A self-service environment in which consumers carry out activities and transactions independently

With the internet, a lot of things are made independent, and it's really up to you where you pay for things and what you do with the internet's abilities. Shopping is made a lot easier where you can buy things online quickly, find what you want online, review different products, different businesses and places you can buy it from. Then access their website and buy whatever you need within the click of a few buttons. This is a great improvement as it lacks effort and things can be done quickly and easily. The only problem is, if you don't do your research and you are not aware of what you may be doing, you can be easily fooled, conned, or be extremely confused by things because you don't understand them. So you have to be careful on the internet as a lot of things are up to you to decide, so it's best to have knowledge of what your buying, who you are buying it from, how the deal is being transferred whether things are 'legit' or not. Help is not supplied without your input, so help is not brought to you, as you have to find it yourself, this can definitely be bad for some people as they don't know where to find help, they are not aware of doing things wrong and can cause a lot of problems!

If you do things correctly and you have great knowledge of the internet, it's dangers and you know how to avoid them, the internet can be very beneficial for buying things quickly and cheaply. Certain activities such as playing games on the internet can be lots of fun, but if you are not aware of viruses and dodgy websites, you can get your equipment into a mess, it can be expensive to repair and you may lose important data. The best way to be aware of viri on the internet is to purchase a secure internet protection software, this can protect your computer, keep you away from viri on the internet, warn you about danger and can save you a lot of trouble in the long hand. So it's ALWAYS best to be AWARE of danger on the internet, and be prepared and have the knowledge to tackle and avoid problems. If you get around this independently, the internet can be an amazing resource for many useful things.

Mobile technologies that are blurring the distinction between home and work

Due to current technology, you can do a lot now out of home as well as in home with mobiles and devices. People can now do a lot of work at home, because of the way people can contact each other and the way data can be transferred with emails and files over the Internet. You can now use all your facilities at home and still produce the same outcome with just the use of a laptop or computer and access to the Internet. What a lot of people do now, is that a task is messages over to the worker and the work can be completed without having to travel to a workplace and then transferred back to the employer. This is great for businesses as it saves a lot of money, time, effort and work can be carried out faster and sometimes more efficiently. Mobile technology at work can sometimes slow down work, as they bring a lot of abilities along, and can put a person off work or distract them from doing something. With access to the Internet with a mobile, other messages, social networking can all distract you from work. the distinction between home and work is slowly blurring, because with a mobile phone, you bring a lot of your personal data around with you at all times, so with this, it's kind of a good thing as it may make a person feel more secure and help them carry out at a quicker pace, or it may slow them down and distract them. I think mobile technology is amazing and extremely useful, but it's best to use only when appropriate, and to keep it away when you are doing something important. But with the advantage of this technology and the way it is so portable, you can essentially do certain types of work anywhere you want. New tablets and portable devices are making this easier and becoming really useful as they can expand work potential by giving you a lot of accessibility to many things.

Virtual Communities

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community operate under social networking services consisting of various online communities. With the access of the internet many different types of communities have developed, where people can share information about certain subjects, like things people are interested in. A few personal communities i may be associated with online may be gaming, specific 'fandoms' and nerdy obsessions i have! It all depends on the person, a person can be involved with all sorts of communities online to simply discuss things you are interested in with other people or to gain knowledge on a new game release or tv series, or some new piece of technology that has just been created. This kind of information is spread out all over the internet on forums, blogs, social networks, news pages and is mostly accessible by anyone. Again being involved with these communities can give a lot of inspiration, can be good to meet new people online and get to know people that are interested in similar things to you. I think these communities are great just to quickly pick up bits of information, and get more involved on the internet. The only problem is, that being on the internet with these communities can be very influential, and can sometimes put across bad views on things and make you believe things that aren't true. You have to be careful on the internet, as you can pick up a lot of false or one-sided data on it. There are different types of coming across virtual communities, you can find these communities on internet message boards, online chat rooms, virtual worlds, specialized information communities and social networking sites.

Increased business opportunities (large or small)

There are many opportunities for all sorts of businesses online now that the internet has over 7 billion people on the internet, and businesses have a lot of things they can do to increase their income, feedback and recognition from others. There are many ways this can be achieved, by simply putting effort, care and value into a website made for your business and by interacting with others as much as possible online. You can to this by applying to lots of different social networking sites online like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, where people will recognise your name and your service, share your name and you can get around very quickly if you provide a good service. The internet has helped both small and large businesses a lot as it can keep customers in touch with a business, feedback, help and advice can be transferred quickly. So it's a good way to improve, innovate, and expand if you have the knowledge of the internet on your side. The use of social media can promote yourself very quickly if you advertise well and you can get across information very quickly to your customers. This helps a lot as it's easy, efficient and reduces stress but keeps people up to date, which is always needed in a business as it conveys a good impression. Doing things online also helps the customer a lot  because things are brought to the customer and they don't have to put in effort to view your business, so it saves time for them and there is more of a chance you will be notices as they don't have to do much to find your business and learn about what you do. Businesses can also have an opportunity to sell products and services online, they can create a system where everything is done online without having to go to a shop and buy a product or service, you can simply just log onto a custom made website and order it with a card payment. So selling things online are made quicker, with less effort and things can be delivered. You can also set up a system where you sign up to a website with an email address and updates and information can be sent straight to customers. This is also a good way to keep people informed and involved.

