Wireless Internet Access Points At home, work, school, and in many public locations, people connect wirelessly to the Internet through a wireless Internet access point using mobile computers, smart phones, handheld game consoles, or other devices. Users access wireless Internet access points with computers or devices that have the necessary built-in wireless capability or the appropriate wireless network card, PC Card, ExpressCard module, or USB network adapter (Figure 8-4). Two types of wireless Internet access points are hot spots and mobile wireless networks. A hot spot is a wireless network that provides Internet connections to mobile computers and other devices. Through the hot spot, mobile users check e-mail, browse the Web, and access any service on the Internet. Three hot spot technologies are Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and Bluetooth. Wi-Fi hot spots pro- vide wireless network connections to users in public locations such as airports, train stations, hotels, convention centers, schools, campgrounds, shopping malls, bookstores, libraries, restaurants, and coffee shops. The coverage range for WiMAX hot spots, can be much wider than Wi-Fi; for example, they can cover an entire city. Bluetooth hot spots provide location-based services, such as sending coupons or menus, to users whose enabled devices enter the coverage range. Sections later in this chapter discuss Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and Bluetooth in more detail. Some hot spots provide free Internet access, some charge a per-use fee, and others require users to subscribe to a wireless Internet service provider, to which they pay per access fees, daily fees, or a monthly fee. Per access fees average Php100, daily fees range from Php20 to Php150, and monthly fees range from Php1,000 to Php5,000 for unlimited access, with the higher monthly fee providing greater coverage areas. A mobile wireless network provides users with high-speed Internet connections, as long as they are in the network’s range. A mobile wireless network usually includes most major cities and air- ports. Subscription fees for unlimited monthly Internet access to a mobile wireless network through a cell phone range from Php1,000 to Php3,000. Fees for notebook computer access are higher, ranging from Php1,500 to Php3,500 per month.
 Google+ (Google Plus) was launched by Google in 2011 as an attempt to compete with Facebook. Features of Google+ include “Circles” for sharing information with different groups of people (like Facebook Groups), and “Hangouts” for video chatting with a friend or groups of friends. Google Hangouts recently merged with Google’s Talk program, which created a single location for all text, video, and image sharing between a friend or a group of friends.
Tumblr, which launched in 2007, is another “microblogging” platform that gives users a quick way to post text, images, audio, video, links, and quotes in a community setting. Unlike regular blogs, Tumblr blogs (also called “Tumblogs” or “Tumblelogs”) are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary. Some have described Tumblr as a kind of online scrapbooking tool that allows users to curate web-based content they find interesting. Taking on the features of other social networking sites (most notably Twitter), Tumblr allows users with similar interests to “follow” each other, and offers the option of “liking” or “reblogging” other posts. David Karp, founder of Tumblr, explains what makes this platform different on CNN:
Foursquare is a location-based mobile application that combines aspects of social networking and gaming. Users “check in” at a venue (such as a store, restaurant, library, etc.) and can connect with friends in nearby locations. Users are encouraged to be hyper-local and hyper-specific with their check-ins – one can check into a certain floor/area of a building, make recommendations, or indicate a specific activity while at a venue. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. Points and other distinctions are awarded for check-ins, and some businesses offer additional incentives, such as coupons, for checking in at their locations. A screenshot of what Foursquare looks like on a mobile device is shown below. LinkedIn launched in 2003 as a social network for work professionals, and has become the standard for employers looking for new talent. Through LinkedIn, users can search for jobs, submit applications, and join work-related groups.
MySpace launched in 2003, and was, at one time, the most popular social networking site in the world. It has since been surpassed by Facebook, but continues to be used, most notably as a way for independent bands to share their music. In 2011, MySpace was sold to Specific Media and pop star Justin Timberlake for approximately 35 million dollars.
YouTube began in 2005 but has grown exponentially since then. It was purchased in November 2006, for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Users may register with YouTube to upload videos, rate them and participate in different user groups, but it is not necessary to register in order to view video clips, send them to others, or embed them in other websites. YouTube has quickly become the pre-eminent video-sharing site on the internet, though its success has created competitors. Increasingly, advocacy groups and political parties have also used YouTube to get their messages out. YouTube helped create the concept of viral video, in which videos may be easily shared with millions of people through other forms of internet communication.
SecondLife represents a new type of graphic-rich Internet experience known as a MMUVE, or Massive Multi-User Virtual Environment. The interface is very much like computer games, and users must download special software to participate. Users create avatars for themselves with unique user names, such as "Lefty Nicolaidis," to traverse the environment and encounter other users in real time. Users may purchase land, set up shop in a virtual environment, and provide unique products and services such as clothing, furniture, movies, and clubs. Increasingly, SecondLife has attracted the interest of large companies, such as IBM and Sony, as well as leading universities, who seek to make use of the 3-D video and audio interactive environment for collaborative projects and online classes. Social Networks for Photo Sharing Popular services for hosting and sharing images include Flickr, Instagram, and Pinterest. Flickr is an image and video hosting website and online community launched in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to upload and share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images they embed in blogs and other forms of social media. Services similar to Flickr include Photobucket and Google’s Picasa. Instagram is a photo sharing application launched in 2010 that allows users of mobile devices to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it on a variety of social networks. A distinctive feature confines photos to a square shape, similar to old-fashioned Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images. In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock, with plans to keep it independently managed. Launched in 2010, Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks on the web. Pinterest allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections by uploading their own photos, or by importing (also known as “pinning”) images from elsewhere on the web. Users can browse and/or “follow” other pinboards for inspiration, and can “like” and/or “re-pin” images to their own collections. Users can also share their “pins” on both Twitter and Facebook. A screenshot of Pinterest is shown below. Social Bookmarking Social bookmarking is a method for internet users to organize, store, and share links to online resources. Prior to the proliferation of social bookmarking services, the only way for internet users to save (or “bookmark”) links to web content that interested them was to add them to a list of favorite links stored on their computers. If they typically used more than one computer (one at home and one at work, for example), they had go through the inconvenience of saving their favorite links on both machines. Social bookmarking sites now enable users to gain access to their favorite links from any device with an internet connection, and to share links with other users. Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms "social bookmarking" and "tagging." Tagging, which is the practice of assigning descriptive keywords to a bookmarked resource, is a significant feature of social bookmarking systems, enabling users to organize their bookmarks in flexible ways and develop shared vocabularies known as “folksonomies.” Other popular social bookmarking services include StumbleUpon, Diigo, and BuzzFeed. Social bookmarking services such as Reddit and Digg give users the ability to vote on bookmarks submitted by others by giving a virtual “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Resources with the most “upvotes” are given prominence on the service’s website. Twitter and Pinterest are also considered social bookmarking services, because of the ease with which users can organize and share content found elsewhere on the web. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 License |
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