The Internet for Normal People
Written by David Ashby
A self-paced introduction for adults who are not dummies
Click the underlined text
here
for the most important things...
like how to navigate this introduction!
Table of Contents
- Am I nuts not to know much about this Internet thing?
- Am I nuts to want to learn?
- What is the Internet, anyway?
- What can I do on the Internet?
- How do I do this stuff on the Internet?
- Worries about the Internet
- On-Ramps to the Information Super Highway
- Onramps: Yahoo and other directory sites
- Onramps: Portals
- Onramps: Search Engines
- Onramps: Link pages and directories
- Onramps: Bookmarks
- What else can I do?
- What else can I do: Email
- What else can I do: Newsgroups
- What else can I do: Mailing Lists
- What else can I do: Chat and IRC
- What else can I do: E-Commerce
- How can I learn more?
- What does the Dundee Library have to help me?
- A final test: an internet scavenger hunt!
Am I nuts not to know much about this Internet thing?
No!
The internet is still pretty new and still pretty "wild and woolly," and just now getting beyond the curiosity phase and the early-adopters phase, just now getting into the "Normal People" phase.
Right now, to use an analogy to the American West, the internet is past the frontiersmen and women, past the earliest homesteaders, and about the era of the early townspeople who've moved in, built permanent structures, tried to make it safe for families, and set up shop keeping in order to make a living in the once-wild places. The Web likewise has its online churches, libraries, and commerce, but there are still moments when wildness returns (like a gang of cowboys coming into town on a Saturday night) with flame-wars, foul language, and general rowdiness. So, as things are settling down in the territory, newcomers are showing up, eager to learn what the new land has to offer... people like you!
Welcome to the World Wide Web!
Back to Top
Am I nuts to want to learn?
No, not that either!
Navigating your way around the world wide web is fun, productive, and exciting (even if some parts of it are confusing, strange, or disturbing.
Actually, it's never nuts to learn new things and discover new resources for your life and interests. That's why we have libraries! Just consider the internet to be a gigantic, unregulated, uncharted, amazing extension of the public library... that's why they call poking around in the stacks of the library and clicking your way around the web both "browsing!"
Sooo... you're not nuts to want in on the "information superhighway" (not to mention a its still sky-high "cool" factor!).
Back to Top
What is the Internet, anyway?
What is this internet thing, anyway?
The "Internet" is the popular term for a loose assemblage of various university, military, research, and commercial computers all tied together with several backbone networks, all sharing as common set of communications protocols, once the province of "computer geeks,", researches, and the defense industry). Originally used in the sixties for transferring data among several defense industry companies, the U.S. military, and several major universities over high-speed data lines, the communications protocols were used to link many other educational and commercial organizations as well. For years, data was passed back and forth as "FTP" files and email on dumb, character-based terminals.
The popularity of the internet soared with the development of a more graphical, more user-friendly standard, "HyperText Markup Language" or HTML. The data is still moved around the same way as before, but more powerful personal computers handle the load of displaying the data with a nicer graphical interface called a "browser." With ever more powerful browser software capable of handling sound, images, movies, and even little programs, the World Wide Web has revolutionized the staid old internet.
The World Wide Web, has grown exponentially in the last few years precisely because "normal" people and businesses have discovered how useful it can be for research, entertainment, email and even video communications, community building, virtual tours, marketing, customer service and support, product information, and other dozens of other worthwhile pursuits. The downside is that it has also been discovered by get-rich-quick operators, scam artists, "adult entertainment," fringe groups, opinionated jerks and other not so worthy pursuits. Still, the benefits of access to people, ideas, places, and information all over the world far outweigh the problems.
More information on just what the "Internet" is can be found in collections of "Frequently Asked Questions" or FAQs maintained on the major servers.
Back to Top
What can I do on the Internet?
 | You can look up product information. |
| You can purchase computers, software, automobiles, clothing, airline tickets, books, and Beanie Babies. |
| You can look at pictures from an art gallery on the other side of the world. |
| You can see pictures of your grandchildren from across the country. |
| You can look up information about history, people, science, etc. |
| You can visit the Smithsonian Institution or the Library of Congress without leaving Dundee. |
| You can check television schedules. |
| You can correspond with electronic "pen pals" without buying stamps or making long-distance phone calls. |
| You can see if they have a coat you like in the color you like in your size. |
| You can play games online. |
| You can meet many wonderful people (and a few jerks!). |
| You can look out into the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope. |
| You can feel connected to the world from the side room of the Dundee Library! |
Back to Top
How do I do this stuff on the Internet?
Don't be too worried about the internet being difficult to manage; with the computing power available on the average desktop and with the sophisticated browser and auxiliary software available, any one with a basic knowledge of using a modern graphical interface computer (Windows or Macintosh) has the entire world merely a mouseclick away!
