CYBER CONTRACTS

Cyber or Electronic Contract

An electronic contract is an agreement created and "signed" in electronic form -- in other words, no paper or other hard copies are used. For example, you write a contract on your computer and email it to a business associate, and the business associate emails it back with an electronic signature indicating acceptance. An e-contract can also be in the form of a "Click to Agree" contract, commonly used with downloaded software. The user clicks an "I Agree" button on a page containing the terms of the software license before the transaction can be completed.


The contracting parties must stick on to the terms of the contract and must have sufficient redressal in case of breach (violation) of the rules of the contract.

Basic issues invovled in forming the contract are:

1. Intention to enter into a legal agreement
2. Proposal
3. Acceptance
4. Communication
5. Consideration
6. Competence of parties
7. Remedies for breach of contract

An internet contract is one that is entered into using the medium of internet, either by 'clicking' the I AGREE button or through e-mail.

The legal issues arising out of e-contracts have not yet been dealt by in Indian courts and the existing laws such as:
IT Act 2000, Indian Penal Code 1860 and subsequent amendments, The Indian Evidence Act 1872, The Bankers Book Evidence Act 1891 and the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, are applied to deal with issues arising in the process of an e-contract.

There are two major types of e-contracts:

CLICK WRAP and
SHRINK WRAP

A clickwrap agreement  is a common type of agreement (often used in connection with software licenses). Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media.

The content and form of clickwrap agreements vary widely. Most clickwrap agreements require the end user to manifest his or her assent by clicking an "ok" or "agree" button on a dialog box or pop-up window. A user indicates rejection by clicking cancel or closing the window. Upon rejection, the user can no longer use or purchase the product or service.

NEW MEDIA LAB LOGO

For creating a logo, you may visit cooltext.com. Create the logo (it should take less than 15 minute, even for a novice). Take a print out and mail the picture to me:

neelprof@gmail.com

NEW MEDIA LAB 8

Prepare guidelines for writing a crime report.

1. Know your limits

If someone has been charged with an offence or is about to be charged, you are limited in what you can say so that you do not prejudice the chance of a fair trial. That does not mean that you must say nothing about the crime, but it does mean that you should only report those details which will not be contested in court, keeping out personal opinions.



If no-one has been arrested and charged, you can say much more, always bearing in mind that you could be sued for defamation by anyone involved if you do not stick to the truth.

In many crime stories, once you have told the most important details in your first few paragraphs, you will want to tell the story in chronological order (the order in which things happened). You should already have gathered plenty of information, so now lead your reader or listener step-by-step through the event, explaining things in detail where necessary.

2. Features and background stories


Crime reporting can be dull if all you do is record what has happened and when it happened - dull for you and for your readers or listeners. You can add interest for everyone with background reports and features. These can be done when you have some spare time between news stories or while awaiting further developments in continuing cases.



The simplest background stories for crime reporters are general features about crime. By these we mean features (or current affairs programs) on such things as the rise in burglaries; why psychologists think more rapes happen in hot weather; how people can protect their homes from thieves during the holidays; a new course in self-defence for women.

3. Illustrations

Always try to think of ways of illustrating your crime stories. A good picture is worth a thousand words and a simple diagram can save readers struggling through lines of text of description.

4. Language in writing crime stories




There is a lot of need for care and accuracy when reporting anything to do with crime and the courts. Accuracy must extend all the way through the work, including the words you use when writing your stories, whether for news, features or current affairs.



You must select each word in your story carefully then, when you think you have finished, you must go back to the beginning and read it through, checking again.


The police, criminals and the courts use specialist terms, some of them technical in nature, some of them short forms and some of them slang. You should only ever use them for two reasons: (a) for precision if no alternative is available and (b) for added colour.

5. Legal terms

The exact wording of charges causes most problems for starting journalists. You must always use the correct terms. For example, there is a clear legal distinction between murder and manslaughter. The police, the courts and criminals also use jargon words as a short form. Jargon is specialised language concerned with a particular subject, culture or profession. It is not usually found in the everyday speech of your ordinary readers or listeners. Your readers or listeners may not understand jargon or any words which are not in clear and everyday language.
 
Many journalists believe that they add drama and life to a story by adding adjectives and adverbs. They refer to "a brutal slaying", as if another slaying can be gentle. They say that ambulances "rushed" to the scene, as if some ambulance drivers dawdle in an emergency.



Adjectives and adverbs usually get in the way of understanding, unless they add to the accuracy of defining something, such as red car. If you choose the right noun, you will not need many adjectives. For example, all screams are high-pitched, all explosions are loud, all battles are fierce, so you do not need the adjective.

