About Search Engines

WHAT ARE SEARCH ENGINES?

Search engines are huge databases of web page files that have been assembled automatically by machine.

There are two types of search engines:

1. Individual. Individual search engines compile their own searchable databases on the web.
2. Meta. Metasearchers do not compile databases. Instead, they search the databases of multiple sets of individual engines simultaneously (see Lesson 2).

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

Search engines compile their databases by employing "spiders" or "robots" ("bots") to crawl through web space from link to link, identifying and perusing pages. Sites with no links to other pages may be missed by spiders altogether. Once the spiders get to a web site, they typically index most of the words on the publicly available pages at the site. Web page owners may submit their URLs to search engines for "crawling" and eventual inclusion in their databases.

Whenever you search the web using a search engine, you're asking the engine to scan its index of sites and match your keywords and phrases with those in the texts of documents within the engine's database.

It is important to remember that when you are using a search engine, you are NOT searching the entire web as it exists at this moment. You are actually searching a portion of the web, captured in a fixed index created at an earlier date.

How much earlier? It's hard to say. Spiders regularly return to the web pages they index to look for changes. When changes occur, the index is updated to reflect the new information. However, the process of updating can take a while, depending upon how often the spiders make their rounds and then, how promptly the information they gather is added to the index. Until a page has been both "spidered" AND "indexed," you won't be able to access the new information.
NOTE: While most search engine indexes are not "up to the minute" current, they have partnered with specialized news databases that are. For late breaking news, look for a "news" tab somewhere on the search engine or directory page. Examples include:

* Google Breaking News
* Yahoo! News

WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS OF SEARCH ENGINES?

PROS:
Search engines provide access to a fairly large portion of the publicly available pages on the Web, which itself is growing exponentially (see "How Big Is the Internet?")

Search engines are the best means devised yet for searching the web. Stranded in the middle of this global electronic library of information without either a card catalog or any recognizable structure, how else are you going to find what you're looking for?

CONS:
On the down side, the sheer number of words indexed by search engines increases the likelihood that they will return hundreds of thousands of responses to simple search requests. Remember, they will return lengthy documents in which your keyword appears only once.

Additionally, many of these responses will be irrelevant to your search.

ARE SEARCH ENGINES ALL THE SAME?

Search engines use selected software programs to search their indexes for matching keywords and phrases, presenting their findings to you in some kind of relevance ranking. Although software programs may be similar, no two search engines are exactly the same in terms of size, speed and content; no two search engines use exactly the same ranking schemes, and not every search engine offers you exactly the same search options. Therefore, your search is going to be different on every engine you use. The difference may not be a lot, but it could be significant. Recent estimates put search engine overlap at approximately 60 percent and unique content at around 40 percent.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES RANK WEB PAGES?

In ranking web pages, search engines follow a certain set of rules. These may vary from one engine to another. Their goal, of course, is to return the most relevant pages at the top of their lists. To do this, they look for the location and frequency of keywords and phrases in the web page document and, sometimes, in the HTML META tags. They check out the title field and scan the headers and text near the top of the document. Some of them assess popularity by the number of links that are pointing to sites; the more links, the greater the popularity, i.e., value of the page.

WHEN DO YOU USE SEARCH ENGINES?

Search engines are best at finding unique keywords, phrases, quotes, and information buried in the full-text of web pages. Because they index word by word, search engines are also useful in retrieving tons of documents. If you want a wide range of responses to specific queries, use a search engine.
NOTE: Today, the line between search engines and subject directories (see Lesson 3) is blurring. Search engines no longer limit themselves to a search mechanism alone. Across the Web, they are partnering with subject directories, or creating their own directories, and returning results gathered from a variety of other guides and services as well.

EXAMPLES OF INDIVIDUAL SEARCH ENGINES:

* Google
* Ask

EXAMPLES OF SEARCH ENGINES THAT HAVE PARTNERED WITH SUBJECT DIRECTORIES:

* Gigablast
* Yahoo! Search

On the next post, i will be talking to you about Metasearch Engines

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

Great Search Engines

Need information? There are hundreds of search engines out there on the web. . .

