Information, Communication Technologies and New Media

Secrets of the 7 Basic Blog Posts
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/commentary/alttext/2008/06/alttext_0604
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Connected to the ISS by a wire and sweltering in a pressurised space suit, movement is cumbersome and difficult. Astronauts wear a rocket pack to control their movements
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Mother nature excellent...


some useful web sites for journalism students, teachers etc.,

Jteacher.org
Exchange4media.com
Pitch
Access.org
Cjr.orghoot.org
Journalism.org
Ojr.org
Saja.org
Pointer.org
Jea.org
Reportr.net
Thinkcycle.org
Mediabistro.com
Agencyfaqs.com
Indiatelevision.com
Sree.net
Aef.com



The newsroom at the New York Times is seen as editorial staffers work feverishly to prepare a Monday edition, in this Nov. 5, 1978 file photo.


world wide web
internet
url
html
hyper links
search engine
cd-rom
multimedia
video on demand
internet radio
web tv
blogs
citizen journalism





The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web. Robert Cailliau, also at CERN, was an early evangelist for the project.


The Internet, sometimes called the "Information Superhighway", is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).



Uniform Resource Locator (URL), still known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

* In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI);
* Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. In the early times, these identifiers were variously called "document names", "Web addresses" and "Uniform Resource Locators". These names were misleading, however, because not all identifiers were locators, and even for those that were, this was not their defining characteristic. Nevertheless, by the time the RFC 1630 formally defined the term "URI" as a generic term best suited to the concept, the term "URL" had gained widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.



A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a (different) website.
Embedded link

An embedded link is a link embedded in an object such as hyper text or a hot area. Example: The first word of this sentence is an example of an embedded link.

Hot area

A hot area (image map in HTML) is an invisible area of the screen that covers a text label or graphical images. A technical description of a hot area is a list of coordinates relating to a specific area on a screen created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to various destinations, disable linking via negative space around irregular shapes, or enable linking via invisible areas. For example, a map of the world may have each irregular shaped country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in the various skin elements.

A Web search engine is a search engine designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Information may consist of web pages, images and other types of files.

Some search engines also mine data available in newsgroups, databases, or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.

CD-ROM (an abbreviation of "Compact Disc read-only memory") is a Compact Disc that contains data accessible by a computer. While the Compact Disc format was originally designed for music storage and playback, the format was later adapted to hold any form of binary data. CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, whilst data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as PC CD-ROMs). These are called Enhanced CDs.

Although many people use lowercase letters in this acronym, proper presentation is in all capital letters with a hyphen between CD and ROM. It was also suggested by some, especially soon after the technology was first released, that CD-ROM was an acronym for "Compact Disc read-only-media", or that it was a more 'correct' definition. This was not the intention of the original team who developed the CD-ROM, and common acceptance of the 'memory' definition is now almost universal. This is probably in no small part due to the widespread use of other 'ROM' acronyms such as Flash-ROMs and EEPROMs where 'memory' is the correct term

Multimedia (Lat. Multum + Medium) is media that utilizes a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only utilize traditional forms of printed or hand-produced text and still graphics. In general, 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. Multimedia (as an adjective) also describes electronic media devices used to store and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is similar to traditional mixed media in fine art, but with a broader scope. The term "rich media" is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Hypermedia can be considered one particular multimedia application.


Video on demand (VOD) systems allow users to select and watch video and clip content over a network as part of an interactive television system. VOD systems either "stream" content, allowing viewing in real time, or "download" it in which the program is brought in its entirety to a set-top box before viewing starts. The latter is more appropriately termed "store and forward". The majority of cable and telco based VOD systems use the streaming approach, whereby a user buys or selects a movie or television program and it begins to play on the television set almost instantaneously.

Nowadays, the term often encompasses a broader spectrum of delivery devices, referring not only to set-top-boxes but also computers, mobile phones and indeed any system that can receive on-demand audio-visual content over a network.


Internet radio (also known as e-Radio) is an audio broadcasting service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted broadly through wireless means. The term e-Radio suggests a streaming medium that presents listeners with a continuous "stream" of audio to which they have no control much like traditional broadcast media. It is not synonymous with podcasting which involves downloading, nor does e-Radio suggest "on-demand" file serving. Many Internet radio "stations" are associated with a corresponding traditional (or "terrestrial") radio station or radio network. Internet-only radio stations are independent of such associations.

