What is Facebook?

What is Facebook?
It is one of the most popular social networks in the world and was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University. At that time, the main purpose was to store personal contact information of the Harvard University community; but today, with just over 350 million users, the purpose is not limited to being an "agenda" but to be a place where everyone shares its personality through thoughts, information and links sharing websites, videos that are posted in their space within Facebook, photographs uploaded, games whose records are shared, concerts and events they attend, bands that follow, causes to which are joined and many other activities that can be carried out within the same site. Facebook is also an open platform where it is possible to create applications if you have a basic knowledge on digital languages.

Facebook has been criticized for its policies and contracts. The most unpopular being the one that alludes to stay in perpetuity with the rights of all content that users upload to their profile, "they have managed to rectify and have stated that 'no, that's not going to happen', so they move away, at least a couple of months of lawsuits about intellectual property in certain content published on their platform. ( Jorge Hierro Alvarez, Social network Facebook listen to users ).


How it works?
The steps to join and use the web site are simple and basically are shared with many other social networks. The differentiating characteristics of Facebook lie in the elements it contains:

1. Each profile and therefore each user is entitled to a space (wall) where paste content such as blog entries, links to other sites or information about what you are doing at the moment (if you're thinking, you can type what you think, if you are using an application, you post what you did in this application). The friends of the user also can upload messages or reminders to the wall of another friend.
2. You are entitled to upload photos or videos.
3. You can create applications for sharing with Facebook users through its own network spread given to the implementation or buying advertising space that offers the same site, bringing its application to the public with the profile that has been chosen.
4. You can open or start groups in which people with similar interests can join.
5. You have the right to publicize events such as parties, concerts, exhibitions and so on.
6. It has the option to send messages to other users, having a strong control over the spam and the ability to start chats with users who are online.
7. Also, "users can participate in one or more social networks in relation to their academic status, place of work or geographic region" ( Wikipedia, voice: Facebook).

The main difference of Facebook compared to other web sites lies in the simplicity, cleanliness and order in both the provision of visual elements as in the activation of profiles according to your goal within the network. Thus we find sections dedicated to companies or organizations whose purpose is to spread their services or their activities rather than make friends. In this way, the spam and the techniques of guerrilla marketing are handled fairly.

What is it used?
The Facebook application can be viewed from several angles. One is the personal use where "we have a different address book with photos that let you know to the Internet community all that goes with your person, from your hobbies, tastes and preferences to share with your past and present friends in real-time "( Jorge Hierro Alvarez, Social network Facebook listen to users ).

The other is the commercial approach where the social network serves as a platform for companies to present their products or services or be a database where you can know for certain the exact profiles of each person "according to the country, age, sex, date of birth, inserted pictures, hobbies, tastes, groups and communities they belong. (...) Facebook has done its job, providing a form of identity in real time where the protagonist is the direct netizen. "( Jorge Hierro Alvarez, Social network Facebook listen to users ).

PICS
Sociopath
Not going to work...
Superpoke!

WE RECOMMEND:
FRANCESCO MANETTO, La cara oculta de Facebook, in the Journal: "El País".
STEVE HOLZNER, Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business.

What is a Social Network?

What is a social network?
It's a site that uses applications built on digital language specifically created to facilitate interaction, participation and communication between people who can share with acquaintances or friends a wide variety of content such as blog entries, documents, links, videos, photos, music and in some cases, if your application allows it, you can share virtual games, surveys, quizzes, discussions on topics of interest and so on.

How they work?
The first social network emerged between 1997 and 2001 sites as "AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet and MiGente," which "allowed users to create personal and professional relationships" through "profiles that allowed users to identify friends in their networks without asking the adoption of these connections "( Wikipedia, voice: Social Network ). Here are a list of the most common steps to be performed to enter one of these social networks:

1. As one can see, the first step to start and operate a social network is to locate a network that represents the common interests we each have.
2. Then, typically the new user will be asked to register on the website, creating what is called "profile". Generally, as networks are websites where friends and family have access, the profile is very close to reality.
3. Once the web site system has recognized and registered the new user, he or she should start to find friends who are already on the social network or invite those who have not already done so. This is known as "weaving the web" or create lines of communication that can be as large as the number of acquaintances or people you want to contact.
4. Finally, the users start to use applications that the network enables, for example in the case of the MySpace website it is possible to customize the personal site that the website lends us; in the case of Facebook, you can access applications games, tests, surveys, or visit the pages of friends, watching pictures or things that the person has posted on their walls, as far as they allow it.

