Life in the Information Age

Technology has changed our lives dramatically over the last couple of decades.  The information age has changed our lives in many different ways.  An example of this would be in the way people work in offices and on the go. 

In the 1980’s, there was not a computer on every desk and only the important people in the office got to have a phone on their desk.  The things people used to use to do their work were adding machines, which we now call calculators, and typewriters for typing up reports and letters.  The offices in the 1980’s used to have lots of filing cabinets that were full of files and reports on paper.  Today we do not use as many filing cabinets because most of the information is stored on the computer hard drives or on servers.  However, some hard copies are still required for some important documents just in case something happens to the digital copy.

Also in today’s offices, you are basically unemployable if you have no knowledge or skills on the computer.  If you don’t have basic skills such as using a word processor, you wouldn’t be able to do the office work as effectively as everyone else.  This is because using the computer is faster, more accurate and what people expect you to use.

Things have also changed for people that are on the go.  Instead of being expected to only work when you get to your work building, you are now expected to do work while you are travelling to your work building.  Years ago people would have just read the paper and had a cup of tea while they were travelling on the train, but now people use their laptops and smart phones to do reports, presentations and make important phone calls.

Before all the technology in the work place, important people like managers would have had a skilled secretary that would write their letters and reports for them because they would not have time to do it themselves.  However, today nearly every manager would have their own computer which makes it easier and faster to write their own letters and reports.  Even though this seems better than before, it means there are fewer jobs.

An example of how a specific job has changed is a sales rep.  Years ago, a sales rep would have carried a diary, a road atlas and other maps, change for pay phones, a calculator, a note pad, lots of forms and CD’s for the numerous car journeys.  This has completely changed thanks to the information age.  All a sales rep used to carry can now be replaced by just a few objects.  The diary that the sales rep would have carried can be replaced by the diary on a smart phone, the road atlas and other maps can be replaced again by a smart phone with internet or a sat nav,  the change for pay phones is no longer needed because of mobile phones, a calculator can also be replaced by a smart phone, the note pad can be replaced by a laptop or net book and the CD’s can be replaced by an ipod, an mp3 player or once again, a smart phone.  All this technology makes the sales reps job much easier.  The sales rep would have also needed to go into the office about 2 times a week to type up the paperwork he had been doing by hand, but now they don’t need to go to the office at all because of laptops or desktop computers that they could have with them all the time or at home.

Because of the Internet and the ability to communicate with the company network from anywhere in the world, many workers now work part time or full time from home.
Telework is not a specific job, it is a method of working which usually means doing work from home. There is no legal definition of teleworking, but the important feature is the use of information technology to enable people to work away from the office.
This could apply to people working full time or part-time at home, those managing their time between home and work, and mainly mobile workers who use their home as an administrative base.
Telework is growing. Over 7 million people in the UK now use IT to help them work away from the traditional office environment, either full time or part time.

On the positive side, ICT has resulted in many new jobs being created created.
Here are a few examples - I'm sure you can think of many more.

Network Technician

• Helps set up office and school networks
• Monitors network performance
• Installs new software
• Sets up and monitors user accounts
• Ensures network security

Computer programmer

• Writes the code for new software
• Adapts or develops existing software

Website Designer

With the explosion of the Internet, there has been a huge demand for people who can design and write websites.
There has also been many jobs created around web advertising, web hosting and e-commerce.

Help Desk Operator

• Answers technical problems from staff
• Provides advice when software/hardware not working
• Resets passwords
• Can remotely control a computer screen to demonstrate how to do something.

Business Analyst

Because businesses need specialist software and hardware to suit their particular needs, most large organisations employ a team of business analysts.
These analysts examine the methods currently used by the company and determine what works and what needs improving.