Five major "search engines" do stand out, however, for their massive catalogs of information: Google.com and its Amazon.com variant, A9.com, AllTheWeb.com, AskJeeves.com, Vivisimo.com and Dogpile.com.

These five database engines use "spiders" (automated programs) to read thousands of pages per day, and index them for easy finding later.

Three major "search directories" also stand out for their voluminous catalogs: Yahoo's Directory, DMOZ.org, and About.com. Different from search engines, these three search directories use human editors and reader submissions to hand-pick their cataloged content. With human reading being much slower than robot spiders, you can expect search directories to be much smaller than search engines. The human editor element, however, does add the filter of human judgment, which can help cut down the drivel you have to sift through when searching.

So, when it comes to the question, "which search tool is the best?", the real question should perhaps be: "which search tool do you personally prefer?"

Google.com has the least advertising on its screen, and the most indexed content of all the search engines.

DMOZ is slower to load, but it has excellent depth of content.

Vivisimo uses "clustering" to present results in categorized format. About.com has lots of advertising, but has amazing subject matter expertise.

Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, and AllTheWeb have their pros and cons, too.

There are almost 300 other search tool choices not even listed here. Whichever you personally prefer, every one of these search tools contains more content than you or I could ever read in a lifetime! The smart choice, accordingly, would be to test and compare these major search tools for yourself.

Don't settle for one search tool! Use different search engines and directories in combination! Not only do search tools change their appearance every few months, you are also more likely to locate higher-quality web pages when you combine the high volume of spidered content, and the hand-picked reviewing of human editors. Rotate your search tools, avoid the rut of relying on only one search engine, show some perseverance and patience, and you will get good results.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

Mozilla Firefox vs Internet Explorer

Good: Firefox has a super-small installation (4.9MB), tabbed browsing, multiple shortcut features, integrating pop-up ad blocking, integrated Google search, large viewing area, compatibility with IE shortcuts/ favorites/cookies, clean interface, very user friendly design, and no glaring security holes.

Bad: images load 30% slower than IE; Firefox does not integrate well with Outlook email or Pocket PC Synching; browser plug-ins like Flash and Shockwave require extra user effort to install; some Javascripts will not run in Firefox. Some online banks and other password-protected websites are not designed to allow Firefox users.

Overall: Despite its small flaws, Firefox is an excellent browser that is within a two years of unseating Microsoft IE from its throne.

BACKGROUND

In the mid 1990’s, a heated courtroom battle of Microsoft IE versus Netscape Navigator was waged. After years of legal wrestling, Microsoft triumphed with the permission to bundle its IE browser into its Windows software and distribute it freely. By the sheer inertia of this distribution, 90% of the world now uses Microsoft IE to surf the web.

Netscape, while losing the market share battle, did preserve a spot in the universe by starting the Mozilla Project in 1998, where they published the Netscape source code for open developer use. Within six years, “Firebird” was designed, which has now become “Firefox”, a very respectable browser that will give Microsoft a run for its money.

Now, Firefox is available as free software at www.mozilla.org and at www.getfirefox.com

FIREFOX PROS

1. The Mozilla Firefox browser is amazingly lean. At just over 4.9MB to download and install, Firefox does not suffer from being overweight (unlike Microsoft IE6 at 80MB). The 4.9MB Firefox install does not include plug-ins like Java Virtual Machine, Flash Player, Quicktime and Shockwave, but those features can be added through 30 minutes of user effort.

2. Firefox supports plenty of user shortcuts and keystrokes. Both novices and power users will like the helpful little perks like “Type Ahead”, CTRL-enter to complete URLs, and CTRL-T to launch new tabs. In many ways, it feels like Microsoft IE, and IE users will find it easy to switch to Firefox.

3. Integrated pop-up blocking! Yes, Firefox will shut down those pesky advertisements for you. No need to install 3rd party software…just set your Firefox options in your Tools menu to prevent pop-ups.

4. Power User Feature: Firefox can prevent annoying Javascript code from hiding your status bar, resizing or moving your window.

