Internet Technologies At Work
Chapter 1: Understanding the Internet
After completing Chapter 1, you will know how to:
- Define the Internet, describe how large it is, and compare its explosive growth rate to the relatively slower pace of adoption of other communications media.
- Identify the most popular Internet services and clarify the relationship between the Internet and the World Wide Web.
- Describe underlying technological concepts that enable the Internet to work.
- Define how the Internet impacts on everyday activities.
- Provide a brief history of the Internet, explaining how it grew from its humble origins into the worldwide network that we enjoy today.
- Describe efforts that are underway to improve the infrastructure of the Internet.
End of Chapter Labs
Lab Project 1.1: Planning Internet Services
Imagine that you are employed in a school or small company that is planning its information technology infrastructure. Your employer has asked you to consider the basic Internet services and plan how they can function in the workplace to improve productivity and communication on a daily basis. You will submit your plan in the form of a matrix. To create the matrix, follow these steps:
- Use your word processor to make an outline of the basic functions of your school or business.
- Consider how each function in the outline could make use of one or more of the basic Internet services you studied in this chapter.
- Using the table feature of your word processor, create a matrix that lists the basic Internet services across the top, and the functions in your outline along the side.
- In each cell of the matrix, put a checkmark if the Internet service in that column can help achieve the task in that cell’s row.
This matrix constitutes a functional analysis that will inform how and where your school or company will apply the different Internet services in the workplace. Save the matrix on your hard drive. If your instructor has asked you to hand in the matrix, make sure you put your name at the top of the matrix, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.
Lab Project 1.2: Adopting a PDA Platform
As you learned in Chapter 1, the PDA market is divided into camps. The operating systems are very different, as is the software needed to use these devices. Because of these differences, most schools or companies will probably choose to adopt one or the other instead of trying to support them all. Imagine that your superior has asked you to recommend which PDA platform your school or company should adopt. In developing this recommendation, consider these issues:
- The marketplace for PDAs is volatile. From 2000 to 2003, for example, Palm’s market share dropped from over 70% to about 40% of the market for personal digital assistants. In 2010, HP bought Palm and rebranded the Palm PDAs as HP devices. Use the search engines at google.com or yahoo.com to find the latest reports on PDA market share.
- Consider the extent to which your coworkers use Windows. If they are diehard Windows users, for example, they may prefer devices that run mobile versions of Windows. Macintosh users may prefer the iPhone.
- Get personal experience with PDA operating systems before you make a recommendation. You can try them in the PDA departments at Best Buy, Staples, or Office Depot, plus many other retail stores.
- Functionality should be your guiding light in deciding on a PDA platform. Consider the applications that are available on the various brands, and match these applications up to the daily tasks faced by your coworkers.
Use a word processor to write a brief essay telling what PDA you recommend and why. Report the brands of PDA you considered. Discuss the relative pluses and minuses of the PDA platforms as they relate to daily activities in your workplace. If it seems necessary to support multiple brands, state the reasons why this will be necessary. Also in this report, state what the current market share is for the brand of PDA that you recommend. If your instructor has asked you to hand in this assignment, make sure you put your name at the top of your PDA recommendation, then copy it onto a disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.
