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DCM’sDigital Communications

Email

E-mail (or Electronic Mail) is the sending, receiving and storage of mail over the internet, and also mobile networks in recent years. Originally made to send just text, E-mail has developed into forwarding other medium such as images, music, links, videos, and pretty much any file you have on your computer. For E-mails to work, the sender and receiver need only a connection to an e-mail service, and an ‘address’ for the service (before the @).

IM

I.M, or Instant Messaging, is exactly what it is; a way to contact someone instantly. Usually just text, IM is the ‘push’ of text between two people who have each other as ‘clients’ on their chosen Instant Messaging device. For example on a computer, the original MSN or AOL messenger services were the first to be recognized, along with the more modern BlackBerry Messenger (or BBM), a form of IM between BlackBerry users

SMS

SMS, or Short Message Service, is a service that provides the sending and receiving of text between mainly mobile phones. SMS is for text messages only, sent over mobile networks.

SMS messages can be up to 160 characters long, giving it the name SHORT message service.

Bulletin Boards

Originally a manual, paper and pin based medium for sharing things between a community. More modernly and widely used on the internet as ‘forum boards’, giving the users of these the freedom to post their views, opinions,. Information and almost anything on their given Forum site.

Can give information on events, reviews on media texts etc.

Discussion Forums

Discussion Forums are internet sites that feature a topic bought up by a user, maybe a view or a fact, which would then have other users posting text-based conversations about the posted topics. Individual Conversations about a given topic are called ‘threads’.

The difference between chat rooms and discussion forums are that in forums, sometimes an invigilator or moderator has to approve any input on a thread, and messages are also archived.

Weblogs (blogs)

Blogs are internet publications, usually made by an individual who wants to share different things to others on the internet. The user/author usually creates an account on a blogging service (such as Blogger or Tumblr), and would share ideas, findings etc, depending on the type of blog page they’re creating.

NewsGroups

‘Usenet’ Newsgroups are Internet Discussion groups that discuss just about any type of news topic they can.

Internet Telephony

Internet telephony, also known as VoIP, is the transmission of voice and audio information over Internet Protocol (IP). Used for things such as voice conferences and other multimedia services.

Conferencing

This can refer to either video and/or audio conferences. This means a meeting, or real time conversation between two or more clients, usually over Internet Protocol.