Online Entertainment

Entertainment Downloads

The most popular form of downloading today is music downloading; it is one of the most popular actions performed on the web. This involves a user purchasing their chosen music files from any music store such as ITunes store or Amazon MP3 and saving it within their own files, it is then possible to transfer these music files on to their IPod or phone. Through these sites, the user can listen to almost any song anywhere for a reasonable price.

Although, this also means that illegal music downloading is an extremely common problem today. To overcome this problem many anti-piracy laws have been introduced; also various illegal sites; such as LimeWire have been shut down permanently.

Movie downloads are also popular with online browsers today, this is similar to music downloading just with films rather than music. Movie download sites allow users to watch nearly any movie requested online. A couple of examples of film browsing websites include Lovefilm and Netflix; these both have increased in popularity along with movie downloading altogether. However, there are also forms of movie piracy, meaning some users are watching illegally downloaded movies instead of paying. As a result from this cinemas are drastically struggling with money issues through loss of customers. Cinema companies have also reacted to the problem of piracy by making short anti-piracy films.

Another form of downloading is game downloading, when a game is downloaded online, the online games will be installed onto a user’s computer. There are now various gaming apps that is available to download onto a Smartphone or tablet; this allows users to choose from many different games that can be played at any time you desire. Unfortunately yet again piracy also affects downloadable games; many gaming companies have lost money from people using the ‘P2P’ piracy network.

BBC IPlayer

BBC IPlayer is part of  bbc.co.uk; it allows you to watch TV at anytime you want.

In order to access you simply go to the BBC IPlayer website and browse for the programmes you want to watch. You can browse using a selection of categories, including; channel or by different genres. There is also a search box to find something specific. A wide range of BBC TV programmes from the past seven days from many television channels are available to watch or even download.

Once you have chosen what you want to watch, you can either play the programme immediately, this method is known as 'streaming', or instead you can download it to your computer to watch when it’s most convenient for yourself.

If you have a more modern computing device such as the IPad hopefully you can just choose a programme and hit the play button. However, if you have an older computer, you may be asked to download 'Flash Player', this software will allow you to play the programme.

Spotify

Spotify is instant, fun and simple, it is one of the most recent and up to date ways to enjoy music.  It offers you legal and free access to a large library of music. All you are required to do is create an account and start to download our streaming music player. You simply download and install, and straight away you can start downloading music, you are spoiled for choice. You can search anything from the genre, artist or song of your choice.

Spotify aim is to connect millions of people with their favourite songs by creating a programme that people love to use daily.

What are the advantages of using Spotify?

·         There are no restrictions when it comes to what music you wish to play and download.

·         There is no longer the hassle of waiting for files to download, also they don’t fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them.

·         Music has many social aspects, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends.

ITunes

There are many types of entertainment among the web today, one of the main sectors being the music industry, ITunes today is the most popular music download website today and is used by millions on a daily basis.

Tunes are a free media management application software created by Apple, for both the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. You can use it to manage and play both your downloaded audio and video files on your computer. It can automatically download new music, app’s, and book purchases across all your devices and computers that hold an ITunes account. There is a store that has everything available that you need to be entertained, the prices are inexpensive for a great piece of entertainment that you will have in the long term.

In 2005 video support was introduced to iTunes with the release of iTunes 4.8. This allows the user to purchase an ever larger selection of multimedia for their computing device; these include videos such as movies and music videos. Users can drag and drop video clips from the computer into the iTunes Library for organization. They are then available to download on to other MP3 devices so you can watch anytime, even when on the go.

There is also an ‘App’ section on iTunes keeps track of all of the apps the user has downloaded or purchased. It also organizes their apps by genre, such as games and social networking sites; these would both be segregated into their own section. There is an additional tab that allows the user view all of their apps together. It also informs the user quire regularly when they have updates for their apps, these updates are optional.

In 2010, Apple announced the new release of the IPad, along with this a new app for it came too, this is called iBooks. The application performs two functions, the first function being a direct link to the iTunes book store, called iBookstore, which can be accessed on any iOS device and computers. The second reason was for a storage place for downloaded books from the iBookstore; these can be either free or purchased.

