THE WEB.
WEB 1.0:In the 1990s, information on the Internet was only for reading. It was a network of documents and people could not interact with the content.
FINDING INFORMTATION:The most common sources of online information are web pages and news feeds (RSS).
NEW FEEDS:RICH SITES SUMMARY(RSS)
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
WEB 2.0:This was developed during the first decade of the 21st century. In this new web, information became bidirectional. Users could not only receive information, but also create and share it.
WEB 3.0:From 2006 onwards, new technologies allowed the integration of data and the web so that programs could understand' and work with the information that they received.
WEB PAGES:A web page is a collection of documents that can include text, audio, video, images and hypertext links to other web pages. A browser is a program that locates a web page by its address and lets users access the content.
Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a subscription service that provides users with frequent updates to media websites, blogs and other sources of information. In this way, people can keep up with current issues that interest them.
Social bookmarking is an Internet tool that lets us organise, use and share information more efficiently. It works in a way that is similar to the Favourites option of a browser program, but with an extra advantage: all of our content is stored in the cloud so we can access it from any location in the world. Some of the most popular social bookmarking applications are:
Delicious is a service that lets us save our favourite web pages along with a description and a list of key words (tags) for easier classification.
Delicious is a service that lets us save our favourite web pages along with a description and a list of key words (tags) for easier classification.
Evernote provides a convenient workspace where we can collect information by capturing articles and images from the Internet.
WORKING IN THE CLOUD
Some Internet services let us create, save and modify documents online. This is called cloud computing'. The most popular cloud-based services are Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, which are also available as mobile apps.
The two main advantages of these services are:
Access to our files from any location or device with an Internet connection.
The ability to share our files easily with other people
Sharing information
Although people continue using classic online services (email, chats and videoconferences), social networks have revolutionised how we spread or share information.
HORIZONTAL SOCIAL NETWORKS
The users of horizontal networks form communities who have diverse interests and a wide variety of reasons for using the application. The most popular examples of horizontal networks are:
TWITER
VERTICAL SOCIAL NETWORKS
The users of vertical networks form communities who have similar reasons for using the application. These reasons, which can be personal or professional, may include:
LINKED IN
Creating information
On the Internet, we can quickly and easily create information about anything that we consider interesting. Then we can communicate that information to other people, either privately or publicly.
WEB PAGES
In previous sections, you have read about web pages as sources of information. In the following section, you will learn how to create attractive web pages where you can share information with other people.
BLOGS
Weblogs or blogs are a special type of web page. They were originally used as online diaries for people to share their personal experiences. However, nowadays many blogs are opinion generators' about a variety of other topics, including art, culture, sports, technology, education and politics.
WIKIS
wiki is a collection of web pages that visitors can edit, modify or expand. In this way, the content grows quickly with the contributions of the people working on it.
Like other web pages, wiki content must be stored on a server. Normally, this would require paying for a hosting service, but many wikis use a free online service instead. The most popular examples are Wikispaces and PBWorks.
Exchanging information online
The exchange of files and software has become one of the most common online activities. Every day, people are uploading and downloading more and more songs, videos, photos, software applications and other files. It can be done quickly, easily and automatically by using Peer to Peer (P2P) programs, such as Ares and BitTorrent.
Although many users exchange information online, we must be careful about the files and software that we download, use on our computers or redistribute to other people. There are legal restrictions that apply to many types of digital content. For example, some types of software are open source, which means the source code is available to the public and can be modified by users. Other types of software are closed source, which means the source code can only be modified by the progammer.
USER licences
The information and software that we find online may be protected by some form of licence. We usually have to pay for commercial content or software, and people can have legal problems if they try to distribute or use such materials without the proper licence.
In order to avoid problems with the exchange of software, public licences were created. The most common example is the General Public Licence (GPL). These licences aim to protect the free distribution, modification and use of software. As a result, any software under this licence is free software, which cannot be owned by anyone. The Linux operation system and the LibreOffice package are examples of free, open source software that are GPL protected.