Greater interaction with others and organisations

Due to the increase of use of the internet use, many business now use the internet to advertise and sell their products and services. It's easy just to start up a new business on the internet and interact with loads of different contacts to expand your business. You can also interact with other businesses really easily by using Skype conference calls, emails and texts. This allows businesses to stay in touch with the click of a button, so they can update each other quickly on news, events and anything related to business work.

People can also use social networking sites to advertise. Businesses can save a lot of money by using the internet to it's full potential, and they can get a lot out of it, if they dig deep and use lots of the resources available. Users can have a great advantage with shopping online, where now you can order something online, and have it delivered within the next few days without having to do anything in the time being. You can go onto a businesses website and look through what they can offer easily, and have access to all of their services. People can contact each other very quickly with instant messaging on websites like Facebook (www.facebook.com), people can send messages to other people quickly, and not have to worry about expenses or a fee, as it's free. If you message someone on Facebook it will become pending to the person you have sent it to, so they are free to vie
w your message whenever they are online and when they want to.

There are a lot of advantages to having this ability to quickly contact people, as it reduces work, effort and stress. If a business puts in the effort to interact online, more people will like you as your web presence shows you are passionate, if your web presence is high, people can see the effort you are putting in with the site you produce and the way you advertise, and it gives a great example of the way you are viewed, as people can see you value you work if it is at of high quality and you care about the way people perceive your business. This makes a great impression, so the internet can help a lot, with all sorts of perceptions. Social media has a great advantage as you can communicate more with your customers more, the more you can communicate the more a customer trusts your business, as they feel secure with you products and services as if something goes wrong they can easily contact you and make any queries quickly.

A lot of people can use the internet to review something they are interested in, and with the interaction of others, you can quickly pick up an overview of something. For example if you are interested in buying a new shower, you can look up all different types of businesses that sell these products and use other people's interactions on forums, blogs, reviews and discussions to pick up the good and bad things about a business.

There are a millions ways to interact with other people on the internet, and so many different examples to discover and look at.

Sharing Information Quickly

There are many easy ways to share information quickly, usually it depends on what you want to share or publish. On a social and more personal side of the web, you have websites such as:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Tumblr
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Google Plus+
• And more

These websites have different purposes, so for example, Instagram can be used to share photo's quickly to friends and followers, and it's a good way to gain feedback on your photos or just to simply interact with other people. These kind of websites can be used to look about personal interests like hobbies, favourite films and shows, sports, news focused around you. You can quickly post information about how you feel, or how you feel towards a certain subject of interest, and with your posts on certain things you can gain internet friends, that are interested in similar things to you. This is a great way to get to know new people that have things similar to you, to get more involved with others, and to become more interactive online. Facebook is great for sharing all different types of information, and social networking is becoming massive where you can find out about new people and people's activities, and it's becoming very popular. Here is a video about how social media has developed...

You can share creations and projects online very easily, and become noticed by the public and complimented by it. This is a great way to become noticed and gain reputation for your skills, or creativity, or entertainment to others! 

You can also post information about other subjects, which may be more business or work related by using webites like blogger, or private, business websites. This can be used to display internal information to the people working within a business or workplace, these private webpages are usually called the 'Intranet' an internal place to post and receive data within a network. 

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, for one, can immediately report changes in Web pages to anyone with a browser or RSS reader. By subscribing to the feed, users have more immediate knowledge that something about a Web site has changed. RSS feeds are great for sharing news about the world and recent events that have happened that people may be interested in. 

Presenting information in different ways

The internet has many different ways to present data, media and to convey an opinion on things. The first way is in a text based format and is used on virtually every website you would visit whilst on the internet, the most popular would be Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) as it displays a lot of information through text and delivers the required amount of knowledge and detailed explanation you need. It also does use another form of presenting information but on a minor scale, which is the use of pictures and images to present information. The main websites which use this form of presentation are sites such as Google Images and the image search on Bing as it displays pictures that include the information you have asked for or relevant information from your search. So information can be viewed on all sorts of different types of websites, you can read news pages and view people's reports easily. Data is presented on all sorts of sites to show an audience a certain topic of interest, in different ways. Dependant on the subject, images, text, audio and video can be used on websites to show different things. Google is a great website to search through billions of different websites and data, for example if you wanted to know about a new tv series, you could type into Google (www.google.co.uk) 'New tv series', and Google would categorise all the results related to this definition in front of you, so you can click through and view information and data. To look through all different types of images online, Google Images (http://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi) makes things very easy and puts data in a presentable format where you can look through the images you want. Youtube (www.youtube.com) is the same, but for videos, and people can create their own 'Channels' to publish their own videos and upload onto the internet. Data can be presented in different fonts, sizes, styles and formats, depending on where you want text, how big, what topic you want the text to represent. (For example if you were presenting a Gothic band of some kind, you could do dark,
Gothic text to suit the subject). The ability to present and produce all different types of data online gives the internet more spice and gives different websites individual looks depending on the producers interest or purpose.

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.org

www.youtube.com