You Tube

You Tube is the largest video sharing website today, is becoming a website that some people use on a daily basis. You Tube allows people upload videos of anything that a person has decided to record or produce. These videos are made by people because their interests have influenced them, or of anything they want to aware the public of, but these videos have to abide by the terms and conditions. On You Tube you can listen to new music via Vevo or just videos people have made because they enjoy that song. You can also catch up on some television series or programmes; these are usually uploading in parts E.g. each different scene.

Netflix

Netflix now have more than 30 million streaming members worldwide. Netflix is the leading online subscription service for streaming films and TV episodes over the Internet. People have to option to purchase a free trial to see if they like the website and whether it is worth purchasing fully in the long term, if they decide this is the case it can be downloaded for just £5.99 a month, Netflix members can instantly watch unlimited films & TV episodes streamed to their TVs and computers. However, Netflix does not contain every film or programme, only a wide selection.

E-readers

An E-reader allows you to download books from the internet and save them onto your personal E-reader; this device can hold thousands of books at once. E-readers allows the users to be able to read wherever they want to without having to carry multiple books around, that would take up a lot of space. An E-reader is thin and lightweight which is ideal for everyday use. The most popular E-reader is the Kindle; these have had negative effects on book stores. Book stores have lost out on many sales because people will be downloading E-books instead of purchasing a paperback book from your local store.

Facebook

Facebook now allows each member to play games with your friends and challenge them to battle you, this can be done as a form of socialising or even getting to know other people better as you will contact them about the game. This is a quick and easy method of entertainment that you can play with your friends; this is because a large majority of the population have Facebook as it is, so using a social networking site for gaming is a brilliant idea.

Download Services

Downloading is where a software programme is installed into your hard drive onto your computing device through choice; you are just copying the programme or file from the internet and claiming it as you own. Downloading a file offers many similarities as when you visit a shop and purchase items off the shelves from there, but instead you pick what you want and place it into a shopping cart to buy and download instantly. Whenever you download a file, there is always a small risk that the file will contain a virus or a program that can damage your computer or your information, therefore you have to make sure you computer is fully protected against viruses before downloading anything.

 

Therefore download services is where you purchase any type of service off the internet such as audio files like music or films; this are available from sites such as ITunes. The popularity of people using download services today has dramatically increased over many years, it is almost normal for the people of today’s generation to be using download services instead of shopping elsewhere. There are many other types of download services available, these will be discussed in detail below.

What is streaming?

Streaming means listening to music or watching video in ‘real time’, instead of physically downloading a file to your computer and saving it to watch whenever desired.

With internet videos and webcasts of live events, there is no file to download as it is happening at that exact moment, just a continuous stream of data.

The reason why people and most broadcasters prefer streaming is because it’s hard for most users to save the content and distribute it illegally.

Why do people illegally download music?

 

The music industry is facing a crisis because of the high amount of young people downloading music. This problem has now grown so big that the numbers of young people who download music from illegal file-sharing websites sucj as LimeWire (which has now been shut down) outnumber those using legal services such as ITunes.

 

Thousands of people download music illegally because they don't realize the harm it does and the risk they are enhances on their computer, these people are only thinking about themselves. When you illegally download music you are taking well earned money from the artist who rightfully earned it. Although some people only illegally download music is if they cannot find it on for sale on ITunes; however, this does still not make it right to do so. Most people today download music illegally because they may no money to purchase certain items.

Downloading Audio

Audio downloads being made through the internet offers a huge advantage to people today, they no longer have to leave the comfort of their own home in order to buy and receive their favourite forms of entertainment; such as films. There are now many websites in which you can download and sync audio to your own personal PC on the internet. This is done by the company who runs the websites because they know that this method of buying entertainment offers much higher rates of convenience to a customer and therefore the profits are significantly higher.

The four main types of audio downloading today are music, films, games and e-books. People today mainly tend to shop online as it is a much easier and quicker option, now there is no need to worry about having to go out and buy luxuries as almost all types of entertainment is available to purchase online. Also having e-books available to students online saves them the worry of having to go out and buy study and revision guides and text books as they can now be downloading straight from the internet as well.

