What can we do with the Internet?
The Internet is for Everyone
The Internet is now one of the most significant slices of our daily life. Because we can do a vast number of things on the Internet, it became vital. With the growth of the Internet, we are improving in every field of life as it not only makes our tasks easier but also saves much time for us. On these days the Internet used for different purposes depending upon the requirement.
Communication
The most common type of communications
E-mail
Short for electronic mail works much like the traditional letter, but the process is instant by using an e-mail client such as Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail.
Instant Messaging
IM, shorthand for Instant messages allow us to send messages in real time over a network using specific software such as Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook Messenger.
Chat
Chat is a multi-user text-based communication system that allows people to gather on channels or rooms to talk in groups or privately. Some of the chat clients: IRC, Bonjour, AIM, Google Talk.
Social Networking
Today social networking the most known communication type. It leads us to reconnect with old friends, makes new friends and brings together with fellows of similar interests. Popular sites: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.
Forums
An Internet forum is a discussion area for registered members on a website. Members can start discussions by opening new topics and read and respond to posts by other forum members. The conversations in a forum called threads. A forum can focus on nearly any subject. Forums usually monitored by moderators.
Blog
The blog is typically written by one-person online journal or diary, telling about a character’s life, promoting products, providing information and education materials, tutorials and stating opinions.
Audio and Video Conferencing
These are providing a connection between two or more computers using microphones and web cameras that the users able to hear and see each other through the speakers and webcams.
Dating Sites
It dedicated that members can contact each other that making romantic connections.
Internet Telephony
We can make phone calls over the Internet using our computers via phone services, called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Some providers: Ring Central Office for businesses, Phone.com, Skype.
Photo Sharing
One of the most popular sharing type. Photo sharing engage users to upload their images to share with friends online or indeed the entire web. A vast number of photo sharing sites are free to use and provide a vast number of tools for editing, cropping and grouping images together. Some of them offer hosting services as well. Well-known sites: Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, Photobucket, Pinterest.
Research
The World Wide Web is a giant database that we can find information about any topic we desire. Research is the regular study of materials and sources to create facts and reach new conclusions and questions for future research to explore. Before the internet, handling research for school, work or out of interest elaborate a set of encyclopaedias and a journey to the library.
Research has got lots of advantage from the development of the internet. We search for the related topic, and we get hundreds of hints that may be beneficial for our study
We can explore
- Academic journals, articles and other scholarly and education content (Google Scholar)
- Books (Google Books Search)
- Wide search (Google)
- Creating a cited page (Citation Machine)
Collaboration
The Internet is the network of the networks, and collaboration is to keep it together.
Online collaboration lets a group of people work together in real-time over the Internet as if they were here in the room jointly; geography is no longer a wall. Folks involved in online collaboration can work together on any documents, presentations and even for brainstorming often at the same time. The members of the work group can work from home and clients can come from all over the World.
The best way to work with each other online is using the appropriate collaboration tools. The adequate tool needs to be secure, easy to use and setup. The excellent collaboration tools make it easier and faster to get feedback and professionally approve work, and they are available from free application through paid complete manager tools to web browser extensions.
Here you are a sort of list of the best recently available tools
- Google Docs (Free)
- Huddle (For government and enterprise)
- Basecamp (Free trial)
- iMeet Central (Free trial)
- OneHub (Free trial)
- Collabtive (Open Source)
- In Vision (First project free)
- Trello
- Yammer
- SharePoint
- Red Pen
- Mural
- ProofHub
- Cage
- Wrike (Free and paid)
- Zoho
- Work front
e-Commerce
E-commerce is short for electronic commerce. It is a term for any business, or trade activity, which holds up the exchange of information over the Internet.
An e-commerce platform is a software application that allows online businesses to manage their website, sales and operations. Electronic selling and buying allow consumers to exchange goods and services with no boundaries of time or distance.
The benefits of e-commerce include its non-stop availability, the quickness of access, the broad availability of goods and services for the consumer, simple accessibility, and worldwide reach.
Its recognised downsides are sometimes-limited customer service, consumers not being able to see or touch a product before purchase, and the required wait time for product shipping.