The internet category which has gained most attention is the "World Wide Web." This huge segment of the internet is based on two key concepts. The first is the "Hyper Text Markup Language" or HTML protocol which is then displayed in glorious color and movement by your computer's browser software. Because the actual code which is transmitted is fairly compact and much of the work is done at your end, the WWW is fast and interesting.
The other key concept is that of the URL or "Uniform Resource Locator," a precise naming convention which tells what kind of connection you want to make and which server in the world has the information your browser is requestions. These URLs are the ubiquitous strings of letters like "http://www.linkny.com/~dun_lib" you keep seeing. The work very much the same way for computers connected to the internet as area code and exchange numbers work for people dialing the telephone. A complicated system of "domain name servers" keeps track of the semi-readable URLs and translates them into the specific machine addresses anywhere in the world, whether in a university in New Zealand or a museum in France or a business in California or a library in Dundee.
If you have the connection and the www.address your computer can find anything or anyone connected to the internet. And, if you don't have the address, there are many ways of finding them, which we will cover later in this guide. And, once you find the site you like, you can save the URL on your computer as a "bookmark" or "favorite" so you can return with a click or two.
Back to Top
Worries about the Internet
Of course, if you've been paying much attention to the internet, you've also heard horror stories of bad stuff happening.
In all reality, you only have to be about that much more cautious about what you do on line as you are if you go to Rochester or Syracuse shopping. Good common sense still works, just like they taught you in grade school. "Don't talk to strangers," "keep track of your credit cards," "be careful about who you do business with," "if it feels strange, wrong, uncomfortable, etc., stop and get out of there," "don't share personal information," "be careful of 'adults only' places," and so on.
Yes, tales abound of hate groups, rudeness and "flaming," pornography, "get-rich" scams, misinformation, and problems, but, with some common sense, you can also find wonderful sites, new friends, great information, and many treasures.
Back to Top
On-Ramps to the Information Super-Highway
There are several "on ramps" to the information superhighway. Just like driving, it depends on where you want to go and how. Just like the library, it depends what you're looking for.
The lowest, simplest, and often first approach is simply to type a URL into the space in your browser's window. Often a person will stumble across a web address in the "real world" and want to check it out. You might see the www.something.com on TV, see it in an ad, have someone tell you about it, or scrawl it down on a scrap of paper to look up later. Just put your cursor in the browser's URL window and type. Navigator and Explorer will add the "http://" if you leave it out. Be aware, however, that most web servers are case sensitive in their naming systems, so watch your capitals and lowercase letters. Web servers are amazingly literal-minded and unimaginative, so if your spelling or punctuation (with all those slashes and tildes and such) isn't exactly right, you will likely get the dreaded (and frustrating) "404: File not found" message. Check your URL or try another approach.
Portals
Search Engines
Link pages and directory pages
Your bookmarks
So which should I try?
Just like the library, the way you approach a search varies depending on what you are looking for and what your tools are. Yahoo is much like looking up a "subject" the card catalog, and their contribution to topic and category headings is the equivalent of the Dewy Decimal System. The various search engines use both brute-force word-matching and sophisticated Boolean and/or/if/not queries, like an immensely fast card catalog search. Name searches are hyper telephone book look-ups. Link pages are like asking a friend or the librarian, "what do you have about this subject?" And your bookmarks are like having lots of little pieces of paper stuck to the monitor, but you don't have to retype the URLs!
For complicated searches or research, you may need to employ all strategies... just like researching in the library!
Back to Top
Onramps: Yahoo and other directory sites
The best known of all the internet directories is Yahoo, the classic case of two college students inventing something and turning it into big business! They invented the internet equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System. They divided up the known (web) world into useful subject categories and listed sites under those subject headings. The different divisions were good enough that many others use them.
Furthermore, Yahoo is a listing site to which web developers submit their site URL, and those requests are reviewed by real, live human beings, who determine whether to include them in the indices. It can take several weeks for a new site to be listed due to the backlog of requests clamoring for the human reviewers.
Over time, Yahoo has been adding functions, beginning with search capabilities, email, chat, user groups, and other services. Recently, they have worked at becoming a portal site, a full-service beginning point to keep people returning.
Use Yahoo if you know a general category for what you are looking for (such as business> manufacturers> buggy whips) or you want some human intervention culling the information into useful forms.
Click here to open a new window for Yahoo.
Onramps: Portals
In an effort to keep users returning (and viewing advertisements which generate revenue), several big sites morphed into what the industry calls "portals." These are sort of like "regional malls" which have some of everything (national chains, bookstores, music stores, clothing stores, etc.), all bundled up so you can park once and never leave the building.