What are they for?
First they are websites that exploit the property of interaction and participation of users that Web 2.0 has. This enables participation activities such as getting people with similar interests to share their views or their findings, or simply get back in touch with people who for reasons of lack time or distance we can not stay so close, so it is possible to know what they have done, the photographs were taken, the videos they see, know their tastes, in other words we are able to approach the person in way that otherwise we would not be able to reach.

It is this latter point that has recently been exploited by marketing areas, agencies and personnel departments and political parties or groups. Marketing finds in social networks a suitable place to complement the market studies they are carrying out. Personnel agencies can know how does the person that is about to be hired behaves, as networks are place where usually people tend to show "what they really are". Political parties and groups can reach people with similar political views creating groups that bring together this people, and also engaged in broadcast news, ideas and feedback to reinforce their positions. The latter is social networks are finally living spaces where users can share and above all communicate more easily.

PICS
Network
NOT-Work

WE RECOMMEND:
JEFFREY S. BEASLEY, Networking.
JAY CONRAD LEVINSON, Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet.

What is a blog?

What is a blog?

It is a mass media on the Internet that merges the modality of the diary, a book in which the user publishes his thoughts, and the one of the binnacle or log, where the user makes a registration of what happens on some topic in particular.

It is a website that allows a user to have a website in which it can be created, published and continually updated content in an easy and quickly way. Most blogs allow owners to enable the possibility to have answers by visitors to the blog. It also has the feature to provide publications in chronological order to maintain, usually the most current at the beginning.

How it works?

In general, blogs are usually a shared network space for a general server. That is, blogger.com is the Internet company that has servers. By registering for the blogger page, it gives you a space on the Internet, but to access it, also offers you a variety of tools such as "Creation of entries" or "Design" which gives you control over the content and the way of your blog.

Each company has different tools blogs that meet the needs of its users, although the most common is to submit the section to create entries or contents and to shape the section blog, changing colors, forms or arrangement of the elements of the page.

What is it for?

Many of the blogs have allowed people to approach the possibility of publishing content on different subjects (technology, education, politics, religion, personal, music, etc.). If you previously needed a publisher and a printing press to publicize your ideas, now just need a computer, a theme and style that will capture the readers of blogs.

The blogs have turned the Internet users into communicators allowing them to show their point of view to anyone who comes to their website.

PICS

I once...

Types of blogging

WE RECOMMEND:

BOB WALSH, Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them.

MICHAEL A. BANKS, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers.

What is Web 3.0?

What is Web 3.0?

We said in the previous article that Web 2.0 switched the network by making it more accessible to users, enabling social participation and creating what many experts call the knowledge society. Web 3.0, which is still under construction, is looking for a second change by making the web more accessible to computers. That is, as expressed by the author Salvador Pérez Crespo "it comes to giving meaning to web pages, hence the name of semantic web" (Pérez Crespo, Salvador, will the Web 3.0).

How it works?

Currently the archives that contains the web pages and information is encoded in different database programming languages one from another. Therefore, the first step is the standardization of databases, so that all computers can easily access the contents without the "difficulty" of having to "know" many languages to interpret the information. Html language currently only allows the interconnection of files and the improvement of interfaces, but experts say it is very difficult cataloging information for the reasons described previously.

At the time of uniformity extensions of databases, it is possible the creation of information agents who are dedicated to catalog and search data without using humans. In other words, the Internet will start to realize autonomous interconnections of knowledge and data, becoming a "super-brain."

What is the utility?

With Web 3.0 search will be more human, so that, on the one hand, Web sites begin to offer free personalized information that the user needs based on the prediction of tastes, something that already happens in many websites, but it will be much easier and much precise given to the extensive network of connections that will the web.

Moreover, this system will allow for detailed and specific questions to the network and it will return accurate results without the need for the user having to be searching in search engines (forgive the redundancy). In other words, if you remember the scene of the film A. I., where a holographic robot to what you can ask questions like a person and he answered as humanly possible, will be an undeniable reality.

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Future

This is web 3.0!

WE RECOMMEND:

DEAN ALLEMANG, Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL.

DANIEL HARRIS, Web 2.0 Evolution into The Intelligent Web 3.0.

What is the Web 2.0?

What is the Web 2.0?

It is the term used to designate the stage of the Internet today. The main characteristic of this stage is in the user participation: the web is no longer a one-way communication medium to become multidirectional. Many websites begin to develop with the support of many surfers, as the case of Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Blogs, among other places.