TO SUMMARISE:


Write crime stories about people - the criminals, the police and the victims


Keep your writing simple and straightforward; avoid jargon


Make your reports more interesting with appropriate quotes or actuality; attribute all comments and attribute facts where necessary

NEW MEDIA LAB 9

Report on hardware components of computers with different configurations

Hardware comprises all of the physical part of the computer such as Monitor, CPU, motherboard, ram, CD-Rom, printer, scanner, hard disk, flash drive (AKA pen drive), processor, pci buses, floppy disk, power supply, VGA card, sound card, network interface card, peripherals, joystick, mouse, keyboard, foot pedal, computer fan, camera, headset and others.  




On the other hard software is a logical part of a computer and is used to carry out the instructions, storing, executing and developing other software programs. A typical PC consists of a case or chassis in the desktop or tower case and these components.



Motherboard

• CPU

• Computer Fan

• RAM

• BIOS

• Digital Circuitry

• Computer Fan

• PCI Slots







PC Buses

• PCI

• USB

• Hyper-transport

• AGP

• ISA

• EISA

• VLB





Media

• CD-Rom

• DVD-Rom

• Combo box

• Joystick

• BD-Rom drive



Internal storage

• Hard disk (ATA & SATA)

• Data array controller

• Floppy disk



Other Peripheral Devices

• Mouse

• Modems

• Digital Camera

• Sound, Video Cards

• Printer



Output Devices

• Printer

• Scanner

• Monitor

• Speakers

• Headset

• Video output devices



CPU (Central Processing Unit): CPU or central processing unit relates to a specific or processor. The performance of the computer is determined by the CPU chip (processor speed) and the other computer circuitry. Currently, the Pentium chip (processor) is the most popular even though there are other chips available in the market today such as AMD, Motorola and others. The clocks speed becomes most important factor in determining the performance of a computer. The motherboard contains the hardware circuitry and connections that allow the different hardware components of the PC to interact and communicate with each other. Most computer software is being developed for the latest processors so it would be difficult to use the older systems.



Hard Disk Drives – Disk drive is the mechanism to run the disks. All disks need a drive to get the information, read it and put it back to the disks. Hard disk is used to store the data permanently. Often the terms disk and drive used to describe the same thing but it should be clear that a disk is a storage device.



Modem – A modem is used for the modulation and demodulation of the data that is transferred through the modem and the telephone lines. Modem translates the data from digital to analog from analog to digital. Because on the telephone lines data can travel in the form of the analog signals and in the computer data transmits in the form of digital signals. Modems are measured by the speed which is called baud rate. The typical baud rate is 56Kb.



Keyboard – The keyboard is used to type something or input information to the computer. There are different designs and models of the keyboards in the market. The most common layout of the keyboard is QWERTY layout. A standard keyboard has 101 keys and embedded keys.



Video cards-Video cards allow computer to display video, graphics and animation. Some video cards allow computers to display television. A video card with a digital video camera allows users to produce live video. A high speed broadband internet connection is required to watch the videos on net.



Network cards: Network interface cards allow PCs to connect with each other and communicate. Every network computer is required to have a NIC card. NIC cards are required both in wired and wireless networking.



Cables: There are two broad types of cables internal cables, which are embedded on the mother board circuit that performs the communication between the devices and CPU. The other types of the cables are the network cables like coaxial cable, CAT 5, Ethernet cables. These cables are used for the communication purposes between the devices or computers.



Memory – Memory is the one of the important piece of the hardware. Sometimes memory chip memory is confused with the hard disk memory. Sometimes unallocated space of the hard disk is used as virtual memory also known as page file. This type of memory is a temporary memory and is used actual memory is less and requires some additional memory to perform a specific task.



RAM (Random Access Memory) RAM is a memory that is being used by the computer to store the information temporarily. For example when some work is performed on some applications that work is temporarily stored in the RAM. More RAM in the computer more faster computer works. Today at least requirement of a modern PC is 64 RAM. RAM is in the form of a chip and different vendors have developed the RAM of different capacities.



Mouse – Every modern computer requires a mouse for faster operations. Generally a mouse has two buttons left and right to perform different functions. One type of the mouse has a round ball under the bottom. Another type of the mouse use optical system to track the movement of the mouse.



Monitors – The monitor is used to display the information on the screen. All the activities of a computer, functions and tasks are seen on the computer screen and this is called outputting information. Monitors come in many sizes and shapes, monochrome or full colors. Today most computers use LCD screens. It is light weight and consumes less power as compared to the monitors.



Printers – The printer takes the information from the PC and transfers it to the paper of different sizes, which are placed in the printer device. There are three basic types of a printer such as dot matrix, inkjet and laser.



Scanners- Scanners allow you to transfer pictures and photographs to your computer. A scanner is used to scan the images and pictures. You can then send the image to someone, modify it or take a print out of it. With optical character recognition software you can convert printed documents into the text that you can use in the word processor.

