The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and
location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed
connections. The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous
means, including through
mobile Internet devices. Mobile phones,
datacards,
handheld game consoles and
cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet
wirelessly.
Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited
facilities of such pocket-sized devices, the services of the Internet,
including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may
restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be
significantly higher than other access methods.
Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from websites. Examples range from
CBeebies, through school and high-school revision guides and
virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly literature through the likes of
Google Scholar. For
distance education, help with
homework
and other assignments, self-guided learning, whiling away spare time,
or just looking up more detail on an interesting fact, it has never been
easier for people to access educational information at any level from
anywhere. The Internet in general and the
World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of both
formal and
informal education.
The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made
collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of
collaborative software.
Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide
reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example
of this is the
free software movement, which has produced, among other things,
Linux,
Mozilla Firefox, and
OpenOffice.org. Internet chat, whether using an
IRC chat room, an
instant messaging system, or a
social networking
website, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way
while working at their computers during the day. Messages can be
exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email. These
systems may allow files to be exchanged, drawings and images to be
shared, or voice and video contact between team members.
Content management
systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents
simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work.
Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and
other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas
including scientific research, software development, conference
planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political
collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access
and
computer literacy spread.
The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers
and information stores easily, wherever they may be. They may do this
with or without
computer security,
i.e. authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the
requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home,
collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant
sitting at home can
audit the books of a company based in another country, on a
server
situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT
specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by
home-working bookkeepers, in other remote locations, based on
information emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of
these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet,
but the cost of private
leased lines
would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker
away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a
business trip or a holiday, can access their emails, access their data
using
cloud computing, or open a
remote desktop session into their office PC using a secure
Virtual Private Network
(VPN) connection on the Internet. This can give the worker complete
access to all of their normal files and data, including email and other
applications, while away from the office. It has been referred to among
system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,
[38] because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its employees' homes.