How it works?

The current digital language suitable not only for creating interfaces to display information but also include specific modules in order to upload information without having to enter fully into the source code. Although there are sites that do allow users to enter this code (like Linux) that simply represent a barrier for other surfers who are not familiar with building instructions from a programming language.

This is the hallmark of Web 2.0: Include specific tools to put messages (comments, pictures, videos, audio, etc.) on web pages and websites, so that the site is enriched by the participation of society.

What is it for?

The performance of Web 2.0 is much easier to understand by the current Internet users since we continously use web 2.0 tools. Today Internet has transferred to the virtual social interactions that ever happened in local environments. For example, long time ago people shared their photos through albums and invited friends and family for an evening to see them; today the same is done through a website.

PICS

The web 2.0 gigants

What is Web 2.0?

WE RECOMMEND:

FEDERICO SÁNCHEZ, Introducción a la Web 2.0 para empresarios (que apenas encienden la PC).

GOTTFRIED VOSSEN, Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity.

What is Web 1.0?

What is Web 1.0?

Websites that are developed on this platform only offer one-way information. This mean the user cannot interact with the website or with the information and elements that are displayed. It aims to be a brochure or a book on the Internet, where the webmaster upload content and where the users can only read it without making any comments or communication with the webmaster through this site.

How does it work?

Since the early 60's when they first used these sites until know, the logical sequence of operation is simple. The engineer or web designer use programming language to create a site. Then they link different elements in the website with files that will be made available to the public who use the WWW. Now a days webmakers uses HTML language to gives more movement to the site and make it a nicer place to include information, however participation is impossible.

What is for?

As we have said, the Web 1.0 is a term that allows us to describe the Internet world when participation is not allowed.

PICS

1.0

The Age of Authority

WE RECOMMEND:

DANIEL COHEN, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web.

ANDREW MCMICHAEL, History On The Web: Using And Evaluating The Internet

What is a Protocol?

What is a Protocol?

As we have been stating all along this blog, in order to communicate it is necessary to have rules that standardize the use of elements in order to create meanings. In this way, protocols are the rules that make computers create syntax and semantics using their information to communicate among them.

Each protocol helps to guide the machine into the communication with other computer or special device (such as a printer, a scanner, a telephone, a camera, a thermometer) in order to achieve a specific objective. This means that while each protocol is designed to enable communication of different things, its operation is similar.

How does it work?

In a first stage, a protocol helps to detect an underlying physical connection. Once it is established there is a node or an endpoint, it comes the “handshaking” which in telecommunications refers to a process in which the computer negotiates the parameters of communication channels, in other words, computer is verifying response on the other device and “talking” to it to make sure there exist a common language in order to transfer data.

After knowing there is possible to communicate with the other device, the protocols checks: 1) the negotiation of the connection characteristics, 2) the procedures to start, end and format a message, 3) what should be done if any problem happens while sending a message (such as noticing if there is a corrupted or a not well formatted message) or what happens if suddenly is detected a loss of connection and finally 4) how to terminate a session or connection.

What is it for?

Is more understandable the function of something by know what will happens if that something does not exist. The protocols were created to make it possible the communication between the computer with other hardware or software or between software with other software. In other words, without protocols it would not be possible to have any communication between machines or the programs it uses. Thanks to the protocols we can print, we can connect to Internet, we can watch satellital TV, we can transfer data and the telecommunications have developed so fast.

PICS

Machine Communication

The computer communicates

We recommend:

NATALIA OLIFER, Computer Networks: Principles, Technologies and Protocols for Network Design

GERARD J. HOLZMANN, Design And Validation Of Computer Protocols

What is the Domain Name System?

What is the Domain Name System (DNS)?

It is a tool that acts like a directory of the domains that exist in Internet. The Domain Name System helps to prioritize and classify a file, in order to be located easily, as it translates the domain names into Internet Protocol addresses, controlling also the electronic mail delivery. Without the DNS it would be impossible for a computer access to websites.

How does it work?

The DNS consist of three basic components: the resource records or DNS data, the name servers and the Internet Protocol. The files or domains are distributed all around the world, and are organized in zones. Each zone is kept on servers that will receive queries asking for a specific domain which due to the DNS has been translated into an Internet Protocol, therefore, what the server is looking for are numbers.

The prioritizing method used by the DNS was created to use the normal distribution of domain names and IP in a hierarchy of authority. Because of this, there must be a DNS server near to your access provider that maps the domain names in your Internet requests or forwards them to other servers in the Internet.

