Real-Time Information

Flight Tracking -

Flight tracking is a stream of data which allows people to track the current whereabouts of airplanes and obtain various information such as the airline, destination and where it came from, aircraft, registration, altitude, speed and so on. It allows the public and airline workers (airline workers will receive far more detailed information and via different sources) to keep tabs on flight progress (e.g. tracking your families whereabouts as they fly to Australia for vacation), conclude when flights will arrive (e.g. if your flight has been delayed and you wish to see where it currently is) and determine where planes that you have just seen are heading (e.g. one flying over your house with a destination of Norway). A popular website for airplane tracking is Flightradar24 (http://www.flightradar24.com). It allows the public to access a constantly updated stream of airline data which is available all-day every day. This is made possible by automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) which works as follows:

1. Aircraft gets its location from a GPS navigation source (satellite)
2. ADS-B unit on aircraft transmits a signal containing the location and much more
3. ADS-B signal is picked up by a receiver connected to Flightradar24
4. Receiver feeds data to Flightradar24

Parcel Tracking -

When items are purchased online via various websites such as Amazon, HMV and FedEx users are often given the opportunity to track the status of their product, this is called parcel tracking. Generally the extent to which people can track their parcels is fairly limited as the cost of attaching GPS tracking devices to deliveries would be steep, prices of items would be increased and it would be massively inconvenient for the company to do so. What users tend to find is that parcel information will be updates as it reaches key stages in its journey to the house of whoever purchased it such as manufacturing, shipping, delivered and so on. To track the package, users are often provided with a unique code which when entered to the website of the provider will supply them with the current progress of the parcel.

Webcams -

Webcams (in this case hosted by websites) are cameras which provide a live or regularly updated stream of photos or videos across the internet. The majority of websites hosting these webcams often do not charge users for accessing them, thus providing us with a free source of instant weather information (people will be able to see if it is raining, sunny, etc) and showing the current condition of the area in which the webcam is located (for example whilst researching a holiday destination people may desire a more recent and unbiased view of the area than various holiday websites may provide, for this they may use a webcam). Webcams such as this are usually located in areas of general interest such as airports (website example: http://www.airportwebcam.net/), beaches (website example: http://magicseaweed.com/) and holiday destinations such as ski resorts (website example: http://www.latania.co.uk/webcam/) or used to stream live events such as concerts, vlogs (video blogging) and spaceship launches on sites such as Livestream (http://new.livestream.com/) and Usteam (http://www.ustream.tv/new).

Satellite Navigation -

Satellite navigation (also known as ‘SAT NAV’ for short) use GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking devices (which work via signals from an array of orbiting satellites) to track the locations of users and provide them with live visual and audio navigation assistance. Often these devices come built into cars or as an attachment or phone application. These days they provide a vital role in journey planning as they are faster and easier to use than maps as they allow users access to almost instant automatically generated route planning and often provide current location on a virtual map shown on screen. 

Disadvantage to satellite navigation include:

• Expensive prices for devices
• Possible bizarre detours from route such as down country lanes and through small villages
• Unexpected glitches or syncing errors thus resulting in unusual outcomes such as showing you vehicle to be miles out at sea

News and Traffic Updates -

Advances in technology have allowed news to develop to the point of being available to from people around the globe almost as soon as the event happens. Unlike newspapers (printing is required) or television (video crews may be too slow), the internet allows news and weather reports to be published instantly and allow the public notify them of currently occurring incidents (for example if people were to witness a car crash they could email or ‘Tweet’ a local news station thus provide them with information on the accident almost as soon as it happens). Some major Websites include BBC news (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/), BBC Weather (http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/) and BT Yahoo (http://home.bt.yahoo.com/). Personally, I use BT Yahoo for news updates as it provides instant access to interesting and important news stories and has a rather useful email system.

