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ICT and Pensioners in England

IT seems to have definatly changed this couples life. They can organise their meetings better, using officer applications. Also letters etc can be typed making them look more professional and easier to read for the club. IT isnt essential but it makes so much easier for anyone.

I don't think they'd be worse off if they didn't have IT at home but it definatly saves them time and effort which is great for an elderly couple. Instead of going to the shops they can order their weekly shopping online and wait at home for it.

Acessing a computer at the cimmunity centre wouldn't be as useful, first off they'd have to walk or drive there costing petrol money or taking about 20 minutes to walk. Then they probably wouldn't be allowed to do certain things on the public PC such as order shopping. Having IT at home is much better.

Who studies IT?

As a sterotype i'd say males study IT based subjects more than girls. In our class there are just 2 girls and around 15 boys. I'm not sure why as its not a 'macho' thing to do and girls are meant to be good at multi-tasking so they could probably get more work done quicker. I'd say on a whole that more males than females take IT / computing courses. This may change in the future but we never know.

Also women tend to do secutary work and PA work which uses IT a lot but still more males than females do IT in my opinion.

Impact of the internet for the homeless

Giving homeless people acess to theinternet could improve their lifestyle quite a bit. They may be able to find employment, schemes to get them off the streets and into work or housing or they could meet othe rpeople in the same situation and help eachother.

Internet cafés could have a day once a week were homeless people can look for jobs / help etc.

If this was turned into a government scheme it coul dhave quite big benefits.

World Summit

The main aim of the summit was to try and get around 90% of the worlds population started in the world of IT. this is quite a goal to achieve and will take a lot of work.

Bad points of this summit were only 40 heads of nations showed up for the summit. Also trying to get so many nations to agree on one thing is quite difficult.

Posative points are that the world is trying to agree on something and work together to connect the whole human race on the internet.

Personally, from the limited information i think that the summit could have gone better but its a start, we can't expec thuge thing slike this to be settled and action taken instantly.

E-mail in the Solomans

After reading the BBC report on the use of IT in the Soloman islands its obvious that there is a digital divide. Althought odds are against them, they people who live on them are starting to get more into IT. Havign community internet services is a strat, then soon once everyone has got used to using the IT they may be able to use it freely or get their own. Their divigtal divide problem might have started because of the isolation of their islands. Wireless internet can start to solve these problems as its only been around for a few years and can be expensive, espacially for a country that is still developing.

Laos

Laos has quite a big digital divide but also has a few bizzare cases of secluded places with no proper electricity having IT and internet access. Problems that have caused the divide are that the terrain is hilly / mountinous and it is hard to get signals into some of the country. Also there is a lot of rainfall and monsoon weather which can break equipment like ariels. A lot of people are willing to get into IT but some cant. At the moment most people are using text messaging to communicate.
A 'Peadal Powered' generator has been instlled in a village so they can run computers, it is water proof and sturdy so its safe from the weather. Also a charaity has set up in schools to help people learn about IT and its uses. I beleive that once more people in Laos learn how to use IT then the digital divide it has now will decrease, and soon be gone.

Data Response

Dr Odedra tells us that IT is ineffective in Sub-Sahara Africa because the money of the state and businesses is being spent on computers and IT products but its mostly not being used because there isnt enough demand in the country yet.

He states; "there are no IT policies or strategic buying plans which clearly identify the needs that are likely to bring overall benefit to the nation"

This shows us that are companies are trying to sell IT hardware to businesses in this country, but there are no beneficial plans or deals that make people want to buy the items. If these IT things were essential for companies then more would be bought but at the moment the computer companies aren't selling their products well enough.
Also as Africa isnt used to IT, there is hardly anyone who is specialised in its use, making it hard for companies to get into IT use. It is a pressing issue that needs to be attended to.

Africa has had help from some organisations to get it on the track to IT development; United Nations, the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development and the Canadian International Development Association have all contributed to helping Africa become more involved with IT.

Althought these schemes have been put in place, funding africa for IT hardware, most of the counrty remains without use of IT. This is because there isnt a pressing need for IT applications to help work along and there are very little who are specialised in IT use so there would be no-one to use the systems even if they were purchased.

Most computer skills are lacking in Africa, as stated before, no-one has trained in IT at the moment so there is nothing that can be used when no-one knows how to use it.

Business skills that are lacking are that the IT companies are not offering good enough deals / packages to make people and businesses want to buy their IT goods. Maybe if better and cheaper systems were offered then IT in Africa would bloom more.

What leads to the wrong side of the digital divide?

