Internet Democracy Project

August 23rd, 2010

Sharing Knowledge Through The Internet: Even JCPenney Coupon Codes

: Image via Wikipedia

The Internet has become more than just a place to hang out and chat. During the early years of its development, it was thrilling to get an email and to learn about others who also had the services. It was fun to chat with friends and to read the latest news. However, today there is much more to do and see when it comes to using this immensely popular tool. It is so effective that most homes have numerous computers all connected through the web.

One of the ways that the Internet has helped people is by allowing better communication to occur. Imagine, for example, the traditional desktop encyclopedia set. By the time it was printed, it was out of date. It did not include the latest news. It was impossible to use for up-to-date reporting. It was likely to hold key information and resources, but finding that information is also possible to through the web. The information sharing found on the web is what makes it such a valuable tool.

There are many examples of how sharing knowledge occurs on the web. Businesses can interact with each other and build entire marketing models for use around the information shared. Research can help families to learn more about a research study for a medical procedure that could save a family member’s life. Families can use the Internet to save money, even finding their favorite store coupons such as JCPenney coupon codes.

Sharing knowledge is something that people do well. When people can do this successfully, everyone benefits. Individuals benefit from learning what others know. The group benefits by elevating their level of education and accomplishing more together. In short, the Internet is allowing people to share information between each other not only more thoroughly, but also faster. Those are key benefits no other device in the world can do so well.

August 22nd, 2010

The Sprint Coverage Map is Vast, Indeed

: Image via Wikipedia

Are you a part of the ever growing smart phone nation? The smart phone is turning into more than just a fun little thing that you can whip out at a party and do little parlor tricks with. In this day and age, you can use your smart phone for a very wide variety of different things. With a smart phone, just about any kind of administrative or entertainment related task can be done, either stock or with one of the unbelievably large number of different downloadable apps. You can even surf the internet with a smart phone. And it seems like every company boasts something neat to add to your experience.

The Sprint coverage map is a pretty huge net to fall into. If you happen to be in the continental United States (or in a small swath of Canada), you have the option of surfing the net from pretty much anywhere. There is barely a square foot of space in this country where you can’t go online and check out sports scores, see how your portfolio is doing this hour (and panic because you’ve lost a nickel per share), or find out what the current hot celebrity couple is fighting about this week.

Overall, the Internet is the ultimate expression of a free society. You can read about any conceivable opinion becuase anybody is free to say pretty much anything! You can go on forums and spout off about whatever is annoying you, and you can get into little ego wars with people who think you’re nothing but an annoying troll. And while you used to just be able to do this at a computer, now you can get involved in little egomaniac wars with other self important people from absolutely any place.

August 4th, 2010

Internet Scams: How Cautious Should You Be

: Image via Wikipedia

Internet users are victims of various scams online. The goal of these scams is to steal your money or perform some criminal act using your identity. Millions of dollars have been lost because of these crimes, and despite law enforcement having organized many special units to combat this crime, it is still proliferating.

Some of the many types of online distribution of Internet fraud are:

Phishing E-mails; here, hundreds of thousands of emails are sent out using fraudulent email addresses. These usually ask for personal information you should not give out, but many people fall for it for various reasons. The result is usually identity theft.

Lottery scams: are emails with messages informing you that have made millions of dollars in an international lottery. The message usually tells you that your e-mail has been included among the winners by random drawing. To convince the victim, they are given links to real lotteries, or even documents or false ads that claim that the lottery was approved by well known companies such as Microsoft.

Nigerian Scams or the 419 scam: Popularly known as the Nigerian scam, it is one of the most pervasive and popular internet scams. It also uses e-mails with different versions of a story of some political leader who has been overthrown and possesses millions of dollars that need to be transferred. All you need to do to get that money is provide bank account information. Once you do that, your bank is robbed online.

One other popular scam involves sending you an interesting image or document as an attachment. This attachment contains a malicious code. When you open the attachment, the executable code gets downloaded into your computer. Unknown to you, it sits there and either records your every online movement and transmits them, or enslaves your computer and makes use of it for illegal purposes.