5. Larger viewing area than IE. With smaller toolbars, Firefox can fit nearly 10% more surface area onto your monitor.

6. Nifty bookmarking features for researchers! It is possible to bookmark and folder-organize multiple tabs at once.

THE BEST FEATURE OF FIREFOX

Tabbed browsing. This is the most elegant and efficient way to run multiple windows at once. Instead of loading another 40MB of code into your computer's memory, each new "tab" window in Firefox adds less than 1MB of overhead load. With a simple press of keystroke CTRL-T, you can have a Google window, a Hotmail window, a news window, an Icebergradio.com window, and multiple other browsing screens. This is particularly useful for people on dial-up who want to multi-task while waiting for slow pages. Microsoft IE should take a lesson from this extremely useful tabbed design.

FIREFOX DOWNSIDES

As much as Firefox is a great tool, there are some small deficiencies in this application. Gratefully, these deficiencies will be quite minor for most users, and with impending improvements, these glitches will likely be repaired within the next 12 to 18 months.

1. Images inconsistently load slower than IE. While Internet Explorer will render most web pages quickly on DSL or cable bandwidth, Firefox seems to intermittently take 30% to 100% longer to render the same graphics. This is not a consistent flaw; it seems unique to whichever website you are visiting.

2. Firefox does not integrate well with Outlook or Outlook express email. With little annoying things like viewing HTML email, or launching links from a message, Firefox does not respond quickly, and often fails to respond at all.

3. Firefox also fails to integrate with Pocket PC Windows and USB cradle synching. Although only a small percentage of users actually download web calendars and web mail into their Pocket PC’s, that small percentage will be frustrated until Firefox fixes this.

4. Firefox will not render the same web page format and styles that IE will. For example: where you would normally see a page's black table outline in IE, you will see a blurred grey outline in Firefox. Not a show-stopper, but annoying, especially to web developers.

5. Plug-Ins do not auto-install as easily as IE. To add Flash player, Shockwave, Quicktime, and Java Virtual Machine, Firefox users need to manually search and download/install these tools. Sometimes, you will even need to tweak the installs using Firefox Tools menu.

6. Power User Complaint: intermittently, HTML form buttons fail to respond to the keyboard enter button in Firefox. For example: to log into one of my online bank accounts, I normally enter my account number and PIN, and press enter to submit. In Firefox, I need to switch to my mouse to press submit. This is a small peeve for those of us who love our keyboards.

PERSONAL COMMENTS

I must confess, despite my devout loyalty to Microsoft's IE browser, I absolutely adore Firefox! It's clean, fast, similar enough to IE for immediate transition, and better in many little aspects. I am particularly fond of the tabbed pages, group bookmarking, and personal skin options. For repetitive browsing, searching, and viewing 90% of web pages, Mozilla’s Firefox is now my preferred choice.

Most significantly: I prefer to do online financial transactions in Firefox instead of IE. Firefox is much more reliable for encrypting my passwords and protecting my online PINS.

Granted, there are times I need to switch back to IE: viewing my web calendars, synching my Pocket PC, and viewing a select few web pages that render better in IE. But outside of these few exceptions, I am now a Firefox convert.

SUMMARY

Whether you are loyal to IE, Opera, Safari, Mozilla, or Netscape, the imperfect-but-lean Firefox is a highly recommended alternative. With so many helpful little features like pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, horizontal bookmarks, and integrated Google, Mozilla's Firefox is working hard to win its users affection. By focusing on the most-appreciated browsing features, the Mozilla developers are giving users a slick and lean alternative to the bloated-and-insecure Microsoft IE browser.

Is this the end of Microsoft IE? No, not by a long shot, but this is the first really serious threat to IE's market share, and perhaps the beginning of Browser War II. As of this writing, an estimated 35 million users have switched from IE to Firefox, or roughly 15% of the Internet public. Accordingly Microsoft's market share has dropped from 90% to less than 80% since Firefox was released.

Try Firefox out for yourself. Maybe you'll see why so many users are switching over.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

Using Internet Explorer

Part A - Internet Explorer Window Control

Tip A.1) Switch to Full Screen for better web page viewing. This feature will hide the menu bar, toolbars, and address bar at the top of your screen, and will hide the status bar and taskbar at the bottom of your screen.
Purpose: To make better use of a small screen by hiding items temporarily.
How: Press F11 key to turn Full Screen view on and off.

