INTERNET ..... This seven letter word is much much more than just amazing. If you are one of those who is utterly lost whenever somebody mentions anything about the internet, its time to roll up your sleeves and get ready to ride this information superhighway or 'cyber space'.

The internet is the largest computer network in the whole world. It connects thousands of computers all around the world. Infact ... it has gradually become the easiest medium of communicating with your friends, relatives or anybody anywhere in the world. And in case you're wondering who thought if such a phenomenon, the credit goes to the Defence Department of the United States which began the internet in the late 1960s. The network grew by leaps and bounds and soon included others than the United States Armed Forces. Eventually other global organizations also joined in.

As it is so widespread, its not controlled by anyone. It is its own master and no one has the right to censor the information available on it. The internet offers many exciting and informative features such as e-mail, entertainment, discussion groups, online shopping, and countless more. But before we discuss these lets get you 'hooked up' first.

To start surfing on the net, you need to have a computer first ( better be fast! I mean not a 486 system with Windows 3.1 ). Next you need to choose an ISP. ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. These are companies that charge a fee and in return give you access to the Internet. All the information comes to the ISP first and then passes onto your computer. You also need a Modem ( I should've mentioned it before ... but anyway! lets go on ). Modem is a device that is capable of exchanging information between your computer and the Internet. Softwares and a telephone line are two more things that you need. Most ISPs provide you the special computer programs for e.g, browsers for surfing the internet.

If you are wondering how all this gets together to let you access the information on the Internet, here's how. All the computers around the world are connected together by telephone lines.It is on these telephone lines the information travels and reaches you. The modem, we spoke of, translates this information ( which is in computer jargon ) to a form which you can easily read on your computer screen. Similarly any input that you feed from your computer is first translated into the computer language by Modem the great! and then sent along the telephone line. A modem at the other end will again translate the information in the same way.

Now having hooked up, let's talk about the World Wide Web or the WWW. This is a graphical, easy to use system on the Internet which offers a wide amount of information. Now a good question to ask at this point is ' who's putting all this information on the Internet ? ' The answer is governments offer information such as federal budgets and NASA reports to educate the public College and universities offer details about their courses, credit hours, admission procedures etc. Companies offer free information to promote their products and get you interested to buy their products. All this information is stored on web pages. Besides information they may also contain graphics, sound and even video clips. Each page on the web has a unique address called a URL ( Uniform Resource Locator ). If you know the URL of a page that you've read or heard about, you can enter it on your browser's address bar and that page will be displayed at once, no matter on which computer in the world it may be stored on! These webpages make up a website. A website is simply a limited space available to anyone on a server. It is just like a folder on your hard drive. but the difference is the webspace in it is limited. Many communities on the Internet offer you to build websites on their server for free! Thats how every one of us can get familiar with WebDesigning and HTML.

Ok ... now we know what really are Webpages and Websites. But suppose you dont know the URL or the address of the website and want to get your hands on all the information you can .... let's say about the Bermuda Triangle or Bruce Springsteen. Well, then you make use of the 'Search Engines'. All you need to do is enter the URL of any search engine, let's say Yahoo! which can be accessed at http://www.yahoo.com . As soon as Yahoo! appears on your screen you see a search box. You type in whatever you are looking for and click the Search button. As soon as you do that, Yahoo! starts searching the web for any pages which have the keywords you've just typed in. Amazing isnt it ? The search engine does all the searching for you. Lycos, AltaVista and Excite are other popular search engines to try out. But if you are damn serious about going searching then MetaCrawler is an excellent bet as it uses a number of search engines to find your request. When your search result appears there may be some pretty weird sites. So you have to read the little description given next to their names so that you can open the pages you want to view.

One of the most widely used features on the Intrenet is E-mail on which a message can travel across the world in seconds. To send a message on the E-mail, all you need to know is the e-mail address of the person you want to contact. You need to be very sure of this and should type each and every letter of the address very carefully. Specially the username or the name that appears behind the @ mark. Any spelling mistake in that name can mislead your email and it might be directed to the wrong person ... so be careful. The best solution for this is to add the person's E-mail address in your Address Book so that you won't have to type in his e-mail address every time you try to send him an e-mail.

You can use many features within your emails without mentioning them. A good example is the 'smileys' which are used to pep your messages. E.g, :) is a smile, :( is a frown while ;) is a wink! Similarly writing somthing in CAPS means that you are shouting! You'll know what i mean when you turn your heads sideways to view those cool simleys. You can either install an Email Client on your system which usually comes bundled with your browser or you can get a free account on any Web-based Free Email Provider for e.g, Hotmail and Rocket Mail .

With access to emails, mailing lists are the next best thing on the Internet to get to know. There are several discussion groups that use e-mails for communication. They cover a wide variety of topics and you are bound to find something that interests you. Once you find something interesting you can subscribe to it and you will start receiving emails concerning that topic. If you haven't ever subscribed to any discussion group yet then why not join mine first ... click here! . It is not wise to too many lists at the same time as your mailbox will become flooded with messages. Visit http://www.neosoft.com/internet/panel/ for a lot of available mailing lists!

Newsgroups are other types of discussion groups for which you need a newsreader - a programme that lets you read and send articles to newsgroups.

Chatting is also a popular feature an all-time favourite on the Internet. It lets you communicate instantly with people around the world. The most popular choice is ICQ ... Almost every second user has it installed on his/her computer. For chatting using ICQ ... you are given a separate account on the ICQ Network and a unique UIN number as your I.D For Example, mine is 16980823. Another popular choice is mIRC in which you only need to join servers and then channels of your interest.

Now you are aware of the basic features of the greatest network in the world, the Internet! and can call yourself a Beginner! :) So why not get the lure of the web get you now.

Happy Surfing!

 

For comments, suggestions or any type of questions ... feel free to email me!