General-interest magazines
General-interest magazines, also called consumer magazines, concentrate on subjects of interest to many people. In Britain these include Ideal Home, Garden News, BBC Good Food Magazine, Mother and Baby. There are also magazines on DIY, cars, sport, travel, films and music.
Music and film magazines cater for a wide range of tastes. Q,Rolling Stone and New Musical Express contain reviews of popular music and interviews with musicians. Mixmag covers dance culture. Classical music, opera, jazz and folk music have their own magazines, some of which give away free CDs. US film magazines include Empire, Neon, and Sight and Sound.
Sports magazines also attract many readers. US titles include Total Sport and, for individual sports, Top Gear and Regatta. In Britain some football clubs produce a club magazine. Fanzines are cheap magazines produced by fans (= supporters) of a singer, group or sports club.
Gossip magazines also called the gossips, have stories about the rich and famous and range from the up market (= smart) Hello! to US super market tabloids like National Enquirer.
Some magazines are bought mainly for their listings, e.g. Time Out, which gives details of plays, concerts, etc. in London or New York. Exchange & Mart contains only advertisements of items for sale or wanted.
A few magazines have a more intellectual content. These include news and current affairs magazines, such as Time, Life, The Economist, Private Eye and The Spectator, as well as New Scientist, Scientific American and National Geographic.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.
Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites.
The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
A mobile phone (also called mobile, cellphone or handphone) is an electronic device used for mobile telecommunications over a cellular network of base stations known as cell sites. Mobile phones differ from cordless telephones, which only offer telephone service within limited range through a single base station attached to a fixed line, for example within a home or an office. Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones, whereas high-end mobile phones that offer more advanced computing ability are referred to as smartphones.
A mobile phone allows its user to make and receive telephone calls to and from the public telephone network which includes other mobiles and fixed line phones across the world. It does this by connecting to a cellular network owned by a mobile network operator. A key feature of the cellular network is that it enables seamless telephone calls even when the user is moving around wide areas via a process known as handoff or handover.
In addition to being a telephone, modern mobile phones also support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS (or text) messages, email, Internet access, gaming, Bluetooth, infrared, camera, MMS messaging, MP3 player, radio and GPS.
The first hand held phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing in at two kilos. By the end of 2009, the number of mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide reached approximately 4.6 billion, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.
Fax
A fax (short for facsimile) is a document sent over a telephone line. Fax machines have existed, in various forms, since the 19th century though modern fax machines became feasible only in the mid-1970s as the sophistication increased and cost of the three underlying technologies dropped. Digital fax machines first became popular in Japan, where they had a clear advantage over competing technologies like the teleprinter. Over time, faxing gradually became affordable, and by the mid-1980s, fax machines were very popular around the world.
Although businesses usually maintain some kind of fax capability, the technology has faced increasing competition from Internet-based alternatives. However, fax machines still retain some advantages, particularly in the transmission of sensitive material which, if sent over the Internet unencrypted, may be vulnerable to interception. In some countries, because electronic signatures on contracts are not recognized by law while faxed contracts with copies of signatures are, fax machines enjoy continuing support in business.
In many corporate environments, standalone fax machines have been replaced by "fax servers" and other computerized systems capable of receiving and storing incoming faxes electronically, and then routing them to users on paper or via an email (which may be secured). Such systems have the advantage of reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary printouts and reducing the number of inbound analog phone lines needed by an office.
ENVIRONMENT
Cleaning up the world's environment is undoubtedly one of the major problems facing all the people inhabiting our planet. For many decades this issue has been neglected by many countries and the result is that it is more and more difficult to find any unpolluted place on Earth. Bearing that in mind, it seems obvious that the struggle against contamination and the need to protect the environment have become the most urgent of tasks because air, water and soil are slowly becoming unsuitable to sustain life.
As far as water is concerned the prognosis is really gloomy. Sewage dumped directly into rivers or the sea has polluted the water so heavily that many countries, for example China, do not have enough safe drinking water. What is more, in some parts of the world, for instance in Peru, people are at the mercy of contractors who sell the precious liquid for money! This tragic situation is a result of population growth and above all industrial development which have contributed to the depletion and pollution of the world's water supply, raising the risk of starvation and epidemic. Equally dangerous are very frequent tanker leaks as oil spills make the water in many regions unfit for any use. Whatever the consequences for people, the pollution of water has an even greater effect on other living things. Fish, birds and countless other creatures are poisoned and ecosystems are disrupted. This, in turn, results in the serious violation of the ecological balance.
As far as the contamination of soil is concerned, again mainly industry and agriculture are to blame. One source of pollution are acid rains caused by chemical substances dissolved in rain, which results in polluting water and ruining crops. Another problem is mismanaged farming techniques, for instance the world-wide continuation of irrigation and the misuse or abuse of fertilizers and pesticides which are gradually destroying the fertile upper layer of soil. Deforestation is equally dangerous. It brings about floods and soil erosion during rainy seasons. At the same time the thoughtless and uncontrolled exploitation of forests for timber results in species extinction.
However, it seems that the most dangerous problem for the world is the pollution of the atmosphere. Air is contaminated mainly by exhaust gases emitted directly into the atmosphere. From year to year man increasingly contributes to the so called "greenhouse effect" by additional emissions of sulphur, carbon dioxide from burning coal, natural gases and derivative products of oil as well as from burning forests. This short-sighted policy has resulted in the rapid change of the world's climate (the effect of "global warming") due to the depletion of ozone layer in the atmosphere, the consequences of which may well be disastrous. There is a danger that many places on the planet may be flooded while others will suffer from droughts. Numerous species of animals and plants will become extinct. Instead there may be ideal conditions for the development of noxious insects and bacteria. They, in turn, may become a source of dangerous infections which may decimate the world's population.