While the iPhone 4S, announced Oct. 4, will be the newest in a group of legendary devices that first came out in 2007 and transformed the mobile industry and the very fabric of our lives forever, Jobs’ contribution to technology in the last 35 years is really hard to overstate.

He notoriously started Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976, the two groundbreaking the first mass-market personal computer, the Apple II. Most people forget that, since the system eventually lost its leadership position to IBM’s more open platform, the PC, but there’s little doubt that Apple drastically transformed the computing landscape by setting off an arms race in the personal computing space.

Under Jobs’ leadership, the company did it again in 1984 with the launch of the Macintosh. A famous Super Bowl ad introduced the Mac, characterizing the PC as begetting something akin to George Orwell’s dystopian Big Brother future. The Mac ushered in a completely revolutionary concept: a computing machine designed for the first time with an intuitive graphical interface and a mouse. The power of computing was thus extended to everyone, not just those with a head and an inclination for programming languages and clunky text inputs.

Jobs was eventually fired in a power struggle at Apple, but spent the hiatus founding the Pixar animation studio, among other ventures. He returned in 1996, reclaimed the CEO position, and went on to launch a string of beautifully designed desktop and notebook computers. The years that followed firmly ensconced Apple as the “hipster” company of Silicon Valley, offering computers that may cost a bit more but were tailored for creative design and other graphics-intensive tasks – all in a package of knockout industrial design. The iMac was followed by the Macbook Air, two offerings that became more symbolic of the power of computing-as-lifestyle-choice than any Windows-based machine could ever hope to be.

But it was the launch of iTunes and the iPod in 2001 that solidified the company as an icon. iTunes completely remade the face of music for artists, studios, concert promoters and radio, with a digital distribution scheme that was weighted against album sales and towards individual choice. It also successfully commercialized the concept of a mass-market walled garden oriented around a specific OS or device – an idea that would come into full form with the launch of the iPhone

Internet Service is a vehicle that enables consumers to access the internet, worldwide web, go online or whatever term you prefer. It allows the you to communicate, research, access applications and obtain music and movies. It also allows for communications via instant messaging, email and social networking.

Once you actually sign up for internet service, you may discover that it is too slow for what you want to do on the web. Depending on what type of connection you have, music, messages and videos might take a long time to show up in your email inbox or other portal like iTunes.

It is worth considering what kind of internet service you want. You want to make sure it matches your needs. Following are the types of internet services currently available:

Dial-Up: This means that your internet service will have to be procured by dialing a phone number. A common source of this type of internet access is America Online (AOL). For about $12 a month, you can get on the internet. However, you will be unable to use the phone line that you are using for the hook-up. Also, the speeds to download music, for instance, can be slow.

DSL Broadband: DSL also uses a phone line but it splits it between phone and data (so you can use the phone simultaneously with the internet). To do this, the local phone lines have to be equipped with specially made copper wires in order to receive the DSL internet signals. In general, DSL is limited to areas that where the phone wires are already equipped with the copper sires. As a result, in some older cities and rural areas, DSL is not available.

Cable Broadband: Your internet service can also be received through your cable company. The way this works is via your cable modem. When you input your ethernet cable in the modem, your computer will receive an internet signal. To provide access for multiple computers in your home, you can also purchase a router that will accept several computers while the main connection is between the router and the cable modem.

You can also obtain a wireless connection. This means you can go anywhere in your home and be connected to the internet.

Satellite: Satellite internet service   works by hooking up a satellite dish that is pointed to an unobstructed Southern sky. Then you connect the dish to the modem. The modem is installed in your home. The internet service signal is actually provided between the dish and what are called low orbit satellites flying above the earth. The signal may not be as reliable as the others and may also be susceptible to storms.

Satellite is mainly used in rural areas where cabling or wiring has not or will not occur.

Wireless: While you can obtain wireless internet in your homes via internet service providers, you can also access it in public places (it is called WIFI). They are found in cafes, airports, hotels and an increasing number or food establishments. It is not everywhere, but you can generally find it when you travel.

Which Internet Service Do Need?

That depends on your usage. For example, if you are just going to occasionally surf the web and do email, a dial up service might be good enough. If you are going to be receiving music files, photos and large attachments, the faster DSL or cable may be better.

In general, faster is better (and in some cases, cheaper). You might find yourself twiddling your thumbs or tying up your phone line while waiting for large file downloads.