Digital camera- You can take the digital photographs with the digital cameras. The images are stored on the memory chip of the digital cameras and you can transfer them to your computer with the USB drive.

Configurations

A recommended configuration

To meet the minimum requirements of commonly used software and to use the Internet effectively, a computer should meet the following minimum specifications. A recommended configuration  is:



Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Recommended)

Processor: 1 GHz 32 bit, 2 GHz or better duo core 64 bit recommended

Operating system: Windows Vista/Windows 7 Premium or Business

Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 250 GB or more recommended with at least 25 GB available space

Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended

For networking: TCP/IP. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). For modem connections, dial-up adapter installed. (Modem connections are not recommended due to very slow connection speed.)

Support for DirectX 9 Graphics adaptor or better, with WDDM Driver, 256MG of graphics memory or better (non-shared), Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, and 32 bits per pixel capabilities

CD/DVD Read/Write drive, dual layer recommended

Audio Output

Windows XP (Minimum)

Processor: Pentium class or comparable, 1GHz minimum ; 3 GHz or better recommended

Operating system: Windows XP minimum

Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 250 GB or more recommended

Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended


For networking: TCP/IP. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). For modem connections, dial-up adapter installed. (Modem connections are not recommended due to very slow connection speed.)


Vista or Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor


To check your computer to see if it can run vista you can download a program from Microsoft called the Vista Upgrade Advisor or Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It can check your computers hardware and software and advise you on what components will not run under Vista.


Macintosh computer


Processor: G4 minimum; Intel Core(duo) 2 Ghz or better or better recommended


Operating system: Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) minimum, Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6) recommended


Disk space: 80 GB hard drive minimum; 200 GB or more recommended


Memory (RAM): 1 GB minimum; 2 GB or more recommended


For networking Open Transport (TCP/IP control panel. Wireless 802.11 b/g/n (WPA2 compatible). Modem access not recommended.


Case – Case or casing covers the whole computer’s circuitry. There are two types of casings desktop and tower casing. There is room inside the casing to add or remove components. Cases come in many sizes like desktop, mini, midi and tower. There are some additional empty slots inside the cases such as IDE, USB, ASI, PCI and firewire slots.



Cards – Cards are the hardware components that are added to the computer to increase their functionalities and capabilities.



Sound cards produce the sound like music and voice. The older cars were 8, 16 and then 32 bits.

Color cards allow computers to produce colors. Initially there were 2, 4 and then 16 bits. The main types of the graphic cards are EGA, VGA and SGA. The 32 cards are the standard to display almost billions of the colors on the monitor.

NEW MEDIA LAB 10

2. Create an e - page

An e page is simply any electronic page. You may take a print out of one of the pages of your blog and submit.

NEW MEDIA LAB 11

1. Select 5 news stories and explain the news values

News values determine how much importance a news story is given by the media, and the attention it is given by the audience.

There are several news values:

Impact: If the news has an impact on people directly. For e.g. budget news, increase in fuel prices.
Timeliness: information has timeliness if it happened recently.
Prominence: information has prominence if it involves a well-known person or organization.
Proximity: information has proximity if it involves something happened somewhere nearby.
Conflict: information has conflict if it involves some kind of disagreement between two or more people.
Weirdness: information has weirdness if it involves something unusual or strange.

What you need to do:

Select five news items, paste them on a white paper leaving at least 5 lines below each cut out. Underline the word (s) that you feel meet the news value criteria. Write down the word, and the news value that it represents.

Copyright Issues

The author of a work, who has created the work has copyright over the work. The copyright may also be held by the publisher.  A person or business that wants to use copyrighted materials in some way needs permission to exercise the appropriate rights.

Although we usually think of copyright in terms of written materials, many other kinds of things can be copyrighted: photographs, movies, musical compositions, and recordings of musical compositions, for instance. Some of the toughest legal problems on the Web deal with the fact that a Website can involve "multimedia"-e.g., combinations of items, involving different rights, and whose rights are held by different people.

One of the most important rights in the "bundle" is the right to control "derivative works, " such as sequels and works using the characters of a work of fiction in other contexts. As long as a work is in copyright, only the copyright proprietor can determine how its characters will be used.


Exceptions to Normal Copyright Requirements



Public Domain
 
Copyright doesn't last forever: material "falls into the public domain" after the copyright expires.





