The term video conferencing may conjure up images of suited and booted businessmen gathered in a boardroom having high-powered discussions with clients or colleagues on the other side of the world. While it’s great that video conferencing allows businesses to do this, forms of video calling are increasingly being used in the home, allowing friends and family members to stay in touch across the globe.
The internet allows you to speak to and see people anywhere in the world in real Read More
It can take a day to send a letter across the city and weeks to go around the world. To save time and money, you can’t beat electronic mail. It’s fast, easy and cheaper than the using the postal service.
What is email?
In its simplest form, email is an electronic message sent from one device to another. While many messages go from computer to computer, email can also be sent and received by mobile phones, PDAs and other portable devices. With email, you can send and receive personal and business-related Read More
Would you like to converse with other people from the comfort of your desktop? With online chat you can communicate in real time with people all around the world. In most cases, you don’t need any special software, just your web browser. (For the best results, we recommend that you use the latest version of your favorite browser.)
Type to Me
The word ’chat’ may be somewhat misleading because you’re not really talking to anyone, just typing and reading text messages that participants write. Once you enter a chat room, which is really a web page that runs special software, you can choose to just read the exchanges, known as lurking, or you can join in by posting your own messages.
Many chat rooms focus the conversation on specific topics, such as health, politics, football and so on. That way people with similar interests can find one another. It can be a lot of fun and the price is certainly right–generally it’s free–so there’s little to lose.
A New You
The first step is to locate a chat room that interests you. Try an online search using the keywords ’chat rooms’. Once you access the website, you will usually be required to register by providing some personal information. You can use your real name, but many people make up a name.
After you choose your chat persona, you may also be able to select an image to represent you. These graphics, called avatars can be anything from a frog to a prince or princess or a mythical being. Although communicating online lacks the nuances we get when talking face-to-face, humorous graphics personalise the experience in a small way, and break the monotony of a text-only screen. Equipped with a name and possibly a character, click the Enter button and follow the instructions to choose a chat room.
Join the Crowd
Once inside, you may find yourself in the middle of an ongoing conversation. Take a few minutes to absorb the gist of the exchange. There’s no harm in lurking for a while before you join in. In fact it’s not uncommon for chat rooms to have many more lurkers than participants. As the interaction continues, new postings appear at the top or bottom of the list. Once you feel confident enough to participate in the discussion, type your message in the blank box at the bottom of your screen and click the Talk button or hit the Enter or Return key on your keyboard. Soon your message will be posted in the chat room and people may respond.
While chats can offer an engaging experience, proceed with caution. Use common sense. Remember that all your comments are public. Even if it appears that there is only one other person in a room, others can be lurking. Don’t give out personal information to strangers you meet online–certainly not your address, phone number or credit card account. Having said that, it’s time to start chatting.
Learn the Net (www.learnthenet.com) is Copyright 1996-2010.
Michael Lerner Productions. All Rights Reserved.
When we’re out in the real world, interacting with friends, family, co-workers and strangers, there are unspoken rules that guide us. Yet as we move our social interactions online, especially to social networking websites, do the same rules of etiquette apply?
Typically different rules of netiquette apply, depending on the site. These differences are because each site has different functions and goals. For instance Twitter, which focuses on the sending of brief text messages, has different netiquette than LinkedIn, which focuses on keeping businesses and professionals connected.
So here are a few rules of netiquette for Facebook and Twitter, the most popular social networking sites. However, many of these rules could easily apply to sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Friendster.
Learn the Net (www.learnthenet.com) is Copyright 1996-2010.
Michael Lerner Productions. All Rights Reserved.
Digital Revolutions is a new short film competition that asks entrants to illustrate creatively the impact of information and information technology on their lives today.
Today, information and information technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives, providing a creative outlet for self-expression. This competition has been devised to encourage people to look more closely at how IT impacts them, to appreciate how it is helping people to lead richer, more fulfilling lives.
Both amateur and professional filmmakers, writers, designers, animators and programmers are called on to use film to communicate how they view the information society that we live in today, in what will be the biggest documentary film festival in the UK.
BCS is running the competition in conjunction with Doc/Fest, a leading documentary film festival, and Crossover, an international digital media and content programme. The competition is open for entries until noon on 15 October.
The films will be judged by a panel that includes Kevin Macdonald (Oscar winning director of One Day in September and The Last King of Scotland), and David Bond (director of the award winning and critically acclaimed documentary Erasing David). Read More
Online Collaboration
Alastair Mitchell, CEO, Huddle talks about online collaboration – what it is and how it can help businesses work more efficiency.