Bookings -

Online booking has made it increasing easy for people to discover and attend a huge variety of activities. When it comes to events with a limited amount of spaces or seats (e.g. football matches and cinema showings) real-time information is put into use. To touch on the subject I shall use Odeon as an example. Odeon (a chain of cinemas) allows users to purchase cinema tickets for specific films and seats online. It constantly updates itself using an automatic system to tell users which seats have already been bought, thus preventing clashes due to users buying the same seat as each other and overselling. The most recent ticket I bought online was to the Barclaycard Wireless Festival 2012 (a music festival in London featuring musicians such as Deadmau5, Knife Party and Zedd)

Online Communication

Forums -

Internet forums are online message boards in which users may discuss various topics of interest with other site members. Forums are usually divided into key areas (e.g. music, gaming and video) which contain various subgenres (e.g. music sections may contain various sections such as ‘Jazz Music’, ‘Dubstep’ and ‘rock & roll’). Within the subgenre sections users are often allowed to create or respond to an assortment of topics (also known as threads) created by either admins or normal site members. These threads often begin with a question (e.g. “How do I turn off my computer”) which is may then be debated and answered by a variety of site members. However, occasionally threads may become off topic or spammed thus resulting in confusion and possibly arguments. Due to this, admins and moderators are often needed to maintain the forums of websites. To do so they are granted special privileges such as the ability to remove posts, ban users and lock topics so as to keep discussions relevant, lower the level of spammers or people posting inappropriate text and/or pictures (e.g. gruesome gifs and chain messages) on the site and so on.

Personally I rarely use forums; occasionally however I will use them to find solutions to problems with software, to download mods and plugins and to join small creative projects. The most successful of these being an animation collaboration which I was able to join via the forums on a site named Newgrounds. The project received over nineteen thousand views and achieved a solid four out of five stars.

Email -

An email is a way of messaging others via electronic devices. Currently over 600 million people use email as a method of communication in the modern world due to its ease of use and accessibility. It is estimated that an average of 90 trillion emails are sent every year.

The man credited with its invention in 1972 was Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson worked as an ARPANET (the system in place before the global internet) contractor and it was he whom chose the @ symbol to denote exchanging messages between peoples computers, thus providing people with an easy way to identify who exactly the message was from and whom they were sending to. The first email ever sent between was between two computers located within a short distance of each other and read “QWERTYUIOP”. In 1975 a man whom was named John Vital created a piece of software to organize emails, this was a huge advancement for emails and has led to further developments of the sort. However, even before these advances there was an early method of computer messaging. It began with people leaving small message files on people’s computers (as one would do so with office notes), then evolved into a system which allowed messages to be sent between users of a single computer; until eventually allowing people to message people on other computers at close range and has continued to advance to what we have today.

Chat rooms -


Chat rooms are websites in which users use real-time messaging systems to anonymously ‘talk’ to complete strangers via the use of self-picked or automatically generated usernames. Chat rooms may provide a variety of graphics to use (e.g. ‘smileys’ and gifs), minigames (e.g. pong) and video/voice use to improve the overall experience of site members. Popular chat room websites include Chatroulette, Omegle and Tinychat.

SMS -

SMS stands for Short Messaging Service and is a vastly popular method of communication. It allows short messages of text (up to 160 characters per message) to be exchanged between mobile phones or fixed lines. Currently over SMS has over 3.6 billion active users (78% of total mobile phone subscribers) and in 2010 over 6.1 trillion messages were sent using the service (193000 messages per second). Reasons for its huge success include its ease of access (is a available on the majority of mobile phones) and cheap costs (the average price being $0.11, however many networks provide deals which entitle users to unlimited SMS message usage for a monthly contract).

Video Steaming -

Video Steaming allows users to communicate face to face without needing to be physically present via the use of webcams (small cameras which are capable of streaming real-time video footage across the internet). This is incredibly useful for businesses as it allows them to communicate with other companies around the world without having to travel the distances, for example a company based in New York (America) could have a professional meeting with business partners in Rome (Italy) to discuss future plans, without having to leave their offices thus saving the time and money of the company. Another popular use of the software is the communication between members of families whom are located in different countries or parts of the country. For example a soldier in Afghanistan is now able to see and talk with his family despite him being located thousands of miles away from them, this helps troops overcome homesickness and maintain a close relationship with their loved ones. One of the more popular platforms for video communication is Skype (it allows free video calls from computers to computers, but charges a small fee when communicating with mobile phones and telephone landlines via Skype).

