Iinformation on scanner

Image scanner In computing, an image scanneroften abbreviated to just scanneris a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop (or flatbed) scanner where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning. Hand-held scanners, where the device is moved by hand, have evolved from text scanning "wands" to 3D scanners used for industrial design, reverse engineering, test and measurement, orthotics, gaming and other applications. Mechanically driven scanners that move the document are typically used for large-format documents, where a flatbed design would be impractical. Modern scanners typically use a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a Contact Image Sensor (CIS) as the image sensor, whereas older drum scanners use a photomultiplier tube as the image sensor. A rotary scanner, used for high-speed document scanning, is another type of drum scanner, using a CCD array instead of a photomultiplier. Other types of scanners are planetary scanners, which take photographs of books and documents, and 3D scanners, for producing three-dimensional models of objects. Another category of scanner is digital camera scanners, which are based on the concept of reprographic cameras. Due to increasing resolution and new features such as anti-shake, digital cameras have become an attractive alternative to regular scanners. While still having disadvantages compared to traditional scanners (such as distortion, reflections, shadows, low contrast), digital cameras offer advantages such as speed, portability and gentle digitizing of thick documents without damaging the book spine. New scanning technologies are combining 3D scanners with digital cameras to create full-color, photo-realistic 3D models of objects.*citation needed+ In the biomedical research area, detection devices for DNA microarrays are called scanners as well. These scanners are high-resolution systems (up to 1 m/ pixel), similar to microscopes. The detection is done via CCD or a photomultiplier tube (PMT).

Types

+Drum

The first image scanner developed for use with a computer was a drum scanner. It was built in 1957 at the US National Bureau of Standards by a team led by Russell A. Kirsch. The first image ever scanned on this machine was a 5 cm square photograph of Kirsch's then-three-month-old son, Walden. The black and white image had a resolution of 176 pixels on a side.*1+

Drum scanners capture image information with photomultiplier tubes (PMT), rather than the chargecoupled device (CCD) arrays found in flatbed scanners and inexpensive film scanners. Reflective and transmissive originals are mounted on an acrylic cylinder, the scanner drum, which rotates at high speed while it passes the object being scanned in front of precision optics that deliver image information to the PMTs. Most modern color drum scanners use three matched PMTs, which read red, blue, and green light, respectively. Light from the original artwork is split into separate red, blue, and green beams in the optical bench of the scanner. The drum scanner gets its name from the clear acrylic cylinder, the drum, on which the original artwork is mounted for scanning. Depending on size, it is possible to mount originals up to 11"x17", but maximum size varies by manufacturer. One of the unique features of drum scanners is the ability to control sample area and aperture size independently. The sample size is the area that the scanner encoder reads to create an individual pixel. The aperture is the actual opening that allows light into the optical bench of the scanner. The ability to control aperture and sample size separately is particularly useful for smoothing film grain when scanning black-and white and color negative originals. While drum scanners are capable of scanning both reflective and transmissive artwork, a good-quality flatbed scanner can produce good scans from reflective artwork. As a result, drum scanners are rarely used to scan prints now that high-quality, inexpensive flatbed scanners are readily available. Film, however, is where drum scanners continue to be the tool of choice for high-end applications. Because film can be wet-mounted to the scanner drum and because of the exceptional sensitivity of the PMTs, drum scanners are capable of capturing very subtle details in film originals. Only a few companies continue to manufacture drum scanners. While prices of both new and used units have come down over the last decade, they still require a considerable monetary investment when compared to CCD flatbed and film scanners. However, drum scanners remain in demand due to their capacity to produce scans that are superior in resolution, color gradation, and value structure. Also, because drum scanners are capable of resolutions up to 24,000 PPI, their use is generally recommended when a scanned image is going to be enlarged. In most graphic-arts operations, very-high-quality flatbed scanners have replaced drum scanners, being both less expensive and faster. However, drum scanners continue to be used in high-end applications, such as museum-quality archiving of photographs and print production of high-quality books and magazine advertisements. In addition, due to the greater availability of pre-owned units, many fine-art photographers are acquiring drum scanners, which has created a new niche market for the machines. + Flatbed

CCD scanner
A flatbed scanner is usually composed of a glass pane (or platen), under which there is a bright light (often xenon or cold cathode fluorescent) which illuminates the pane, and a moving optical array in CCD scanning. CCD-type scanners typically contain three rows (arrays) of sensors with red, green, and blue filters.