Tip A.2) Hide and show the toolbars you prefer. This feature will allow you to choose which of three common button rows you can display across the top of your screen: standard buttons, address bar, and links.
Purpose: For personal preference, you can hide/show navigation controls at the top of your screen.
How: Right-click on any toolbutton or menu command at top of screen.
A shortcut menu will appear. Simply left click on what you wish to hide or show.

Tip A.3) Customize your toolbuttons to be large or small, with or without text.
Purpose: Personal preference for experienced users... they can hide explanations of buttons that they already understand.
How: Right-click on any toolbutton or menu command at top of screen. In the shortcut menu, choose customize. Then try small icons and no text labels.

Tip A.4) Choose your default font size for easier reading. Yes, you can control about 75% of the font sizes you see on the Web. If your vision prefers it, you can crank up the font size for easier reading.
Purpose: Good for people who need eyeglasses, or for people with small monitor settings.
How: click View menu, Text Size. Choose the Larger or Smaller font sizes until you can easily read the web page. Medium is common.
Note: web pages that use "style" formats or Flash or graphic fonts will not be affected by this command. Only those web pages that use regular HTML body text.

Tip A.5) Customize the IE Explorer Bar on the side of your screen to show your favorite search tools.
Purpose: Personal preference technique for navigating and searching.
How: first display the Explorer Bar by clicking View menu, Explorer Bar, Search. Once the bar is displayed at the side of the screen, click Customize, and then choose your favorite search tools to display in the bar. Use the X button to close the Explorer Bar.


Part B - Power User Tips for Opening web pages in IE5/6

Tip B.1) You never have to type the http:// or https:// prefix!
Purpose: Save yourself typing those obnoxious http letters! This peculiar acronym is really just an annotation... it displays that Hypertext Transfer Protocol language is being used to transmit your web pages. Since IE web browser already assumes this protocol by default, there is no need for you to actually type those prefix letters to open a page.
How: This technique is actually more easy than it sounds.

Let's break it down into three small steps...

The example is to visit Queen Elizabeth at http://www.royal.gov.uk/
Step 1: click or drag select (highlight) the entire URL address in the address bar, including the http:// prefix. The entire text string should turn reversed blue-white color.
Step 2: Without pressing delete or backspace, and without typing the protocol prefix, just type your URL directly over top of the blue-white block. This is called "typing replaces selection". In this case, you would type: www.royal.gov.uk
Step 3: Press enter to send your URL command to the browser. At this time, IE will type in the http:// prefix for you, and you have erased an old URL and typed a new URL all in a single motion!

Tip B.2) This is an even better tip: if you are going to an http://www.something.com address, IE will type the http://www. and the .com for you!For example. If you type about and press CTRL-Enter, the IE browser will type http://www.about.com for you! If you type darwinawards and press CTRL-Enter, then IE browser will type http://www.darwinawards.com for you!
Purpose: Save yourself even more typing by using the CTRL-Enter keystroke to open a .com web page.
How: In your URL address bar, click or drag-select (highlight) all the URL text until it turns reversed blue-white. Type the middle portion of your desired www.middleportion.com URL. Press CTRL-Enter (hold one of the two CTRL keys, then poke the Enter key.) Voila!
Warning 1: this CTRL-Enter trick only works for www.something.com commercial addresses. If you want to go a .ca or .net or .au or .uk address, you will have to manually type that.
Warning 2: The Autocomplete setting must be enabled in your browser options. Check this by clicking Tools menu, Internet Options, Content tab, Autocomplete..., Web Addresses.

Tip B.3)You can use a quick keystroke to select-highlight your IE address bar!
Purpose: save yourself having to reach for the mouse to type a new URL.
How: Press ALT-D on your keyboard. (Hold one of the ALT keys, and poke the letter D). This should instantly block the whole address bar in reversed blue-white color for you! A kind of awkward keystroke motion, but a very helpful habit once you learn it!

This was just quick, short and simple. I hope you enjoyed it.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

Plugins for Internet Users

What are Internet Plug-ins?