These countries may be on the wrong side of the 'Digital Divide' because of undeveloped governments or pack of income from things such as tourism etc. If these countries aren't getting much money to even pay for basic things such as roads / water / electricity then not many people who live in these countries will be able to afford electricity let alone a computer. Most people will be more concentrated on living and working, not spending spare time on the internet. IF the countries government really want to get their people into the digital age were everyone is using IT then maybe schemes form the better off countries could help fund their first steps into the information age.

Also internet and other IT suppliers may see no profit to be had from places or countries and either won't supply to them or increase the costs , putting people off of using such things.

Monitoring Internet and E-mail use

Monitoring employee's use of e-mail and interent can have its advantages. firstly if the employee is abusing their acess to the interent by spending time that they should be woking, browsing shopping ebsties etc, then the manager or whoever is in charge of the companies internet acess can see that they are not wroking and bring them up on it. Also if the employee is spending work time sending e-mails to friends of looking for potential new jobs then they can be viewed byt he manager and action can be taken. Filters can pick up on keywords too such as 'porn', 'jobs' 'CV' 'illegal' etc, if a site which has use of these 'key words' is found by the system the site will be blocked and an notification sent to the manager.

Negative impacts that this type of security can have is that it invades the employee's privacy, if a confidential e-mail is sent about family/friends or personal health and someone else reads it first, it isnt right. Also the filter can block sites that maybe have one of the keywords on it but has nothing of the content that is meant to be blocked on. This can cause big annoyance when the staff won't be able to access sites that may help them do their job.

Advantages this type of system has for employees is that it can protect them from unwanted e-mail spam and potentially harmful websites.

As said before the system can block sites that are not harmful or contain unwanted content, this can cause problems that can hinder the staff's work thus making they business less effective.

Use of this system may be vital to keep the users safe and keep the company running smoothly without its employees spending work time browsing the interent but the system can hinder work by blocking vital e-mails and websites.

...

Pros and Cons of ID cards:

Id cards are being used a lot in modern society. They bring a whole new level of security to the table and have many advantages and disadvantages.



Firstly, advantages. Higher levels of security means that data / items are much safer because only individuals with the correct card can access the room / safe etc. Security gaurds can check the ID card to make sure the person if who they say they are and there is also electronic tages on most so there is a human check then a computer check. Overall ID cards bring a higher level of security all round but there are also some disadvantages.
ID cards are a hastle to keep getting out and using, if you work in a business that requires you to show your ID card pretty much whereever you go it can become an annoyance. Also if the card is lost it can mean no access to areas you need to go until you get a new one / find it. Cards can be forged if they are only for use with humans (If a security gaurds checks it not a machine for example)

More info here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2657143.stm

Managing Information Overload

People with jobs in IT need to be able to overcome the vast amount of data they send and receive. SO much information pases between people that by the end of the day, most employees working in IT have to trawl through a hundred or so E-mails and documents they have been sent. Tools need to be made so that this data income is kept under control. One way of keeping the information income to a minimum is to use "filters." To cope with volumes of data, e-mail filters can be used to screen out less-than-critical messages and prevent an overwhelming amount of data from being sent to a person. Filters can block known 'spam' sites and can also block e-mails and documents with certain keywords in such as: games / violence etc. If the filter has a keyword to block 'games' then any website that essecively says 'games' it will block.

Making choices

Because mobile phones are a fairly recent invention, i believe that a simple, cheap and user friendly phone is needed for someone who has been brought up without all the new technology. I have been using Google to search for cheap mobline phones, as i think the more you spend the more complicated the phone will be. So if we choose a cheap phone it will be a basic model.
I have looked at:

www.phones4u.co.uk
www.carphonewarehouse.com

Most of the phones for sale are on contract, which means you pay monthly. I don't think this is the best idea to have her pay monthly for sya, 1000 minutes and 500 texts when they won't get used. The best option would be pay as you go.

Using T-moblie's website i located a phone that is cheap and simple.

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/phones/pay-as-you-go/nokia/2610-black-payg/overview/

At £19.99 this phone can text, call, picture messege and use the internet. Which is more than is needed for her. The phone is small enough to carry around as expected and the layout is simple and easy to use. It is also pay as you go.

I think this is the phone i'd chose for my grandmother because it meets all the criteria that i believe would make a good phone for an elderly woman with no experience of mobline phones etc.

Discussion on Pirated Entertainment.

