E-commerce and m-commerce

E-commerce refers to the use of the internet to be able to make purchases online. A great example of this would be Domino's ability to be able to order a pizza and track where it is along the process without ever consulting a sales associate by voice or in store. This entire process has been automated and websites such as Paypal will securely store information of credit cards and bank accounts as well as address in order to make it easy for customers to buy things online.
M-commerce refers to the use of mobile devices such as phones and tablets in order to be able to practice e-commerce on the go. The new technology paypass is used here in this image as the consumer uses their phone to make a payment easily.
For more information visit https://www.internetretailer.com/2014/04/28/e-commerce-and-m-commerce-next-five-years

Image by
 Evans, Alan, and Kendall Martin. Technology in Action: Introductory. 11th ed. Pearson, 2015. Print.

Streaming media

Streaming media is media that is controlled by the user to instantly push large amounts of data through internet lines for multiple users to view at once. This type of media was first introduced in 1995 when ESPN Sportszone used the web to broadcast a baseball game between the Mariners and the Yankees. One of the programs that was able to utilize web 2.0 was Macromedia  Flash Player. It had to be downloaded onto the system as a plug-in in order to stream videos. This technology was difficult considering mostly what was being used was 56k modems that couldn't handle large amounts of data at once. It was not until protocols like HTML 5 that made it possible to handle streaming without having to use plug-ins because the protocol worked with web browsers to manage these tasks. Nowadays larger amounts of data can be streamed in high definition. More information can be found here http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/01/history-streaming-future-connected-tv
below is an image from Flickr of a program called Netflix which is widely used to streams a database of movies that is available through almost any computing platform. 

Podcasts and webcasts

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are available for download by using a specific application such as iTunes, or Winamp. They will automatically gather information that is part of the podcast once it has been made available for download.
A webcast is different from a podcast because the data that is being transmitted is live and the user is viewing in real-time. A webcast is basically like a T.V. channel in other words. Here is a link to many of the recorded webcasts made a CERN, one of the leading groups for technology with physics, https://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/index.php
Here is the usual symbol for a podcast courtesy of Flickr.com

Wikis and blogs

Wikis are websites that are used to make collaborative work of websites that can be changed and modified by users. Wikis are different from blogs because these integrate multiple users into a page. Wikis are useful tools because information is not coming from a biased view. Instead information is coming from multiple views. Wikis are used by schools to teach students how to work together to put information together as a team. One of the most commonly searched wikis is Wikipedia and is regarding as the fastest and easiest way to get information.
For more information visit http://teachinghistory.org/digital-classroom/tech-for-teachers/14592
Blogs such as this one started with Usenet in the early 1990s were some of the first forums and threads were created. Blogger is just one of the many services used to host blogs.

This image was actually found within Wikipedia.com labeled Logo of Wikipedia. The logo for Blogger is also found using Wikipedia.
 

History of email

Email is referred to as one of the most widely used forms of communication besides talk and text over a phone. Email was created around the same time as the emergence of the internet and at its earliest form was known as a simple file directory named MAILBOX by MIT in 1965. This early system used a mainframe style network which used what was called "dumb terminals" located at work spaces through large buildings. These mainframes were not connected to he internet so they could only communicate within the primitive LAN (Local Area Network). It was not until 1975 that John Vittal developed software to organize email within the ARPANET. As the internet matured web browsing platforms and protocols such as Gmail and Outllook suites were created which made managing email easier.
Below is an image of the early day terminals used with MAILBOX courtesy of "DEC VT100 terminal" by Jason Scott - Flickr: IMG_9976. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DEC_VT100_terminal.jpg#/media/File:DEC_VT100_terminal.jpg
Additional information can be found here http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html

Social media

Several different methods of communication have been created since the invention of the internet. These include social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is a website that allows a user to be able to post information to followers who are people that subscribe to another person's account. Facebook is something we should all know very well and has dominated most other social media sites. Myspace was one of the earliest social media sites that allowed users to be able to connect with their friends and made the user able to express their daily lives via sharing content or simply writing a post stating something like, "I had a great day at the museum." Most of us are familiar with these icons of social media sites courtesy of http://aha-soft-icons.deviantart.com/art/Social-LongShadow-Icons-481470144

Brief history of web browsers

The earliest of web browsers is NCSA Mosaic which turned into Netscape. Netscape was widley used until the release of Internet Explorer in 1999 which is still in use today as later versions. Netscape was later developed into an open sources browser which is known as the modern day Mozilla Firefox that was created in 2004.  Several other web browsers were released in the early 1990s and most of them are still used today as later versions. Below is an image of the old AOL start-up menu that some of you may remember literally hearing on your modem courtesy of http://bronteshore.ca/c/38112ee27d62e9229092d945e4ec84b7
Additional information on early web browsers can be found here http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm