In ICT today I used Google maps to find out the distance from English College Dubai(my school) to Sultan Qaboos University Muscat.

To find it out, i pyut in the two schools names and then clicked on 'find directions'' THe information i got up on my screen was the directions i should take, using the main roads, and thhe distance between the two. ( This was 344KM)

Bad points of the website:

It only gives maps, and not directions which can be annoying, especially over larger distances.

Google Groups

Today in class, we had to search 'Google Groups' looking for Internet groups which present information on a topic with members from all over the world accessing it via the Internet. People which are interested in that same topic can become members. The website Had to be able to allow members which can discuss each of the topics, or make new ones.

I have found a small music group called 'Music in London'
http://groups.google.com/group/TransientMusic
Although this website is small, it is very focused on which topics are discussed. (focused topics are usually submitted by the creator of the website)
There is a creator of the website who posts blogs or information which can be read by either members of the website or just Internet surfers.
The creator is also very informative, giving links to show where he researched his ideas/discussions.

Benefit
The benefits of this particular website is that it is very informative. unlike other groups who just let people discuss a topic, giving biased views and then others elaborating on it, this website is totally un-biased, giving links to related websites in the blogs posted.

Disadvantages
The downside of this website is that there are people who post a blog of a topic nothing to do with the main 'theme' of the website. I think this could be improved my the admin limiting what is posted on the website, keeping the main discussions more focused. Although this mean need a high maitenence system for the website if it became much more popular.

Communication.

Three ways of communication.

Today in class, we had to send a Japanese Haiku poem to a friend in call using each of these:
-SMS (text message)
-Chat it (Windows Live Messenger)
-Email.

Phone message.

in this, we had to use shortened text language.
i sent-
i luv u u knw,
cum bck 2 me i miss u
plz dnt leave me agen.

translated into perfect it is-
I love you, you know,
come back to me i miss you
please don't leave me again.

my friend sent to me lyrics of a song:
oh hawt damn tis is ma jam,
keep me partyin till tha AM
yall don understan
mak me thro ma hanz up in tha ayer.

translated it is-
OH hot damn this is my jam,
keep me partying until the AM
you all don't understand
make me throw my hands up in the air.

MSN-



Here is our MSN conversation. you an see how one person can talk, and then the second person can talk. it is a easy, free and easy way to communicate with people over the Internet, and even with people in different countries.

Email-
here is a screenshot of one of the emails we sent.
using the same text as everything else, you can see a clear straight line across the screen which separates the two individual emails. It is basically the same as the instant MSN, but obviously not as fast and easy with email as it is with MSN.

Emails

So, email, how do it work? Well... my homework was to find out. So here is what i have come up with- Enjoy =]


E-mail is the internets most widely used application, as well as being one of the oldest. The majority of emails sent everyday are business related.
Knowing that emails have become very important, it's surprising that many people don't actually know how an e-mail works. The process is VERY confusing on many differnet levels, but the basics on how the mail travels from point A to point B is quite easy to understand.

Sending Mail
· When sending an email, your email program will connect to you internet.
· Internet has traffic, so your email could be split into different ‘packets’.- these smaller packets can travel faster from server to server.
· These smaller packets are then put back together when they richer their destination..

Sorting the Mail
-The emails are sorted by their Domain. For the e-mail address complaints@tesco.com, for example, the domain is the tesco.com portion.
-The domain identifies where the message needs to go.
-Each domain name maps to a unique Web address, called an Internet Protocol (IP) address, this is a string of numbers which identifies each server.
- When the e-mail server gets a message, it looks at the domain and checks the registry to determine what IP address to send the message to (sort of like checking your ZIP code to make sure letters go to the correct place). Once it determines the proper destination, the e-mail message is sent on its way.

Delivering the Mail
- Depending on where the server is you want it to be sent to, the original e-mail server may not actually make the final handoff. It is likely that the message will travel between through many points before reaching its final destination. Each "hop" identifies the domain, and passes the message to another transfer point. This process is repeated ( with each 'hop' your email is getting closer to the desiered server) until the correct server is reached.
- Once a message reaches the appropriate domain server, it's channeled into the right e-mail account and stored until the user logs in and checks for mail.

FINALLY

-When the account which you have (either hotmail,gmail or yahoo) tells his or her e-mail program, like Microsoft Outlook, to check for new mail, the e-mail program shall connect to the e-mail programs server, the person can then check their inbox and any awaiting emails will be shown.
The e-mail has reached it final destination, with all of this taking place in a matter of seconds!

Research links:

First recearch page, here

Second research page, here