What is it for?

The DNS is a system that helps to translate the domain name into an IP and then track it within the entire Internet.

Pics:

DNS

DNS diagram

We recommend:

DNS Resources Directory

BLAIR RAMPLING and DAVID DALAN, DNS for Dummies.

What is World Wide Web?

What is World Wide Web (WWW)?
It is a service offered on the Internet created from a group of protocols that allows the search of files or hypertexts in servers or computers, and it standardize and organize information that will be exchanged. It was created by Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau.

How does it work?
It is necessary to have a browser. Then in a special box you have to indicate to the computer where to look the file you need, in example, you “say” to the computer “please search, using the Internet Protocol, in the World Wide Web the file eriescomm that is a commercial site”, of course the computer will not understand these words, consequently we write down: http:// (which is the command to use an Internet Protocol) www (here is the first place the computer is ordered to look for) eriescomm.com (this is the folder we are looking for).

What happens then? The computer using the Internet Protocol Suit connects with the server using an assignated number. Then, uses the WWW service which means that the computer is seeking a file that is in a place in the world. The file is eriescomm and the extension is commercial, that is asignated by the Domain Name System, but the computer does not understand this words, it is necessary to track a number. Here comes the role of the Uniform Resource Locator that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. Using the DNS and the URL the machine, using the Internet plataform, can locate the file easily and then show it in the screen of the first client through out a interface.

What is it for?
The World Wide Web let us share easily information and files created by us and give a big boost to the communication among communities. Without the WWW we would not be able to click on a link and get to the site we want.

FOTOS
Twenty Years Ago
WWW

Recomendamos:
JAMES GILLIES, ROBERT CAILLIAU, How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web.
MICHAEL A. BANKS, On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders.

What is Internet?

What is Internet?

Is a worldwide platform that uses the digital language to enhance communication of messages and data and storage of information between independent and decentralized computers and therefore among people. It’s usually confused the concept Internet with the concept World Wide Web (WWW) since the second one is the most commonly used Internet service in the world, but they are different concepts. Internet is the main structure where the WWW service can be used.

How does it work?

Thanks to the theory Leonard Kleinrock published in 1960 engineers and scientist developed computers that actually receive information and compress it into small packages that can be send to other computers that decompressed them making it possible to send information through the electric telephonic cable rather than using circuits. As we see, the functioning of Internet is quite simple.

It takes two types of computers to ensure the working of Internet: the server and the client. The first one stores information and data and administrates the coordination and communication between two or more computers or clients that are going to be connected. In this understanding, if you want to contact people or access the information found in China from Sydney, the computer-client connects to the Internet where the system will assign a number, then track the number identifier of the computer-server where the information or contacts in China are and the link is done.

The computer uses the Internet Protocol Suit (TCP/IP) to transform information into bits using the digital language.

What is it for?

Internet is just a bunch of independent computers interconnected. Its main use is to make it easier and faster the communication of people and data. There are a large number of services that are used according to the kind of function expected from the Net. We find the above mentioned WWW, the electronic mailing (SMTP), the online conversations (IRC), the instant messenger, the radio broadcasting and television, telephonic conversations, electronic newsletters, remote access (SSH), etcetera.

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Internet's Universe

Internet's Diagram

WE RECOMMEND:

JANNET ABBATE, Inventing the Internet (Inside Technology.

JEREMY M. NORMAN, From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology.

BRIAN KAHIN and JAMES H. KELLER, Coordinating the Internet.

What is Operating System?

What is Operating System (OS)?

The operating system is the group of instructions that are pre charged in a computer in order to prepare it to start other programs such as word processors, spread sheets, etcetera.

How does it work?

The Operating System activates itself ones the computer is turned on. When the first electric impulse arrives to the brain of the machine it is interpreted as a sign to go to a special place in the memory and "read" the inicial programming that have been stored there. Those programming lines will allow the computer to start the interface with the user of the machine and therefore will be ready to begin any action or program that she or he decides. If the OS is seen like this, we can compare it to the initial instructions that each being in the world has in order to preserve their lives, and those instructions, that exist in the form of chemical fluids and substances are named "instincts".

What is it for?

The main use for the OS is, to put it in some way, to pave the road for other programs to work properly so they can help the users to achieve and complete their tasks and duties.

PICS

Windows

Dad's Operating System

We recommend

AVI SILBERSCHATZ, et. Al., Operating System Concepts.

ANN McHOES, IDA M. FLYNN, Understanding Operating Systems.