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Chapter 4 - The Internet and Telecommunications

Other Internet Software

Plug-ins. Plug-ins are computer programs that plug-in to a browser and enable you to handle new kinds of information. An example of a plugin is Realplayer™ (www.realaudio.com) that plays sound files as you download them.

Publishing Tools for HTML documents. WWW pages are compiled using HTML programming language. The basic language is relatively easy and straightforward to use in preparing HTML pages for publication. However, many programs have HTML conversion capability built into their program to make publication of HTML documents even easier. The latest releases from Corel and Microsoft show a major shift to allowing a user to easily convert different applications, such as word processing documents, to HTML for Internets or Intranets. 

Web Authoring Tools. There are a variety of programs available to assist in creating, developing and maintaining a web site. Some software considerations:

  • Price and platform compatibility;
  • Search and replace, spell checker, edit HTML tags, validate remote links, validate internal links, and publish to web site;
  • HTML extensions; tables, frames, font size, font color;
  • Interactivity: image map editor, client side image maps, form fields, forms handler, Java applets, and database queries; and
  • Page templates, clip art, image editor.

Some products to consider:

Bookmarking WWW sites, images, video, etc. Delicious (http://delicious.com/) is an Internet bookmarking service. It permits you to bookmark and organizes Web information you find valuable.

Audio. Audio clips can be placed on web sites for instant listening or for downloading and listening to at a later time. Now, you can listen to your favorite news, music, and sports sites, just like with a car radio. The audio can be a live broadcast or on-demand.

Video. Video can either be downloaded or played real-time over the Internet. Generally, video is downloaded in an AVI format and then played on the user’s computer. However, streaming video allows one to see the video as it is downloading to your machine. While a bigger bandwidth is preferable, all you need is a 28,800 modem and a free software plugin.

Internet Phone and Voice Mail. Internet Phone offers unlimited long distance and international conversations for the cost of an Internet connection. VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) allows users to communicate over the Internet using their computer microphone, without disconnecting from the web or using a second phone line. Converting voice into information packets, sending those packets as data files, and then converting them back on the receiving end do this. Voice quality may be an issue, as well as the fact that both parties must have microphones in place on their computers.