential customers to attach a “face” to the product or services you are selling.

The Internet is ready to handle sophisticated audio and video files. Plus, Internet technology is improving every day. You can create these audio and video components in the comfort of your own home or office. It really is that simple.

Internet Crime

Internet crime is crime committed on the Internet, using the Internet and by means of the Internet. Its is a general term that embraces such crimes as phishing, credit card frauds, bank robbery, illegal downloading, industrial espionage, child pornography, kidnapping children via chat rooms, harassment, scams, cyberterrorism, creation and/or distribution of viruses, spam and identity thief and so on. All such crimes are computer related and facilitated crimes. With the evolution of the Internet, along came another revolution of crime where the perpetrators commit acts of crime and wrongdoing on the World Wide Web. Internet crime takes many faces and is committed in diverse fashions. The number of users and their diversity in their makeup has exposed the Internet to everyone. Some criminals in the Internet have grown up understanding this superhighway of information, unlike the older generation of users. This is why Internet crime has now become a growing problem worldwide. Some crimes committed on the Internet have been exposed to the world and some remain a mystery up until they are perpetrated against someone or some company.

The different types of Internet crime vary in their design and how easily they are able to be committed. Internet crimes can be separated into two different categories. There are crimes that are only committed while being on the Internet and are created exclusively because of the World Wide Web. The typical crimes in criminal history are now being brought to a whole different level of innovation and ingenuity. Such new crimes devoted to the Internet are email “phishing”, hijacking domain names, virii propagation, and cyber vandalism. A couple of these crimes are activities that have been exposed and introduced into the world. People have been trying to solve virus problems by installing virus protection software and other software that can protect their computers. Other crimes such as email “phishing” are not as known to the public until an individual receives one of these fraudulent emails. These emails are cover faced by the illusion that the email is from your bank or another bank. When a person reads the email he/she is informed of a problem with he/she personal account or another individual wants to send the person some of their money and deposit it directly into their account. The email asks for your personal account information and when a person gives this information away, they are financing the work of a criminal.

My First Attempt (not a very good one) at Making a Video.

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface is a forthcoming multi-touch product from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures or physical objects. It is expected to be released in late 2008.

Imagine being able to actually touch your digital photos and drag them around by hand, or use your finger as a Photoshop paint brush. You can do that and much more with this surface computing product. The Minority Report-style computing environment allows you to directly interact with a touch-sensitive 30-inch tabletop setup using nothing but your fingers. Its multi-touch interface gives you hands-on control of content such as photos, music and maps. Microsoft Surface can also sense objects that you place on the tabletop. Sit down a Wi-Fi enabled digital camera, for example, and all of your recently captured photos magically flow out of the device onto the computer screen, ready for quick emailing or saving. The technology won't be available for home use right away, however. Hotels, retail stores, and restaurants will get them first though.

Expect the Microsoft Surface to soon become a common item in every household, or even a basic necessity, as has become of the computer and the mobile phone. With the vast functions available on the Surface, practically anything could be done at our fingertips, literally. Bills could be paid, groceries could be ordered, and so on. Even though it will only be released for commercial use initially, expect Microsoft's Surface to be in the home of every first-world country in a few years to come. And you thought Bill Gates could not get any richer.

Issues about Security, Privacy and Legal Issues for E-Business

Electronic Business, commonly referred to as "e-Business", may be defined broadly as any business process that relies on an automated information system. Today, this is mostly done using Web-based technologies. Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers. E-business has been benefitial to both companies and consumers alike. Business can now even reach more markets, provide new services and even enhance responsiveness. No doubt, it has revolutionized the current market. However with all this increased convenience, comes some rather disturbing issues though.

Ever since the introduction of the Internet, security has always been a debated issue. It was soon discovered that with the aid of the Internet, computers could be hacked into, and any information that was deemed to be private or confidential, could be accessed by anyone with the proper skills/tools. This was a worrying issue as high-security websites such as government and e-baking ones for example, could now be hacked into and vital information could end up in the hands of the wrong people. This deterred many from making online purchases, as there have been many reports of credit card fraud and online scams. However, it is also the responsibility of the consumer to take into account the credibility and reputability of the said company. The bigger and more well-known the business is, the higher its credibility. After all, no one is putting a gun to our head and forcing us to reveal our credit card information.

These days, all the bigger firms and government agencies are spending millions of dollars to make sure their networks are hack-proof and as secure as possible. E-business has now become a billion dollar industry, with a significant market share. Still, with this increased convenience, comes added risk.

Second Life

How many of us have actually wondered how it would feel like be in another person's shoes, or how would it feel like to be a completely different person altogether? With today's advances in the gaming industry, that possibility has now become a reality.

In 2003, a company named Linden Research Inc. developed a "game" that might have changed the future of interactive gaming. Second Life is an Internet based Virtual World, where users can socialize, connect and create using voice and text chat. Users are able to interact with each other through motional avatars from which they can explore, socialize with other users, participate in individual or group activities and create and trade items and services between one another.

While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, this description does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. It's a stretch to call Second Life a game because the "Residents", as players prefer to be called, create everything. Unlike in other virtual worlds, Second Life's technology lets people create objects like clothes or buildings from scratch, LEGO-style, rather than simply pluck avatar outfits or ready-made buildings from a menu. There is no set storyline, and players are free to do as they wish.

While Second Life may spark a revolution in the Gaming industry, what social repercussions will come about as a result? As it is, there has been much concern about addiction to online games. Children and adults alike can sit in front of a monitor for hours at end, playing multi-player games such as World of Warcraft for example. A certain few have speculated that this surge in online gaming/interaction would result in the weakening of social ties and relationships as it would decrease human interaction. At the end of the day, it is at the discretion of the individual, if it should be used or abused.

Brief History & Evolution Of The Internet

The Internet (Information Network) has now become a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services alike. But how exactly did this vast network come about?

In the 1960's, the Department of Defense wing of the United States government sought to create a network that would still function in the event of a disaster, be it natural or man-made. It sought to create advances in the field of information storage and retrieval. With the assistance of some graduate students, ARPANET, the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet, was soon developed. Packet Switching, a communications paradigm,allows a system to use one communication link to communicate with more than one machine by assembling data into packets. If information could not be sent directly, it would navigate around traffic to find an alternate route.

TCP/IP the first two network protocols to be defined, emerged in 1978. Consisting of a set of layers, each layer solves a set of problems involving the transmission of data, and provides a well-defined service to the upper layer protocols based on using services from some lower layers. By 1982, the U.S. Department of Defense made TCP/IP the standard for all military computer networking.

It is generally agreed upon that the turning point of the Internet began with the introduction of the Mosaic web browser in 1993, which was a graphical browser developed by a team at the NCSA. Mosaic's graphical interface, which was primarily text-based, became the preferred interface for accessing the Internet. It was eventually overtaken by Marc Andreessen Netscape Navigator, and then was soon displaced with the development of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Today, the Internet has become part of everyday life. It has grown to include more services, e-mail, online chatting and file-sharing among the few. As of 30th September 2007, it is estimated that 1.244 billion people now use the internet regularly.