An advantage of paying a supplier for legal music downloads, such as Apple iTunes is that you are funding the band who made the song, buying their songs will increase popularity/reknown and mean they can continue making music. The download is legal so you need not worry about having your Internet cut off by your ISP. ISP's have started to collect information about people sharing music illegally and can cut off your connection if they deem it appropriate. If your illegal downloading is caught you can be fined for it because you are breaking the copyright laws. Legally downloading music may cost a fair amount but it may be the cheaper option if you end up getting caught and paying thousands of pounds in fines:

"Criminal penalties can be as high as five years in prison or $250,000 in fines."

http://www.cmta.com/brochure.htm Has more information.


The disadvantages of buying pirate DvDs, espacially from market stalls is that the quality will be terrible and even the sounds / language cannot be garunteed to be good or english. Also if the DvD doesn't work its more than likely you either won't be able to find the same person who sold you the DvD again or if you do find him, they probably won't tank back the DvD. Most Pirate DvD's are filmed from the backs of cinema's with a handheld camera so you know the quality is going to be poor before you even purchase it.

Downloading movies takes a lot of time because they are normally 2 hours long. This means the file size is pretty big and the site you're downloading from wont have a good downloader. Also just like Pirated DvD's the movie will have to have been filmed in the cinema with a handheld camera becuase it isnt released properly yet. Thi smeans the quality will be poor, maybe even to the point were not much can be seen in the movie. Also it may be relased in a counrty that doesnt speak english so you won't be able to understand it after downloading it for a few hours.

Visiting websites that host illegal music can be bad for a number of reasons. Firstly it may contain malware and unwanted things trying to download and install on your machine. Also you'll most likely be expected to pay for a membership fee... to download illegal music which you could end up being caught out for and charged even more money in fines. Also the music could be 'live' or a remix or a cover band playing the song, so you can't be sure what you're downloading.

Dowloading illegal music can stop new bands from workng their way up in the music industry. If their fans are just downloading the bands music then they band won't sell many CD's meaning that the sellers won't think they are a popular band and could cancel their contract etc. Bands make the most money from gigs and CD sales. If no-one is buying the CD's then the band are technically making half as much money. This will discourage music companies from signing new bands if they know they won't make much money.

Analysing the “good old days”

Paper based systems in office enviroments needs to be changed. Too much space is used to store the paper. Also it means more trees are being cut down.

Two applications that are effective for office use for typing and replacing paper based systems are 'Mircosoft Word' and 'Microsoft Excel' The programs are both very similar, they are basically virtual paper were the user types in what they want written, just like handwriting it but with typing. Benefits of there programs are that it a mistake is made then it can easily be corrected. Another advantage is that the documents are stored onto the computer or a server. This means there is less space taken up by filing cabenits etc.

An advantage of paper based documents is that if the computer/server breaks it may mean loss of all the data or that it cannot be acessed for a while. With paper it can be retrived from the filing cabinet at any time.

Typists and secretaries jobs were affected when office pakcages started to come into the workplace because if they didn't learn how to use the software effectively by the time it was in their workplace, the company may fire them and hire someone who could use it.

This means lots of ICT jobs were created as people were needed to maintain and fix the computers and servers. Also people who were already using these software packages would be hired over people who didn't know how to use them.

Tool Man:

"John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels over 1000 miles a week to see new and existing clients. For the past 20 years he has carried around a large diary, an address book, a large road atlas and numerous A-Zs as well as numerous small coins for phones. He prides himself on his punctuality, but even he is occasionally late as he struggles to find a new client or is delayed by traffic. He always takes along a calculator, and a bulky sales catalogue with the latest price lists and order forms. He is usually on the road four days a week, six hours a day and spends every Friday in the office ensuring all his administration and sales are handled properly. He has always said he quite likes the time spend in his car between appointments, as it is his time when he can listen to CDs undisturbed.

State how john could use the following ICT to change and hopefully improve his working style: PDA, GPS, Laptop, software, Mobile phone, and the internet."

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John has too much phyical stuff with him. A-Z's and roadmaps etc. If he bought a Laptop he could use the internet to look up a routefinder or map. To get rid of the coins for phonecalls, he could use a instant messaging program or even better; Skype. (www.skype.com) Skype gives free calls to anyone who has Skype. He could use this to save money and time stopping at phone boxes to call people. E-mail would also suffice. With a GPS John could put it in the car, type in the clients location and follow the route to the client. This would get rid of all the maps. Using a PDA would be useful as its basically a small electronic diary. It would save space and money of new diaries. Also whatever he notes down can be edited. With a mobline phone he could, again, stop using loose coins and phone clients while on the move. Also if there is an emergancy he can call for help. With the Interent on a Laptop he could look at the newest items in the catalogue, online. This would save him from taking huge catalogues with him everywere.

