As technology advances through time, so does the way news stories are made available to the public. Far from simply publishing all sorts of stories (national news, feature articles, sports stories, wire stories, etc.) in newspapers daily, journalists and media outfits alike have now adopted the Internet (the Web) as an ally in disseminating information online.
Hence, I invite you all to join me as I learn and discover the various innovations that make journalism more interactive and fascinating.
I. SKYPE
Skype is a computer software program that allows users to make telephone calls via the Internet. Skype-to-Skype calls to computers or mobile phones are free of charge, while those made to non-Skype computers or mobile phone users come with certain fees.
Skype was founded in 2003 by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis with the help of a group of software programmers/developers. It has its main headquarters on Luxembourg, and several offices on London, Tallinn, Tartu, Prague, and San Jose, California.
Aside from VoIP [Voice-over-Internet protocol] services, other features such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and file transfer can also be made through Skype.
II. TWITTER
Twitter was first launched in October 2006 and employed as a research and development program five months after by San Francisco-based start-up company “Obvious, LLC”. Today, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging website that allows users to post updates [“tweets”, text-based messages up to 140 characters long].
III. SHORT-MESSAGING SERVICE (SMS)
Short-messaging service, as we all know, gained popularity with the advent of “text messaging” through mobile phones. It is a communication system that allows certain network providers’ users to send and receive short text messages to and from their cellular phones.
IV. FLICKR
Flickr is an online community — one of the first Web 2.0 applications — that offers a variety of web services, most prominent of which is its image and video hosting capabilities.
*NOTE: Most of the website links in this post have used “Wikipedia” as its primary link. For further informations, please click the related links in the respective pages.
Posted by: Erickson Beco (June 27, 2008, 7:10 p.m.)
