| Well, the answer to that question is that there are | | | | second, there's no contest. Video sites like YouTube |
| simply so many things happening on today's Internet | | | | and Google Video have done well, too, as people |
| that weren't really popular before the rise of | | | | look for short, funny videos in a spare moment. |
| broadband. Let's take a look at a few of them. | | | | Online gaming is another excellent application of |
| The biggest effect of broadband has been the rise | | | | broadband - whether it's free flash games, or |
| of streaming multimedia: music, video, games, and | | | | amazing 'massively multiplayer' online worlds inhabited |
| more. On dial-up, you had to spend hours | | | | by thousands of people from all over the world, the |
| downloading these files, saving them and then playing | | | | extra data transfer capability provided by broadband |
| them in a separate program. Now, you can get | | | | makes gaming a lot less frustrating. |
| plug-ins for your web browser that allow you to just | | | | One final thing that many people don't think about is |
| go to the page and see the video or hear the music, | | | | that broadband has made online shopping much, |
| instantly - as it can download faster than it plays, | | | | much more popular than it was. Although the sites, |
| there's no waiting. | | | | prices and delivery times haven't changed, the |
| Understandably, this has been very popular. The | | | | convenience of getting to e-commerce websites and |
| fortunes of iTunes, Apple's legal music service that | | | | browsing around the store has been improved |
| allows you to buy individual songs cheaply over the | | | | dramatically with broadband. Put simply, when you |
| Internet, are directly tied to broadband - when you | | | | have broadband, you find yourself making more use |
| have the choice between goings to the shop or just | | | | of the Internet than you ever did before, whatever |
| clicking a button and hearing the song the next | | | | it is you want to do. |