Fair Use




There are also some situations in which some kind of use can be made of copyrighted material



without infringing on the copyright. One of the most important is "fair use": the opposite of


unfairly taking someone else's work. For instance, it is a fair use to discuss the ideas in a book or


article in another book or article, and even to quote short passages as part of a review, discussion,


or comment. There are four major elements in fair use, as defined by Copyright Act ¤107 and a


body of case law:


• How and why the material is used; non-profit educational use is much more likely to be considered fair than for-profit commercial use


• The nature of the work or trademark allegedly copied


• How much of the allegedly copied work is used-and what percentage of the whole it constitutes


• Whether the asserted fair use limits the commercial potential of the allegedly copied work

Legal issues in new media

Copyright Issues



Legal Problems of Domain Names



Patent Issues



Liabikity Issues for On-line Publishers and Distributors



Privacy



Credit card fraud
 
Spam
 
 
 

Assignment IV

Assignment IV

Submit on or before 6th April   2010

1.  What is a communications satellite ?
2. What are the applications of communications satellite?

2.

multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different media. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms.

Multimedia is usually recorded and played, displayed or accessed by information content processing devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can also be part of a live performance.  The term "rich media" is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Hypermedia can be considered one particular multimedia application.

Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active content progresses without any navigational control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a computer game or used in self-paced computer based training. Hypermedia is an example of non-linear content.

Major characteristics of multimedia

Multimedia presentations may be viewed in person on stage, projected, transmitted, or played locally with a media player. A broadcast may be a live or recorded multimedia presentation. Broadcasts and recordings can be either analog or digital electronic media technology. Digital online multimedia may be downloaded or streamed. Streaming multimedia may be live or on-demand.

Multimedia games and simulations may be used in a physical environment with special effects, with multiple users in an online network, or locally with an offline computer, game system, or simulator.

The various formats of technological or digital multimedia may be intended to enhance the users' experience, for example to make it easier and faster to convey information. Or in entertainment or art, to transcend everyday experience.

The term "multimedia" was coined by Bob Goldstein.

Usage

Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to, advertisements, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics, business, scientific research and spatial temporal applications. Several examples are as follows:

• Creative industries

Creative industries use multimedia for a variety of purposes ranging from fine arts, to entertainment, to commercial art, to journalism, to media and software services provided for any of the industries listed below. An individual multimedia designer may cover the spectrum throughout their career. Request for their skills range from technical, to analytical, to creative.

•  Commercial

Much of the electronic old and new media used by commercial artists is multimedia. Exciting presentations are used to grab and keep attention in advertising. Business to business, and interoffice communications are often developed by creative services firms for advanced multimedia presentations beyond simple slide shows to sell ideas or liven-up training. Commercial multimedia developers may be hired to design for governmental services and nonprofit services applications as well.

• Entertainment and fine arts

In addition, multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to develop special effects in movies and animations. Multimedia games are a popular pastime and are software programs available either as CD-ROMs or online. Some video games also use multimedia features. Multimedia applications that allow users to actively participate instead of just sitting by as passive recipients of information are called Interactive Multimedia. In the Arts there are multimedia artists, whose minds are able to blend techniques using different media that in some way incorporates interaction with the viewer. One of the most relevant could be Peter Greenaway who is melding Cinema with Opera and all sorts of digital media. Another approach entails the creation of multimedia that can be displayed in a traditional fine arts arena, such as an art gallery. Although multimedia display material may be volatile, the survivability of the content is as strong as any traditional media. Digital recording material may be just as durable and infinitely reproducible with perfect copies every time.

• Education

In Education, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training courses (popularly called CBTs) and reference books like encyclopedia and almanacs. A CBT lets the user go through a series of presentations, text about a particular topic, and associated illustrations in various information formats. Edutainment is an informal term used to describe combining education with entertainment, especially multimedia entertainment.

Learning theory in the past decade has expanded dramatically because of the introduction of multimedia. Several lines of research have evolved. The possibilities for learning and instruction are nearly endless.

The idea of media convergence is also becoming a major factor in education, particularly higher education. Defined as separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video that now share resources and interact with each other, synergistically creating new efficiencies, media convergence is rapidly changing the curriculum in universities all over the world. Likewise, it is changing the availibility, or lack thereof, of jobs requiring this savvy technological skill.

Newspaper companies all over are also trying to embrace the new phenomenon by implementing it's practices in their work.

• Engineering

Software engineers may use multimedia in Computer Simulations for anything from entertainment to training such as military or industrial training. Multimedia for software interfaces are often done as a collaboration between creative professionals and software engineers.

• Industry

In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way to help present information to shareholders, superiors and coworkers. Multimedia is also helpful for providing employee training, advertising and selling products all over the world via virtually unlimited web-based technology

• Mathematical and scientific research

In mathematical and scientific research, multimedia is mainly used for modelling and simulation. For example, a scientist can look at a molecular model of a particular substance and manipulate it to arrive at a new substance. Representative research can be found in journals such as the Journal of Multimedia.

• Medicine

In Medicine, doctors can get trained by looking at a virtual surgery or they can simulate how the human body is affected by diseases spread by viruses and bacteria and then develop techniques to prevent it.

