Internet Download's

The types of downloads that are done using the internet, mainly fall into one of these categories;

Software, hardware drivers, Media, Patches.

I download things in all the areas quite regularly, new software that's hit the web e.g Google Chrome (one of the best browser out there), i had to download a hardware driver because I lost the installation disk for my printers, Media like movies and music I frequently download through iTunes etc, and the even the other day I finally got my Java update.

Downloading items has its drawbacks though, often when downloading some files they can be tampered with if not downloading them from an original source. For example, Downloading Moxilla Firefox, using a uTorrent can be dangerous, because it is not a direct download, people contribute pieces of files from there computers and this can result in 'things' ie virus's being transfer ed to your PC, ending up with you getting more than you bargained for.

All-in-all, I am a true believer in the download revalation and how information has become more accessible to all.

Google Chrome Download link:
http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html?hl=en-GB&brand=CHMB&utm_campaign=en_gb&utm_source=en_gb-ha-emea-mena-sk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=chrome

Online Banking

An overview presentation of internet banking sites, Barclays and Lloyds TSB, in forms .ppt and .pdf, can be found at:

http://sites.google.com/site/craighandleyrofl/Home/the-filing-cabinet

eBay

eBay is an online auction house that aims to help people buy and sell items through them.

    eBay is one of the Internets phenomenon as it receives more hits everyday. It aims at attracting anyone that is computer literate and wants to sell or buy things to people, with having the responsibility of making sure it gets to them.

       The auction process is pretty simple, in terms of the user, people post items that they want to sell on their profile and when or if someone is interested in it, they place a bid on that item. They will only have a certain amount of time to outbid others or wait to see if they have won. If they do win that bid, then the user's details are sent to the seller, their name, address, bid, country, etc. Once they get this, they have a legal obligation to send the item to the winning bidder, under a contract with eBay, but people still try and send faulty goods or fakes, or even ironic items, e.g. if someone bids for an X-Box, they will be sent a box with an 'X' on it. If this does happen and it is reported to eBay the person receives a full refund, as stated in the T's&C's.

        The benefits of this type of service are that, you are more likely to find a product on eBay than anywhere else, you will find it at a cut price, and its delivered to your door. The limitations however, are that not everything can be found on eBay, you have to pay for the items P&P, and the site requires you to be over 18 and have means of paying electronically.

        All-in-all eBay is a pretty good shopping site and I would recommend it to everyone.

Note to self.

Note to self.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Microsoft-Mozilla-Google-Talk-Browser-Futures/

Weather Reports

All in all the weather forecasts were pretty correct, only a few differences in temperature, but other than that it was pretty accurate.

These are the weather reports for 5 days (20th -24th).

Report for;

Saturday 20th : Sunny, 17°C -15°C

Actual Forecast: - Sunny, 18°C

Sunday 21st : Sunny, 17°C - 13°C

Actual Forecast: - Sunny, 20°C

Monday 22nd : Sunny, 17°C - 12°C

Actual Forecast: - Moderately Sunny, 17°C

Tuesday 23rd : Sunny intervals, 17°C - 13°C

Actual Forecast: - Sunny, 19°C

Wednesday 24th : Cloudy, 16°C - 15°C

Actual Forecast: - Cloudy, 15°C

All info sourced at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?id=3146

However this site updates itself everyday, so it may not be the actual Saturday - Wednesday forecast.

Planning a route to Tottenham Court Road

    To plan a route to Tottenham Court was easiest to do for a car. AA route planner was the best car route planning resource I found, returning specific information about the route and other factors you would want to consider; for example, a map, speed camera locations, travel lodges, traffic reports and traffic blind spots.

AA Route Planner: http://www.theaa.com/travelwatch/inc/planner_places_redirect.jsp

    However it was not so easy planning a route by rail. Mainly because you couldn't’t go directly to that area, without changing train,  or changing form of transport.

National Rail route Planner: http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/en/pj/tt

     I did find result for both though, they are as follows;

All info is in PDF format on my separate hosting site: http://sites.google.com/site/craighandleyrofl/Home ~ Then go to my filing cabinet, filed under "Planning a route to Tottenham Court Road."

IT in an emergency

The tragic incident of 2004 in Indonesia sparked mass interest in how IT was used during and after the Tsunami. As many of the communication links were broken or damaged, they were unable to be used. For example, Postal services, phone networks (physical connections). So therefore the people with remote quick services such as mobile phones and email were able to send and receive information. As these media's were the most used, many forms of information was able to be sent e.g. pictures, videos etc. It also caused mass interaction between people and organisations trying to help the survivors of the Tsunami, by people donating to these online charities etc.

Out of this, many virtual communities were formed and people brought together through there experiences. Many blogs and web pages were set up so that someone involved in the accident could contact other people about it, and many of the websites relayed constant updates on what was happening.

The reason modern communication was used over the much older technology was because it could be used very easily and because it was so resistant to the Tsunami itself. Many Internet cafes were recently built, before the Tsunami, because of the surge of interest in the Internet so people could just log into there account and send an email to friends and relatives.

The services that were there, were very effective in there purpose of relaying information from one person's device to another.

Reflections on Usenet

    I found these groups only partially useful, only finding one discussion that had any relative information.

    Only topical and popular pages are going to give 'good' information, whereas not so topical pages are harder to find.

    They have there upside in that, if you can find a goo enough page, then the information that is on it can be very valuable as theses are mainly written by people that have researched this deeply.

"Dr. Resta described six “essential conditions” necessary to overcome the digital divide:
* basic literary skills;
* access to information and communications technologies;
* access to content in the student’s language;
* ability to create and share digital content;
* teachers who can teach with digital resources; and
* effective leadership in educational policy and planning. "

The above was found at
http://groups.google.com/group/bnyee/browse_thread/thread/2257a0b587674154/8a6adbbd5056abee?lnk=st&q=digital+divide

SMS, Chat and Email.

    The purpose of SMS, Chat and E-mail are so that we can communicate with other people with different devices; such as a mobile phone and computer, with the internet used at the base of chat and E-mail. There functionality's are quite similar, in that they both send short or detailed messages. SMS, however is not as advanced as email, for example; emails can be widely customisable with colours, high def images, URL links etc. 

IT Homework: Info on Email and GoogleMail.

Here is some info on Email and GoogleMail.

What is email, and how does it work.

Electronic mail is a method of writing, sending, receiving messages over electronic communication systems, otherwise known as store-and-forward. The term "e-mail" (as a noun or verb) applies to the Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, to network systems based on other protocols and to various mainframes, minicomputers, or the internet by a particular systems vendor, or on the same protocols used on public networks. E-mail is often used to deliver bulk unsolicited messages, or "spam", but filter programs exist which can automatically block, quarantine or delete some or most of these, depending on the situation.

The most typical sequence of events when sending an email:

Google Mail.

Gmail, officially Google Mail in Germany and the United Kingdom, is a free web-based (webmail), POP3 and IMAP e-mail service provided by Google. On April 1, 2004 the product began as an invitation-only beta release. On February 7, 2007 the beta version was opened to the general public. With an initial storage capacity of 1 GB, it drastically increased the standard for free storage.Gmail currently offers over 7100 MB of free storage (increasing approximately 3.348 MB daily), with additional storage ranging from 10 GB to 400 GB available for US$20 to $500 per year. It has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an internet forum. Gmail is well-known for its use of the Ajax programming technique in its design, and has tens of millions of users.

First Post

First post, to simply check if this is working.

Look out for more to come.