To creating a prosperous online store can be hard if unaware of e-commerce principles.
Brief History
E-commerce first introduced in the 1960s via an electronic data transaction on value-added networks. The medium grew with the increased availability of internet access and the advent of favourite online merchants in the '90s and at the beginning of the 2000s.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon as a book shipping business in his garage in 1995. Also in this year eBay introduced online auctions and exploded with Ty Warner’s Beanie Babies in 1997.
Like any digital technology or consumer-based purchasing market, e-commerce has changed over the years. As mobile devices became more popular than before the time, mobile commerce has become its market.
The changing market represents a massive opportunity for businesses to improve their relevance and expand their market in the online world. Thanks to Facebook and Pinterest, social media has become an essential driver of e-commerce. Mobile and internet use expand both in the USA and in developing markets around the world.
What does e-commerce business sell?
- Digital goods, such as downloadable music, software, etcetera.
- Physical products, like furniture, books, and so forth.
- Services, for example, insurance, web hosting, tickets.
Who are the members of the e-commerce business?
- Both contributors are businesses: Business to Business (B2B).
- Businesses sell goods to consumers: Business to Consumer (B2C).
- Consumers placing their offer and companies sell it, for example selling and buying tickets: Consumer to Business (C2B).
- Buying and selling platforms, such as eBay: Consumer to Consumer (C2C).
Types of e-commerce platforms
Cloud or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), it is also called to as hosted
- It is a class of solutions where a merchant rents a software together with infrastructure from the same vendor.
- All the clients of the vendor use the same software.
- Platform support and maintenance (software updates, bugfixes, improvements) provided over the whole shared infrastructure.
- Less need a technical background.
- Lower Level of flexibility.
- You cannot modify or amend the source code of your website.
- Not all, but many SaaS providers charge you a percentage of your store revenue.
Popular platforms
Open Source eCommerce platforms
These programs often referred as self-hosted are shipped with full access to the source code and can deploy to any compatible hosting.
- High level of flexibility.
- You can access to the source code so can amend, change and modify it the way you need to achieve your business goals.
- You can decide where to host it and who maintain your store.
- A Greater level of control and ownership. The store hosted on your pc, so you have full access to the data and the code, can manage it the way you need, transfer and change it.
- A vast number of plugins, apps, and extensions.
- In general, open-source platforms need expert IT knowledge for both initial set-up and ongoing support and maintenance. More expensive than SaaS because of expertise fee.
- Since you manage your hosting, you need to keep an eye on your business progress and upgrade your infrastructure if required.
Popular platforms
Enterprise Software
Enterprise software is computer software used in need for an organisation, such as large businesses, schools, large user groups, governments.
It is an information system, and it provides useful tools for businesses such as online payment processing and automated billing systems with strict requirements for security and business administration.
Enterprise applications are classically designed to integrate with other enterprise applications used within the organisation and installed on a variety of networks.
The enterprise software developed some part of, or all the application by a specialised IT development team within the company and installed internal, called branded application. However, the more common on these days is working with an enterprise application service provider (ASP)
It is also often mentioned as software-as-a-service, software-as-a-storage (SaaS) or Web-based applications.
Types of Enterprise Applications by functions
- Automated billing systems/Accounting software
- Payment processing
- Email marketing systems
- Content management system (CMS)
- Call centre and customer support
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Business Intelligence
- Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
- HR Management
- Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
- Enterprise search
- Business process management
- Database
- Master data management (MDM)
- Enterprise asset management (EAM)
- Supply chain management (SCM)
- Backup software
Enterprise software characteristics
- Market size of broadly 200 Billion dollars and growing 5-10% per year.
- Thousands of merchants with high client purchase costs.
- Products vary from simple to complicated.
- Prices reach from free to expensive.
Some reputable software
Primary cloud computing services
The areas of the internet use described here are certainly only part of the many opportunities that the Internet can offers. A few days ago I didn't even know what Steem is, and for now, I have become a steemian. The internet is wonderful.
Thanks for reading it,
Gesha
References
- Research Tools
- A Basic Guide to Online Collaboration
- Learn the Basics About Ecommerce
- Electronic Commerce
- Enterprise software
