Communication Uses and benefits Introduction Communication is an

Communication- Uses and benefits

Introduction Communication is an action used to exchange information with people from around the world using the internet.

Email allows you to share messages with people on the internet and add attachments (other files). The benefits of email are that you can send messages to anyone around the world. A disadvantage are that it is not always secure and can be vulnerable to hacking or exploited for scams and the like if you are not careful.

VOIP (Voice over internet protocol) allows you to speak to someone over the internet using your voice or video camera. Programs that allow their users to call others can be used for a number of different purposes, the main one being for conference calls in big businesses. Skype is one of the most popular applications because you can call people from all over the world for free.

Online chatting is communicating with other users on the internet by text. Chatting to people online is a great way to meet people and make friends. However, you need to be careful of the fact that you do not always know who you are talking to. Some people will go out of their way to hide who they really are so you need to be vigilant.

Social Networking Social networking (SN) is a group of people (locally, regionally or internationally) communicating via social networking websites (Facebook or Twitter). Social networking is a massive amount of users communicating with one another either by text or by picture. Advantages of SN include: Being able to get your message across to a large amount of people in a short space of time and being able to meet new people. Disadvantages include: Not always being able to check if the information you read is truthful and you should always check your sources to be sure.

Forums is a website that allows users to share information with one another. These can be discussions ranging from a variety of different topics. You can also share files that cannot usually be edited. There are moderators that keep the forum clean from profanity and spam messages. Advantages of forums include the fact that you can easily find answers to a specific problem - for example if you have technical issues you can find support for your issues on a support forum. Disadvantages of forums are the same as any internet based form of communication - they aren’t always reliable.

Blogs are a text based method of sharing information on a live post. Similar to You. Tube, people will have their own individual “channel” which they can talk about anything they want as long it doesn't go against the website’s terms and conditions. An advantage of using blogs it allows you to get your point across to a large amount of people in a short amount of time depending on your following. Disadvantages of using blogs are the fact that blogs are kind of impersonal, meaning they don’t have a personal touch to them unlike vlogs or videos where you can see the person’s face.

Wikipedia Pages A Wikipedia page (or wiki for short) is a page or group of pages that list various facts or data linked to different topics. These pages are constantly updated to contain new facts and can be edited by anyone. An advantage of a wiki is that wiki pages contain a lot of data that is easily accessible to anyone as long as they have an internet connection. A disadvantage of using a wiki is that it can be publicly edited by anyone therefore, it can be unreliable when used for information gathering.

Topic 2 - Sharing of hardware Hardware is useful because it can be moved around from place to place. You could physically give someone your hard disk or USB pen and they could access the information on it. The other form of sharing hardware is when you can give your client access to your hardware via the network. This can work with printers and scanners.

Scanner A scanner can copy images and share them via the computer. the advantage of a scanner is that you can transfer images to other clients computers the disadvantage of sharing a network for a scanner is that it can be a slow process to send information if you have massive amount of packet loss

Printer allows you to make a copy of your work on paper. it also allows other devices in your house to connect to the printer such as phones, tablets, desktop, laptops etc. the cost of ink can be a lot of money to replace.

The Internet All devices in your house connect to the internet by the router. Each device shares a network so you can connect to the internet.

Storage storage can be shared in multiple ways. you can either use a cloud which is data that is sent to the internet or you can use a flash drive which is portable and holds data.