Chapter 3 • Telecommunications and Networking 81TABLE 3.4 Internet Applications
Name of Application Purpose of Application
Electronic mail, or e-mail Easy-to-use, inexpensive, asynchronous means of communication with other
Internet users
Instant messaging (IM) Synchronous communication system that enables the user to establish a private “chat
room” with another individual to carry out text-based communication in real time
over the Internet
Remote login Permits user to log into and perform work on a computer that is remote to the user’s
current location
Usenet newsgroups Internet discussion groups, which are essentially huge electronic bulletin boards on
which group members can read and post messages
Listserv Mailing list such that members of a group can send a single e-mail message and have
it delivered to everyone in the group
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Permits users to send and receive files, including programs, over the Internet
World Wide Web, or the Web Hypertext-based tool that allows the user to traverse, or surf, the Internet, by clicking
on a link contained in one document to move to another document, and so on; these
documents might include video clips, recordings, photographs, and other images
Search engine An information retrieval program that permits the user to search for content that
meets a specific criterion (typically containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a
list of items that match the criterion
Blog A user-generated Web site where entries are made in journal style; blogs often
provide commentary on a particular subject or serve as a personal online diary
Wiki A Web site that permits users to add, remove, or modify the content of the site, often
without the need for registration, thus making a wiki an effective tool for mass
collaborative authoring
Social networking application An application that permits users to post information about themselves and to view
information posted by others
Twitter A social networking and microblogging application that enables its users to send and
read messages known as tweets; tweets are text-only messages of up to 140
characters that are posted on the author’s Twitter page and delivered to the author’s
subscribers, who are known as followersdiscuss some topic. Usenet newsgroupsare the most
organized of the discussion groups; they are essentially a
set of huge electronic bulletin boards on which group
members can read and post messages. Google Groups
provides a Web interface into Usenet newsgroups. A
listservis a mailing list such that members of the group
can send a single e-mail message and have it delivered to
everyone in the group. This usually works fine as long as
users remember whether they are sending a message to an
individual in the group or to the entire group. Do not use
the reply function in response to a listserv message unless
you intend your reply to go to the entire group!
The sharing of data resources is a gigantic use of the
Internet.File Transfer Protocol (FTP)is a program that
permits users to send and receive files, including other
programs, over the Internet. For ordinary FTP use, the user
needs to know the account name and password of the
remote computer in order to log into it. Anonymous FTP
sites have also been set up, however, which permit any
Internet user to log in using “anonymous” as the account
name. As a matter of courtesy (and to track accesses), most
anonymous FTP sites ask that the user enter an e-mail
address as the password. Once logged in, the user may
transfer any files located at that anonymous FTP site.
FTP is still popular today, but by far the most
important application for sharing data resources is the
World Wide Web (WWW), or just the Web. The Web is a
hypertext-based way of traversing, or “surfing,” the
Internet. With hypertext, any document can contain links
to other documents. By clicking on the link with the com-
puter mouse, the referenced document will be retrieved—
whether it is stored on your own computer, one down the
hall, or one on the other side of the world. More than this,
the Web provides a graphical user interface (GUI) so that