Internet radio services are usually accessible from anywhere in the world—for example, one could listen to an Australian station from Europe or America. This makes it a popular among expatriates and listeners with interests that are often not adequately served by local radio stations (such as progressive rock, ambient music, anime-themed music, classical music, and stand-up comedy). Internet radio services offer news, sports, talk, and various genres of music—everything that is available on terrestrial radio stations.

MSN TV (formerly WebTV) is the name of both a thin client which uses a television for display (rather than a computer monitor), and the online service that supports it.

The product and service were developed by WebTV Networks, Inc., a company purchased by Microsoft Corporation and absorbed into MSN (the Microsoft Network). While most thin clients developed in the mid-1990s were positioned as diskless workstations for corporate intranets, WebTV was positioned as a consumer device for web access.

The WebTV product is an adapter that allows a television set to be connected to the internet, primarily for web browsing and e-mail. The setup includes a web browser, cord or wireless (i.e. bluetooth or IRDA) keyboard and connection to the Internet (i.e. using modem, ADSL, cable, PLC).

While WebTV does not allow as much functionality as a computer-based browser, it is a low-cost alternative to a traditional computer connection to the Internet.

It should be noted that the term web TV is also used concerning TV transmissions over the Internet, usually by streaming.


A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs



Citizen journalism, also known as public or participatory journalism, is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. They say, "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires." Citizen journalism should not be confused with civic journalism, which is practiced by professional journalists. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.

In a 2003 Online Journalism Review article, J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types: 1) Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community), 2) Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report), 3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (OhmyNews), 4) Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin), 5) Other kinds of "thin media." (mailing lists, email newsletters), and 6) Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as (KenRadio).

Dan Gillmor, former technology columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, is one of the foremost proponents of citizen journalism, and founded a nonprofit, the Center for Citizen Media, to help promote it. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's French-language television network has also organized a weekly public affairs program called, "5 sur 5", which has been organizing and promoting citizen-based journalism since 2001. On the program, viewers submit questions on a wide variety of topics, and they, accompanied by staff journalists, get to interview experts to obtain answers to their questions.

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Web page

A Web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.

Web pages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Web pages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Web pages may consist of files of static text stored within the web server's file system (static web pages), or the web server may construct the (X)HTML for each web page when it is requested by a browser (dynamic web pages). Client-side scripting can make web pages more responsive to user input once in the client browser.

A web page is a type of web document.

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Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum, and is typically measured in hertz. In case of a baseband channel or signal, the bandwidth is equal to its upper cutoff frequency. Bandwidth in hertz is a central concept in many fields, including electronics, information theory, radio communications, signal processing, and spectroscopy.

In computer networking and other digital fields, the term bandwidth often refers to a data rate measured in bits/s, for example network throughput. The reason is that according Hartley's law, the digital data rate limit (or channel capacity) of a physical communication link is related to its bandwidth in hertz, sometimes denoted analog bandwidth. For bandwidth (computers), less ambiguous terms are, for example, gross bit rate, net bit rate, throughput, goodput or channel capacity.

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Emerging technologies

Emerging technologies and converging technologies are terms used interchangeably to cover the emergence and convergence of new and potentially disruptive technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Although the exact denotations of these expressions are vague, various writers, including computer scientist Bill Joy, have identified clusters of such technologies that they consider critical to humanity's future.[1] These proposed technology clusters are typically abbreviated by such combinations of letters as NBIC or GNR.

Advocates of the benefits of technological change typically see emerging and converging technologies as offering hope for the betterment of the human condition. However, critics of the risks of technological change, and even some advocates such as transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, warn that some of these technologies could pose dangers, perhaps even contribute to the extinction of humanity itself; i.e., some of them could involve existential risks.

Much ethical debate centers on issues of distributive justice in allocating access to beneficial forms of technology. Some thinkers, such as environmental ethicist Bill McKibben, oppose the continuing development of advanced technology partly out of fear that its benefits will be distributed unequally in ways that could worsen the plight of the poor.By contrast, inventor Ray Kurzweil is among techno-utopians who believe that emerging and converging technologies could and will eliminate poverty and abolish suffering.

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