June 1st, 2010

Internet Communication through Video and Audio

: Image via Wikipedia

The internet has always been used as a mode of communication. Old timers will remember a period when two computers used to communicate textually using something called an IRC chat. Here, there were no programs like Yahoo Chat in those days, but smart programmers deviced little applets to send and receive messages using various shell protocols.
We have come a long way from those days. Although we have not nearly arrived at teleportation yet – your online pizza delivery cannot be eaten out of your high end lcd display. No, but we have still made enormous progress. You can see and talk to friends and business associates across continents, you can see them moving around in their office or their homes, and feel like you are nearer to them than reality would have you believe.
Welcome to the world of audio and video chat over the internet.
The necessary devices required to accomplish this modern day marvel are a set of microphones and headphones, and a web camera; assuming you have the internet connection going, of course. The software usually needed for this is a java based chat program. Currently the two most important chat programs are gtalk and skype; this is after the relative demise of Yahoo chat as the program of choice for chatting. In some countries like the US, AOL is also very important.
All you need to do is login to your skype or gtalk or whatever account, and start a conversation with a friend on your list. Once the textual chatting thing is on its way, you can easily start the webcam and the voice. This lets you talk to people while they can see you; you can see them too if they have their own cams online. The voice and image thing may not work well for slower connections, but with high speed broadband, it is a blitz.

May 25th, 2010

Cyber Crime: Threatening Every Internet User

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Cyber crime has become a serious problem for those using the Internet. The greatest threats to all Internet users are malicious software programs known as crime-ware and social planning systems, which are often known as phishing and pharming scams. Viruses do not currently pose as big a problem with the potential loss of data or damage to our computers; spyware and phishing attack is where the danger is real.

Spyware is the most common form of crime-ware. It is a small program or piece of code that is designed for spying on your online activity and / or personal information. There are many types and forms of spyware and new versions are introduced into the Internet every day. Although all spyware is used for illegal purposes, some can be very dangerous because of an ability to record keystrokes, take pictures of our PC screen and monitor everything that we do online. Spyware often installs unknown to anyone, and runs quietly in the background.

The information gathered by spyware is secretly transmitted to the person who planted it. Sometimes it is emailed, but more often it is relayed to a hostage slave computer, where it is captured by the criminal that installed it. It is possible for the person to use it to access bank accounts, credit card money, or even steal identity. Some spyware is used to hijack computers, turning them into slaves used to collect and store data that were obtained illegally. Most owners rarely know that their PC is used to store illegal information. Many of the slave computers are also used to help social engineers collect data through pharming scams.

How to protect yourself online?

There are several things you can do to protect yourself from cyber crime. The most obvious is to use good Internet security products. Anyone who uses the Internet should use a good personal firewall, anti-spyware and anti-virus software. The easiest way for more secure computer users at home is to buy an Internet Security Suite.

May 1st, 2010

How the internet promotes democracy

: Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

The internet is a great tool that helps promote democracy. It acts as a easy and low cost way for the least prominent of individuals to give prominence to their voice. There was a time when these voices went unheard among the millions of voices clamoring for attention on the internet. But not anymore; people have begun to realize the potential of what they call “social content,” which is internet content created by the common people. This has resulted in something important in how we seek justice, social, political, economic, corporate and the like: the concept that if you know how to promote your opinion on the internet, it will definitely be heard.

The two best ways to give voice to your opinions are blogs and forums. A blog is like a web diary. You can record your thoughts here, and have people read them and leave comments. Because a blog has a lot of reading textual material, it is usually ranked much higher in Google – this means more readers to you, and more reading of your opinions. If you have been wronged, or if there is some important social justice issue you want people to give urgent attention to, start a blog. Your message will spread virally, from one person to another, until soon there will be a voice with your opinion.

The other way is a forum; here you have people of similar interests discuss a topic to death. Forums can have hundreds of thousands of registered members; it is like your very own private newspaper network. So if you have something you want to let people know, start a discussion thread in your forum. Thousands of people will come to know about it in a few hours.

In today’s world, many of the most important discussions had been initiated on the internet. From political corruption to military secrets, all have had their place on the internet, and democracy has been promoted with a capital “P.”

April 28th, 2010

Computers and Internet for Business

Internet for business has many uses. It is the most powerful medium to give your business exposure to millions of people around the world.

The first thing one requires when starting out online is a website. To be honest, creating one is not a Herculean task at all. The primary requirement would be a domain name and these are easily available from $10 to $50 per year. There are numerous websites online that offer domain space and registration and you can find them in major search engines. When you have found a domain name for yourself, you need a web host for making your website suitable for the whole world to view. The last step is to create your website and you could do it yourself with software, or find professional help.

The next step to online business is to purchase internet advertising, and there are innumerable paid internet advertising techniques available online. The most effective of these paid methods are pay-per-click ads, banner advertising and purchasing leads.

For websites to be successful, the content needs to be perfect. That is one of the reasons why content is still king! Get an article writer to create content suitable for your business and ensure that relevant information is added to the content.

Social Networking is the order of the day and it is a community of regular internet users. Hence it is mandatory that your presence be visible on major social networking sites to help get your business noticed.

