eCommerce and mCommerce

eCOMMERCE and mCOMMERCE

A step-by-step roadmap that describes the synergy and context between Business and IT.

Retrieved April 7, 2015 

from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Approach.png

According to Katherine Arline (2015) eCommerce started in the 1960s, grew popular during the 1990s, and represents the world of business and sales that take place over an "electronic channel." Building on eCommerce is mCommerce or "mobile" commerce, which might be considered a sub-field of eCommerce in which people are able to purchase items using mobile devices. 

Arline outlines four types of commerce:

• B2B (Business to Business) — This involves companies doing business with each other. One example is manufacturers selling to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers.
• B2C (Business to Consumer) — B2C consists of businesses selling to the general public through shopping cart software, without needing any human interaction. This is what most people think of when they hear "e-commerce." An example of this would be Amazon. 
• C2B (Consumer to Business) — In C2B e-commerce, consumers post a project with a set budget online, and companies bid on the project. The consumer reviews the bids and selects the company. Elance is an example of this.
• C2C (Consumer to Consumer) — This takes place within online classified ads, forums or marketplaces where individuals can buy and sell their goods. Examples of this include Craigslist, eBay and Etsy.

Reference

Arline, K. (2015). "What is eCommerce." Business Daily. Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4872-what-is-e-commerce.html. 

Methods of Communication: Streaming Media

STREAMING MEDIA

Apple Icons. Retrieved April 10, 2015 from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/3DStreaming.png 

Jan Ozer (2011) explains that Streaming media arose around 1995 in response to a desire to listen to and view sports games in real-time over the Internet. Streaming became more prevalent between 2000-2007, as more consumers purchased notebooks and Flash evolved to provided "greater interactivity and design flaxibility." Issues facing Streaming markets today include "competing technologies (HTML5/Flash), connection speeds, and playback platforms." Companies are using streaming for deliver entertainment content, to market and sell products, and even for purposes of online learning and training. 

Reference
Ozer, J. (2011). "What is streaming?" Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=74052.   

Methods of Communication: Podcasts and Webcasts

PODCASTS and WEBCASTS

Schematic illustration of a typical audio podcast; German inscription; created with Inkscape.Retrieved April 10, 2015 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Podcast-Schema.svg. 

There are more than 30 types of "casting" formats today, that include use of video and audio content that can be shared between a sender and a receiver. Among these types, webcasts represent AV (audio video) content that could be live or delayed, and is broadcast on the Web. Webcasting is a form of "push technology," which takes place when a central server initiates the request to transmit information. 

Podcasts, on the other hand, deal exclusively with audio files that are shared to users via RSS, and then uploaded to a digital player like Soundcloud or hardware like iPod. It is worth noting that many people confuse podcasting with "voice recording." Recording oneself making a lecture of learning materials is not a podcast. 

Reference

WhatIs. (2014). "Podcasts, webcasts, narrowcasts and the rest of the casts." Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://whatis.techtarget.com/reference/Podcasts-webcasts-narrowcasts-and-the-rest-of-the-casts-Glossary. 

Methods of Communication: Blogs

BLOGS

Retrieved April 10, 2015 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internal_blog.gif

Blogs or "weblogs," in basic terms, are are medium through which a person can produce articles, journal entries, and learning materials informally for an online audience. Two additional definitions for blogs include: 

“…the first journalistic model that actually harnesses rather than merely exploits the true democratic nature of the web. It’s a new medium finally finding a unique voice.”–Andrew Sullivan

“[a] collection of posts…short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal…with the freshest information at the top.”–Meg Hourihan

It is not uncommon today for bloggers (writers of blogs) to develop a following, and to later see their blog adapted to novel or movie format. The book/film Julia and Julia, for example, derived from the author's blog about spending a year cooking Julia Child's as a rite of passage. 

According to BlogBasics, there are several characteristics to a blog: 

a blog has some form of navigation, usually menus

a blog’s layout contains a header, footer and content.  Usually there is at least one sidebar running beside the content.

categories of posts

that readers can access the archives, previous posts

that a post can contain text and images, (and often video and other media)

that posts can contain links to other posts, both within blog and to the entire web

should contain a contact page and form

should contain an about page

Reference
BlogBasics. Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://blogbasics.com/what-is-a-blog/. 

Methods of Communication: Wikis

WIKIS

MediaWiki logo by en:User:Anthere (flower) and en:User:Eloquence (combination, concept). 

The flower is Image:Tournesol.png. Retrieved April 15, 2015. 

The word wiki derives from the Hawaiian "quick," and relates to the characteristics of wikis--that they are websites that can be collaboratively edited in real-time (quickly, at the moment) by users. 

Although Wikipedia is probably the most well-known and used wiki, there are numerous wikis that are created for and by special interest groups (i.e., music-based, anime-based) and that are education-based (i.e., interactive fiction, flipped learning). Many learning management systems also come with a wiki plugin now so that students can practice creating wikis in their courses. 

According to Zach LeBar (2014), wikis allow users to: 

• Make it quick and easy to write information on web pages.
• Facilitate communication and discussion, since it's easy for those who are reading a wiki page to edit that page themselves.
• Allow for quick and easy linking between wiki pages, including pages that don't yet exist on the wiki.

Reference

LeBar, Z. (2014). "What are wikis, and why should you use them?" Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540. 

Methods of Communication: Emails

EMAILS

A schematic representation of the most common ways that an email message can get transferred from its author to its recipient. Retrieved April 10, 2015

Freely derived from Patrik Fältström work for SPF, available at http://fixforwarding.org/wiki/mail_flows

Email, or "electronic mail," evolved from a system called MAILBOX, which was developed at MIT around 1965; it was used to send messages between users of a sole computer. 

Email as we know it today evolved in 1972, when the "@" sign was developed by Ray Tomlinson to symbolize sending messages between computers. Email worked efficiently to send messages where using a phone would be either expensive or physically impossible (Peter, 2004). 

In higher education, people were able to get by without using email up until about a decade ago; as a graduate student at NYU in 1998, I rarely used my email address. I still know professors who prefer not to be accessible via email to their students, as they feel this creates a 24/7 connection with no offline privacy. 

Reference

Peter, I. (2004). "The history of email." Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html. 

Methods of Communication: Social Networking

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Bodeezer, a social network

Image Retrieved April 7, 2015 

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Bodeezer3.jpeg 

Social Networking takes place when groups of people gather virtually over the internet to communicate, share information, arrange for face-to-face meetups, and market ideas and products. 

Social Networking could include job-related sites like LinkedIn, platforms for sharing personal or company profiles like Facebook, microblogs like Twitter, and various others. 

Brown notes that there are issues associated with social networking, which include predators and bullies, cybertheft and crime, addiction to the internet, and viruses (2014). 

Reference

Brown, K. (2014). "Social networking...it's the way 21st century communication takes place today. Want to know what it really means?" Retrieved April 10, 2015 from http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/article1.html.