Technology has not just changed the way we work, it has changed the way we go shopping.  Years ago, if you wanted to buy something you would find what you wanted in the shop, go up to the till, the person on the till would have added up all of the products prices and you would pay by cash.  In today’s world, we would find what we wanted, go up to the till, the person scans the barcodes on the products, the computer tells them what the total amount to pay is and we would pay with our credit or debit card.  This is much easier and safer than carrying cash around with you all the time because if your wallet or purse got stolen, you would lose your money, but today if your card gets stolen then you would deactivate it and the criminal wouldn’t be able to buy anything with it because of your pin code.  This kind of till is called the Electronic Point of Sales.

Online Entertainment

In this blog, I will be talking about different kinds of online entertainment.

Youtube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos.

Youtube displays a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, VEVO, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.

YouTube Statistics

48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day

Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day

Users upload the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week

YouTube is localised in 25 countries across 43 languages

YouTube's demographic is broad: 18-54 years old

YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010

Advantages of You Tube

• There are lots of different channels that upload different things so you can find something that you are interested in.
• You can subscribe to a particular channel so you can be notified when they have made a new video for you to watch.
• There are millions of videos to choose from that can entertain you.
• Some TV companies upload previous episodes of a television series so you can watch it if you missed it the first time round.
• You can watch it on the go on your mobile.

Disadvantages of You Tube

• People can post what ever they want on You Tube so some videos could be found to be offensive.
•  Some videos can take a long time to load before you can view them or they could randomly pause in the middle of the video to load.
•  There are lots of adverts at the beginning on videos that can take up to 30 seconds to stop before you can watch the video.

 In my opinion, YouTube is extremely entertaining as you can find a video about almost anything you can think of.  Any disadvantages are a small price to pay for the large amount of entertaining content all on one website.

Second Life Online Game

In 1999, Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab. He made Second Life, developing computer hardware allowing people to immerse in a virtual world.

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on the 23 June, 2003.  Client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users to interact with each other through their avatars. Residents can explore the world, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another.  In November 2010, 21.3 million accounts were registered and as of 2011 the game has about one million active users that play regularly.

Advantages of Second Life 

• People find it fun to be able to play a game where they can forget about what is going on around them and immerse themselves in their second life online. 
• It is a free game and it is easy to sign up to play. 
• You can connect with and talk to other people. 
• You can make money from the game from the in-game currency called lindens.

  Disadvantages of Second Life

• If someone plays it too much they can get addicted which can lead to health problems. 
• They would be staring at a screen for ages which can lead to eye problems. 
• You need a good computer in order to run the game. 
• You need a good internet connection in order to connect to the game servers. 

 In my opinion, a game like second life could be very entertaining.  You can connect to other people around the world and play it with your friends.  However,  the game needs a good internet connection and computer to be able to run and some people may be playing this role playing game too seriously, which could be a problem if they get addicted to it.

  

Music and Movies

On the internet, there are a number of companies that have programs that enable you to buy music and movies from the internet to your computer or mobile device, for your entertainment.  One of the most well known and most used is Itunes.

iTunes was introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9, 2001.

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing and downloading digital music and video files computers. It can also organise the contents on iPods, iPhones and iPads.  iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store to purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks and podcasts.

As of October 4, 2011, the store served its 16 billionth song.

Advantages of music and movies online 

• Convenient as you can download and listen to it in just a few clicks. 
• It is easy to find the song or movie you want by just searching, buying, downloading and playing it. 
• There are thousands of entertaining movies and songs. 
• Once you buy and download it you can play it anywhere.

  Disadvantages of music and movies 

• They can take up lots of hard drive space on your computer. 
• Long movies can take a long time to download before you can watch them. 
• Some people download music and movies for free from illegal websites.

  

In my opinion, music and movies from the internet are very entertaining and convenient.  They are as entertaining as music and movies that you buy on a disk, but they are much easier to obtain from a website such as Itunes and much easier to watch or listen to on the computer, which I think makes it better. 

Download Services

In this blog we will be looking at a few of the many download services available today on the internet.