Here are some facts about Skype (source: www.statisticbrain.com):

• Total number of Skype users as of Jan. 2012 - 31 million

• Average time spent on a Skype conversation - 27 minutes

• Number of time that active Skype users spend on Skype per month - 100 minutes

• Total percentage of small businesses that use Skype as primary communication service - 35%

• Number Skype enabled television sets - 50 million

• Number of iphone Skype downloads in 2010 - 7 million

• Number of people who have ever used Skype - 560 million

• Total percentage of Skype calls that are video to video - 40%

• Average spent yearly by a paying Skype user - $96

• Skype revenue in 2010 - $406.2 million

• Number of monthly log-ins to Skype - 124 million

• Number of monthly paying Skype users - 8.1 million

• Amount of money spent by Microsoft to acquire Skype - $8.5 billion

Social Networking -

Social networking sites allow people to create personal profiles with which to share photos, videos, personal information, interests and random other ‘posts’ with friends, family and various other acquaintances using the website. Major social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google Plus and MySpace (MySpace was extremely large a few years ago but has declined in public interest and active users). Social network sites have become increasingly more important in society and now are used for a mass of different activities such as messaging radio stations, storing photos, arranging activates with groups of people and sharing a variety of things which users consider to be worth putting online (e.g. ‘I’m having toast for breakfast, lol!’ followed by a delightful picture of a slice of toast with an amusing caption such as ‘the toast’).

Here are some interesting statistics for the social networking website Facebook:

However social networking does contain a variety of issues. Due to social networks being used essentially as a personal diary by the general horde of users there are many privacy concerns surrounding social networks. If users are not careful with the information they share online and the setup of their profiles (e.g. leaving the publicly visible setting on) they risk the leakage of their personal information on the internet (such as hobbies, desires, photos, contact details and more). It can be extremely difficult to remove things posted on the internet and therefore people run the risk of having their past mistakes come back to cause trouble for them in later life (e.g. photos of them drunk or preforming  undesirable actions as a teenager may be found by future employers and therefore reduce their chances of obtaining a job).

Online Services

Here is a short video introduction to the main areas of online services:

This blog post will cover the seven key online services of the modern day information age, these are:

• Communication
•  E-commerce
• Education
• Entertainment
• Real-Time Information
• Downloading
• E-Government

Communication –

To begin with, the information age has seen a vast change in the ways people use to communicate with others. The three most common of these forms of communication are messaging text from one machine to another (e.g. Email, Sms, and forums), Video streaming (e.g. Skype and video conferences) and Social Networking (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr).

Sending text messages is hugely popular as it allows people to almost instantly communicate with others no matter how far away they are from each other (providing that there is a network connection). This is basically the same as sending letters via post but without the hassle and long waiting times.

Video Steaming allows users to communicate face to face without needing to be next to each other. This is incredibly useful for businesses as it allows them to communicate with other companies around the world without having to travel the distances, for example a company based in London (England) could have a professional meeting with their partners in Tokyo (Japan) to discuss business plans without having to leave their offices thus saving both time and money. Another popular use of the software is the communication between members of families whom are located in different countries or parts of the country. For example a soldier in Afghanistan is now able to see and talk with his family despite him being located thousands of miles away from them, this helps troops overcome homesickness and maintain a close relationship with their loved ones.

Social Networking allows users to create personal profiles for themselves which display various features such as their interests, contact information (e.g. post code and email address) and photos of themselves. This is a massively popular trend nowadays and has had a large effect on culture. For example, Facebook (a social networking site) currently has over 800 million active users and it is common for radio stations to use ‘Tweets’ (Twitter messages) as well as text messages and phone calls as part of their shows. However, Social Networking doesn’t come without its disadvantages; these being the breach of privacy, cyber bullying and hacking, all of which can cause major issues with those affected.