While a plain web browser allows you to view static HTML pages, Plug-ins are optional software additions that enhance and/or add functionality to a web browser. This means that above and beyond reading a basic web page, plug-ins let you watch Internet movies and animation, hear sound and music, read special Adobe documents, play online games, and do 3-D interaction.

What Plug-ins I should have?

Although new plug-in software is released every week, there are about 12 key plug-ins and add-on software that will serve you 99% of the time:

1. Adobe Acrobat Reader (for .pdf files)
2. Java Virtual Machine (JVM to run Java applets)
3. Macromedia Flash Player (to run .swf movies)
4. Macromedia Shockwave Player (to run heavy-duty .swf movies)
5. Real Audio Player (to listen to .ram files)
6. Apple Quicktime (to see 3d Virtual Reality schematics)
7. Windows Media Player (to run a variety of movies and music formats)
8. Windows WinAmp (to play downloaded .mp3 and .wav files)
9. "Pop-Up Killer" software (to reduce the annoying advertisements)
10. Anti Virus software
11. Optional browser toolbars, like Google toolbar, Yahoo toolbar, or StumleUpon toolbar
12. WinZip (to compress/decompress downloaded files)
(although technically not plug-ins, WinZip and AV software work as silent partners to help you download web files, and to prevent nasty programs from infecting your computer)

What do these Plug-Ins Do For Me?

Anytime you visit a web page that includes more than simple HTML content, you are likely to need at least one plug-in.

For example, on a daily basis, Flash Player is perhaps the most needed plug-in. 75% of the animated advertisements you see online are Flash .swf “movies” (Shockwave format). Here is one Flash movie example: Any Given Sunday.

The second most common plug-in need is for Adobe Acrobat Reader .pdf (Portable Document Format) viewing. Most government forms, online application forms, and a multitude of other documents use .pdf format on the Web.

The third most common plug-in would be a movie/audio player to run .mov, .mp3, .wav, .au, and .avi files. Windows Media Player is perhaps the most popular for this purpose, but you can use a multitude of other movie/audio choices.

The fourth most common enhancement to get is WinZip, which allows you to download large files in “compressed” (shrunken file size) .zip format, and then expand the compressed files for full use on your computer. This is the smartest tool for sending either large files, or batches of many smaller files. Technically, WinZip is not a "plug-in", but it certainly is recommended as a web browsing partner tool.

Depending on your browser habits, the likely fifth-most-common plug-in need would be for Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JVM allows you to run online games and online program “applets” that are written in the Java programming language. Here are some sample Java game applets.

How do I find these Internet plug-ins?

80% of the time, the plug-ins will find you! This means that most web pages requiring plug-in software will alert you if the particular plug-in is missing from your computer. The browser will then either present you with a link to, or take you directly to the webpage where the needed plug-in can be found and installed from.

If you have the most current version of the browser, some plug-ins will be already built-in.

The “hard way” of finding the plug-ins is to manually search for them via the search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. In most cases you will not need to do that. Do be careful when downloading plug-ins though. Some contain so-called “Spyware” (which will be covered in a separate article) and can be detrimental to your computer’s health.

How do I install plug-ins?

When you visit a website that has some “extras” to present to you, you will be informed that the browser needs you to install something.

You will then be given directions on what to do to complete the installation. In most cases, these installations are very easy and consist of you clicking on a button, or two. Typically, you might be asked to accept the “license agreement”, or click a “Next” or an “OK” button once or twice, and the installation will be underway.

Sometimes, however, you might be asked if you want to proceed with the immediate installation, or save the installer file somewhere on your computer, for installation at a later time. The recommended course of action would be to save the file, especially if it is rather large, and your connection is via 56K (or less) modem. The most common place to save the installer file is on your Desktop; it will be easy to find, you will only need it once, and you can delete it afterwards. It is also a good idea to reboot the computer after installing anything.

Where do I go to manually get plug-ins?

Yahoo Toolbar – recommended for killing popup ads and for enhanced web browsing:
http://toolbar.yahoo.com/

Acrobat – for viewing of PDF files:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Shockwave - for animation, games and multimedia files:
http://sdc.shockwave.com/shockwave/download/frameset.fhtml?

