ICT Btec Revision Theory Notes

1. communication Email, messaging, news groups, social networks, conferencing, blogs, vlogs   Talking to friends on Skype™ Using social networking applications like Facebook or Google+ to exchange information Instant responses to someone who is remote from you, at no additional cost to your broadband fees. Socialising. 2. Real-time information Timetables, news, sport updates, weather reports, travel news Checking an airport website for estimated arrival times of fl ights Provides up-to-date information when picking people up from an airport. Companies can use real-time information about customers’ reactions to an advertisement to improve the effectiveness of the advert. 3. commerce Banking, auctions, online sales and purchases, publishing Selling something through a service such as ebay™ or Amazon ® Allows users to carry out transactions seamlessly (without the need to use physical money) and globally. 4. Government Tax returns, e-voting, applications for grants or benefi ts Applying for your fi rst provisional driving licence Saves time and is more convenient – saves you a visit to the Post Offi ce and means can take your time fi lling in the form and can easily amend any

5. education Online learning, online training, manufacturers’ online tutorials Using the Microsoft ® training package for Windows ® 7 Allows you to do training from the comfort of your own computer and at your own pace. 6. Virtual learning environment (VLe) VLEs such as Moodle Your school or college may use a VLE for you to access lecture notes and assignments, and for you to submit assignment work Cost effective for the school/college and allows the school/college to track the submission of learners’ work. 7. Business (different types of organisations) Business networks, collaborative working, video conferencing Using a price comparison website is an example where you touch on business usage Allows you to get the best price on purchases. 8. entertainment Multi-user games, radio and TV players, video streaming Playing a game with other people over the internet Enhances the gaming experience by allowing you to play against people you may not know. 9. download services Music, fi lms, new software, software upgrades, games Downloading music from a service such as iTunes or Amazon ® Makes purchasing easier and more affordable.

Online advertising Online advertising uses a number of methods to promote products and services. The most commonly used methods include: • Search engine results pages. Companies can register with the bigger search engines (Google™, Bing, Yahoo!) so that their websites appear high up in a list of keyword searches or pay for links that appear when a user does a search. • Banner and pop-up advertisements. These are advertisements that appear at the top of web pages or pop up on web pages. These are often animated to capture attention

Online advertising is becoming a very popular means of promoting products and events, but it isn’t always effective. In order to ensure that online advertising is effective, companies need to make sure that it: 1. Captures the attention of the target market through the use of design features (colour, layout, graphics, animation, e.g. in banner advertisement) and is easily accessible.   2. Retains consumers’ interest. For example, by directing consumers to additional interactive information about a product, such as a video demonstration of a product. The speed with which the information loads is also important to make sure that consumers don’t lose interest.

Pay-per-click advertising Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a form of online advertising. It involves websites or web pages hosting ads for other companies. If a surfer clicks on an ad, they will be re-directed through to the advertiser’s website. The website or web page provider will receive a payment for every ad which is clicked on. Pay-per-click advertising uses what is known as an affiliate model.  Advertisements or links to a company’s website are placed on other websites (affi liates) and in return the affi liate site receives a percentage of the income for any customer that clicks through. Google™ AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft ® adCenter are all big players in this field. 

Compressing files Working with online documents means that local fi les frequently need to be uploaded for sharing, or downloaded to be used for local processing. Files may be extremely large, which can cause problems with transmission (delivery) in terms of speed and network usage. To reduce this problem, fi les have to be compressed (i.e. reduced in size) before transmission and then expanded after transmission. A common method of doing this is to convert them to zip files (.zip format). Zip files are basically stores of data fi les which may have been compressed. There are many differentalgorithms for doing the compression – with most compression software supporting several of these. The last item in a zip fi le is an index, which shows the placement of each of the data fi les and allows other fi les to be added. Quite often the zip fi le will also contain some program code (a sequence of instructions) to allow the fi les within the zip fi le to be unzipped (known as self-extracting files). There is a wide range of software available for zipping files, with one of the most popular being WinZip

The advantages of using online software The biggest advantage of using online document software is that you can allow many people to share a version of a document and work on it at the same time as other people (known as collaborative working). You can also access content: • anywhere there is an available internet connection • via different devices (e.g. PC, smartphone, tablet) • on different operating devices (e.g. Windows ® and Mac).

ONLINE SERVICES

Online advertising

compressing files