• Document Imaging

Document Imaging is a technique that takes hard copy of an image/document and converts it into a digital format

HD Radio

It’s the most significant advancement in radio broadcasting since the introduction of FM stereo more than 50 years ago. HD Radio technology enables AM and FM radio stations to broadcast their programs digitally – a tremendous technological leap from the analog broadcasts of the past.

HD radio works on a technology that splits the radio signal into analog and digital channels and then transmit it over the existing AM/FM bands. It’s a process known as In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) Broadcasting. It’s DIGITAL, and it’s FREE.

Basically, digital radio works the same as conventional radio. There’s a signal on one end and a receiver on the other. But there are a few key differences.

 

1. Instead of sending out one analog signal, stations send out a bundled signal – both analog and digital. Because it is digital, textual data such as traffic, stock info and song titles can be sent out, as well.
2.  The digital signal layer is compressed.
3.  The combined analog and digital signals are transmitted.
4.  Inevitably, radio signals bounce off objects, causing what is called multipath distortions. This is what causes the static in conventional radio receivers. HD Digital radio receivers are designed to sort through reflected signals, reducing static, hiss, pops and fades.
5.  Finally, the signals reach their destination. Both broadcasts are free, with no subscription fee. To hear the digital broadcast, all you need is an HD Radio receiver.

Features for the listener:

 

  

• FM stations now with CD-quality sound
• AM stations now with FM-quality sound
• Crystal-clear reception with no audio distortion
• New channels to play more of what you like to hear
• All digital, all the time
• No hiss, distortion or station drop off
• Reception is free, with no subscription costsMore talk and music from the stations you’re plugged into
• More complete sets and more full albums
• More in-depth interviews
• More lengthy talk and more detailed news
• Receives and plays digital HD2 Multicast programming
• Available in tabletop systems and shelf units
• Also available in car and marine stereo units

Assignment III

Submit the assignment on/before 25th March 2010.

Expand the following abbrevations:

1. ISDN
2. DSL
3. TCP/IP
4. HTML
5. HTTP
6. CTI
7. LAN,WLAN,MAN
8. SNS
9. MPEG
10. BMP
11. JPEG
12. MP3

Assignment II

Complete the following assignment and submit on/before 22nd March 2010:

1. Write the names of any 10 popular SNS and the country of its origin.
2. Write the names of any five Indian SNS.
3. List down the 5 popular uses of Multimedia at (a) Home, (b) in Business, (c) in Entertainment.

Telephony

In telecommunication, telephony encompasses the general use of equipment to provide voice communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to each other.

Telephones were originally connected directly together in pairs. Each user had separate telephones wired to the various places he might wish to reach. This became inconvenient when people wanted to talk to many other telephones, so the telephone exchange was invented. Each telephone could then be connected to other local ones, thus inventing the local loop and the telephone call. Soon, nearby exchanges were connected by trunk lines, and eventually distant ones were as well.

In modern times, most telephones are plugged into telephone jacks. The jacks are connected by inside wiring to a drop wire which connects the building to a cable. Cables usually bring a large number of drop wires from all over a district access network to one wire center or telephone exchange. When the user of a telephone wants to make a telephone call, equipment at the exchange examines the dialed telephone number and connects that telephone line to another in the same wire center, or to a trunk to a distant exchange. Most of the exchanges in the world are connected to each other, forming the public switched telephone network (PSTN). By the end of the 20th century almost all were Stored Program Control exchanges.

After the middle 20th century fax and data became important secondary users of the network created to carry voices, and late in the century parts of the network were upgraded with ISDN and DSL to improve handling of such traffic.

Digital telephony is the use of digital technology in the provision of telephone services and systems. Almost all telephone calls are provided this way, but sometimes the term is restricted to cases in which the last mile is digital, or where the conversion between digital and analog signals takes place inside the telephone. Telephony was digitized to cut the cost and improve the quality of voice services, but digital telephony was then found useful for new network services (ISDN) to transfer data speedily over telephone lines.

IP telephony is a modern form of telephony which uses the TCP/IP protocol popularized by the Internet to transmit digitized voice data. Contrast this with the operation of POTS (an acronym for "plain old telephone service").

Computer telephony integration (CTI) enables computers to know about and control phone functions such as making and receiving voice, fax, and data calls with telephone directory services and caller identification. The integration of telephone software and computer systems is a major development in the evolution of the automated office.

CTI is not a new concept. Such links have been used in the past in large telephone networks but only dedicated call centers could justify the costs of the required equipment installation. Primary telephone service providers are offering information services such as automatic number identification (ANI) and Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) on a scale wide enough for its implementation to bring real value to business or residential telephone usage. A new generation of applications (middleware) is being developed as a result of standardization and availability of low cost computer telephony links.