E-commerce –

E-commerce is the buying or selling of products or services over electronic systems. Online shopping is a huge industry at present. Popular sites include Ebay (an online auction service), Amazon (a website which allows users to buy items from a vast range of products and have them delivered via post), ITunes (a service which allows users to buy music and video downloads which can then be placed onto various Apple products such as the Ipod and the Iphone) and many more. This form of shopping has become so popular due a variety of different reasons. The first reason being that the internet provides a far greater range of products than any local stores could offer; also it is far easier to find exactly what you are looking to buy due to search engines such as Google and Bing. Other reasons for its success include users not having to leave the comfort of their homes to purchase items (this is extremely useful for people whom are too busy or too shy to go shopping at real shops), that there is waiting in lines to buy products and that shopping online provides a more personal experience (allowing users to change website themes, suggesting items they may want to buy and sometimes even allowing them to personalise the product they wish to buy). In theory, due to online shopping a person could survive without ever having to leave their home.

Education –

The information age has provided us with exciting new advancements in education. Nowadays it is common for students to use the internet for research and help with homework and for teachers to include online resources in their presentations such as helpful videos or graphics. This allows for an improved educational experience as students can now see the topics they are learning spring to live on a computer screen via images, videos and vast quantities of additional information on their studies.

To add to this, it is common for school to use online education platforms such as ‘MyMaths’ and ‘Frog’ to set students homework and various other tasks, thus providing a more personal way of learning for pupils and lessening the amount of work needed by teachers.

Entertainment –

These days the internet is one of the largest sources of entertainment available. This is due to the sheer amount of content upload by people around the world on a daily basis. Entertainment can be split into five main groups: Art, Video, Music, Reading and Gaming.

Gaming has vastly benefitted from the internet. Now instead of playing by yourself, players can now join huge servers to play with thousands of others. A great example of this is mmo games (mmo standing for massively multiplayer online game) such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars which allow users to play alongside complete strangers in order to progress through the game. The internet has also seen a huge growth in indie game developers, posting their work on sites such as Newgrounds and Kongregate; notable examples of such games include Minecraft, Counter Strike and Super Meat Boy.

In terms of art, video, music and reading there are thousands of websites which allow their users to upload their creations to be shared to the world and gain popularity. Notable websites include Youtube (video), Deviantart (art), Soundcloud (music) and Blogger (reading).

Real-Time Information –

Real-Time information is frequently updated information such as news, weather, sports and event information. The aim of this is to keep users up-to-date with current events. For example if there was a league football final (e.g. Manchester United Vs. Chelsea), news teams would post information about the current status of the game (e.g. goals, injuries and players being sent off)  in real-time information. It may look something like this:

(1:34) Manchester United have scored a goal against Chelsea, the score is now 2-1

(1:38) Wayne Rooney has been carried off the pitch due to spinal injuries

(1:46) Chelsea have just scored, the score is now 2-2

Downloading –

Downloading is copying data from one computer to another. Online people can download basically anything, such as music, games, art, software, films, and plugins. Notable examples of sites for downloads include Mediafire (a file sharing site), Steam (a platform which allows users to purchase and download games) and ITunes (a music platform for buying and downloading music). Whilst downloads are mainly safe and legal it is easy for illegal activity (e.g. free music, software cracks and keygens) and viruses to occur, viruses can break computers and lead to personal information and passwords being stolen whilst illegal downloads may result in fines and possibly even jail.

E-Government –

E-Government provides a link between citizens and the government. It allows citizens to check up and manage their taxes and insurance via the internet which can be convenient and efficient. Another service E-Government provides us with is crime statistics in local areas; this is incredibly useful as it allows members of a community to prepare themselves for common events in their area such as car theft and vandalism.

The History Of Email

Let us begin by identifying what an email is. An email is a way of messaging others via electronic devices. Currently over 600 million people use email as a method of communication in the modern world due to its ease of use and accessibility.

The man credited with its invention in 1972 was Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson worked as an ARPANET (the system in place before the global internet) contractor and it was he whom chose the @ symbol to denote exchanging messages between peoples computers, thus providing people with an easy way to identify who exactly the message was from and whom they were sending to. The first email ever sent between was between two computers located within a short distance of each other and read “QWERTYUIOP”. In 1975 a man whom was named John Vital created a piece of software to organize emails, this was a huge advancement for emails and has led to further developments of the sort. However, even before these advances there was an early method of computer messaging. It began with people leaving small message files on people’s computers (as one would do so with office notes), then evolved into a system which allowed messages to be sent between users of a single computer; until eventually allowing people to message people on other computers at close range and has continued to advance to what we have today.