Cut Communication Costs

No matter what distance you send or receive data over, you will only be billed your Internet Service Provider’s fee, and the cost of the phone connection to your Internet Service Provider. Whether e-mail is sent overseas or to your next-door neighbor, the cost on the Internet is the same. Videoconferencing and Internet phone technology can allow you to converse with friends, relatives, or business associates anywhere in the world for the cost of your Internet connection. The Internet can eliminate barriers of distance within your company or family or eliminate the use of the phone, fax, and internal newsletter (in some cases) within your company.

Marketing and Public Relations

The Internet offers opportunities for publishing or presenting information never before seen. Not only can web sites, e-mail, and newsgroups help a company reach an exponentially growing online market in new ways, but they can also let your family publish information through personal web pages (such as those offered by Westelcom).

Research

The Internet is the greatest single resource of information known to date. Most existing government, educational, and business resources have been pooled to form the content of the Internet. Search tools offer expansive results to any query and email is a great tool for receiving quick answers to questions.

Intranet

An intranet is a mini version of the Internet that exists within your company’s network. You can use web pages on your intranet to publish information for use within your company and online message boards to stay up to date on projects. Software for accounting, billing, and management can be run securely through web browsers on workstations. You intranet can be expanded to include other offices using the Internet as a bridge.

What can the Internet be used for?

E-mail

Users of the Internet usually receive an e-mail address. The e-mail address is typically their username ‘@ ‘ the domain they’re connected to. Westelcom customers receive an e-mail address such as johndoe@westelcom.com. E-mail software is used to compose, send, and receive messages across the Internet and store them in a filing system that contains folders or directories such as "Inbox", "Sent", "Outbox" and perhaps different folders to sort saved messages.

Web Browsing

Web browsing software, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, are used to visit web sites and view web pages on the Internet. Different web sites can be compared to different media. Some are similar to magazines (some are actually online versions of existing magazines), or TV channels, or entirely new featuring news, games, research data, and more.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

Oftentimes a domain will have some sort of FTP server with their web server. While the web server offers up web pages to view through a browser, an FTP server allows for the direct transfer of files from the remote server to the local computer, which is where the name FTP, File Transfer Protocol, comes from.

Newsgroups

A newsgroup is like a message board where users can post messages of their own, read others’ messages, and read replies to, or reply to, other messages. Newsgroups are formed based on specific subjects and number in the thousands. A group of messages and their replies within a newsgroup are called threads. Newsgroups are not only frequented by people with specific interests or hobbies, but are often one of the best sources of support for software users and developers alike.

Chats

Chat rooms or instant messaging programs are software that allow users to communicate with each other directly and in real time (live). Some chat, instant message, or communication programs are ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, and mIRC.

How Do I "Surf the 'Net"?

Click On Links

Underlined words, often blue or some other color that stands out from other text on the page, are hyperlinks. Clicking on a hyperlink loads a new web page in your web browser’s window. The page pointed to by the hyperlink should be relevant to the linked text.

Enter A URL

If you know the URL (Uniform Resource Locater) or address of a web site, you can enter it into the address of location line at the top of your browser’s window. And hit enter to go to that site.

Use The Navigation Buttons

You can use the Forward and Back buttons on your browser to flip between pages you’ve already viewed.

Stop A Page From Loading

If a web page is having considerable difficulty loading, you can press the stop button or hit the escape key (Esc) on your keyboard to stop it.

Make A Bookmark Or Favorite

If you’re at a web site or viewing a web page you think you’d like to visit again later you can add a bookmark or favorite to return there. In Netscape go to the Bookmarks menu and add a bookmark, in Internet Explorer go to the Favorites menu and add the site to your favorites. You can also sort your bookmarks and favorites into different folders (which you may create) to keep them organized.

Speed Up Page Loading

If you would like to make web pages load faster on your computer, you can turn off the images that your web browser would display. In the options or preferences for you web browser uncheck or deselect Auto-Load Images or Image Loading or whatever is appropriate. Be warned, however, that some web sites rely heavily on images for content and navigation.

Software

If you’ve downloaded shareware (trial versions of software) be sure to register it if you’ve found it to be a useful tool and decided to keep it on your computer. Not only is it illegal to use unregistered versions of software, but unfair to the software developers as well.

Support

Some web browsers have online support directly available. See under the Help menu for details.

Plugins and helpers

Some web site technology requires separate plugins or helper programs. You will usually be prompted to download these plugins and install them. More recent plugins may actually download and install themselves (with your permission) for you.

Using Boolean Operators In A Search

The word boolean refers to statements that are True or False and is used to restrict the results from a search engines. You can use the boolean qualifiers AND, NOT, and OR (written in all caps with a space on each side) in your searches through the web’s search engines:

AND – Pages found must contain all words joined by the AND operator. For example "cars AND boats"

OR – Pages found must contain at least one of the words joined by OR. For example "cars OR boats"

NOT – Pages found cannot contain the word that follows the term NOT. For example "cars NOT boats"

( ) – Parentheses are used to group queries. For example "cars AND (boats OR jetski)"

Plus (+) – If you put a + sign in front of a word all the pages retrieved will contain that word.

Minus (-) – If you put a – sign directly in front of a word the search engine will not retrieve pages containing that particular word.