CIS scanner

CIS scanning consists of a moving set of red, green and blue LEDs strobed for illumination and a connected monochromatic photodiode array under a rod lens array for light collection. Images to be scanned are placed face down on the glass, an opaque cover is lowered over it to exclude ambient light, and the sensor array and light source move across the pane, reading the entire area. An image is therefore visible to the detector only because of the light it reflects. Transparent images do not work in this way, and require special accessories that illuminate them from the upper side. Many scanners offer this as an option.

Film
DSLR camera and slide scanner "Slide" (positive) or negative film can be scanned in equipment specially manufactured for this purpose. Usually, uncut film strips of up to six frames, or four mounted slides, are inserted in a carrier, which is moved by a stepper motor across a lens and CCD sensor inside the scanner. Some models are mainly used for same-size scans. Film scanners vary a great deal in price and quality. Consumer scanners are relatively inexpensive while the most expensive professional CCD based film scanning system was around 120,000 USD. More expensive solutions are said to produce better results.

GeniScan GS4500 Hand Scanner

Hand scanners come in two forms: document and 3D scanners. Hand held document scanners are manual devices that are dragged across the surface of the image to be scanned. Scanning documents in this manner requires a steady hand, as an uneven scanning rate would produce distorted images - a little light on the scanner would indicate if the motion was too fast. They typically have a "start" button, which is held by the user for the duration of the scan; some switches to set the optical resolution; and a roller, which generates a clock pulse for synchronization with the computer. Most hand scanners were monochrome, and produced light from an array of green LEDs to illuminate the image. A typical hand scanner also had a small window through which the document being scanned could be viewed. They were popular during the early 1990s and usually had a proprietary interface module specific to a particular type of computer, usually an Atari ST or Commodore Amiga. While popularity for document scanning has waned, use of hand held 3D scanners remains popular for many applications, including industrial design, reverse engineering, inspection & analysis, digital manufacturing and medical applications. To compensate for the uneven motion of the human hand, most 3D scanning systems rely on the placement of reference markers typically adhesive reflective tabs that the scanner uses to align elements and mark positions in space.

INFORMATIO ON INTERNET
The Internet (or internet) is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email. Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Newspaper, book and other print publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or are reshaped into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and small artisans and traders. Business -to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by the United States government to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of June 2012, more than 2.4 billion peopleover a third of the world's human populationhave used the services of the Internet.*1+ The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

Modern uses

The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous means, including through mobile Internet devices. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet wirelessly. Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited facilities of such pocketsized devices, the services of the Internet, including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher than other access methods. Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from websites. Examples range from CBeebies, through school and high-school revision guides and virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly literature through the likes of Google Scholar. For distance education, help with homework and other assignments, self-guided learning, whiling away spare time, or just looking up more detail on an interesting fact, it has never been easier for people to access educational information at any level from anywhere. The Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of both formal and informal education. The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example of this is the free software movement, which has produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. Internet chat, whether using an IRC chat room, an instant messaging system, or a social networking website, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way while working at their computers during the day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email. These systems may allow files to be exchanged, drawings and images to be shared, or voice and video contact between team members. Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work. Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy spread. The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be. They may do this with or without computer security, i.e. authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in

a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other remote locations, based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can access their emails, access their data using cloud computing, or open a remote desktop session into their office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection on the Internet. This can give the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including email and other applications, while away from the office. It has been referred to among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,*39+ because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its employees' homes. Services