Books, Newspapers, Magazines    

The option of downloading newspapers and magazines via the internet has been rising in popularity over the past few years. This is because people are always wondering what is happening in the world today and its common affairs, the public like to be up to date with what happening. In order to do this, if there was not the option to browse the recent news and stories online then people would have to go out on a regular basis to buy the most recent paper based newspapers and magazines. This is highly inconvenient for most people as they are always busy doing various things such as working. In addition, there are also people who do not have the option to go out and buy things for themselves whether they would like to or not, such as elderly or disabled people. Therefore, making it possible for anyone to browse the news online has been introduced mainly for the least fortunate members of the public, and it has become more and more popular as technology has become much more advanced as years go by.

Producing newspapers books and magazines come at a very high price today; they are all made with paper, therefore, the advantage being the highly significant savings made from having them available to browse online.

The Kindle

A kindle is an electronic book with a screen that is hand held by a reader. You first purchase the kindle hardware from Amazon; you are then open to the option of purchasing thousands of downloadable books. The main advantage of a Kindle is the fact that it can hold a considerable amount of books and takes up next to no space at all, and is a lot easier to carry around than a pile of hardback books. The Amazon Kindle enable users to shop for and download many different genre books, browse and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media types. But in order to do so you have to be connected to a nearby wireless network.

Maps & Manuals

Having maps available online saves people at lot of problems. If someone who is travelling somewhere that there are not too well known with a map is always useful. Therefore if that person owns a smart phone or tablet with internet access they can get a map up of anywhere in the world they desire at that exact moment in time. This is a great advantage to people if they are lost and don’t own a paper map, it is not always possible for people to go out and  buy an actual paper map before going on an unknown journey, especially if the journey was an unexpected, spur or the moment thing.

However, not everyone has internet access on their phone, which means an online map is most defiantly going to be an option for them, this being a disadvantage for the people who requires directions.

Having manuals available to us online is always useful. When anyone purchases a new product or item that is reasonably complex; they do not always think to keep the instruction manuals. This later on resulting in confusion of how to operate something, for example, if it falls apart. So companies now think to advertise manuals online just in case this happens to someone, this saves a lot of time for companies as they won’t get customers calling up for help or visiting the shop to complain.

 

Downloading Software

 

Instead of having to go out to you local computing shop to by software, you can now purchase it online. This is good because if your software runs out or you realise you need a new type of software in order to do something important, being able to buy software online is highly convenient and saves a lot of time.

Downloading Pictures/photos

Today it is now possible to download photos that have been taken by a company and print out the selection you want and like yourself. This saves time and everything is being controlled by you once your photos have been uploading and are available to you via the internet. You can save these photos to your own PC and change the size and edit them if you desire with no extra costs from the company.

 

Downloadable tickets

The online ticket brings the ticket counter to you at home. You can now purchase your tickets online and print them out yourself. People today can be quite impatient, so rather than waiting for tickets to come through the post they prefer to download them straight from their PC and print. Therefore, as this has become the preferred option of retrieving tickets today, the idea of printing them has become popular and more websites now have the option to do so. An advantage of doing this is there is a lot of time and effort saved. You don’t have to sit around pondering about when your tickets are going to arrive; also the postage cost for both you and the company is saved.

The main reason this is preferred today is because, rather than having the worry that your tickets may turn up late or not turn up at all, if you can print them yourself; you have the guarantee of receiving you tickets on time. After purchasing from any ticket shop or website, you will be provided with the online ticket on the Internet as a PDF file to download.

Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection that must always be provided to the authors of any original work belonging to them, this could include work such things as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intelligent creations. These creations can be both published and unpublished, it doesn’t matter, and if they are copied it is still illegal. Copyright does not protect ideas of any sort; it only protects the specific and original idea.

Copyright within the music industry

Copyright protects every artist involved in the music industry. This could involve aspiring artists who have only recently become involved with the music industry or a successful best selling, award winning artist. Copyright supports both local independent recording companies to the large multinational producer. In addition, copyright ensures that all the parties that have had any part in creating the music are guaranteed to be rewarded for their hard work.