The only problems of being 100% technology reliant is that, if John gets to a meeting / client and his laptop won't work, he cannot sell to the client because all his catalogues, referances and nots are on it. Having backups on paper would help the situation.

Online Entertainment:

Using the interent, a wide variety of entertainment facilities are avalible to us. There are videos, music, games, chatrooms and much more.

Recently i have used the following Online Entertainment:

Played World of Warcraft using the interentet. WoW is an MMORPG, a game with millions of people playing at once and who can all intereact and chat woth eachother.

Used MSN: MSN is a chat service where you cna talk to friends as long as they are logged onto their account on MSN>

Watched TV shows and movies: Streaming movies and TV shows is a great idea, it means that you can watch any episode of any show when you want.

Listening to music on websites is also good, it means you dont have to buy the music, and aren't breaking the law by illegally downloading music.

Used YouTube to watch videos: YouTube is a site were anyone can make an account and post videos of pretty much any genre. It is a great way to see new things.

Java etc can be used to play browser based games. theres games tend to be 2D flash games but are still fun to play if bored.

These kinds of entertainment are aimed at younged people, i'd say 12-20ish. Anyone can use them but working adults wouldn't spend much time playing 2D games. THough music and video is great for anyone who wants to listen or watch free music and TV.

Limitations on these types of entertainment are that the applications can only be as good as modern computers are now and that the interent browser / speed can handle. If a user has a weak internet connection it will take a long time from them to navigate round the web, stream videos and download data so much of the entertainment has to be limited to what is possible at the moment.

Download services:

Downloading data from the interent is a useful resource. It can save the user from going out of their way to purchase the phyical item which would use fuel etc.

Items my family have recently downloaded are:

Music - Saves space (No CD's but the songs can be burned onto a blank CD if wished)

Videos - Downloading my favorite movies and TV shows means i can watch them when i want instead of having to be free when a certain program is on TV

Patches for programs - Patches can be downloaded to update a program on your PC. there help to keep the program running as it should.

Programs - I have downloaded a program to convet MP4 files, that were only usable on iTunes, to MP3 so i could use them outside of iTunes.

Downloading data saves travelling expensives, which i guess is good for the planet as it means less pollution. The only problem is that large files can take a while to download onto your computer. Also if the file is from a free website it can contain viruses etc that can harm your machine. Trusting some software downloads can be risky.

ICT uses outside of College.

Because i am also studying Graphics and Art, i have to use sftware to produce images. At home i have CorelDraw X4 Graphics suite, Photoshop CS3 and Paintsho Pro 8.

Learning to use there different pieces of software is useful for my courses and helps me develop ICT skills.

It has also helped me design graphics for my Module 2 work on my E-Portfolio coming up with a logo, banner and buttons.

I also tried to re-new my Xbox live subsription with a month but the wireless adapter couldn't be detected.

Online Banking...

Today i looked at online banking to see how it works, and if it is faster and easier than going into an actual bank.

I have looked at 2 websites for banks,

The Abbey National - http://www.abbey.com/csgs/Satellite?pagename=Abbey/GSDistribuidora/GS_Home

NatWest - http://www.natwest.com/personal.ashx

The purpose of Online banking is to save the customers time, if they need to pay bills etc they can log onto their computer and pay then quickly rather than talking to someone on a phone for 20 minutes or going into the actual bank and quueing up for ages.

There are security risks involved with online banking, a keylogger could pick up your card details, card holder name etc. Also the website could be a fake, made to look the same as your banks website but when you enter your details the fraudulant webites owner will recive your details.

The target audiences of Online banking, i believe, are students and young adults, people who have beenn brought up using the internet. Also Businessmen who do not have the time to spare going into banks all the time can quickly and effeciantly do their banking in their office, without moving from their chair.

NatWest fufills its purpose of their target audiences because as seen on their home page, they offer free rail cards for students wgo apply for a student account. This will draw more students to the bank as they will be able to travel cheaply on trains back to their family / university when they please.

NatWest also have a page specificly for Businesses: http://www.natwest.com/business.ashx

This shows that NatWest also cater for their second target market by offering a service dedicated to Businesses and their finances.

Abbey on the other hand doesnt seem to offer much, just the standard banking. This shows that Abbey targets civilians and the general population rather than certain minorities. But still this attracts a lot of people who just want simple banking without all the extra accounts etc.

Benefits of online banking are that it is easily accessable to anyone with interenet acesss, and people who dont have interent at home can go to the local library and use their computers, most of the time for free. It is quick and easy and means that less people are travelling to their local bank, thus saving fuel and helping the ecomonmy.