Flash - for animation, games and navigation:
http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

Java VM – for running Java applets such as an ICQ:
http://www.virtualmachine.tk/
or here:
http://java-virtual-machine.net/download.html

Quicktime – for watching files such as movie trailers:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Real Player – also used to watch video on the Net:
http://www.real.com/player/

Media Player - yet another format used for video on the net:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp

Pop-up Window Killers - to reduce annoying advertising:
http://download.com.com/sort/3120-2001-0-1-3.html?qt=pop+up+killer&ca=2001

Not technically plug-ins but nice-to-have utilities:

WinZip - to uncompress .zip files (the Evaluation copy is free for 30 days, then is $29 USD after that): http://www.winzip.com/download.htm

Winamp - to play .mp3 and .wav files you may download:
http://www.winamp.com/player/

Anti-Virus - to help prevent nasty programs infecting your computer:
http://download.com.com/sort/3120-2001-0-1-4.html?qt=anti-virus&ca=2001

I assure you these plug-ins and utilities will enhance your brwosing experience.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

Are You Ready for the Internet?

What you need before you dive the Internet!

There's much more to this than just having a computer.

"Surfing the Internet" is a misleading metaphor. It is really more like "Scuba Diving the Internet", with all the complexities of equipment, navigation theory, and understanding the wildlife and the terrain.

Here, we will focus on equipment needed to "successfully dive the Net"! Note that both mandatory and optional equipment is listed below. Please also note that if you browse the Internet from work, many of these items will be provided for you, provided you adhere to professional ethics when using the Internet at the office.


Internet User's Equipment Checklist

1. Computer with Internet connection. PC or MacIntosh is fine.
You can also browse the Net with a Pocket PC, a WebTV, or even a Citrix or Sparc workstation, if it is setup correctly. As you might know, there are coffee shop "Internet Cafes" that will rent usage of connected computers to you.

2. Internet account with a connection provider. Often called "ISP" (Internet Service Provider), these are usually phone or cable companies that charge you $20 to $80 USD a month for Internet access. Note: if you browse the Net from work, your company eats this cost as part of their operations. They also will have rules for you to follow. If you browse from an Internet Cafe, you will need to pay perhaps $6 USD per hour.

3. Internet browser software. The most popular is called Internet Explorer version 6 ("IE"). The the second most common browser is Mozilla Firefox. Other browser choices include: AOL, Opera, and Netscape.

4. Anti-virus software. Symantec/Norton or McAffee are the two most common. These will help defend you against nasty programs that will erase parts of your hard drive.

5. Email software. You can choose from the very popular Outlook or Outlook Express, less-common email softwares like Eudora or Groupwise, or the free "web-mail" offered by Yahoo or Hotmail or Canada.com.

6. Plug-In software. This is a big topic in its own right, but here are the most-common you will need: Java Virtual Machine, Macromedia Flash Player, Windows Media Player, Real Audio music player, Apple Quick Time.

7. Optional: stereo speakers, microphone, and webcam. These hardware devices will allow you to hear game sounds, do Internet telephoning, and send images to your friends and family.

8. Optional: Anti-Spam software.

9. Optional: Censorware, to help police what your kids can see.

10. Optional: graphic software, so you can edit pictures you like.

11. Optional: printer.

12. Optional: wheel mouse, to quickly scroll pages up and down.

As you can see, some are optional. You can still do without some of the necesary one, but i am quite sure you want the best for yourself.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che

An Overview of the Internet

The Frustrations of Not Understanding the Internet

80% of the cyber world uses the Internet without formal training. By using the trial-and-error technique of "fumbling successfully", so many people fumble their way through searching, emailing, downloading, blogging, chatting, and posting.

Granted, many self-taught users manage to fumble through email and Web page searching using trial-and-error, but they are destined to have five negative experiences every time they go online:

1. Self-taught users spend their online time without a feeling of true confidence or clear direction. Like watching television without a TV guide, people will find Internet destinations that interest them, but more through random chance than through directed choice.

