Gigabit Broadband

While many broadband providers offer broad band from 100-500 megabits per second. Resarchers in South Korea are trying to increase broadband speed to 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) by 2012. The South Korean government will need to spend £19 Billion to achieve this which would give South Korea broadband 500 times faster than the UK despite them already having the world's fastest broadband at 12mps as an average.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9093991.stm

Download Services and entertainment

With the dawn of the internet development it is easier to download certain goods and services, some legally, some illegal.

Software has come along so that you are now able to download certain software from the internet. you can now download certain upgrades for software as the internet now allows you to either got to a website and download a digitised upgrade rather than buying it from a local computer shop. You can also download certain programmes for buisness or pleasure through freeware or purchase. If a programme has a glitch or an error you can now download patches to fix the issue quickly and save you from reinstalling the programme. With the internet, companies can now advertise downloads to draw customers to their site.software can also be used to inform you of any problems with the hardware. 

Music which is bought over the internet is now either sent in CD format posted to a person's home or more commonly, digitally sent. Music files bought over the internet are compressed to keep them small to save space on people's hard drives. The result in doing this means that the sound quality is usually much lower due to compression. The files in which they are often sent are in Apple's MP3 files. Microsoft have their own version called the Audio Video Interleave (AVI) which isn't used much compared to the MP3s. There is also MVI which is streaming music onto a disk. Streaming is when a file is slowly released which leads to better quality but longer waiting times.

Videos are also compressed and streamed.Streamed videos are often done in MPEG which allows the content to be released slowly due to load time but gives better picture quality. Websites such as Youtube use MPEGs and streaming to show videos.

Games can now be downloaded as either freeware or after purchasing it over the internet. Games can also be played with other people around the world via interactivity of multiplayer games. Single player games such as Broken Sword 2.5 are classed as freeware and can be downloaded for free and can be plaed by yourself at home. Games such as World of Warcraft are played over the internet and players can interact with others from around the world. Both are ways the internet have revolutionised the entertainment buisness.

Books now are able to be read (with the author's permission) wholly on the Internet and also can be published electronically as "e-books". Devices such as Amazon Kindle, iLiad, Personal Digital Assistant and the 100 Classic Book Collection for the Nintedo DS are a few examples of e-book readers that allow you to read a book electronically rather than physically. Websites such as Google Books allow you to either read part of or all of certain books depending on certain copyright restrictions. Many E-books are regulated under DRM (digital rights management) which limits what you can legally do with it opposed to a real book due to the possibility of illegal copying and sharing.

The internet now allows you to watch live and recorded television via your computer. Many TV channels have their own dedicated internet players to allow people to catch up on somethng they've missed on TV. All of the online TV viewers usually work on a streamed basis which means that the programme will be slowly sent to you when you need to view it. The major TV channel's players are the BBC iplayer, ITVplayer and 4 on Demand. All these allow people to view programmes when they want within an allotted time (usually a week) under certain copyright allowanced and the DRM. Despite the iplayer stating you need a TV licence to use it, the other channels leave it open to use by anyone who may not even have or need a Television set due to that they can forcibly run adverts on it while the BBC can't.  This leads to the advantage that in future people won't need a Television and therefore no longer have to pay TV Licence fees.

With Televison on the internet, you also have the ability to listen to live and listen again to recorded radio. The broadcasts can be digitised so it can be sent to you over the internet. As well as TV, radio is under DRM. Websites can offer you to download Podcasts which are downloadable audio files.Websites such as Spotify and other online radio stations give you the ability to listen to internet-only radio stations which are not on normal radiowaves.



As a result of all this dowloadable content around there is now plenty of easy ground for piracy to become rife. There are many websites around such as Pirate Bay and Limewire which allow you to illegally download certain entertainment media which often consist of copyrighted matiral. The result is that some people may not even realise they have downloaded something illegally as many piracy sites look legitamate but do not mention that if people download pirated matirial, then they violate DRM and/or DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). This idea of using the internet for piracy came from in the early days of the internet it was an easy way to share information from gentlemens special interest websites and magazines and has grown from that as the internet developed and the original piracy is still going strong despite attempts to crack down on it.

E-Government

Investigate the range and number of government services available

There are a wide range of government services that range from paying council tax and fines to how to claim certain benefits. The a list example can be seen at www.directgov.co.uk .

Which are for information only?

The sections of the website that are information only are the sections that contain reports and legal documents which cannot be altered as otherwise it would be a crime.  An example of this is at Tunbridge Wells borough council news section, here at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3996 .