As a comparison, consider the following download speeds. Download is where you have received a file and want to play or see it on your computer. This could be music, photos or large documents.
•Download speed for dial-up is about 56 Kbps (Kbps means kilobit per second)
•Download speed for DSL is about 768 Kbps
•Download speed for Cable is about 4 Mbps (Megabits per second- more than kilobits)

There are even faster internet service connections on the way. Fiber optics, for example, offers download speeds of up to 10 Mbps. Some cable companies are laying fiber optic lines to provide faster service for their customers.

Also, with the availability of more wireless channels, wireless download speeds could become very, very fast in the future.

The “Spam King” is Sanford Wallace, a 43-year-old spam tycoon who first got his start in the business of spamming in the go-go 1990s. He was head of Cyber Promotions, a company that sent out roughly 30 million junk emails a day.

As the times moved beyond archaic email and into social networking, so too went the “Spam King.” He now stands accused of sending over 27 million spam messages to Facebook users. In 2009, the man they sometimes call “Spamford” was banned from using social networking sites. He violated the ban.

Wallace was initially indicted on July 6 on six counts of electronic mail fraud, three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt. The indictment, filed in a San Jose federal court, says that “Spamford” compromised roughly 500,000 Facebook accounts between November of 2008 and March of 2009. He did this by sending large batches of spam through the company’s servers – three different times.

Wallace allegedly sent “phishing” messages that tricked users into providing Facebook passwords. From there, he logged into the users’ accounts and spammed the walls of friends. When those friends clicked the spam links, Wallace would get paid by the websites that he so sneakily redirected traffic too.

Facebook tried to ban the “Spam King” in 2009 with a restraining order, but the Stephen King lookalike violated that bad boy in less than a month – hence the contempt charges. At the time Facebook won a $711 million judgement, much more than the $230 million judgement MySpace won against Wallace in 2008, but the bankrupt spammer has since been unable to pay. Turns out that, while spamming is his business, business is not altogether good.

Wallace has pleaded not guilty to the indictment and was released on Thursday after paying a $100,000 bond. He’ll be back in court on August 22

If you are wondering how you can start taking more advantage of social media in your business, take a look at some recent success stories:

IBM, the computer services giant, knew it had a huge opportunity to sell more of its services to the growing financial community in India, but was little known there. To build awareness and relationships and jumpstart the kind of dialogues that lead to sales, IBM India’s CFO, Robert Parker, leverages LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogging. Parker is now host to LinkedIn’s largest CFO community and at the top of unpaid search lists for CFO issues in India.
To burnish its position as one of Canada’s leading communications services companies, and develop a lower cost channel of sales leads, TELUS Business Solutions created a website (http://www.telustalksbusiness.com/home.do) where businesses can come together, exchange ideas, and gather expert advice. Visitors to the site quickly qualify themselves in terms of size and interest and then they are off and running. But this quick qualification allows TELUS to deliver a stream of detailed customer profiles to its sales team. TELUS reduced its cost per lead by 30%.
Start-up business Silver Barn Antiques in Columbus, Tex. hadn’t formulated its e-commerce strategy-it didn’t even have a website. Instead it launched its operations while relying on a Twitter account and a blog to connect to suppliers and customers nationwide, jump starting its supply chain and its sales.

In none of these instances was social media the only marketing effort-but in each one, social media accomplished a goal more quickly and efficiently than traditional online or offline marketing.

What’s the right social media tool for your business? As in all things, it depends on your objectives, your target audience and the brand image you want to convey. There are no best practices. But before plunging in, keep the following in mind:

Research your target market to find out what they are doing online. If there are lots of LinkedIn groups, but no one is using them, it’s either a dead end or an opportunity for you to fill the vacuum.
Regardless of what social media you are using-and most likely you will use several-don’t be self-serving. People don’t want to be “sold to,” they want help. Create strong, smart, well thought-out content that adds value to your customers’ lives. Give them information they can us. Think the three I’s: insights, incentives and inspiration.
Finally, remember to keep the conversation going. With social media, you can start and stop at any time. But you can’t start and stop, start and stop. If you do, you are constantly forced to reinvent your community and it’s probably not worth it. Set a schedule of posting and tweeting that works for you. Remember: you are in this for the long haul!!