Being able to use digital communication techniques.

There are 4 area's within digital communication; Messaging systems, Web 2.0 communities, Conferencing and Devices.

Messaging Systems:


One example of a messaging system is email, for example hotmail. Email is a way of exchanging digital messages from one person to another, or to numerous people. Email operates across the internet, though you can send messages to people even if they don't have an internet connection at the time of you sending the email. You can forward an email someone has sent to you, to someone else. Email is great for communicating between friends or family, and can also be used for business reasons, to communicate with co-workers or companies.

Instant messaging is another form of a messaging system, one example of instant messaging would be MSN or Facebook chat, in order to use instant messaging, both you and the person you are trying to communicate with must have an internet connection and be 'online'. Instant messaging usually involves a contact list, and shows you which of your friends is online, and who isn't.

Another example of a messaging system is short messaging systems (SMS) which is commonly known as a text message. Text messages can be sent between friends and/or aquantences, as as way of communication without needing any internet connection in order to do so.

MMS, stands for multimedia messaging system. This is another form of a messaging system. MMS is very similar to an SMS, and is more commonly known as a picture message, using an MMS you can send a picture, video or MP3 to a friend, however, unlike a SMS, and internet connection is needed in order for the data to be sent.

Web 2.0 communities:

One example of a web 2.0 community is Wikipedia, which is a free, collaborative, multilingual internet encyclopaedia. People can go onto Wikipedia and read up on different topics, it is basically a site filled with information about over 20 million different articles.

VLE, which stands for Virtual Learning Environments is another form of a web 2.0 community. An example of a VLE could be YouTube, people can go onto YouTube and type into the search  bar what they are looking for, and look at various tutorials for various different things.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are another example of web 2.0 communities. On Facebook, users can create their own profile and fill it with as much, or as little information as they want, they can add their friends, and make new ones. As well as this they can post pictures, video's and more in order to customise their profile. You can update your status and tell people what your doing, or whats on your mind, and comment or like your friends status'.

Information sharing is another form of a web 2.0 community. Examples of this could be YouTube or Flickr. YouTube is a video sharing website, where people can sign up and create a YouTube channel, and upload their video's, personal or not, and share their information and video's with the public and other YouTube users.

Conferencing:

One example of conferencing is an audio conference, which usually refers to meetings held by people in different places using devices that allow sounds to be sent and received. These meetings may only involve two parties, but in many cases, there are numerous parties involved.

Video conferencing is another example of this. An example of video conference is FaceTime, FaceTime is software created by Apple to be used on their products, only those of which have a forward facing camera. FaceTime is basically the same as ringing someone, with the exception that you can see the person you are calling, as you talk to them. In order to use face time you cant just ring somone normally, under their contact information there is the option for FaceTime, and you select that.

Conferencing via vertual communities, this is basically a community of people, who interact with eachother over the internet, based on specific media. One example of this could be Xbox, as users can go live over the internet and converse with eachother. Another example of this could be Facebook, you can go online, and if you have a webcam, use it and speak to an view your friends as you speak.


Devices:

Wireless handheld devices such as mobile phones include Bluetooth, which is another form of digital communication, Bluetooth is used to send files over a short distance. You must first turn on your Bluetooth, and search for others near by who also have theirs turned on, once you have found the person you are looking for, you can connect with them, and then from their chose various photographs, videos and MP3's to the people you are connected with.






Skype is a type of video and audio conferencing used to communicate between different people, you have a friends list, and you can add various people to your contact list and connect with them. You can have conversations with more than one person, but to add someone into a conversation you must first be friends with them, where as someone your having a conversation with can invite one of their friends in that you aren't connected with. Skype can be used for personal reasons to connect with friends or even for a business reason, for example if there is a meeting being held and you can't make it in, you can use Skype so that you can hear and see everything going on in the meeting, and the people in it can hear and see you too.

XboxLive is another form of digital communication. It is an online gaming community in which users can communicate with other gamers, all they have to have is a headset, which allows them to be able to play the game and speak to others without the need to hold anything to their head, so they can play and talk at the same time. If you want to have a private conversation with someone over XboxLive you must have a gamer tag and whomever you wish to talk to you must have their gamer tag on your friends list. But if you wanted you can join a multiplayer game and talk to random people also involved in the game.