Fundamental Computer Networks Concepts

In the world of computers, networking is the practice of linking two or more computing devices together for the purpose of sharing data. Networks are built with a combination of computer hardware and computer software.

Types of Computer Networks

Networks can be categorized in several different ways. One method defines the type of a network according to the geographic area it spans. Alternatively, networks can also be classified based on topology or on the types of protocols they support.

One way to categorize the different types of computer network designs is by their scope or scale. For historical reasons, the networking industry refers to nearly every type of design as some kind of area network. Common examples of area network types are:

• LAN - Local Area Network
• WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network
• WAN - Wide Area Network
• MAN - Metropolitan Area Network
• SAN - Storage Area Network, System Area Network, Server Area Network, or sometimes Small Area Network
• CAN - Campus Area Network, Controller Area Network, or sometimes Cluster Area Network
• PAN - Personal Area Network
• DAN - Desk Area Network

The building blocks of a home computer network include adapters, routers and/or access points. Wired (and hybrid wired/wireless) networking also involves cables of varying types. Finally, large-scale enterprise networks in particular often employ other advanced equipment for specialized communication purposes.

Ethernet is a physical and data link layer technology for local area networks. Homes, schools and offices around the world all commonly use Ethernet standard cables and adapters to network personal computers.

Wi-Fi is the most popular wireless communication protocol for local area networks. Private home and business networks, and public hotspots, use Wi-Fi to networks computers and other wireless devices to each other and the Internet. Bluetooth is another wireless protocol commonly used in cellular phones and computer peripherals for short range network communication.

The technologies used to connect to the Internet are different than those used for connecting devices on local area network. DSL, cable modem and fiber provide fixed broadband Internet service, while WiMax and LTE additionally support mobile connectivity. In geographic areas where these high-speed options are unavailable, subscribers are forced to use older cellular services, satellite or even dial-up Internet instead.

Network Design

Computer networks also differ in their design. The two types of high-level network design are called client-server and peer-to-peer. Client-server networks feature centralized server computers that store email, Web pages, files and or applications. On a peer-to-peer network, conversely, all computers tend to support the same functions. Client-server networks are much more common in business and peer-to-peer networks much more common in homes.

A network topology represents its layout or structure from the point of view of data flow. In so-called bus networks, for example, all of the computers share and communicate across one common conduit, whereas in a star network, all data flows through one centralized device. Common types of network topologies include bus, star, ring and mesh.

Network Protocols

In networking, the communication language used by computer devices is called the protocol. Yet another way to classify computer networks is by the set of protocols they support. Networks often implement multiple protocols to support specific applications. Popular protocols include TCP/IP, the most common protocol found on the Internet and in home networks.

Technology of Networks - Wireless

Benefits of Networking

The benefits of networking (either wired or wireless) in homes are:

• 
  
  file sharing - Network file sharing between computers gives you more flexibity than using floppy drives or Zip drives. Not only can you share photos, music files, and documents, you can also use a home network to save copies of all of your important data on a different computer. Backups are one of the most critical yet overlooked tasks in home networking.
• 
  
  printer / peripheral sharing - Once a home network is in place, it's easy to then set up all of the computers to share a single printer. No longer will you need to bounce from one system or another just to print out an email message. Other computer peripherals can be shared similarly such as network scanners, Web cams, and CD burners.
• 
  
  Internet connection sharing - Using a home network, multiple family members can access the Internet simultaneously without having to pay an ISP for multiple accounts. You will notice the Internet connection slows down when several people share it, but broadband Internet can handle the extra load with little trouble. Sharing dial-up Internet connections works, too. Painfully slow sometimes, you will still appreciate having shared dial-up on those occasions you really need it.
• 
  
  multi-player games - Many popular home computer games support LAN mode where friends and family can play together, if they have their computers networked.
• 
  
  Internet telephone service - So-called Voice over IP (VoIP) services allow you to make and receive phone calls through your home network across the Internet, saving you money.
• 
  
  home entertainment - Newer home entertainment products such as digital video recorders (DVRs) and video game consoles now support either wired or wireless home networking. Having these products integrated into your network enables online Internet gaming, video sharing and other advanced features.

Advantages of a wireless home network instead:

1. Computer mobility. Notebook computers and other portable devices are much affordable than they were a few years ago. With a mobile computer and wireless home network, you aren't chained to a network cord and can work on the couch, on your porch, or wherever in the house is most convenient at the moment.

2. No unsightly wires. Businesses can afford to lay cable under their floors or inside walls. But most of us don't have the time or inclination to fuss with this in our home. Unless you own one of the few newer homes pre-wired with network cable, you'll save substantial time and energy avoiding the cabling mess and going wireless.