Copyright has the right and responsibility to protect the true value behind the sale of any musical recording. These rights represent and reward the creativity and hard work of those who create and sell music.

Tablets

A tablet computer is an operating system such as the extremely popular IPad. The IPad consists of a thin, touch-screen operated system, it has become the weapon of choice for many computer users as they offer a great experience when browsing the web or using  one of the thousands of apps available. Apps include everything from games to specialized word processors, search engines and social networking sites. Apps make use of a tablet's touch screen; this delivers an experience that a user could not retrieve from a typical computer.

 

There are many advantages to having a tablet; such as forward and rear-facing cameras which can be taken and used anywhere, these photos are also extremely high quality. 

However, there are also disadvantages to owning a tablet, they are considerably bigger than the average Smartphone which makes it harder to carry around place, this equal high inconvenient. There is a huge risk of breaking a tablet as they are reasonable heavy and are much more delicate as they have a large touch screen, this could easily crack under too much pressure. Tablets have the ability to do nothing more than the average Smartphone yet so many people today feel the need to have one as well as a Smartphone, this just equals having to pay out more for near enough the same experience.

E-readers

Electronic devices today are made purely for our entertainment needs; the people of today are starting to depend on technology such as e-readers. It will be no shock when the way to read books in the future is through the use of an e-reader. Reading books now is unnecessary, you can now hold you own portable reading device within in the palm of your hand with these new and clever technological gadgets. People love to use their e-reader rather then read an actual book, considering an e-reader can store more than one book in one tiny device. They hold a variety of features that make the overall experience of reading rather enjoyable.

There are two main sellers of e-readers today, these being the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. Each of these highly advanced items of new technology offers a variety of features which include the ability to hook up to a computer to back up your information, also all reading files can then be downloaded and transferred. Most e-reader devices hold up to 200 books, memory cards are available to purchase for your device if you need more storage space.

What are the advantages of an E-reader?

E-readers have a wide range of options compared to ordinary reading e-books; it is possible to get online versions of your favorite magazine or newspaper that you like to read on a regular basis. Additionally there is a magnification tool to enhance and enlarge the text you are reading. Although, there is a variety of different other tools available for you to try out and use, e-readers hold the ability to bookmark pages, turn pages back and forth and highlight parts of the text. But the main advantage being all of the above is inclusive within one small compact, convenient and comfortable portable device.

The contribution to a greener environment is offered by the use of e-readers, people are encouraged to purchase their materials digitally. This reduces the amount of trees, ink and manufacturing that goes into making hard copies of books. These savings are forwarded onto the consumer; they will then pay far less for digital books than they will for printed versions.

Online Banking

What is online banking?

 

Online banking is where any computing system allows individuals to perform their banking activities at home through the use of the internet. The majority of online banks are just traditional banks which also offer online banking, while others are online only and offer no physical presence.

 

On the internet online banking has many different names, it is also known as PC banking, home banking, electronic banking or Internet banking.

Today online banking allows you to perform various different routine transactions, these could be a range of things, you might shop online for a loan, life insurance or a home mortgage, but when it comes to that time to commit, most people generally feel more comfortable working with your banker or an agent you know and trust.

Although online banking is not in any way an excuse for people to change their money spending habits. Instead, it uses the computer technology available to us today to give you the option skipping the time-consuming and paper-based aspects of traditional banking. This is to allow you to manage your finances more quickly and efficiently but you can do so from home.

Origin of online banking

The popularity of the Internet has grown rapidly and this acts as an advert to banking agencies, therefore, popularity of personal computers presented both an opportunity and a challenge for the banking industry overall.

Over the years, financial institutions have used computer networks to automate millions of daily transactions. Usually today the only paper record is the customer's receipt at the point of sale. Now that the vast majority of customers are connected to the Internet, banks envision similar economic advantages by adapting those same internal electronic processes to use at home.

Automated Teller Machines

An automated teller machine is an electronic banking outlet, which allows customers to complete basic transactions without the assistance of a branch representative or teller. 

There are genuinely two primary types of automated teller machines, or most commonly known as ‘ATMs’. The basic units allow the customer to withdraw cash and receive a report of the account's balance. However, the more complex machines will accept deposits, facilitate credit card payments and report account information. Although to access the advanced features of the complex units, you will usually need to be a member of the bank that operates the machine which defeats the idea of getting things done quickly without any assistance.