The final step to a successful online business is through the use of blogs. Blogging is generally a website or webpage where regular comments, descriptions, videos and images or graphics are added and shared amongst the Blogging community. A normal Blog would contain text, images and links to other different blogs.

These top five ways are sure to get your business noticed and can create an online presence. However, if you still find that you require traffic to your website and need more visitors to your website, use the services of an SEO specialist to do the rest for you.

March 15th, 2010

Computers and Internet: An Integral Part of our Lives

These days people cannot live without a computer and an internet connection. This goes to show how people have made the computer and the internet an integral part of their day-to-day life. A day is not complete without checking mails, sending chat messages or socializing on the umpteen social sites one would find online. Friendships and socializing has now gone completely online and people are so hooked to these sites, that they do not have time for actually socializing with human beings anymore.

The trend is not bad; however, it does come with a cost and people are slowly losing their identity to machines. Not so long ago, the computer was believed to be a boon to mankind for the amount of utilities and purposes it solved, and even today many deem it to be an extension of them. It is true that computers and the internet have numerous uses. We all know that by now, yet most of us are still apprehensive about the computers and internet ruling our lives and gradually this trend is catching up with many.

Computers and the Internet have made things simpler for all. Imagine shopping for your favorite things right from the comfort of your home. With online shopping, buying that much-desired quilt or bathrobe is no more a problem and saves you the trouble of hunting for it from one shop to another. Not just shopping and socializing, the internet has created a vast environment for news distribution and allows people to be updated with the immediate happenings from around the world. The internet also provides a vast encyclopedia of information for research and finding out new things that we never knew before. In short, the computers and internet have contributed to the benefit of the society in many ways, yet they do have their set of drawbacks too. Younger children need to be protected from adult sites and other inappropriate content but if used in the right way the internet opens out a window to the outside world right from your living room.

March 14th, 2010

Internet for Entertainment and education

It would be difficult to imagine modern life without the use of computers and the Internet. Our identities are largely a cyberspace extension of our real self
The use of the Internet can be divided into four main categories: business, networking, entertainment and education.

The Internet offers endless opportunities for electronic commerce, in order to sell, buy, and find something on the Internet. Internet has become our social sphere in a big way when we make new friends that we have never seen. We come to know people from all over the world, regardless of religion, skin color, nationality and language. We come together and meet friends, business partners, the future partner of an unmarried person, and a whole lot of other people.

Entertainment is another very important use of the Internet today. With the proliferation of sites and services, there is something for everyone. Streaming online video, radio, web communities, live video chatting websites, P2P download services; everything is there on the net. Sports fans can now watch their streaming video games or sports updates. The Internet is also an important source of information and education to people of all ages, with their age specific needs. Many people are turning to the Internet, with its newspapers and journals, to keep informed on the whereabouts of the world around them. For others, Internet is the way to learn about training opportunities around the world, sitting in the comfort of your home.

The uses of the Internet, as you can see, are many. Today you can do almost anything, find someone and learn about everything you ever wanted to know, and all of this in the comfort of an armchair in front of a computer. From movies to images to news, from ebooks to shareware to shopping, internet is there to offer every need of our lives.

March 3rd, 2010

The Internet and Your Teenager

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The Internet has opened a window of prospects for teenagers around the world today and most of these prospects are positive including accessing information instantaneously. However, as a parent it is imperative to be informed about the various ways in which teenagers tend to use and abuse the internet. Monitoring internet usages by teenagers is highly important and getting involved in their activity is essential too.

The many problems teenagers face with the internet today are mainly due to negligence from the parentâ€™s part. As responsible parents one needs to be constantly aware of what your teenager does on the internet. Safety is the main concern for teenagers on the internet today, yet there are too many positives of the internet to ban it completely. Learning aptitudes have improved and students are able to do their research on the internet, literally having the world of information at their fingertips.

Interacting with loved ones and close friends on the internet is not a cause for worry but if your teenage children are interacting with strangers, it definitely calls for intervention and action. Parents need to have open-talks with teenage children as to who they are interacting and chatting with. This could bridge the gap between the both of you and also helps you get the trust and attention of your children. Another thing to bear in mind is to keep the computer in a public part of the house rather than giving them access to the internet in their living room.

These days teenagers are at a high risk from stalkers and child-abusers and they can easily gain the trust of your children if your relationship with them is strained. Remember to talk to your children about whatever activity they had on the internet and also install safeguarding software to minimize the amount of risk of adult and pornography sites for your children. Open communication is the key that can eliminate any issue that your teenager faces with the internet, hence parents should learn to respect their privacy yet deal with them in a comfort level.