Disadvantages are, as stated before, that not everyone has internet acess and may have to travel to use the internet, which means why may as well just travel to their local bank. There is also a lot of information to remember, i.e logins / passwords / secret questions and answers. If the user writes this infomation down and then it gets lost / stolen they cannot acess their online account and someone may use it to acess their bank online.

Online banking could improve in the future by being more secure, the major issue is identity fraud. Most people are worried that their information can be tracked on the internet and someone will gain use of their personal account and this money. Going into a real bank with ID and credit cards is a more sure way of identifying somone than having to trust that the person hasn't just found out someone elses's details to log into the online account.

APart from security issues and lack of internet to some people, Online banking is a useful and acessable tool avalible to anyone who has a bank account and the interent.

eBay!

Because of all the blocking procedures our IT class have to use the Irish eBay.

http://www.ebay.ie/

eBay is a tool on the internet, more of a 'online shop'. It is used to auction items. The user places a bit by entering an amount in a text box. The amount has to be higher than the current bid. The last person to bid the highest wins the item and must continue through the payment methods, most likely PayPal and the seller will recive the money and post the item.

eBay uses Paypal, and a variety of other payment methos that are safe and secure so that the auctions go smoothly, even though the buyer may be in another country.

The Navigation bar displayed is a useful tool to guide customers around the site and help them to find the items they wish to bid on. The search function can hone down on specific items that the user looks for. The Catagories can help the user browse through a certain genre of items, i.e Cloths or books.

This is the category bar, it lists different genres of items such as clothes and books.

This is useful for the user to browse through a certain type of item if they are not sure what they want.

Clicking a genre will take you to a new page where only the certain type of item the user selected will be displayed.

eBay has sites for nearly every country:
Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada China France Germany Hong Kong India Ireland Italy Korea Malaysia Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Philippines Poland Singapore Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Kingdom United States Vietnam

This is a good idea as it opens up the consumer market from western countries to a global market.

Also certian items are only avalible in certain countries so this may stop illegal items being put up on eBay.

5 Day Weather Forecast

Using the BBC website i found the tool that can tell the user the weathe rin their area of 5 days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?id=3146

This tool is useful and means you don't have to wait for the news to come on to see the weather.

Journey to Tottenham Court, London.

I planned a trip from home to Tottenham Court in London using the AA Route Finder - www.theaa.com



I typed in my home postcode and then the road name, Tottenham Court, into the route finder.

It came up with written directions and a map. It told me the total miles and time, the total time was 2 hours 10 minutes.



The program also told me where all the speed cameras and Rest stops are, i.e Holiday inn.



Knowing it will take just over 2 hours to drive there i decided to check the train timetables to see wether it would be cheaper and faster to take the train instead of driving.



I looked at Southwestern Trains' website - http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/ - and looked at the timetable from Portsmouth Harbours' Station:



http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/SWTrains/pdfs/ttApril08/PTT17Apr08.pdf



the trip was planned for 11:30 so i looked at the 11:45 train to Waterloo. Unfortunatly the timetable didn't show the estimated time of arrival..

Interent tools i've used recently... & the Digital Divide.

Used the internet to play WoW an MMORPG

Used MSN, an IM service to chat to friends

Used 'Google' search engine

Used Forums

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The Digital Divide:

The Digital divide is the diefference bewteen the world, countries and even people. It is a the gap of knowledge of ICT and other such things.

For example nearly everyone in Britain has a home computer that has acess to theinterent.
In contrast, Africa doesnt have electricity in most of the country, let alone home computers and internet. The digital divide between Africa and Britain is therfore great.

Also older generations who did not have digital media when growing up dont tend to learn to use them. Compared to teenager at the moment who are brought up using computers can use most media and so the digital divide between younger and older generations is quite large too.

Here is some more information about the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide

Reflection...

Todays lesson in ICT was to find out about instant and text messageing.
We looked at the advantages and disadvantages.

We used SMS on our Mobile Phones to create a 'text language' Haiku and send it to class mates for them to translate.

SMS messages are meant to be short so a new language has evolved to cater for the small amount of space. Great = Gr8 etc..

This is becuase texts have alimited amount of space ( 180 characters average ) and people want to be able to fit as much in as possible.

SMS is fast and easy but can cost a lot.

Instant messaging is also good as the chat is fast and there is no limit to what you can send, it is also free. The only downside is that the person you want to talk to needs to online running the IM program to be able to talk to them.

Text Haiku -.-'

Ryn lvs man bm bm
he tinks its alot of fn
give him bm bm bm


Ryan loves man bum bum
the thinks its a lot of fun
give him bum bum bum

Created by Louis 'Cheesy balls' Gale
Ryan
and Dodds

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