Brick-to-click banks

Most large national banks, many regional banks and even smaller banks and credit unions around today offer some form of online banking. Those that do are sometimes referred to as "brick-to-click" banks, both to distinguish them from brick-and-mortar banks, that yet have to offer online banking, as well as from online or "virtual" banks that have no physical branches or tellers yet.

The main challenge for the banking industry has been to try to design this new service in such a way that a bank agencies customers will optionally learn to use and trust it, considering banks have spent generations trying to earn our trust; they are not going to risk that on a website that can be frustrating and confusing at times or less than secure.

A vast majority of the large banks now such as NatWest offer fully secure, fully functional online banking for free or for a small fee. However, smaller banks today now offer limited access to customers; for instance, you might be able to view your account balance and history but not any transactions made online.

As more and more banks succeed online, the amount of customers who use their sites will grow rapidly.

NatWest

Online banking allows credit card or debit card holders to access their payments online. NatWest is a prime example of a company that participate in online banking; it enables clients to use their personal, private and business banking at any time with internet access.

NatWest is readily available on mobile phones as it has an app, so that you can manage your money when on the move. The app enables you to check up on any transactions, transfer money, set updates and it is now even possible to find the closest cash machine from your mobile phone or another type of portable device.

Virtual banks

Virtual banks are banks without bricks; from the customer's perspective, they exist entirely on the Internet, where they offer pretty much the same range of services and regulations as your local bank. Virtual banks pass the money they save on overhead like buildings and tellers along to you.

The main disadvantage of using virtual banks revolves around ATMs. They have no ATM machines; virtual banks typically charge the same surcharge that any brick-and-mortar bank would if you used another bank's automated teller. Many virtual banks won't accept deposits via ATM; you have to either deposit the check by mail or transfer money from another account.

Security

Security of a customer's financial information is extremely important, without any form of security online banking could not possibly operate as too many unwanted situations would occur. Financial institutions, being all companies that handle money, have set up various security processes to reduce the risk of unauthorised online access to a customer's records.

Attacks

Most of the attacks to do with online banking that’s used today are based on deceiving the user to steal login data such as password and their username. Two well known examples for those attacks are phishing and pharming. 

Advantages of online banking

Online banking is very convenience unlike your local bank, online banking sites never close, they're available 24 hours a day; on a daily basis and they are only a few clicks of a mouse away.

If you're out of state or out of the country when a money problem arises, you can log on instantly to your online banking personal account and take care of the problem with no trouble.

Online bank sites generally have a much faster transaction speed rate, they execute and confirm transactions at or quicker than ATM processing speeds.

Efficiency is always important when dealing with your money and by having one secure account it is much simpler and safer for you to access and manage all of your bank accounts, including IRAs, CDs, and securities.

Many online banking sites now provide sophisticated tools, including account aggregation, stock quotes, rate alerts and portfolio managing programs to help you manage all of your assets more effectively. They tend to be compatible with money managing programs such as Quicken and Microsoft Money.

Online banking also eliminates paper waste, which is beneficial not only for those who have to handle all the paper work, but also for the environment.

Disadvantages of online banking

In order to register for your bank's online program, you will probably have to provide ID and sign a form at your bank branch. If you and your partner wish to view and manage your assets together online, one of you may have to sign a durable power of attorney before the bank will display all of your holdings together, this is all a very time consuming process.

Online banking sites can be slightly difficult to navigate at first. It takes time to read the tutorials in order to become comfortable in your virtual account.

Even the largest banks alter their websites and periodically upgrade their online programs. Adding new features in unfamiliar places tends to occurs regularly. You may have to re-enter account information at some point.

Most people have trust issues when handling money through the internet. They panic whether they done transactions correctly and whether their transaction went through. But the best thing any customer can do is always print the transaction receipt and keep it with your bank records until it shows up on your personal site and your bank statement.

If someone needs to deposit cash or checks, they will probably still have to spend time at the ATM. Unless the payment is directly deposited, it usually has to be handled manually.