Blogs, Newsgroups, Forums and message boards, Mailing lists, Chat rooms, Conferencing or webinars, Learning management systems, Messaging, VoIP, E-commerce, Online gaming, Virtual Offices, Virtual assistants
- A blog is a website that is in a form of a personal diary or journal. E.g. Twitter.
- Newsgroups are a continuous discussion of a particular topic where the message is relayed across all other servers of the world.
- This is where messages are posted and answered. However these messages are only sent to one sever unlike Newsgroups.
- Mailing lists are a collection of email names and address and known as a singular group.
- Online chat is a real-time exchange of text messages between people connected to the same chat room. It creates a genuine conversation. Most popular chatting through the Internet is Internet relay chat (IRC) which is known as chat rooms. Bots are generated AI to send formatted messages.
- Conferencing software allows multiple users to view each other online. E.g. webcams for tutorials or chatting online.
- Learning management systems (LMS) are softwares to plan learning sequences for education.
- Messaging is not real time as you can send text messages to someone else when they are online or not. Does not make a genuine conversation.
- VoIP stands for voice over Internet protocol. It is the protocol to allow voice calls made over the internet. E.g. Skype.
- E-commerce is electronic commerce transactions to be made online. For example customers can shop online and can do transactions and banking online. Disadvantages of this include theft of credit-card. Advantages of this is that it is open for 24 hours a day.
- MUD (multi-user domain) allows users online to connect and involve playing games online with each other. E.g. World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy.
- Virtual offices are businesses that are conducted anywhere in the world using information technology.
- Virtual assistance is a program that helps the user. E.g. Siri from Apple products.