2. Self-taught users cultivate bad Internet user habits. Unnecessary URL typing, cluttered bookmarks, confining oneself to a single search tool, using only one browser window, failing to install the latest plug- ins, mistakenly trusting spam email... all of these lead to inefficient browsing and wasted hours of searching and fumbling.

3. Self-taught users will unwittingly misrepresent themselves in email and online conversations. Obscure cultural points like "Netiquette", "emoticons", "flaming", use of abbreviations like "RTFM", lack of non-verbal cues, and blind carbon copy are some of the important nuances that elude most self-taught users.

4. Self-taught users experience frustration when the unknown overwhelms them. They don't understand things like pop-ups, unsubscribing, acronyms, Zip, peer-sharing, and URLs. As a result, a feeling of "being left out" festers, and confidence evaporates.

5. Worst of all: self-taught users miss out on so many Internet experiences because they do not know the full scope of available choices. Often called "unknown-unknowns", these are the great discoveries that are sitting at your fingertips, but are hidden from you because of ignorance. Things like dynamic data-driven news pages, Push- and Pull-Technology, mailing lists, special interest forums, online financial trading, trip planning, FTP, freeware, consumer reviews, peer sharing, academic archives, and online communities... these are tremendous opportunities that are hidden beneath a thin veil of obscurity.

Sadly, these five experiences are daily for 80% of the Internet public.

Your Guide to Internet for Beginners

"But no one has taken the time to explain the Internet to me."

"I don't have the time or money to take a formal training course on the Internet."

"I don't have the patience to study the Internet. Just tell me how to get around."

These are some of the common reasons why people choose to surf and email with 1% knowledge and 99% ignorance. Sure enough, it is possible to get by this way. But with a simple investment of a couple hours of guided study, you don't have to settle for 1% knowledge of the Internet. Even one day of formal training is enough to quadruple a beginner's knowledge of the Internet. With a few invested weekends and evenings, a person can easily become a confident intermediate user.

Formally learning the Internet is about small steps, good guidance, and practice.

Consider the analogy of learning to scuba dive. A novice diver could rent equipment and try learning to dive on his own, without professional guidance. Beyond the obvious physical hazards involved, the self-taught scuba diver is destined for incomplete knowledge, bad habits, and moderate confidence at best. His experience of the ocean will be confined to those random techniques and places he has been lucky enough to stumble upon. He will be unable to fully explain scuba diving to other beginners, and if he tries, he will pass his bad habits onto them.

The same learning model can be applied to becoming a lifelong Internet user. Do you want to save a few hours right now by diving in and figuring it for yourself? Do you want to trust the flawed guidance of another self-taught user? Or is this important enough to find a certified divemaster and invest in some formal training?

Here at About Internet For Beginners, we are your divemasters in the ocean of the Internet. We know the equipment, the challenges, the choices, the techniques that work, and the traps to avoid. We know how to defend against predators, how to find the beautiful destinations, and how to enjoy the company of other Internet divers.

Like a good diving school, About Internet For Beginners is dedicated to every beginning and intermediate user who wants to confidently navigate the Internet and its thousands of details. Whether you are a successful self-taught user, a frustrated parent who has learned a few web tricks from the kids, or a brand new beginner who wants fundamental guidance, then this site is for you.

Moreover, it doesn't cost anything to become a student at this web site. Internet knowledge that would normally cost hundreds of dollars at your local college or bookstore is absolutely free here. Because we get our advertisers to pay for this knowledge web site, it is absolutely free for you to use.

Yes, learning to "dive the Internet" is not only much safer than scuba diving, it will cost you nothing more than time and a little personal effort.
Patient versus Impatient Learning Paths for Beginners


OK. So you've decided you want to invest some time in formal Internet training. Instead of taking a course at your local college, you've chosen to stay online and read About Internet tutorials. The price is definitely right, and you can learn at home while sitting in your bathrobe.

So, where does a new Internet user start? What order of events is the best tutorial way to get started on a lifelong Internet career?

Well, the best learning technique is unique to you. Some learners are impatient and want to get quick guiding advice only, combined with lots of hands-on practice. Other people prefer long detailed explanations before doing hands-on. Most people are somewhere in between, with a vague idea of what they want to learn…to be continued