To: Jingle1692@hotmail.co.uk

Email is a way for people to send letters, pictures, videos and other attachments via the internet to another email address, it is faster that traditional "snail mail" and is immune to postal strikes which is an enormous advantage, not to mention it saves paper in an age where resources are dwindling. They are big, allowing anywhere from 10mb to over 1gb to be sent, depending on your provider, Gmail etc.

Instant Messaging is a way of communicating like email, but is.. well, instant, it requires the user and the recipient to be on the same server to chat, the most popular example is windows live messenger (MSN),  microsofts IM service, IM requires both users to be online and allows them to have a normal convosation through typing as opposed to talking, in real time, compared to emails which need the recipient to look at their inbox, read the message and then reply. Though email does have the advantage that the person you are sending the mail to can be offline.

MMS, or the handsome older brother of SMS

MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service, a new standard in mobile messaging. Like SMS it is a way to send messages from one mobile to another, however it differs from SMS due to the fact that it can send, sound, images and videos as well as the standard text. It also allows SMS from mobiles be sent to email addresses.

Formats that can be embedded within MMS include:

• Text (formatted with fonts, colours, etc)
• Images (JPEG, GIF format)
• Audio (MP3, MIDI)
• Video (MPEG)

MMS is an extension to the SMS protocol so it’s pretty easy to use if you are familiar with SMS technology. One of the main differences between MMS and SMS is that while SMS messages are limited to 160 bytes, an MMS message has no limit and can be many Kbytes in size. 

You're listening to GPRS radio!

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is used on mobile phones to allow 2G phones to constantly download data  at a faster rate (around 32-48Kbps), even while talking to someone with it! 

The service is split up into classes, the better the class the faster your transfer speed is, for example if you have class 2 GPRS with 3 slots this means you are limited to 8 - 12 kbps upload/ 16 - 24kbps download.

GPRS is available on most new phones with a range of classes to suit them.

The Third Generation

3G, or too give it its full name, International Mobile Telecommunications-2000, and is the third generation of wireless technologies. What makes it better than it's predecessors is its high speed transmission, advanced multimedia access and global roaming and IPTV support (TV through the phone). Its main use is it's ability to connect mobile devices to the Internet and allow voice and video calls between people.

Unlike Wi-Fi hot spots, which tend to be free, 3G requires you to be subscribed to a service provider to get connected.

A slight disadvantage of 3G is it's cost, it's not very cheap, however that is counterbalanced with the service it provides some would argue that the price is worth having Internet access on the move. Some providers offer it in expensive packages, however some offer plans where the user pays for the amount of data transferred, reducing the cost if you don't use it all the time.

So is 3G worth it? Hell yeah.

W3C, and how it benefits web developers.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by creator of the internet Tim Berners-Lee, it is a document reviewed by many parties who all have the common goal of making the Internet easily accessible to everyone.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a group of recommendations developed by the W3C and other parties too better help website developers create websites that are more accessible to people mainly with disabilities such as blindness. Websites are graded against the guidelines to see wheher they conform to them and thus offer better access to the public.
So basically, the W3C is looking out for less priviledged people by helping make websites more open and interactive with everyone.