Portal sites are the grand lobbies into the internet, with subsections for shopping, email, personal web pages and searches, chat, searches, places for children, research, stock quotes and financial news, user groups and online communities, quantities of original content, and anything else they think they can make run on the internet! Easy of use for the visitor-- often newcomers to the net-- is paramount. The "original" internet portal is considered by some to be America Online, which has its roots as an original content provider which then branched out into the World Wide Web (but which wants users to begin and end at AOL). Some portals are run by software companies (like both Microsoft and Netscape's "My Netscape") or hardware companies (like Gateway) which have an interest in you buying their products. Some portals are run by multimedia companies (like Sony/Disney/ABC's GO! network, CNN/Sports Illustrated/CNNfn network or Nickelodeon) with lots of original content. Some began as online community pages like (The Globe or Geocities) or directories (like Yahoo). All want to give you the most value for your mouseclicks, all in an effort to build a loyal customer base.
Click here to open new windows for some major portal sites.
| Netscape and My Netscape | Microsoft Network | Gateway |
| GO! Network | The Globe | CNet |
| Yahoo | America Online |
Onramps: Search Engines
If Yahoo is the Dewy Decimal System of the internet, the search engines are the assistant librarians who run around in the stacks finding books for you. In fact, because they are so fast, they often can find you the equivalent of the right page in the right book, all in the computer's blink of an eye (or a few seconds when the net is busy!). And, just as different human librarians have different specialties and different ways of doing things, each of the major search engines have slightly different approaches and strengths.
The technology behind most of the search engines (as opposed to directories like Yahoo) is an automated search process which reads through the web, noting what's on pages and stashing the information in an index. These are called variously 'bots (as in "robots"), spiders (as in web), or web crawlers. Each uses as different tactic-- some read just the top page on a site, some read all the pages, some simply index the first 150 words, others use sophisticated logic to index key concepts, some read a page and then go look at any links there and then return, some check whether there are graphics, movies, or sound clips on the page, some rely on finesse, others work on brute-force computing power. Some are best at finding business information, others at finding personal pages.
Almost as important as the crawler is the sorting and displaying process. Each, again, has different ways of weighing the relevance of a page, placing the "better" matches first. Search engines have certain syntax when it comes to searching for terms, often the classic Boolean logical operators (Dundee AND Library NOT Scotland). Getting the search phrase right may be the difference between the engine returning 25 useful sites to follow up and literally hundreds of thousands of useless references. Be sure to click on the help button the first time you use a search engine. For people who want to ask questions in Alta Vista and Ask Jeeves have a "natural-language" search facility where you type in a regular sentence for your question.
Be aware that some systems (HotBot, for instance) will return hits which are for adult sites, while other screen those out or are geared to children (like Yahoo for Kids).
As you use them, you will find the strengths of each of the big search engines and chose your tool according to your requirements. Many sites have links to the other search engines so you can quickly flit between them, often without retyping your query. It is not unusual to see a "try this search on such-and-such" link at the bottom of the page.
| Yahoo's search | Lycos | AltaVista |
| HotBot | Excite | Netscape's search |
| InfoSeek | Ask Jeeves | Yahoo's list of 150 or so search engines |
Onramps: Link pages and directories
The internet is filled with link pages and specialized directories, often personal favorites of the web site owner or links to related business or suppliers. If you come across a site you like and enjoy, you may appreciate that site's list of links to other websites of interest. Many of these listings began life as the site owner's bookmarks, which grew into comprehensive listings around relevant topics. Some, of course, are just random or fun places to browse. A few link pages for the area (which will open new windows) are:
LinkNY's local businesses links page
NYSWGF's Uncork New York wine links page
Steele Memorial Library's "best of the web" links
The Finger Lakes Times Online Home Tech links
Onramps: Bookmarks
Your own personal onramp to the internet is the collection of sites you have discovered. When you arrive at a page to which you wish to return, you can have your browser add it to a file of "favorites" or "bookmarks" (depending on whether you are using Internet Explorer or Navigator, respectively). Your browser will save the URLs and the titles of the pages on your own hard drive, and you can return to them simply from selecting them from your browser's menu.
Of course, if you are using public computers-- such as those at the Dundee Library-- you can't save personal favorites, since those files are frequently purged. In that case, you may have to rely on a relatively low-tech equivalent: a pencil and a piece of paper to write the address down!
What else can I do?
The internet is much more than just world wide web sites; the ability to connect across the globe from in front of your computer screen provided by the internet encompasses several other online activities. The biggest uses of the internet beyond (or in addition to) the world wide web are:
What else can I do? Email
Email, for years, was the driving force behind the internet, and still constitutes the largest single corporate use of the internet. Sending personal notes, business correspondence, and electronic files is one of the biggest reasons individuals and companies hook up to the internet, not the more ballyhooed graphical web pages. Most browsers have an email client as part of their ensemble, and separate mail programs abound. The newer versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator will automatically open message windows when you click on email links, or you can start the messaging part manually.
A number of "freemail" options are offered by some of the major sites. Netscape, Yahoo, various portal sites, and sites like HotMail and Juno provide mail servers accessible through browsers instead of the traditional accounts accessed through email client software. These sites are popular with people who have no ISP account of their own (such as students or folks who uses public computers), business people or travelers who may need to access their mail from a computer not their own at a remote location, and people who want multiple or anonymous mail. These sites pay for the "free" mail by including ads on the sending and receiving mail pages or in the messages themselves, or by asking you for demographic information (after all, "there is no such thing as a free lunch" in cyberspace, either!). Many people find the tradeoff more than worthwhile, and millions of freemail accounts are in use.
What else can I do? Newsgroups
Newsgroups are another long-time staple of the internet predating the World Wide Web. In newsgroups, you post a message (using news client software) to the newsgroup server which anyone can read. Auxilliary programs can attach computer files to messages. News groups range from "authorized" groups like comp.apple.hardware to some of the far-out topics in the alt.rec groups. News groups are analogous to a giant bulletin board where you can stick up anything and comment or write graffiti on everything other folks have posted. Newsgroups are probably the roughest neighborhood on the internet, harkening back to the really rowdy, wide-open early days of the internet. The scorching "flame" (vicious comments about someone, particularly a new user or "newbie") and the infamous "flame war" originated in the newsgroups.
What else can I do? Mailing Lists
Lists, or listservs, are the third long-time staple of the internet. These are specialized mail serving programs which take one message sent to the list by a poster and forward it to all the subscribers in sort of a giant "letters to the editor" equivalent. Thousands of listservs discuss hobbies, sports, computers, current issues, and more. To join one you send a message to the listserv program subscribing (often with very precise syntax) and you can often get messages one at a time or saved up for a once-a-day digest. Think of mailing lists are free-floating electronic newsletters.
What else can I do? Chat and IRC
Chat programs and chat rooms are most like the old CB radio craze (and the party line telephone before that!). You open a chat client or program and you type real-time messages to all the participants. Many people enjoy the more direct interaction with other online chatters. This is also one area where creative new ideas and software thrive, particularly to make the interaction more interesting with moving icons or avatars representing participants in ways far beyond the typed words. Most chat rooms are fun, informative, and benign, but many adolescents have run into problems with unmoderated chat rooms, so it pays to be cautious.
What else can I do? E-Commerce
E-commerce has, naturally, become a major deal as companies try to make money on the internet. It is this force which has domesticated the World Wide Web more than the newsgroups and listservs, since creating a safe, friendly, family-oriented environment is more conducive to commerce and making money.
Amazon.com created a new phenomenon with their huge online bookstore, which has expanded in many different directions, including online auctions.
Online auctions are suddenly an immensely popular due to the market-defining eBay.com. Of course all the warnings about getting caught up in "auction fever" apply big-time!
How can I learn more?
For starters, take a class. The library has one: Surfin' Safari takes place every month.
More information on just about any aspect of the internet (and many other topics, as well) can be found in collections of "Frequently Asked Questions" or FAQs maintained in some of the major servers.
The web FAQ from the people who started it all, the World Wide Web consortium is here, at W3.
ABC News and the GO network have an excellent introduction on the Internet here.
MIT has their equivalent of this internet introduction, "The World Wide Web for the Clueless" here.
Yahoo has index pages for FAQs here and here.
Another highly regarded web FAQ is maintained by Thomas Boutell here.
Books (we are relieved to report!) continue to be a very, very useful source of information regarding sites on the internet and how to navigate the information superhighway. Bookstores and libraries have many titles on specific browsers, references, guides to site listings, web page construction, and a host of other fields, from the most basic to the most advanced technical subjects. Magazine racks, likewise, carry many publications devoted to various aspects of the internet.
What does the Dundee Library have to help me?
Well, some things are still just as easy to find in the Library... The library has several books and subscriptions to magazines such as Yahoo and Internet Life you can check out. Just use the STLS terminal or ask the human librarians!!
A final test: an internet scavenger hunt!
Sometimes, the best way to learn is to try something specific, so use the internet to answer these questions:
- What colors do either:
General Electric refrigerators
or
Apple iMac computers come in? - What are three things you can do with your family in Norfolk, Virginia?
- Find a picture of "The Spirit of St. Louis."
- What did Apple Computer's stock close at on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday (if before today's closing) or today (if after 5 pm).
- Find the weather forecast for the Dundee area (Kevin Williams preferred, but any will do!).
- How much will a motel room in DeMoines, Iowa cost over the Fourth of July weekend?
- When you are done, email a summary of your results and where you found the answers to me, David Ashby. My email account is dashby@linkny.com (sure, I know how to make it a link, but I wanted you to figure out emailing me the "old-fashioned way!").