Patches

A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance. Though meant to fix problems, poorly designed patches can sometimes introduce new problems.

The size of patches may vary from a few kilobytes to hundreds of megabytes — mostly more significant changes imply a larger size, though this also depends on whether the patch includes entire files or only the changed portion(s) of files. In particular, patches can become quite large when the changes add or replace non-program data, such as graphics and sounds files. Such situations commonly occur in the patching of computer games. Compared with the initial installation of software, patches usually do not take long to install.

Computer games receive patches to fix compatibility problems after their initial release just like any other software, but they can also be applied to change game rules and to fix glitches. Extra features and game play tweaks can often be added. These kinds of patches are common in first-person shooters with multiplayer modes, and in MMORPGs.  MMORPGs, which are normally complex with large amounts of content, always rely heavily on patches following the release.

Advantages of patches

• It is automatically downloaded to our computer which saves us time.
• They fix our software and games if there are problems.
• They can add new features to our software and games.

Disadvantages of patches

• They take up more memory on our computers.
• They could take a long time to download and install if it is a large patch.
• They could create more problems if the patch has not been checked thoroughly for errors.

In my opinion, patches are very good because you can see that the developer cares about its consumers and wants to fix and update the programs that people use.  Patches can fix things quickly and easily with not much involvement from us.

Torrents and BitTorrent

Programmer Bram Cohen designed it in April 2001 and released a first implementation on July 2, 2001. It is now maintained by Cohen's company BitTorrent, Inc.

As of January 2011 BitTorrent has 100 million users and a greater share of network bandwidth than Netflix and Hulu combined.

At any given instant of time BitTorrent has more active users than YouTube and Facebook combined.

A torrent file stores metadata used for BitTorrent. A torrent is data about a target file.  The only data that the torrent holds is information about the location of different pieces of the target file. Torrents work by dividing the target file into small information chunks, found on an unlimited number of different hosts. Through this method, torrents are able to download large files quickly. When a person has started a torrent download, the chunks of target file that are needed can be found easily. Once all the chunks are downloaded the client can assemble them into one usable file.

BitTorrent is peer-to-peer used for distributing large amounts of data over the Internet. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounted for roughly 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic.

Advantages of Torrents

• You can download files and programs much faster.
• It is peer-to-peer so you download from people you could trust.

Disadvantages of Torrents

• People can abuse the service and use it for distributing software illegally.
• There could be a higher risk of viruses.

In my opinion, torrents are a good idea because you get to download what you want much faster.  However, it is easily abused for people to distribute software illegally and there could be a higher risk of viruses because the file is downloaded from lots of different places.

Security

Whenever you download a file, there is always a small risk that the file will contain a virus or a program that can damage your computer or your information. Here are some steps you can take to help protect your computer when you download files:

Only download files from websites that you trust.

Be cautious of certain file types. Some file types are less safe because they can carry viruses. The main file types to avoid are program files with extensions such as .exe, .scr, .bat, .com, or pif. Often a dangerous file is disguised as a less risky file type, because it has two file name extensions such as, filename.txt.exe. This example might look like a text file, but it's actually an executable file.

Install and use an antivirus program. Antivirus programs scan files before opening them and notify you if a file is unsafe.  Antivirus software can also block certain files from being downloaded if they are immediately recognised as a threat, which stops it from getting onto your computer.  Antivirus software can also scan your entire computer to see if there are any other hidden threats that you or the computer had not noticed before.

Advantages of download security

• It protects you from viruses that could ruin your computer.
• It makes us aware of things we should look out for and we will know not to use certain websites again.
• It keeps our computers and files safe.

Disadvantages of download security

• The antivirus software could look at a file wrong and stop you from downloading it because it looks like a virus when you know it is not.
• Some antivirus software is quite expensive because you have to renew a subscription every year to use the software.

In my opinion, download security is something that everyone should have and be aware of.  Antivirus software may seem expensive but it is worth it to not lose everything on your computer because of viruses.