Tuesday, June 3, 2008

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be a result of the Internets origins as well as Englishs role as the lingua franca. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers largely originating in the United States to handle characters other than those in the English variant of the Latin alphabet.

After English of Web visitors the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese Spanish Japanese German and French .

By continent of the worlds Internet users are based in Asia in Europe in North America and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Internets technologies have developed enough in recent years especially in the use of Unicode that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However some glitches such as mojibake incorrect display of foreign language characters also known as kryakozyabry still remain.

Internet and the workplace

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location especially with the spread of unmetered highspeed connections and Web applications.

The Internet viewed on mobile devices

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means. Mobile phones datacards handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that devices technology.

Common uses of the Internet

Email

For more details on this topic see Email.

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal email systems. Internet email may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the senders and the recipients control.