World Wide Web Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web, or just the Web, interchangeably, but the two terms are not synonymous. The World Wide Web is a global set of documents, images and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). URIs symbolically identify services, servers, and other databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web, but it is only one of the hundreds of communication protocols used on the Internet. Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data. World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page to another via hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page. Client-side software can include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo! and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale. The Web has also enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost -free services are available. Publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however. Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as

easily updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. Collections of personal web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and Twitter currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as web page hosts. Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow. When the Web began in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted in HTML, ready to be sent to a user's browser in response to a request. Over time, the process of creating and serving web pages has become more automated and more dynamic. Websites are often created using content management or wiki software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other organization or members of the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors. Communication Email is an important communications service available on the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Pictures, documents and other files are sent as email attachments. Emails can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses. Internet telephony is another common communications service made possible by the creation of the Internet. VoIP stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet communication. The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkielike voice applications for personal computers. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always -on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL. VoIP is maturing into a competitive alternative to traditional telephone service. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple, inexpensive VoIP network adapters are available that eliminate the need for a personal computer.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call, but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls. Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialing and reliability. Currently, a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service, but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line-powered and operate during a power failure; VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the phone equipment and the Internet access devices. VoIP has also become increasingly popular for gaming applications, as a form of communication between players. Popular VoIP clients for gaming include Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 also offer VoIP chat features. Data transfer File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed usually fully encrypted across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products. Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users. Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions. They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet "broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of available types of content is much wider, from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where usually audio material is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material worldwide.

Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For example, standard image quality needs 1 Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5 Mbit/s for 1080p.*40+ Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give fullframe-rate video, the picture either is usually small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and without two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with a vast number of users. It uses a flash-based web player to stream and show video files. Registered users may upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims that its users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.*41+ Access

Main article: Internet access Common methods of Internet access in homes include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and 3G/4G technology cell phones. Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usage like ticket booking, bank deposit, online payment etc. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where wouldbe users need to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. A whole campus or park, or even an entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed from such places as a park bench.*42+ Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed wireless services. High-end mobile phones such as smartphones in general come with Internet access through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More

mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used.*43+ An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online. An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signaling interruptions. Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable due to a small number of high-capacity links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.*44+ Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form of Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby approximately 93%*45+ of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.*46+ Users

See also: Global Internet usage, English on the Internet, and Unicode

Internet users per 100 inhabitants Source: ITU*47+

Internet users by language*48+

Website content languages*49+ Overall Internet usage has seen tremendous growth. From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to 1.858 billion.*50+ By 2010, 22 percent of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube.*51+ The prevalent language for communication on the Internet has been English. This may be a result of the origin of the Internet, as well as the language's role as a lingua franca. Early computer systems were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet.

After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese (23%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).*52+ By region, 42% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North America, 10% in Latin America and the Caribbean taken together, 6% in Africa, 3% in the Middle East and 1% in Australia/Oceania.*53+ The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in the world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain. In an American study in 2005, the percentage of men using the Internet was very slightly ahead of the percentage of women, although this difference reversed in those under 30. Men logged on more often, spent more time online, and were more likely to be broadband users, whereas women tended to make more use of opportunities to communicate (such as email). Men were more likely to use the Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, and for recreation such as downloading music and videos. Men and women were equally likely to use the Internet for shopping and banking.*54+ More recent studies indicate that in 2008, women significantly outnumbered men on most social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age.*55+ In addition, women watched more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.*56+ In terms of blogs, men were more likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men were more likely to have a professional blog, whereas women were more likely to have a personal blog.*57+ According to Euromonitor, by 2020 43.7% of the world's population will be users of the Internet. Splitting by country, in 2011 Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands had the highest internet penetration by the number of users, with more than 90% of the population with access. Social impact

Main article: Sociology of the Internet The Internet has enabled entirely new forms of social interaction, activities, and organizing, thanks to its basic features such as widespread usability and access. In the first decade of the 21st century, the first generation is raised with widespread availability of Internet connectivity, bringing consequences and concerns in areas such as personal privacy and identity, and distribution of copyrighted materials. These "digital natives" face a variety of challenges that were not present for prior generations. Social networking and entertainment See also: Social networking service#Social impact

Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book vacations and to find out more about their interests. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. The Internet has seen a growing number of Web desktops, where users can access their files and settings via the Internet. Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have created new ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, to pursue common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in users' videos and photographs. The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas. The internet pornography and online gambling industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other websites.*58+ Although many governments have attempted to restrict both industries' use of the Internet, in general this has failed to stop their widespread popularity.*59+ Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming.*60+ This form of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from roleplaying video games to online gambling. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer.*61+ Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain games. Many people use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based services exist for all of these activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists' copyrights than others. Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness.*62+ Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread. Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader.

Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms and web-based message boards."*63+ Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study by Peninsula Business Services.*64+ Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Psychologist Nicolas Carr believe that Internet use has other effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity.*65+ Electronic business Main article: Electronic business Electronic business (E-business) involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners. According to research firm IDC, the size of total worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business and -consumer transactions are added together, will equate to $16 trillion in 2013. IDate, another research firm, estimates the global market for digital products and services at $4.4 trillion in 2013. A report by Oxford Economics adds those two together to estimate the total size of the digital economy at $20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales.*66+ While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet -enabled commerce, there is also evidence that some aspects of the internet such as maps and location-aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide.*67+ Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality.*68+*69+*70+ Telecommuting Main article: Telecommuting Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videoconferencing, and Voice over IP (VOIP). It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows workers to communicate over long distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost. As broadband Internet connections become more

commonplace, more and more workers have adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home to their corporate intranet and internal phone networks. Crowdsourcing Main article: Crowdsourcing Internet provides a particularly good venue for crowdsourcing (outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people) since individuals tend to be more open in web -based projects where they are not being physically judged or scrutinized and thus can feel more comfortable sharing. Crowdsourcing systems are used to accomplish a variety of tasks. For example, the crowd may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see human-based computation), or help capture, systematize, or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science). Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.*71+ In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.*72+The United States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park. *73+ The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web*74+ and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic.*75+

INFORMATION ON EMAIL Email From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the communications medium. For the former manufacturing conglomerate, see Email Limited.

The at sign, a part of every SMTP email address*1+ Electronic mail, commonly referred to as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and

the recipient both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need connect only briefly, typically to an email server, for as long as it takes to send or receive messages. Historically, the term electronic mail was used generically for any electronic document transmission. For example, several writers in the early 1970s used the term to describe fax document transmission.*2+*3+ As a result, it is difficult to find the first citation for the use of the term with the more specific meaning it has today. An Internet email message*NB 1+ consists of three components, the message envelope, the message header, and the message body. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually descriptive information is also added, such as a subject header field and a message submission date/time stamp. Originally a text-only (7-bit ASCII and others) communications medium, email was extended to carry multi-media content attachments, a process standardized in RFC 2045 through 2049. Collectively, these RFCs have come to be called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Electronic mail predates the inception of the Internet and was in fact a crucial tool in creating it,*4+ but the history of modern, global Internet email services reaches back to the early ARPANET. Standards for encoding email messages were proposed as early as 1973 (RFC 561). Conversion from ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current services. An email sent in the early 1970s looks quite similar to a basic text message sent on the Internet today. Network-based email was initially exchanged on the ARPANET in extensions to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), but is now carried by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), first published as Internet standard 10 (RFC 821) in 1982. In the process of transporting email messages between systems, SMTP communicates delivery parameters using a message envelope separate from the message (header and body) itself.

TYPES OF EMAIL Web-based email (webmail) POP3 email services IMAP email servers MAPI email servers

What is a Computer? A computer is a programmable machine. The two principal characteristics of a computer are: it responds to a specific set of instructions in a well-defined manner and it can execute a prerecorded list of instructions (a program). Modern Computers Defined Modern computers are electronic and digital. The actual machinery -- wires, transistors, and circuits -- is called hardware; the instructions and data are called software. All general-purpose computers require the following hardware components: memory: enables a computer to store, at least temporarily, data and programs. mass storage device: allows a computer to permanently retain large amounts of data. Common mass storage devices include disk drives and tape drives. input device: usually a keyboard and mouse, the input device is the conduit through which data and instructions enter a computer. output device: a display screen, printer, or other device that lets you see what the computer has accomplished. central processing unit (CPU): the heart of the computer, this is the component that actually executes instructions. In addition to these components, many others make it possible for the basic components to work together efficiently. For example, every computer requires a bus that transmits data from one part of the computer to another. Computer Classification, By Size and Power Computers can be generally classified by size and power as follows, though there is considerable overlap: personal computer: a small, single-user computer based on a microprocessor. In addition to the microprocessor, a personal computer has a keyboard for entering data, a monitor for displaying information, and a storage device for saving data. workstation: a powerful, single-user computer. A workstation is like a personal computer, but it has a more powerful microprocessor and a higher-quality monitor. minicomputer: a multi-user computer capable of supporting from 10 to hundreds of users simultaneously. mainframe: a powerful multi-user computer capable of supporting many hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously.