Which are transactional?

Websites that allow you to pay for items and services. An example of this is at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=2879 which is where you can pay off Parking penalty charge tickets.

Which involve some form of interaction?

Questionnaires and any video and sound clips include interaction needed to use them. The site may have some form of interactive educational game. An example of this is at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3610 where Tunbridge Wells borough council give you a questionnaire that you can fill out and e-mail to them as an alternative to printing it out and posting to them

What are the government’s targets for online interaction?

To speed up processes and lower the amount of paper sent to them as they would have it all automatic. It can also be used to benefit the citizen as it allows them ease of access and can use it any time of day whnever they feel like. An example I found is at http://www.gossinteractive.com/NCDC which details the North Cornwall district council.

What are Downing Street Petitions?

They are petitions that are sent to the Prime Minister requesting a change in policy or law. This is usually done in person but with the advent of the internet, they now use online petitions as well. 

What documents (reports, legal documents etc.) are available online?

The documents available online are any public notices of planning permission or bankruptcy as well as any news and legal documents. Tunbridge Wells borough council direct you to where you can find it  as they don’t have the specific information on their site

Find out statistics about your constituency

The Tunbridge Wells constituency is a safe Conservative seat having elected a Conservative MP every election since it’s creation in 1974. The current MP is Greg Clark. At the last election, Greg Clark polled 56% of the vote ahead of the Liberal Democrat MP in second, who polled 25%.

Can you contact your MP?

You can contact your MP through the government website or local council website. For the Tunbridge Wells Constituency it is at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=801 which will tell you who your MP is and how to get in touch with them.

Can you discover your MP’s voting record?

You can see your MP’s voting record at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ . For this example I am going to look for Greg Clark’s voting record which I could see at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/greg_clark/tunbridge_wells#votingrecord . 

Where is your local council refuse site?

You can look where your local council refuse site is on the respective local government website. For this I am using Tunbridge Wells’s borough council, whose information at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=1983 shows me that the local refuse site is the North Farm Refuse Tip.

What happens if you have rats?

If you have an out of control vermin problem you should report it to your local council who may issue enforcement action against them as it is an offence to allow rodent infestation. Tunbridge Wells give you the information here at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3816 which includes some information on how to help deal with it yourself.

How do you complain about blocked drains?

You can complain about blocked drains by e-mailing you local council who, despite not owning the drains have a duty to make sure there is sufficient drainage on properties and they will send a case officer around to assist you with the necessary work. Tunbridge Wells state here at http://www2.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=1424 what their policy is.

Online services in education

The advent of online services has revolutionised the way education is taught in school.  With the use of the internet being more commonplace in schools it leads to many advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages are that pupils can now use revision sites like BBC Bitesize or online work providers like MyMaths to do revision and homework online now as opposed to revising from books  and writing out worksheets. The online services also make life easier for teachers and examiners as online services now allow examiners and teachers to mark peoples work and exams online. Exam boards such as EDEXCEL now use online services to mark student’s work. Many sites which use online services are interactive which allow education to be taught to pupils in a more entertaining way rather than having them just read from a book or whiteboard.

The disadvantages are that with sites such as Wikipedia which advertise themselves as being free encyclopaedias and do offer a lot of information. They however are sometimes unreliable and some information on there needs to be crosschecked with another website to determinate if it’s factual content or if it’s actually terminological inexactitude. Sites like Wikipedia also make it easier to plagiarize someone else’s work and pass it off as your own as the ability to cut and paste makes it easier to copy someone else’s work without crediting them for it. Such a practice is against the law but people have got around that by using the online services to pay someone else to write work for them. This is legal in a sense as it is a contract but if the information was used in a CV (or something similar) that would be misrepresentation which is illegal as you’d be passing that work off as your own through being economical with the truth.

Online services also offer to education several resources which are easier and more accessible to teachers and pupils. Online services now allow people to download worksheets from the internet as well as lesson plans for teachers and help with coursework for pupils. Chat rooms are helped by the advent of online services in education as there are certain educational based chart rooms now. One of them is the Student Room; the student room allows pupils to share information freely and discuss topics with each other as well as debate over certain issues. Youtube is also used as an online resource by teachers to show demonstrations to pupils that they can’t do at that point in time. This has a disadvantage as if pupils used it they could look at something irrelevant to their education which is why many schools block students from using them. A V.L.E, Virtual learning environment such as Frog is a system using online services that allow students, teachers and parents to have the ability to check on the pupil’s progress as well as update any assessments and any behavioural issues.