Instant Messenger is is a means of chatting over the Internet in real-time. My Space.com is a new website built for users to upload info about themselves. Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio programs or music videos, over the Internet. Instant messenger, Myspace.com, and Podcasting are 3 relatively new technologies that younger people are using.

Myspace.com templates are growing more of the rage also, everybody has to be unique. Podcasting is starting to pick up advertisers, so will stick around a bit.

The concept of podcasting was suggested in as early as 2000 and the technical components were available by the start of 2001, but it wasn't until 2003 that regular podcasts started showing up on well-known Web sites. The concept quickly took off and by the end of 2004, thousands of podcasts were available and the term had entered the public domain.

MySpace is a social networking website based in West Hollywood, California offering an interactive, user-submitted network of blogs, profiles, groups, photos, MP3s, videos and an internal e-mail system. According to Alexa Internet, as of August 2006, it is the world's fourth most popular English-language website and the seventh most popular in any language.



In our fast-paced world, sometimes even the rapid response of e-mail is not fast enough. You have no way of knowing if the person you are sending e-mail to is online at that particular moment or not. Also, if you are sending multiple e-mails back and forth with the same person, you normally have to click through a few steps to read, reply and send the e-mail. This is why instant messaging (IM) has gained popularity.

Instant messaging allows you to maintain a list of people that you wish to interact with. You can send messages to any of the people in your list, often called a buddy list or contact list, as long as that person is online. Sending a message opens up a small window where you and your friend can type in messages that both of you can see.

Most of the popular instant-messaging programs provide a variety of features: Instant messages - Send notes back and forth with a friend who is online
Chat - Create your own custom chat room with friends or co-workers
Web links - Share links to your favorite Web sites
Images - Look at an image stored on your friend's computer
Sounds - Play sounds for your friends
Files - Share files by sending them directly to your friends
Talk - Use the Internet instead of a phone to actually talk with friends
Streaming content - Real-time or near-real-time stock quotes and news

Background

Before the Internet became popular, a lot of people were already online through the use of bulletin boards and online services. A bulletin board is comparable to a single, isolated Web site that you reach using special communications software and a modem. You create an entry in the software for the bulletin board that contains the board's direct phone number and any special parameters for connecting to the computer hosting the bulletin board. Once connected to the board, you normally use a series of menus to navigate through the board's contents. To reach another board, you have to disconnect from the first board and dial up to the other one.

Major online services, such as America Online (AOL), Prodigy and CompuServe, were the main way that ordinary people could connect and communicate with each other online. Think of an online service as a very sophisticated bulletin board. Whereas most small bulletin boards use standard communications software, online services provide a complete application that includes the communications software necessary to connect to their service. This application also includes the actual interface that you use once you are online and connected to the service. This allows the online service to create a very sophisticated and targeted experience for their users.

Probably one of the biggest attractions of the online service model is the community that it builds. AOL is considered the pioneer of the online community. AOL provides its users with the ability to talk in real-time with each other while they are online through the use of chat rooms and instant messages. A chat room is software that allows a group of people to type in messages that are seen by everyone in the "room," while instant messages are basically a chat room for just two people.

In the early 1990s, as people began to spend increasing amounts of time on the Internet, creative software developers designed software that could reproduce some of the aspects of an online service. Chat-room software was developed and set up on Web servers, used by sites like TalkCity.

Instant messaging really exploded on the Internet scene in November 1996. That's when Mirablis, a company founded by four Israeli programmers, introduced ICQ, a free instant-messaging utility that anyone could use.