supercomputer: an extremely fast computer that can perform hundreds of millions of instructions per second.\

Uses of Computers in different Fields Our daily encounters with and dependence upon technology is almost invisible as it takes the shape of electronic climate control system, wireless communication systems such as phones and pagers, automatic tellers to dispense money. Magnetically striped cards to facilitate consumer transactions, cable and satellite television, auto mobiles and mass transit. Free trade agreements have led to globalization of commerce and scientific debate about global warming and the effect of our modern use of fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, chemical warfare, and contamination of food and water supplies. In the past several decades we have gone from space exploration to space colonization, intelligent machines, and virtual reality that will lead us into the next millennium. The jobs of the future may not even exist today. Let us see the use of computer technology in our daily life.

Uses of Computers in Business: The business must understand and adapt in the new source of competitive advantage connecting to the people of the core competencies and customer interaction on global scale, globe market place. In the globe business world, globe interaction is very important. In every organization there are major business processes that provide the critical tasks such that customer bills, analyzing sales of various products in different locations etc. in business, computers are used as given:

Marketing: Marketing applications provide information about the organizations products, its distribution system, its advertising and personal selling activities, and its pricing strategies. Marketing applications help managers to develop strategies that combine the four major elements of marketing: Products, Promotions, Place and Price.

London Stock Exchange

Stock Exchange: Stock markets around the world are in transition. On some trading floors, paper is disappearing. In fact, the trading floor itself is disappearing in some places because many stock markets lunched the computerized system that makes it possible for stockbrokers to do all their trading electronically. Brokers interconnected through a data communication network submit and receive bids using their computer workstations or interconnected computer display screens, where brokers match buyers with sellers, so that neither trading floor nor slips of paper are necessary. Banks: Computerized banking have provides several benefits such as save the time and convenience for customer. International banking and the abilities to handle trading in multiple currencies are critical for international trade. The cheques are read by MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reader, a device used to allow the data on cheques to be read by machines). Banks use mainframe computer to maintain their customer accounts by dealing with the transaction generated as a result of withdrawals and deposits. Some banks are used to operate a network of ATMs (Automated Teller Machine). Although some international retail purchasing can be done by giving a credit card number. Departmental Store: People at the store level, cashiers enter sales data into sale terminals by waving a bar code scanner across a packages bar-coded prices and stock numbers. Bar codes are read by bar code readers, photoelectric scanners that translate the bar code symbols into digital forms. The price of a particular item is set with the stores computer and appears on the sales-clerks point of sale terminal and on our receipt. Store and department manager who received report of store and department sales and inventory levels are indirect end users. Record of sales are input to the stores computer and used for accounting, restocking store inventory, and weeding out products that sell well. A security VCR (video cassette recorder) is widely used in department stores and other locations where aesthetics are priority. It is virtually impossible to tell where the camera is pointed, which makes it difficult for would-be camera avoiders to stay out of the cameras view range; that are equipped with a camera, and lens can be augmented with dummy cameras. VCRs use the tapes, hook up the same way, and have all of the standard features of todays consumer VCRs. Most importantly, they are just as easy to use. Security cameras are everywhere these days and the reason is quite clear; there is simply no better way to monitor home or business operations and ensures safety. Office Automation: Office Automation (OA) refers to the movements toward automating office tasks. An office where workers performs different tasks. The management and administrative tasks performed in an office five general categories of activities like decisionmaking, data manipulation, document handling, communication, and storage. Offices have used advance computer technologies to perform various tasks in an office system such as for document management system, message handling system, and office support systems. Document Management System (DMS): DMS include word processing, desktop publishing, reprographic, image processing, and archival storage applications. Word processing enable

documents to be created and edited electronically as well as help to produce high quality memos, letters, proposals, reports, newsletters and brochures etc. which are used to send business community. Desktop publishing enables to make document in attractive form by the use of photos, artwork, graphical illustrations etc. spreadsheet is software package used to create a table of columns and rows used by people responsible for tracking revenues, expenses, profits, loses, statistical, mathematical and logical processing etc. Reprographics is the process of reproducing multiple copies of a document. Image processing allow document to be scanned and stored in image oriented data bases. Message-handling system: It enables to send messages or documents from one location to other location through facsimile (FAX), electronic-mail (E-Mail), Voice Mail etc. Office Support System enables: It to coordinate and manage the activities of work group. Groupware and desktop organizers are some examples of office support systems.

E-Commerce:

E-commerce (electronic commerce) describes the buying, selling, and exchanging of products, services, and information via computer network. The term e-commerce as describe

E Commerce transactions, conducted between business partners. There are many application of e commerce, such as home banking, shopping in electronic malls, buying stocks, finding a job, conducting an auction, collaborating electronically with business partners around the globe, marketing & advertising and providing customer service. There are several types e-commerce like collaborative commerce, business to commerce, consumer to commerce, and Mobile commerce etc. Mobile satellite communications also promise to extend the global reach of voice, data and other services. The following services of e-commerce are used most frequently in e-business.

Electronic Mail (E-mail): The e-mail is a service that transports text messages (with attachments of videos, audio, documents) from sender to one or more receivers via computer. Voice mail systems capture, store, and transmit spoken messages. Video Conferencing: Video conferencing is a type of conferencing in which video transmission over networks. It is an advance form of teleconferencing. Video conferencing should provide a complete simulation of a normal meeting environment, enabling both parties to see, hear and present material, just as if they were in the same room. It can speed up business process and procedures in the same way that the fax and e-mail have revolutionized the way we share information. Tangible benefits are most easily related to actual cost savings. The most obvious quantifiable saving is the cost of travel and the cost of the time wasted during travel. Electronic Shopping (E-Shopping): Almost all businesses now have website that allow Internet users to buy their goods or services. Shopping can take place using a computer at home, from work or at a cyber caf and e-shop can be anywhere in the world working 24hours a day. Electronic Banking: An electronic banking is also known as cyber-banking or online includes various banking activities conducted from home, a business, or on the road instead of a physical bank location.

Industry: Computers are used to control manufacturing system and continuous running of the machinery. These are also help in monitoring temperature, pressure, and also check the quality and accuracy, measurement needed in the manufacturing process. Robots: A robot is an automatic programmable machine that moves and performs mechanical tasks. Robots are used in hundreds of applications from assembling and spray-painting cars, carrying out maintenance on overhead power cables, to testing blood samples, outer space experimental programs, in artificial satellites, and radioactive environments etc. robots can work in environment that are hazardous to humans, it can perform repetitive and boring task continuously without a break at high level of accuracy than human.

CAD (Computer Aided Design) & CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) CAD (Computer Aided Design) are used for display designs and build production prototypes in software, test them as a computer object according to following given parameters.

Compile Parts and quantities lists.

Outline production and assembly procedures Transmit the final different applications some of them like designing new car or aircraft, bridge and building. Making changes to a design requires a large number of complex calculations. A CAD system needs a high resolution monitors, input devices (mouse, keyboard, graphic tables, and scanners etc) and output devices (printers and plotters). CAD use often has the capability of displaying a three dimensional object and speedily rotating it in any direction using controls on the keyboard. CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) is used to control all the part of a manufacturing process. CAM software uses digital design output, such as that from a CAD system, to directly control production machinery. CAM systems are manufactured following goods.

Product can be made very accurately and consistently. Around the clock production is much cheaper. A products design can be modified without the need of bringing production to a computer standstill.

Simulations: A computer simulation is a special type of computer model, which recreates a system that might exist outside the computer. Simulations are often used to train people how to deal with situations that are too difficult, expensive or dangerous to recreate and practice using for real. For example a flight simulation, which is used to train, pilots how to deal with situation that would be expensive and dangerous to practice using a real aircraft. A flight simulator consists of a working replica of the flight deck of an airplane.

Medical: The computers are commonly used in some area of medical fields such as laboratories, researches, scanning, monitoring, pharmacy etc. Which are helping the doctor to diagnose an illness.