3. Wireless is the future. Wireless technology is clearly the future of networking. In building a wireless home network, you'll learn about the technology and be able to teach your friends and relatives. You'll also be better prepared for future advances in network technology coming in the future.

Wireless networking represent the future of computer and Internet connectivity worldwide. Wi-Fi continues to be the pre-eminent technology for building general-purpose wireless networks.

Wireless Networks

Wireless networks utilize radio waves and/or microwaves to maintain communication channels between computers. Wireless networking is a more modern alternative to wired networking that relies on copper and/or fiber optic cabling between network devices.

A wireless network offers advantages and disadvantages compared to a wired network. Advantages of wireless include mobility and elimination of unsightly cables. Disadvantages of wireless include the potential for radio interference due to weather, other wireless devices, or obstructions like walls.

Wireless is rapidly gaining in popularity for both home and business networking. Wireless technology continues to improve, and the cost of wireless products continues to decrease. Popular wireless local area networking (WLAN) products conform to the 802.11 "Wi-Fi" standards. The gear a person needs to build wireless networks includes network adapters (NICs), access points (APs), and routers.

MySpace

MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, US, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media, owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the Netherlands.

MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user. Through its Web site and affiliated ad networks, MySpace is second only to Yahoo! in its capacity to collect data about its users and thus in its ability to use behavioral targeting to select the ads each visitor sees.

On August 8, 2006, search engine Google signed a $900 million deal to provide a Google search facility and advertising on MySpace. MySpace has proven to be a windfall for many smaller companies that provide widgets or accessories to the social networking giant. Companies such as Slide.com, RockYou!, and YouTube were all launched on MySpace as widgets providing additional functionality to the site. Other sites created layouts to personalize the site and made hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owners most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties.

In November 2008, MySpace announced that user-uploaded content that infringed on copyrights held by MTV and its subsidiary networks would be redistributed with advertisements that would generate revenue for the companies.

Despite losing popularity to Facebook & Twitter in recent months, Rupert Murdoch has no plans to sell off MySpace, nor buy out Twitter. Murdoch gave the site his personal support, while feeling that Twitter has yet to find a way to make money on its own. However, in 2009, Myspace also added a new status update feature. If a Myspace user has a Twitter account, the tweet will also update the Myspace status. (Facebook also has a similar feature.) It does, however, require that the two accounts to be synched up together.

Contents of a MySpace profile

 

Moods

Moods are small emoticons that are used to depict a mood the user is in. The feature was added in July 2007.

Blurbs, blogs, multimedia

Profiles contain two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. In the "Details" section, "Status" and "Zodiac Sign" fields will always display. However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image", the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. A photo editor powered by Fotoflexer is available which can not only crop images and adjust contrast but also convert the image to a cartoon or a line drawing made with neon lights, or put the user's face in a photo of a $100 bill. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Blogging features are also available.

Comments

Below the User's Friends Space (by default) is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted, and replaced with the comment saying "This Profile No Longer Exists."

Profile customization (HTML)

MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me," "I'd Like to Meet," and "Interests." Videos and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace.

A user can also change the general appearance of his or her page by entering CSS (in a element) into one of these fields to override the page's default style sheet using MySpace editors. This is often used to tweak fonts and colors. The fact that the user-added CSS is located in the middle of the page (rather than being located in the element) means that the page will begin to load with the default MySpace layout before abruptly changing to the custom layout. A special type of modification is a div overlay, where the default layout is dramatically changed by hiding default text with

There are several independent web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them.

MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS loading delay issue, as the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile. The MySpace profile editor also has a criticism with how the links appear on the profile.

Music

Wikinews has related news: MySpace to take on iTunes

MySpace profiles for musicians in the website's MySpace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload their entire discographies consisting of MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.

Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox news and 20th Century Fox, in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music. Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, artists can upload their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lily Allen and Sean Kingston gained fame through MySpace. The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by MySpace and many more continue to be discovered daily.

MySpace has recently redesigned its music page adding new features for all musicians. These new features include the users' ability to create playlists, resembling the functions of Last.fm and other social music websites, along with the popular ProjectPlaylist that is popular on profiles. The new music features also archive songs from many popular artists, resembling the services of iTunes and Napster.

In late 2007, the site launched The MySpace Transmissions, a series of live-in-studio recordings by well-known artists.

MySpace features

Bulletins

Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that. They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.

Groups

MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.

MySpaceIM

In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.

MySpaceTV

In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a service similar to the YouTube video sharing website. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. MySpaceTV might be a standard channel that will be shown on television.

Applications

In 2008, MySpace introduced an API with which users could create applications for other users to post on their profiles. The applications are similar to the Facebook applications. In May 2008, MySpace had added some security options regarding interaction with photos and other media.