Patient Monitoring: Computers are used in hospitals to monitoring critically ill patients in intensive care units. The patients have sensors attached to them, which detect changes in heart rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, breathing and brain activity if any readings dislocate or reached misbalancing level, the computer activates an alarming device to create sound and

alerts the medical staff. The data is also logged and used to analyze the changes in a patients condition over a period of time. Patients Records: Computerized databases are used to store information about patients, doctors, medicines and other chemicals and equipments. Storing information in proper order to provide the convenient way of arrangements for hospital staff. It is making easy to organize records than paper based records that are not constantly following patients around the hospital. For example if a patient is admitted in one ward but being seen by a consultant and receiving treatment on other parts of the hospital, their details can be viewed and updated at any terminal in the hospitals LAN network. The computerized databases are used to help match patients who are waiting for organ transplants such as a new kidney, liver or heart with suitable organs from donors. Diagnosis: It will come as no surprise that hospitals and clinics use computers to keep records and generate invoices. One common use of computer is to scan the body and sensors detect that how much patients body have affected to any type of cancer. Actually the body scanner helps the doctor to raise over the patient; it displays an image that enables physicians to look beneath the patients skin. As the scanner passes over the patient, it displays an image of bone and tissue structure on a computer screen.

Airline System: In airline system, computers are used to control passenger aircrafts and vehicles. Early aircraft were controlled by moving parts attached to the controls using cables. In modern, fly by-wire system, electronic signals from the cockpit are sent to that adjusts the flight surfaces. Computer is embedded in the pilots or drivers controls. It is linked up among different cities and gives full information about its flight and seat reservation.

Education: Computers are used in colleges to provide the methods of teaching in different ways. The computer education is very familiar and rapidly increasing the graph of computer students. There are number of methods in which educational institutions can use computer to educate the students. Much computer-based educational softwares are available, which students can learn to read, to count, or to speak a foreign language. Software that combines the thrills of games with real information content is becoming most popular. Some organizations are using information technology in their employee training programs.

Computer Aided Learning (CAL): Computer Aided Learning could be described as the use of information technology to assist in the teaching and enhance learning process. Information

technology may be able to aid us in reducing the time spent on creation and maintenance of teaching materials (power point presentations, Lectures in word documents, Flash media files etc). It is also reducing the administrative load associated with teaching and research. Computer Based Training (CBT): Computer based training is a difficult term to adequately define because it encompasses various modes of instruction and has evolved from the simplest definition, an interactive learning experience between the learner and computer in which the computer provides the majority of the stimulus, the learner must respond, and the computer analyzes the response and provides feedback to the learner. Computer-based training is about using computers to help train people. It is not necessarily about training people to use computers. Computer based training works, compared with traditional techniques; it can bring many additional benefits to any organization, their training department and their students. For example:

Students can readily acquire new skills at their own pace and at times that do not conflict with their work schedules. Training times can usually be reduced. Retention of course material is usually greater. Interactive, visually stimulating, easily absorbed and easily available material encourages students to undertake training. Planning and timetabling problems can be reduced or eliminated. Essential skills can be taught and refreshed whenever and whenever needed. The quality and consistency of the training material of students, locally or at remote places. Timely and high quality training on demand leads to increased efficiency. Compared to traditional classroom training methods, students using computer based training absorb similar material faster and retain more of the information they are taught.

Weather Forecasting: Computer based weather forecasting depends on accurate collection of data from weather stations, airports, satellites, different sensitive devices all around the world. Computer depends on building a model of hot, cold air, dry and humid air interaction, and how this is interactions are effected by land and sea temperature, season and so on. Once this is done, the data is collected on atmospheric phenomena over a region. The computer model then generates a forecast of how the air will change. The necessary parameters can never be

measured with total accuracy and it is impossible to make a perfect representation of all the factors that affect weather. Some businesses, however, are so dependent on the weather that they need constantly updated information. SPARCO weather forecasting department offer analysis of live weather data, and provides help to make business decisions based on weather forecasting.

Home: Nowadays people have computers at home and it has become a necessity electrical home appliance used in home. Children play games; keep track of the stamp collections, draw pictures, play music, view movies and do some sort of reading and writing according to their needs. A typical domestic system consists of a PC with a relatively small hard disk; printer, modem and DVD-Writer Drive etc. people can utilize computers for keeping records, making home budgets, using electronic mail and internet services to learn and increase their knowledge. The uses of microprocessor technology in manufacturing of electronic home appliances like microwave, air-condition, washing machine, sewing machine etc have completely changed our way of life.