MySpace Mobile

There are a variety of environments in which users can access MySpace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that can utilize a service known as MySpace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of, other members. Additionally, UIEvolution and MySpace developed a mobile version of MySpace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T, Vodafone and Rogers Wireless.

MySpace News

In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.

MySpace Classifieds

Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. It has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception. MySpace Classifieds was launched right at the same time the site appeared on the internet.

MySpace Karaoke

Launched April 29, 2008, ksolo.myspace.com is a combination of MySpace and kSolo, which allows users to upload audio recordings of themselves singing onto their profile page. Users' friends are able to rate the performances. A video feature is not yet available, but Tom Anderson, MySpace co-founder and president, states that it is in the works.

MySpace Polls

MySpace Polls is a feature on MySpace that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.

MySpace forums

MySpace uses an implementation of Telligent Community for its forum system.

tags and large images.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address (and not residing in one of the countries where it is banned) can become a Facebook user. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, and school or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include (potentially) any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide.

Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.

Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. There have recently been reports of Facebook proposing an initial public offering (IPO), i.e. issue equity shares as stock to investors. However, Zuckerberg stresses that it will not be for a few more years, and the company is in no need of additional capital. Also, some analysts fear the Facebook IPO might be a particularly weak one.

In August 2009, Facebook announced the rollout of a "lite" version of the site, optimized for users on slower or intermittent Internet connections. Facebook Lite offered fewer services, excluded most third-party applications and required less bandwidth. A beta version of the slimmed-down interface was released first to invited testers, before a broader rollout across users in the USA, Canada, and India.

The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.

Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see; Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked); Photos, where users can upload albums and photos; and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user's profile can also view that user's Wall. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.

Over time, Facebook has added features to its website. On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user's friends. This has enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users). In response to this dissatisfaction, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends. On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted US patent 7669123 on certain aspects of their News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds where links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user. This patent is controversial in that it appears to cover all types of News Feeds.

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos. Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album. Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to "tag", or label users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.

Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks,[90] which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.

Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift. On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads. Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are only seen by users that are in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.

On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look. After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.

Social networks

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are connected by friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between all the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to measure social capital -- the value that an individual gets from the social network.

A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain category places (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust.

Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, Bebo and Twitter widely used worldwide; MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Decayenne, Tagged, XING;, Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America; and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, renren and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Orkut and Facebook in India.

Some social networks have additional features, such as the ability to create groups that share common interests or affiliations, upload or stream live videos, and hold discussions in forums. Geosocial networking co-opts internet mapping services to organize user participation around geographic features and their attributes.

There is also a trend for more interoperability between social networks led by technologies such as OpenID and OpenSocial.


Lately, mobile social networking has become popular. In most mobile communities, mobile phone users can now create their own profiles, make friends, participate in chat rooms, create chat rooms, hold private conversations, share photos and videos, and share blogs by using their mobile phone. Mobile phone users are basically open to every option that someone sitting on the computer has. Some companies provide wireless services which allow their customers to build their own mobile community and brand it, but one of the most popular wireless services for social networking in North America is Facebook Mobile. Other companies provide new innovative features which extend the social networking experience into the real world.

Another social networking feature in a professional aspect is Linkedin.com. This social network allows professionals to exchange information, opportunities, and ideas. Professionals are able to stay informed with new knowledge about their field.

The use of social network services in an enterprise context presents the potential of having a major impact on the world of business and work.

Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact bases. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads. Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the world.

One example of social networking being used for business purposes is LinkedIn.com, which aims to interconnect professionals. LinkedIn has over 40 million users in over 200 countries.

Another is the use of physical spaces available to members of a social network such as Hub Culture, an invitation only social network for entrepreneurs, and other business influentials, with Pavilions in major cities such as London, UK. Having a physical presence allows members to network in the real world, as well as the virtual, adding extra business value.

Applications for social networking sites have extended toward businesses and brands are creating their own, high functioning sites, a sector known as brand networking. It is the idea a brand can build its consumer relationship by connecting their consumers to the brand image on a platform that provides them relative content, elements of participation, and a ranking or score system. Brand networking is a new way to capitalize on social trends as a marketing tool.

Artificial life

Artificial life (commonly Alife or alife) is the creation of lifelike models and processes through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton in 1986.

There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches:

soft, from software;

hard, from hardware;

and wet, from biochemistry.

Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. The term "artificial life" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.

Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments. The goal is to study the phenomena of living systems in order to come to an understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. It is the study and design of intelligent agents, where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."

The field was founded on the claim that human intelligencecan be simulated by a machine. Today, has become an essential part of the technology industry, providing the heavy lifting for many of the most difficult problems in computer science.

The central problems of AI include such traits as reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, communication, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.